Last strake

Yesterday the last strake was glued into place. A small milestone…

What also has been done, is making a small chamfer on the strakes; leaving the edges untreated would create a weak spot. Actually I forgot to do this, as it would have been easier to make this chamfer on the work bench before mounting each strake. Ironically enough I discovered this at the time when only the sheer strakes were to be mounted, and these are the only ones that do not need this treatment, as the rub rails will be mounted on the edges. 🤪

But with a bit of patience, a radius plane and some sanding paper the job could also be done on the mounted strakes.

In the coming days work on the false stem will continue; it needs some shaving and sanding to get a nice fit. Same goes for the backbone and strakes in the bow area.

Keep you posted!

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Tiller

Today I was given a very special gift. Roel has secretly been working on a tiller at home, finished it somewhere in the last few days and brought it to the building tent today.

A very nice piece of work! It features the Ebihen sign, and a crane’s head as knob. Neat! Thanks a lot, Roel!

Flooding

As work on the eighth starboard strake was progressing, the recent drought in the Netherlands came to a sudden stop. A massive cumulonimbus emptied itself overhead my tent, and a lot of water ran through….

At the moment this picture was taken it was still quite harmless. A few minutes later there was so much water that it reached the pylons where my Ebihen is resting on, and those are made of chipboard. Which is not exactly waterproof…

So we improvised a bit and lifted up the whole thing so that a 5cm thick plank now carries the weight.

A nice side effect is that the whole boat is now lifted a bit, so that work on the last strakes is accessible a bit easier. As the hull has reached its greatest width it has become increasingly difficult to continue work on both sides of the boat without moving it; a 3 meter wide tent is a bit narrow for a 2 meter wide boat and a working bench. The solution lies in shifting the hull left and right, but that has to be done carefully as the pylons are scraping the pavement as they are moved. To reduce tension in the whole system whilst doing so, I lift up the bow or stem a bit so that the corresponding pylon can be moved a bit. During the last shifting, I lifted the stem a bit to much and out of its mount, almost dropping the hull…😱

Anyhow, here’s a picture of progression so far; today, after a nice camping weekend with friends, the 15th strake has been mounted;

Bilge keels, strakes and various works

Sorry, guys! It has been a while….more or less two months have past since I’ve last blogged about the progress on my Ebihen. During that time there has been good family-time since the girls have summer holidays :-)), a week’s camping vacation in Friesland, a lot of work for my employer and some progress on the boat building project.

First of all: here’s another time-lapse. It starts at the moment where I was still working on the garboards, and it ends at the point where 4 strakes on each side and the bilge keels had been mounted. Click here to watch; https://vimeo.com/285381362

After mounting 3 strakes on each side, I took a photo (front to aft) from below the structure;

On the left and right side, both lockers can be seen. In the middle you see the aft support pillar in front of bulkhead nr.3. Mounted on frame nr. 5 there are two temporary support planks in the place where the floor boards will be; these will be removed after the next turning.

Here’s a nice picture of how all planks are fitted to the transom during the fitting stage. When ready to glue, the planks are held in place by screws.

Here’s the best help 🙂
Every now and then one of my daughters jumps in to give dad a hand. Here the youngest one is helping drill a hole in the device I made to copy the hull’s radius for the bilge keel.

The bilge keels are both made from a plank of iroko. On this picture the port keel can be seen. The inner radius has been sawed, the outer is still to be done. I’ve mounted both keels permanently with screws from the inside and epoxy glue.

 

After mounting both bilge keels on the 4th strake, I started working on the 5th strake. Here is a picture of how the boat looks now; both 5th strakes are mounted permanently, the starboard one still held in place by clamps as long as the epoxy is curing.

Before the 5th strake was mounted, there was some work to be done on the inside of the boat. With this strake the compartments below the side seat locker bottoms are closed permanently and the compartment below the front locker will have limited accessibility. only through small holes in bulkhead nr. 6.
The side seat lockers were filled with foam sheets.

So the work continues. Spirits still high, moral is good 😉

More strakes and some polyethylene

Since the last blog I’ve mounted 2 strakes, no.2 and 3 on starboard. The no.3 strake on port side is in place but awaits permanent mounting.

On this picture the third starboard strake is not yet mounted permanently

Getting the bow nice has proven to be very time consuming

It has taken up a lot of time getting the strakes in the right place, especially on the bow section. A lot of torsion is required.
The result until now doesn’t look bad, but I thinks some filler and some more sanding will be required to get the final shape 😉

Before the fourth strake can be mounted on either side, there are some spaces that need treatment. On the aft part there is a small volume of air below the locker bottom below the seat that becomes sealed, so I’ll have to make sure that the inside is epoxy coated. Something I forgot to do on the starboard side, and since the no.3 strake is already epoxied in place, treating the inside will be a project with a thin paint roller and a mirror…
On the front side there is a small locker that will remain accessible via two small holes besides the mast, but it seems to be better to use the room there is as long as strake no.4 is not in place.

The design of the Ebihen 16 has three large buoyancy tanks that need to be filled with some foam later on. I’ve found some sheets of polyethylene on marktplaats.nl to do that, and wanted to try out filling up a space with it. The room below the lockers bottom in the aft part seemed to be perfect to see how this works.

The room below the locker bottom is filled with polyethylene sheets

Another small project was shaping the plywood that will be mounted as a third layer on the backbone on the outside of the centreboard case. As they are mounted on the outside of the hull, they need to be streamlined.
To get a nice bevel I stacked four layers of plywood, the third backbone layers in the middle, and shaved the bevel. This is a technique that is used to join large sheets of plywood to get the proper length for making strakes. As I’m using the CNC cut plywood sheets, the strakes for my Ebihen are joined by gluing the precut form together, so this was a nice opportunity to try out this nice technique.

2nd strake and some steam bending

Just a short update….it has been a while.

Today, the starboard second strake was mounted permanently.

The piece near the bow needed some work, as the overlapping of the strakes is reduced to zero to make them flush at the point where the false stem will be mounted. To achieve this I’ve made a mold that enables me to gradually mill away up to 5mm depth of both strakes, so they end up flush at the end. Should look nice once all strakes are mounted….😉

Then there was the issue of the extra seat supports needing a trim. As the seat supports have a small radius at some point, the trims needed to be steam bent. A challenge Roel happily accepted! He manufactured a steam box and a boiling pan;

After some experimenting we managed to produce two trims by laminating 3 layers of 1mm thick mahogany on to a seat support.

Then we tried a single layer of 3mm thick, which also worked;

We’ve glued this one into place with the steam bending mold holding the trim in place while the epoxy cured. Looking good! Thanks, Roel!

Garboards

The first strakes, the garboards, have been mounted! Or ar least they have been screwed in place, ready to be epoxy-glued.

I have been working for what feels like days on the first garboard to get a good fit. The strake needed to be shaved and sanded to get the right bevel so it makes a nice close fitting with the backbone. Also the backbone needed a treatment with planer and belt sander. And then there is the issue of joining the garboard with the stem…it involves a lot of torsion and tension. Finally I screwed it into place, accepting a small gap between garboard and back bone between the mould in station 9 and the stem. I’ll fill it up with epoxy.

The second garboard didn’t cost as much time as the first one, so getting that done only cost me one day.

I’ve not yet mounted them permanently as both strakes are going to need a bevel to receive strake nr. 2. For this they’ll have to be removed again and planed on the workbench before final fitting with epoxy.