Dave R1

Varnish is still wet but here it is.

Ken, I set 50% wood filler as the limit. If I go over that, I paint.

Thank you and your boat is lovely as well. I really like the roller furler because I can furl the sail from the cockpit. This makes it much nicer especially when single handing the boat. the traditional two-sheet jib sheet arrangement is not really that hard to work and does give you better control over the jib's shape. I came up with a method for connecting the sheets to the sail that doesn't use any hardware. It is secure, easily worked with one hand and won't give anyone a black eye if they get hit with it while sitting on the foredeck. (My bride enjoys sitting there sometimes.) Keep in mind that if you go with a roller furler, you really need a luff wire attached to the sail. The first year I did that, I ran the wire through the hanks on the sail. I seized the wier to the hanks and to the grommets at the head and tack. This worked fairly well but when I got the tanbark sails, I had the luff wire put in the luff properly. Here is a picture of that sheet to clew attachment. The jib sheet line is one piece, middled with an Alpine Butterfly knot. There is a little strop on the sail with a stopper knot in one end and an eye in the other. You simply push the stopper through the loop in the butterfly and then through the eye in the strop. Just like buttoning a shirt. Oh and by the way, I found a closeup of the roller furler from the first year I had it. I attached it to the bottom of the forestay just to try it out.

John, thank you. Your question isn't so dumb. The spokes are a just a snug fir into the hub. No mechanical or chemical fastening. I've thought about adding some screws but it doesn't seem like they're needed.

"PORTSMOUTH

FWIW, This photo shows the bowsprit and the way the jib is set up now.(or rather last summer. It should be the same this year) The jib anchors at the same distance from the mast as per the plans. The bowsprit is longer and the mast is taller. I suppose it would be easy enough to turn it into a cutter rig by running another sail up the forestay. There's already enough strings to pull though.

I just thought I'd post a couple of pictures of a setup I tried the year before last. I put a roller furler on my jib and was planning to use the club. The geometry happened to work out so that the sail could be furled with the club attached. As it ended up I decided I don't like the self tending jib so I removed the club. Still, for someone who wants the club, this seems to work fine. Just an idea.

Thanks Ken, Frank and Bill. No worries Bill. If the weather and my free time don't cooperate here pretty soon I won't get the boat ready in time anyhow. By the way, the main reason I chose maple and cherry for the steering wheel is that they take paint pretty well.

Right! You lot already forgot about my steering wheel project. Probably thought it beat me and I gave up. Well, not yet but I'm getting close to considering what color I should paint it. Actually, I've been working on the wheel mostly in very short periods due to other things going on. I've also forgotten to take pictures as I went. I finally remembered to haul the camera out and get some shots and here they are. First, the wheel as it sits now. I've got the entire wheel assembled and in this shot you can see the bungs in the screw holes on the front. The wheel is glued together with epoxy slightly thickened with fumed silica. There are screws into the spokes but they aren't really useful once the epoxy has cured. the bumngs are "glued" in with spar varnish which is what I'll use to finish the wheel. The varnish will hold the bungs in place just fine and there won't be an unsightly glue lines around the bungs. the inisde ends of the spokes were varnished since I'll never have access to the ends again. Here are the bungs for the opposite side. As you can see, I cut the bungs nearly free but left a very thin bit of wood so they stay together. This made it possible to dip them into the varnish and place them without getting varnish on my fingers. after dipping the bung in the varnish, I set it in place over the hole and drove it in with a little hammer which also managed to break the bung free of the strip. Leaving the bungs in the strip also makes it easier to align the grain. And, FWIW, here's the steering shaft made by a friend from a bit of stainless steel round stock. The center is drilled and tapped for a machine screw and a key way is cut to mate with the keyway in the hub. the key is glued into the keyway with CA glue.

Ray is correct. The plans don't cover building a dolly. Mine was pretty simple. Two 8' 2x6s cut in half and screwed together for the ends. Another pair of 8' 2x6s for the length attached to the end pieces with joist hangers. Scraps of plywood screwed down on the corners kept the dolly from racking and provided nice places to set down a drill or a pot of expoxy. Vertical scraps of 2x4s on either side of the keel and under the sides of the bottom panel kept the boat upright.

Thanks Kevin. The hub is the one from the old wheel. I got that old wheel through ebay for about $26. The least expensive simliar one I could find in a recent search was $40 (not through ebay) which is still less than the bronze hubs I could find by themselves. I've got some ideas for making a hub along with some improvements to the construction jig that I want to explore but I need to get this wheel and the new rudder box done first. I have the spokes now and they are cut for one outer felloes ring but I've been too busy with other things to do much more or take any pictures. Soon, hopefully.

Glad you got it worked out. A little piece of plywood will fil that gap in the stem notch and you'll be all set.

Hank, if you cut the transom according the plans, the deck should sit down below the top edge by an inch or so. I don't recall the exact dimension but it is marked on the plan. If you are trying to get the deck to meet the top edge of the transom it would appear short. I looked at a 3D drawing I did some time ago fo my Weekender and it shows the deck meeting the transom at the corners, 19" above the lower corner of the transom. The transom should not be curved vertically, though.

Thank you Ken. Yours looks very nice as well. There is no support under the center of the seats. There is a batten running across under neath that ties the boards together, ala park bench. the supports at each end are screwed and epoxied to the boat. The seats are only screwed to the supports--4 screws each end--so the seats can be easily removed. In the first images I posted you can see the mahogany trim pieces that cover the screws. They are simply held in place with double-sided carpet tape. When I want to remove the seats, I pry off the trim pieces and remove the screws. The tape doesn't last forever but it is easy enough to renew. best of all, no exposed hardware.

I found a picture of the seats in my boat. This is from launch day.

Jeremy, welcome and thank you. Sorry, no website for my boat. I can see if I can find a few more pictures. Is there something specific you want to know?

Thank you, Frank. I sure like the way they turned out, too. Here's a little tiny mod I did a couple of years ago. I made this one but I imagine you could find something commercially that would work. This is a piece of stainless welding rod made into a fairlead. It is mounted midway between the mainsheet blocks on the boom. It prevents the mainsheet from hanging down and strangling me on those light air days. My boat is so full of mods it might n ot be right to call it a Weekender. the mast is 3' taller than plan. the gooseneck is about 8" higher so I don't get smacked in the brain bucket quite so often (you know why they call it a boom, right? It's the sound it makes when it hits you in the forehead. ) The bowsprit is longer to maintain the fore triangle shape. The jib is on a roller furler inside the forestay. The steering mechanism is my invention using sprockets and No. 40 roller chain. The companion way is larger than plan, There's a hatch in the middle of the stern deck for access to the steering. This makes it possible to steer the boat by grabbing the stub tiller in case of a problem with the steering system. (which should be pretty much bullet proof now.) There is no exposed hardware on any hatch. The stern hatch is held down with bungee cords on the inside. The forehatch latch is one of those magnetic childproof cabinet latches. The magnetic key is stored in the drawer under the port seat. Probably not good if one has a compass on board but where I get to sail, one is hardly out of earshot of the shore. There's really no need for a compass. I did away with the self tending part of the jib. Never liked it and find the boat handles better with a traditional two-sheet jib. there's no hardware to attach the jib sheets to the sail so there's nothing hard to whack my bride when she lounges on the little foredeck. The jib sheet can also be attached to or removed from the sail with one hand. Pictures if you want 'em. Bill P's Surprise sails extremely well with the self tending jib so I'm not talking you out of that setup. Well, that ought to get you going.

They don't show very well but I made seats that are open below. there is a handy drawer under the forward end of the port seat. Otherwise the space is entirely open. That gives me a good place for my feet either tucked under the seat I'm sitting on or stretched out across the boat. I throw my dock bumpers under there when they're wet, too. For this mod I omitted the lower cutouts in the cabin bulkhead.

Thanks. Here's a few more pics from over the weekend. Routing the outer felloes. They are glued together with CA gel which forms a very strong bond. Since they are difficult to clamp because of the angle, the CA is very handy. After the glue cures in a few seconds, a screw was put in to hold the piece in place. After the outer felloes rings were made, all the felloes pieces got round overs at the router table. Here you can see the inner felloes returned to the jig. They are shimmed to center them on the stand in spoke blanks. Here is one of the outer felloes rings laying in place on the wheel. The next step is to set up the trammel so that I can rout the notches in the spokes for the outer ring.

It's probably just me but I think I'd rather start from scratch than try to repair that boat. I think repairing the keel would be only the beginning. It depends on how you feel about doing that sort of restoration work. Just suppose you get into the project further and discover rot in the bottom panel. You can't really just replace the bottom of the boat. My $0.02 is to start looking for a source for lumber and start new.

Jeff, I'm not done yet. I might end up painting the thing. :roll: Thanks for the compliment.

Last weekend I started on a new steering wheel for my sailboat. (Funny, that boat was "finished" four years ago but I'm still making stuff for it. ) I made the spoke blanks which I sent off to a friend who kindly volunteered to turn them for me. They are laminated up from cherry and hard maple. This weekend I made a trammel for my P-C trim router, milled the stock for the felloes, (the parts that form the rim of the wheel. They are called felloes on a wagon wheel, too.) and got the inner felloes cut to shape. I had enough stock cut to the size of the spoke blanks to stand in for the ones my friend will be making so I could at least get this far. The trammel was a bit of a challenge to work out. There aren't any extra screw holes on the bottom of the stock router base and there's not really that much vertical travel so the base couldn't be too thick. Since I have plenty of scraps I worked out what you can see in the pictures. I started by replacing the plastic base with one made from a scrap of 3/8" lauan ply I had left over from the boat. I used a piece of 12mm baltic birch ply for the trammel itself. I cut a channel in it for the new router base so it is a snug, slip fit. You can see some bits of pine on top that form the rails to hold the router down. Locking the router in place is a simple matter of drilling a hole and driving a screw through the rail, the base plate and the trammel. Not sophisticated but it works. The next step is to make the two outer felloes rings and then I need to get the real spokes in place so they can be milled to receive those out felloes. Thanks for looking.

Jake, thanks for that. I am having a little delamination on the original box which was the impetus for a new box. I had been thinking about replacing the eyebolts with gudgeons from Duckworks. I figure I might be able to use gudgeons on both the boat and rudder box and use stainless pins to hold them together. I used stainless eyebolts but couldn't get a piece of stainless rod to fit. I ended up with a piece of all-thread with some Pex tubing (Thanks to Bill P) slipped over it. That made for a pretty nice hinge but water got up inside and caused the all-thread to rust. Not very pretty. I guess I'll do as you did and epoxy the heck out of the interior void. This time around, I'm using Baltic birch plywood because I have it on hand. Even though it isn't intended for exterior use, I expect it'll be fine once it is glassed, epoxied and painted.