Well I finished planking the hull, and tried to sand it. I did not like how it turned out

Issues:
1. Wood thickness. Since I was being "frugal" I ordered the Paulownia wood as rough planed, not sanded. I figured I can sand it down my myself. Well without a horizontal thickness sander, the pieces I did sand all came out with varying thicknesses. I was worried about, but thought why not try. Lesson learned.

2. The balsa stripper. What a nightmare. It kept following the grain of the wood, no matter what I tried. Keeping it stationary, burring the tip of the blade, longer fence, etc. I ended up with wavy strips.

I tried to work with the wavy strips of wood, but keeping all the waves lined up. That actually worked, but I ended up wasting a bunch of wood. And I still ended up with huge gaps in the planking.

3. CA glue. I really hate using CA (super glue). I originally intended to use wood glue (Titebond III, waterproof), but I kept reading how other people just used CA and how they didn't have issues. I should have followed my original gut instincts. It just sets to fast, and getting your finger stuck to the wood get old quickly. Because it sets so fast, it caused the biggest issue...

4. Gaps and uneven planking. Dry fitting the wood I could get nice smooth, no gaps, planking, but as soon as I start gluing, things got ugly. Once the glue goes off, ripping out the wood isn't an option. Well if I didn't have issue #1, I would have ripped out the plank and tried...Continue Reading

After fixing up a friends Marblehead sailboat, I have gotten the bug to build my own. So here it is:

Hull: Monarch Marblehead Class (50/800), designed by Graham Bantock 2003
Material: Paulownia Elongata, Birch Plywood.

I chose the Monarch because it was modern boat design, but in wood. I ordered the plans from Traplet Publications The plans are classic blue prints. Unfortunately they look like copies from a copy, so the shadow lines (aka profiles) weren't the best. I set out to scan them and convert them to CAD for better printing. For doing the work, I thought it would be nice to make PDF documents and send them to Graham in case someone else felt the plans weren't decent copies.

I ended up with a nice email conversation with Graham about CAD and Marbleheads in the USA. I came out of the conversation with true CAD drawings of the shadow lines from Graham, Wooo Hooo!!!! He recommended that I try to narrow the beam and try to shallow the draft a bit, since I live in an area of really light winds. I decided to do it "by the book" instead. Maybe later I might modify to a narrower, shallower hull.

I also decided to try a different material. The plans call for Balsa or Ceder and Birch plywood. I've read about Paulowina as an alternate for Balsa. It's almost as light as Balsa, but stronger. I can attest that it is stronger. In planking the hull, if I had used Balsa, I would have broken several pieces trying to bend it to the shadows.

The bummer part, is that...Continue Reading