All of the interior trim has been fitted and varnished, all in Australian Red Cedar (Toona Ciliata), a well-used and well- loved classic furniture timber in Australia, a distant relative of Mahogany. This is not meant to be a woodworking lesson, but it contains many tips from my decades of wooden boatbuilding, including how to apply a bit of hand-shaping to improve the look of machine- made trim.https://youtu.be/WP77xJSp6-A
The Ranger hull is completely caulked and payed (seams filled) and this video shows how I did it. I point out that here in Australia we follow the English system of caulking, where the tools, materials and methods are slightly different from the way things are done in the USA and Canada. Full of tips from my long career in wooden boatbuilding. https://youtu.be/0H1wDDVxJ-c
The cockpit has been in for quite a while but not permanently. Gluing it together and sheathing it had to wait until the back of the cabin was in, and that couldn’t happen until the engine was in. I discuss the choice I made to use marine plywood in the cockpit, and show how I scarfed the plywood together and how I sheathed it with dynel cloth in WEST System epoxy resin. The back of the cabin is all built from Queensland Maple, as was most of the Ranger fleet.
Episode 18 of my series on Traditional Carvel Planking: Bronze Castings, Patterns to Polishing is now up on YouTube, on the newly re-named SMITHY’S BOATSHED Channel. Boats like the one I’m building need bronze fittings, and although many can be purchased off the shelf like portholes (Episode 15) and seacocks (Episode 16), many need to be custom-made. If you do the pattern making and polishing yourself these can be reasonably cheap.
Just a short video to update everyone on progress. I needed the engine in the boat to start working out where everything associated with it goes, including the removable engine box. This video shows how I lifted it into position.
Ian Smith discusses seacocks, the different types available, where to put them and how to fit them to a carvel-planked hull.
The 15th episode of the Carvel Planking series shows how portholes were fitted to the Ranger-class sloop. The whole process of deciding where the portholes are to go and locating them for the best appearance is covered.
It’s been a while coming but I eventually had enough footage to put Episode 14 together. It’s basically about how to shape the edges of flat surfaces such as bulkheads and shelves to fit against curved surfaces like the hull sides.
It took me a few weeks but the hull is now faired and primed. Fairing is getting rid of any bumps and hollows in the planking and on a carvel hull most of the work is done with hand planes, followed by sanding boards (“torture boards”) .
A carvel-planked boat has many hundreds of fastening holes to plug as well as a few repairs to plank surfaces where knots are exposed. Here’s how I went about it.
Knees are used to brace the hull and deck in the main load areas like the beams adjacent to the mast, cockpit and cabin structures and in the bow and stern. Ian Smith shows how he fitted knees into the 24′ Ranger-class gaff sloop from natural crooks of tea tree and from laminated knees, from cutting out to fastening off.
The deck beams, cockpit structure and the carlins for hatches are all going in to the 24′ Ranger class new build. Ian Smith shows how to lay out the shapes of the deck beams, how to laminate them and how to fit them to the sheer clamp, as well as fitting the hatch carlins, the fore and aft members between deck beams.
The Huon Pine snub dinghy gets its stringers, risers, thwarts, knees and rowlock blocks, and launches it for a trial run. This is the final episode in the series where the Sydney Wooden Boat School Summer School Class of 1999 built two dinghies, a snub and a stem dinghy.
The Summer School class of 1999 turns over the Huon Pine snub dinghy and steam-bends the ribs into the boat, and fastens them off.
Stringers and clamps are essential longitudinal members of the hull. Here’s how I went about it in the 24′ Ranger.
The 24′ Ranger is nearly planked up, only a couple of planks to the lower sheer strake level. I filmed the process of fitting a couple of planks and have put it together as Episode 8 of the Carvel Planking series.
Now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty of traditional clinker planking, the actual planking itself! The class starts planking the two dinghies, a snub (pram) dinghy and a stem dinghy. In the first few classes I ran back in the early 1990’s, the thing that held most people up was how to make the jerralds (gains or rebates) where the planks are let into each other at the bow and stern. After quite a few ruined planks, I developed a sequence to follow which enables first-timers to get it right every time. It’s not the way it was generally done, but it works! The video follows the class right through the process from deciding how many planks to use, lining out, spiling and marking out, browing off (bevelling), cutting and matching jerralds, drilling for fastenings and fastening off. At the end there is a two-minute summary.
For over 150 years Sydney’s open boat sailors have called the spar out the front of the boat a bumpkin, whereas yachties would call it a bowsprit. This video shows the reasons why this is the case. It also shows stages in the shaping of a new bumpkin for the 18-footer replica Yendys from a select piece of clear Oregon Pine (Douglas Fir).
