Hi,
My name is Terry, I live in a small coastal village two hours south of Sydney in New South Wales Australia.
I have been retired for a while now, I have some experience in boatbuilding and boat restoration. The first boat I built was a Jarcat 6 designed by the late Ross Turner from Queensland. I have owned and restored a Heron dinghy and two fiberglass trailer sailors, done repair work on a few friend's yachts and recently built a nesting dinghy which neatly fits in the boot space of my car.
My hobbies and interests include sailing, surfing, spending time with family and mates and I love the challenge of building in wood.
I came across Pocketship on YouTube and fell in love with the design and its sailing ability. I have read all the posts and blogs on the Pocketship builder's site.
So, I have started the build and would like to share my experience with fellow Pocketship and boatbuilding enthusiasts with this blog, I welcome any advice, comments and assistance, send me an email via the “Comments” section or my email, I would love to chat.
I hope you find the blog interesting and helpful; I've done it as a step-by-step instruction guide of my build roughly following the “How to build Pocketship” builders guide and explaining and illustrating my techniques and mods, please enjoy my journey.
My initial interest commenced by downloading the PDF study plans in 2016 and in 2017 I purchased the plans and construction manual from Denman Marine the Aussie distributer located in Tasmania, Here is their website:
https://denmanmarine.com.au
As I am building from plans it was time to source plywood, epoxy resins, fiberglass cloths, timber and various construction accessories.
And so the project begins with the first load of materials.
I was fortunate enough to find a one stop shop in Sydney called "Boatcraft NSW" who are the distributors for the entire BoatCraft Pacific range. They supply nearly everything required for the build as well as being very knowledgeable and providing helpful advice.
Here is their website:
www.BoatCraftNSW.com
The plywood is European Gaboon Marine Plywood BS1088 grade. The epoxy is called "Bote-Cote" A low viscosity, high solids epoxy resin containing thixotropic agents, developed for modern wooden boatbuilding. It is the base material for all coatings, glues and lamination with synthetic fibers. It's a simple 2 to 1 mix that is water wash up and does not form amine blush (great to sand).
Here is the first load of materials including half of the plywood sheeting on the roof. I'm building in my garage/workshop located under the house so it looks like the car will be parked outside for a while.
I was lucky enough to find a bloke selling old Oregon (Douglass Fir) verandah posts which I intend to mill and scarf for the mast and spars. I found sourcing new Oregon timber a challenge in Australia, but if you are happy to de-nail and mill up secondhand timber it can be occasionally found on various public selling sites. I also visited the local tire dealer who was happy to provide some of the lead weights for the keel and centerboard.
Centerboard Case & Centerboard.
As I am working from plans it was time to transfer the drawings onto plywood and hone my jigsaw skills. I chose to use the "Tight" layout on the plywood sheets. I commenced with the centerboard case and swinging centerboard. I carefully cut out the centerboard case plan and placed it directly onto the plywood sheet and traced around the outside. I used carbon paper for the inspection port, pin locations, round corners and lead cutout. This worked really well.
I glassed the interior of the centerboard case and added three more epoxy coats with a light sanding between coats. I rabbeted the centerboard cutouts for the lead and epoxy filled the oversize holes for the sheave pendant and pivot points.
After considerable research on the Pocketship Forum I decided to install only one centerboard inspection port and locate it forward. This was to provide access to the pendant knot and sheave location.
Time to mill up some old Oregon timber, I used left over pieces from the nesting dinghy project.
Into this:
The starboard centerboard case is glued and clamped
The two halves of the swinging centerboard are glued together and held in place with lots of clamps and weights.
I used my small router attachment to cut the groove in the swinging centerboard, I routed small increments over several runs.
Then I squeezed epoxy into the groove through a plastic sandwich bag with a small cut in the corner, this worked a treat just like piping bag.
The shims are cut from 6mm ply and larger size holes filled with epoxy.
As the inspection port was thicker than the centerboard case side a circular spacer piece was installed to prevent the inspection port catching on the swinging centerboard. I hope I can slide the keelson over the spacer, if not I will slide it over the centerboard case from the bottom prior to fixing the keel sides or remove the circular spacer and re-attach later.
Time to Organise the Workshop.
I started today by relocating my drill press, scroll saw, grinder and sander to free up some much-needed workbench space. This created more space to build various sections of the boat and provide an area to store the paper plans.
Note: When building from plans it is important to have a clean dry area in which to store them. Paper plans can distort, expand and contract if not stored correctly.
Next was an epoxy and tool station. I used an old workshop trolley and built an additional shelf on the top for the epoxy resin containers. The trolley was on wheels so I could drag it any place required in the workshop.
I find an organised and tidy workshop helps to maintain motivation and interest.
The Nose Block.
Now back to the build, for the nose block I glued two longer pieces together then cut them in half and glued those two pieces together to form a large block.
A cardboard template was traced on each end of the laminated nose block timber.
Time to make some dust.
The first cut was the rabbets for the keel sides. Then I angled the table saw blade to rough cut the leading-edge section.
I used a block plane and sander to smooth the nose block into shape.
Another cardboard template was used to check the nose block shape.
Keel sides and Tapered blocking.
Time to mill the keel blocking timbers, the lower aft one needed to be tapered to give the keel its wing shape. A simple bench saw sliding jig was used to cut the tapered blocking timber. The lower screw on the jig forms the adjustment that determines the angle of the cut to the blocking timber. This worked a treat; it was very accurate, and no further sanding or adjustments were needed. I used the waste piece as a perfect support under the keel side prior to glueing.
The two centerboard cases were glued together, after cleaning up the epoxy squeeze, I inserted the centerboard with two packer timbers to maintain an even gap while the epoxy dried.
The blocking timbers are attached and three wet on wet epoxy coats applied to those areas that will never see the light of day again.
I screwed a piece of scrap to the nose
block prior to cutting off the ends on
the band saw.
Time to put the pieces together. A string line was stretched along the centerline to ensure the centerboard opening was square and the aft section had the correct taper.
Lots of weights and clamps held the keel sides to the centerboard case.
Well, that's the end of the first month of construction.
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