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I've started working on part II but not enough progress yet for a video. I've been making video of what work I've done. I hope in the next day or two to have part II ready. Chad

Nice of you to ask Mike. I have been waiting on a shipment of lumber to come in (I really appreciate your offer). I managed to get some western red through a company that does our cabinet work. It came in yesterday and I've yet to get it home. In the meantime I've been working on a paddle (see my other thread). As I get more into the canoe stripping I will keep you updated. Chad

I wanted to post part 1 of my canoe paddle building. I've built a pair of oars before but this is the first paddle I've tried and I will post more videos as I do more work. After watching that video I have some others of my shop and work and misc. http://www.youtube.com/user/locosmith Chad

You would think that around here that yes there would be a better selection, but alas that is not always the case. Most small time operators have been pushed out and most of the lumber is geared toward construction. I can get pretty much any hardwood I want and I can get the western red (just expensive). Mike I will keep your offer in mind and if my other contacts don't come through I may take you up on that offer. Chad

The box stores here carry western red in the form of lap siding here also, but the quality that I have seen here is terriable. I'm not sure you could get any usuable strips out of what they have in stock. That is why I'm checking with some of my suppliers here locally. By the time I bought enough of that knotty stock at HD to get enough strips I would have probably spent more than just going out and buying what I need in clear. Chad

Haven't thought about that. I've been looking into trying to get some western red. So far the best price is $5.80 a board foot. I might ask them about white. Chad

I offset the stations the thickness of the planking (1/4") before laying them out. It was mentioned on the WBF about bevelling the stations as you get near the stems. This is something that I will look into. Chad

If you guys might remember I took the offsets of a 10' pack canoe designed as a wood and canvas canoe, from the book The Wood & Canvas Canoe by Jerry Stelmok and Rollin Thurlow, and converted them to stations using AutoCad. I than created some drawings that I used to lay out the stations. One of the things I wanted was to have a winter project that would fit inside the shop and another is a lightweight canoe and another chance to perfect my fiberglass/wood strip techinque. Last week I started cutting out the stations and this week I started on the strongback. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2115/2153286804_283e6d58fa_b.jpg[/img] http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2408/2152493551_e5dc6d5f89_b.jpg[/img] I also was able to get started on the stems. The stems will be made from white oak along with a corresponding wihite oak strip down the center as a keel strip and the gunwales will also be from a single white oak strip. The rest will be stripped out with ceder. The stem will be 3/4" thick made up of (6) 1/8" strips glued up with Gorilla Glue. I've gotten the first two layers glued up. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2139/2152497893_d3787efcb5_b.jpg[/img] Chad

I've been by the Trailer sailor a few times. I'll will keep you guys updated on my projects. I hope to find some time real soon to get out in the shop. I haven't even opened the shop doors in a couple of weeks. Starting to have withdrawls. Chad

I'll start with an update on my Weekender "Fred" As you may or may not know during the last sailing season I had a "knocked on beam ends" issue with my Weekender. What started as a nice Sunday sail turned into an all day torture fest with cracked ribs and a sunburn from hell. There was quite a bit involved in getting her back upright and bailed out and not going to go there on this discussion. Some other issues that I had was due to the fact that I had used pullys from Ace Hardware and not true blocks. This had not been much of an issue untill everything was racked just a bit and the blocks at the top of the mast had a little mud in them. Long story short I was pretty much disgusted with the cheap pullys and refused to take her out till I had deceant blocks. After much time spent on E-bay I've now gotten all of them repleaced with either Harken or Roisten except for those on the sheet traveler. Another item is a motor. At the present I don't have one and after my receant "beam ends" experiance I had to make my way back to the dock under jib alone. I need an aux motor. Next is the Lyle Hess designed Balboa 20 that I'm restoring. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/67/204770983_04f64523d8_b.jpg[/img] http://farm1.static.flickr.com/235/518721166_9c2ae1d1bb_b.jpg[/img] As you can see I rescued her from the woods and she was given to me. I spent quite a bit of time cleaning her up. Even had to buy a respirator to clean out the cabin. All of the squirrel turds and bad carpet did a number on me and forced the respirator. As you can see I've started getting her painted. At the moment I need to get her back on the trailer, but I need to modify the trailer to make it more suitable for the Balboa. I'm short a mainsail, boom and tiller. I'm looking to buy a new mainsail or a used one and I will make my own boom and tiller. On the inside I've stripped it out and pulled all of the old carpet out. I'm looking at several different options on the inside of the cabin. One involves makeing wood strip panels and the other is re-carpeting. Don't know what I'm going to do for sure. This is also another one I need an aux motor for. Next on the list is the Meerkat. http://farm1.static.flickr.com/114/280567802_665032a512_o.jpg[/img] This started as the DragonShip, but I renamed the design in honor of virtual friend that passed away. This is a group design centered on my wants and needs in a boat. I wanted a traditional gaff rigged boat similar to the Friendship sloop but trailerable. I also wanted a rounded hull form and strip construction. In the end I ended up with a design that takes from several different designs, including the Weekender, and end up with what you see above. The keel is layers of 3/4" southern yellow pine with built in pockets for ballest. She will utilize a heavy centerboard/swing keel to help keep the weight down low. The hul will be built with double sawn oak frames and the planking western red cedar. At the moment all of the weight, CE and other calculations have been done and I'm slowly working on the working drawings. Next is my current project. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2339/1798773958_d6b150b52b_o.jpg[/img] This started as needing a winter project that would fit inside the shop. It is a 10' pack canoe that was designed as a canvas covered canoe, but I modified it for strip. I took the offsets and put them in Autocad and from there I created station drawings which I'm in the process of laying out in the shop. Future projects. http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1399/1235966678_2946362a8a_b.jpg[/img] http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1205/1244176209_620de36654_b.jpg[/img] Include this boat, a Penn Yawl, and motors that are in my cousin's barn. He is waiting permission from the orginal owners and once he has that it will become mine. I would like to restore the boat and the motor and have a period correct runabout. Chad

Steve that design came about becuase of my desire to have a friendship type sloop that was trailerable. In there are ideas from the friendship sloop, the weekender, a wherry and a melonseed skif and even from the balboa 20. The design was named after a friend/formunite from the WBF that passed over the bar this year. Chad

In the next five years I hope to be building a strip planked centerboard gaff rigged sloop of my own design. It is called "The MeerKat" Chad

Just wanted to add here. As you may know I receantly had an "experiance" with the weekender. I wish I had some floatation built in. Two things for you. If and when you go over I found that once the cabin fills with water the weekender floats with the decks about an inch or two below the level of the lake water. The other is that with it full of water you may find that you can't get it stand back up. You may get the mast pointed straight up in the air, but as soon as you let go of the boat it will lay back down. You will find the need to drive it as far up on shore as you can so as to get it sitting on bottom, thus forcing the decks above the water level and making the boat sit up. Chad

Mike did you get my e-mail? Chad

Some good stuff here. Gotta head out to work. I'll check in later. Chad

I think it was a combination of the sails full of water and the boat being completly swamped. When I did get it upright nothing but the cabin top was above the water. Had to push as far on shore as I could to the the rails above the water level before I could start bailing. Chad

Yeah, just a touch. Chad

Thought I would come over here and post this. I posted on the Wooden Boat forum and thought that maybe you guys would want to read it. Learned a lot of new things today. One is I need to think of some different line routing schemes and another is I really need to work on line management. Some of the more important stuff is stuff like the Weekender is real fun around 3 to 4 knots. Around 4.7 knots it gets a little hairy. If you hit 5.6 knots you could have an "incident". Most of the day was good. I was averageing about 2 knots with stretches where I was running between 3 and 4 knots with ocasional bounces off of 4.7. Now that we have some of the backround we can talk about 5.6 knots. Wind gust are tricky, at least to me. Imagine being on the backside of the bay running along at 2 knots. Luckly the GPS was in the Otter box at this time. All of sudden I find myself getting close to a lee shore and the window does it little gusty thing. At this time the GPS would later reveal that I had reached 5.6 knots. It was also at this time that I found out excatly where the point of no return on the Weekender is. BTW it is at the place where the water is halfway between the lee rail and the cockpit. Don't take much from there. Another lesson learned today is to tie all your floaty stuff off to the boat somehow, especilly your bailing bucket. But anyway, next thing I know is 92 degrees and greeen water. At this time I still had my sunglasses. I've read some here on righting onself and I found out that I don't have enough behind to right a Weekender. In fact after about 15 or 20 minutes of trying it by myself a jet ski comes over and overs assitance. Between him pulling with the jet ski and me riding the keel we managed to right it, but it was short lived. The boat was completly submerged at this time with only the cabin top out of the water. I talked him into pulling me closer to shore and than he left. Another jet ski guy came by and got in the water to lend a hand. We got her even closer to shore so that she was sitting on her keel and I was able to get the rails above water. This is when I discovered that my collasable bailing bucket had gone bye bye. But I still had my small cooler. After a lot of bailing I was as close to being dried out as I was going to get. BTW I've got some issues with the rig I will need to work out. But anyway she is floating on her lines and I'm still on a lee shore. I try to raise the jib and sail off that way. I did mange to get off the shore only to be driven back on. After much sweat and cursing I do mangae to make it across a sluegh (or whatever it is called) to the other side, which is really an even worse situation as far as being on a lee shore. The wind is picking up pretty good here and everytime I try and raise some sail I get pushed further into the shore. Eventually I give up on paddleing and trying to sail and walk the boat along the shore till I round the point. At this time I raise the jib, as the wind dies off, and head toward the boat ramp. I eventually make it without any major problems. Of course I get to the boat ramp and head toward the dock. As I approch the dock some kid in a bass boat is trolling toward the dock to pick up his Mom and Dad. At this time I'm almost at the dock and have released the sheets on the jib and prepare to fend of the dock. The kid keeps comeing for the same spot I am. He got a shot of my bowsprit across his bows and never said a word. And of course to make a bad day worse I couldn't back the trailer straight, but I didn't really care what everyone else thought. And BTW I will remember this for a few days at least. I forgot sunscreen and went shirtless, so by this time tommorow I should have blisters. Sorry no photos or videos. Chad

Bill I tried to e-mail you back and it came back as blocked (ie spamblocker). Chad

Bill, it will probably be later this evening or tommorow before I can call. Is there anytime that is to early or to late? Chad

I'm hopeing that this is the last round of calculations and I can start the drawings. I want to be able to include a table of offsets with the plans. In addition I'm going to do a sheet of station molds so you don't have to use the offsets. Chad

Oops sorry. Reckon ya'll knew by now that I can't spell. BTW Michael is the architect and Bruce is the Free!Ship expert. Without either of these two this project would have never gotten off the ground. Are you still interested in doing the table of offsets for me when we are ready? Bill, I think we may have exchanged e-mails when I first was looking at the Balboa. I'll try and call you later. Chad ps Dave I wish we could have gotten a chance to hook up while I was in SD, but it just didn't seem to work out.

Here is a shaded 3d version of the DragonShip. Chad

Not sure if I want to sell it or not. My daughter loves it even though we haven't had it in the water. It is a well designed boat, but it isn't wood and I've got the DragonShip I hope to start building this spring. Chad

The displacment is 1700 lbs. I'll keep you in mind when it comes off the trailer. Still trying to figure out the best way to do this. Chad