Motor Well A Mini Project Unto Itself

16.06 in a, Boat Plans, cabin, itself, mini, more, motor, planning, project, unto, well

Oh, the motor well.  Seems simple enough.  Build a box that bolts to the back of the boat, upon which the motor clamps.

Ive been working on the motor well since the days of the Troublesome Skegs and before the Boat Flip.

Turns out that though this earns only a brief paragraph in the Glen-L Waterlodge instructions, it is really quite time consuming.

And though the motor well shows up on various views in the plans three times, it still leaves a lot of unspecified dimensions. Despite a lot of fancy maths including tangents and the Pythagorean theorem my first effort to suss out the missing dimensions and angles was a loose collection of mismatched angles and incorrectly cut two-by stock.

The challenge of the motor well is that there are few right angles, several that are very close, but not quite 90 degrees, several similar obtuse angles and some crazy acute angles. The difficulty lies in translating perfectly good angles and lengths to actual measurements and cuts.

My second attempt -- salvaging as much of the previously cut wood as I could -- discarded the mathematical approach and did it the way a carpenter would. Rather than cutting the two-by stock first, I marked out the known angles and measurements on plywood, solving the unknowns as I went along.  I cut out the 5/8" plywood giving me a useful template that would be used for the sides of the motor well.  Finally, I measured and marked the two-by members to match the template. Magic!

After fitting everything best I could, I epoxied everything together to give me two assembled sides to the motor well.

This was a logistical challenge similar to assembling the side stringers -- you want to align the two-by members facing up, but the screws need to go in from the other side.  In this case, the motor well sides were small enough I could assemble the two-by members facing up on saw horses, then put a few screws in from the bottom to hold them together.

After that, I flipped them over and screwed the shit out of them.  All done while everything -- drill, screws, wood, hands -- are covered in sticky goo. Fun!

I completely encapsulated the wood inside the motor well with epoxy to protect it from decay.

I know from experience assembling boxes, it is easy to discover in the end that youve created a parallelogram that doesnt fit your last side.  How to prevent this?

I temporarily screwed the bottom on the motor well to square up the sides before assembling the rest of the box.  Im using wax paper to prevent the epoxy from accidentally adhering the bottom.  In fact, the bottom wont go on until after the motor well is already bolted on to the hull to allow me access to the bolts.

Now, I can go ahead and epoxy and screw on the back and the framing members.

We have to bolt this thing in with 5/8 carriage bolts no greater than six inches apart.  Turns out thats a lot, really.

I marked the bolt holes and drilled from the outside of the motor well using a carpenters square to get holes perpendicular to the rake of the hull.

Sixteen bolts for this 2 foot square box hanging off the back of the boat.

The heads of some of the carriage bolts would fall on angled members, and so needed to be countersunk.

I needed to temporarily hang this thing so I can mark the bolt holes on the hull.  I built a little support jig that took into account the missing bottom piece.

Here is the motor well on the boat.  Fancy.

Using a wax china pencil, I marked the bolt holes for mounting the motor well.

It seemed like madness to drill 16 holes in my previously watertight boat hull.  Soon, well finish the outside of the motor well and bolt it on.

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The Cabin Has a Floor

12.18 in a, Boat Plans, cabin, floor, has, itself, mini, motor, project, the, unto, well

Lets put in a floor!  This is the floor that will be inside the cabin.

Remember the beautiful old redwood I got from the chicken shed that Jen, Kai, Alex and I salvaged last year? I wanted to use these thick 1x12s for flooring in the boat. The also have the advantage of putting some weight down into the hull of the boat.

I had a worry that using straight boards for floorboards, there would be little cracks between them that would constantly filter dust into the bilge and possible squeak when you walked on them. So I had the idea to route the edges to make them lap each other.

Ten boards, eight foot long, two edges each. Thats a lot of routing.

Actually, none of the boards were eight foot long, so they had to go in piece by piece.

I used construction adhesive and exterior nails to secure the flooring down. The adhesive will keep the flooring from squeaking and slowly coming up. Modern construction adhesive is so strong, that when you take up plywood that has been adhered down, it comes up in pieces.

It ended up having a neat look.

I wanted to put hatches wherever I could under spaces that were not occupied by fixed objects such as the head, the galley, and the woodstove. After the first three boards aft, I had to start getting strategic with my flooring installation.

It slowly came together. I tried to make the hatch covers match the surrounding boards best I could.

Heres a really bad idea: Using wood that has been nibbled by termites. Some of the wood when I routed it, not only revealed whole termite empires, but actual live buggies.

I went to the lumber yard and drenched everything in Copper Green. This is a special (and more expensive) clear preservative. By clear they actually mean, kind of a deep amber -- but thats preferable to the bright green of the regular stuff.

After all the flooring and the hatches were in, I attacked it with the belt stander, knocking down edges and leaving the different shades a bit more uniform.

I quite like how it came out. I made mismatched hatch handles for each of the four hatches. Can you spot all four?

Heres one of the adorable little hatches open.

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More Cabin Planning

23.11 in Boat Plans, cabin, fancy, more, new, pants, planning, renderings

If youve been following the blog, you know that one place that Im diverging from the Glen-L Waterlodge plans is in the cabin.  While I have been true to the plans while building the hull, I am increasingly going off into the wild blue as I design and build the cabin.  The original plans called for a cabin that looks like this:

My modifications look like this:

Here are the details I didnt mention in my last musings about the cabin. It always surprises me that finish details often end up having a bearing on the framing of a structure.

Wall Construction

Cabin wall exterior finish:  Board and baton (with beautiful ancient redwood)

Cabin wall interior finish:  None, boards exposed inside

The cabin is almost two foot lower than the deck. Doors open outward at the top of stairs at deck height -- or maybe they should open inward. I will bring the studs down into the hull to secure them.

I was fretting about the wall design, whether to use 2x2s, 2x3s or 2x4s.  I was worried about the wall being burly and strong enough to hold the cabin together, but thats just because of my history as a home builder and familiarity with standard stud construction.

In standard frame construction, I imagined the 2x4s forming little natural nooks inside the cabin, that with a cabinet door could hold the innumerable things that clutter up a boat. Broom, fishing poles, gaff, a million other things.

Chicken John, always ready with an opinion, opined thusly:

"Im not looking at your design. I didnt read the other comments. Whatever it is you are building its too heavy. After your 5th revision and youve got your weight down to less then 800 pounds, then we can start talking about the simple fact that whatever is on top of the water you need kinda the same thing under the water. Or you will be punished. Get an apple. Bite into it, deliberately  Understand the leverage that your teeth are using. Bite again, even slower. Identify all the physics involved. All the muscles. The sharpness of the tooth, the rigidity. Feel when the apple surrenders to the teeth. Then ask when you boat surrenders to which force? And remember that the kayak is the result of 10,000 years of nautical design."

Chicken poetically argues for lighter construction on the topside. So I guess steel armor is right out. I heard others, including the boats designer Glen L. Witt, similarly expressing concern about weight.

My friend Scott was worried about the weight of the board and baton, but not the sheer strength:

"Boat and batten convey a surprising amount of sheer strength. Im not so worried about diagonal bracing; and a pair of X-crossed cables could provide lightweight sheer if needed. Theres also two feet of stud locked to the hull thats providing sheer, and its locked in a hole in the deck. Its not going to parallelogram no matter what you make it out of."

Bob on the Shantyboat list offered some great suggestions regarding wall width, insulation, and construction technique.

If you are going to use 2-bys I would use 2x3s perpendicular.  You would still have some space for small jars, containers, etc.  I have done that in a Tiny House build, leaving the inside open and gluing in more horizontally for shelves. Works great. I would make any shelving easily removable and live with it that first year with your heat source.  That way should you decide insulation would be better you can remove them easily to make insulating easier.   

I will probably do board and batton secured every two feet to spacers without plywood. This is ancient redwood and having that redwood facing in will feel sweet. Only worried a little about water/weather proofing, but there is always construction adhesive and caulk.

Roof Construction

Roof style:  Gabled
Roof finish:  Corrugated metal

The cabin will have a gabled roof and yes, I know that its totally absurd on a boat for a number of reasons, including height, weight, and wind resistance.  However, I really appreciate the aesthetics  It is this absurd vision, in fact, that inspired me to build a shantyboat.

Impracticabilities aside, a gabled roof is really quite practice in a number of ways. Lots of storage space, an overhead bunk can fit in the gable, easy to hang stuff from the rafters. It feels big and beautiful and homey.

The roof will be gabled fore and aft.  This gives a view forward from the bunk through a small window in the gable.  It also keeps the height lower at the edges most likely to have a brush with overhanging trees.

Ill be skimping as much as possible on the roof to save weight.

• 1x6 roof center beam
• 2x4 rafters on 24 inch centers (to support corrugated metal)
• 2x4 cross ties on 24 or 48 inch centers, to support an overhead bunk

Perhaps that gives you a little better idea how things will likely be constructed, and what kind of self-imposed constraints I am working with.

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Cabin Wall Framing Finally

15.33 in and, Boat Plans, bow, cabin, eyes, finally, framing, stern, tiedowns, wall

Whew, finally. We get to constructing the cabin walls. This is the fun part for me. As a former carpenter, framing construction is well-within my comfort zone.

Initially, it looked like it would be easy as pie. I planned to simplify the standard stud construction to reduce weight: (single) sole plate + studs + (single) top plate + simplified door and window openings.

But as I started planning out the end walls, I realized I needed access to the space under the decks, and so the end walls had to work around that.

The side walls were a little simpler and more conventional.

I was using all recycled Doug Fir 2x4s from the salvage pile at the dump, ripped from 3-1/2 inches to 3 inches.

Looking one more time at my wall detail, you see that the coaming (labeled "edgeboard") is cut into the wall studs.  So I had to dado a sizable groove into each of my studs to accept the coaming.

Real woodworkers have tools for this, but I had to resort to some deft skillsaw work. And without a working wood chisel, I was sadly using a flat head screwdriver.  Embarrassing. But it worked reasonably well.

Next, I assembled the walls on the floor of the barn, and then awkwardly personhandled them solo into place in the boat.  Every connection was adhered with construction adhesive and nailed.

In the boat, the wall framing was glued and screwed.

Two walls.

Three.

With window framing and blocking added.

And finally four finished walls. In this last photo, you can see the doorframe to the head on the right.

A big day, for sure. Time for a cigar.  Next up, more mistakes were made.

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