Building the Rushton Catboat

Finishing off

Probably the trickiest part of the building the boat at this point was making the cockpit coaming. I thought of several options and finally decide to laminate the coaming out of two layers of 1/4 inch mahogany.

I soaked my material for a couple of days before steaming it. I cut it so that one pair of layers would wrap around the aft end of the coaming, ending around the oarlocks. I steamed these pieces and clamped them right to the boat. After a day or so I took them off and then I glued them together, making sure to squeeze all the springback out of them with a long clamp. The resulting glue-up still had a frustrating bit of springback but when I screwed the coaming to the deckbeams and blocking I was able to force it back to shape. The forward ends of the coaming bent in cold, barely. I first fit and clamped and clamped these in place and drilled for fastenings. Then I laminated these right on the boat, screwing it in to the framing and using plenty of clamps elsewhere.

Hansei (pronounced "han-say")

In 2002 I was working with a 75-year old boat builder in Tokyo building two traditional boats. As his apprentice Mr. Fujiwara was concerned that I fully understood everything we were doing, so although we worked in silence throughout the day, at breaks and before work we talked about the process. It was my job to get to the shop early and open it up and get all the tools out. He would arrive and his first word to me almost every day was hansei. This Japanese word means "reflection," and today it is a well-known part of Japanese corporate philosophy.

Hearing this word I knew that Fujiwara wanted to review something we had done the day before. He took his role as my teacher extremely seriously, and I knew that he had spent significant time the evening before thinking about what I needed to hear. Sometimes, Fujiwara thought of a new way to explain something he feared I had not understood, or he wanted to make sure I knew of an alternate method.

In the case of this catboat, I have a few "hansei moments." After the hull had been planked I made some notes regarding the lining off of the planking. If I built this boat again I might make some small adjustments at the bow to the plank lines. I think a lot of labor could have been saved if I had pre-varnished all the planking material on the inside face. I would have had to sand or scrape the varnish at the laps to insure a good glue joint, but it would have eliminated varnishing the hull when complete, and applying varnish to the panels laying flat would have eliminated any runs.

I also would have worked much harder to clean off excess glue from inside the mould as I planked the hull. The time taken to watch for squeeze out and wipe it off puts one leagues ahead of scraping or sanding hardened epoxy later.

The sheer plank presented several problems. Glued lapstrake hulls are very, very still, but the top edge of the sheer plank is completely unsupported and very flexible. I was doing some research on historic boats locally, and I came across a remarkable double-ended small boat that is about a hundred years old. I just hapenned to notice that the builder laid in a second layer of planking along the sheer. This inner layer ran to within about a foot of either stem, and the builder did it to stiffen the sheer edge. I would either glue in an inner layer like this or install an inwale if I built the catboat again.

I probably would not bother to bend the frames on a mould next time. I would just bend them right into the hull, but I would have to stiffen the sheer, as mentioned above, because bending frames would put too much stress on the sheer otherwise.

A second catboat like this one should go much faster. I made patterns of all the major parts of the boat, including each plank. My plank patterns are drawn on narrow rolls of stiff paper that I got for free from a local printing company. I am saving all the jigs I made, as well as the moulds, of course. My collection of plywood patterns takes up very little space, and hopefully will come in handy someday.

The end...

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