Posted by Jonathan Labaree on February 10, 2004 at 03:15:50 from 24.198.196.209 user JLabaree.
In Reply to: Re: Swallow's tiller fittings & transom posted by John Nichols on February 10, 2004 at -1:28:07:
Yes I have just cut out the first frame for Swallow Mark 2, I will put a picture up tomorrow on the old web site.
Congratulations! That's excellent and very exciting news.
I want to know what I should make the transom out off, obviously Swallow was not marine ply so how would they have done it?
Well, others are in a better position than I to know what wood the Lake District builders used for their transoms, but it seems likely they used oak. That's certainly the traditional wood around here in New England - white oak being preferable to red oak. Another good choice is mahogany, but that is more often used if the transom will be bright (i.e. varnished). As I said before, you'll have a job finding oak wide enough for the transom and even if you did, it's not easy to work with something that big (warps easily, for one thing). So, you may want to consider making the transom out of two or three pieces of wood pinned together with dowels and glue (resorcinol seems to work well with oak) at their edges.
Amazon has a long rod to hold the rudder on (thanks Ed for the picture, which also shows the traveller ) But AR in SW talks of gudgeons.
This one seems to be a matter of personal preference. Pintles and gudgeons work very well and are easy to come by (if you are having trouble finding bits and pieces, try Jamestown Distributors in Rhode Island -link below - you'll find pintles and gudgeons under "Hardware"). That's certainly a good way to go and would meet with Laurence's approval.
I am also debating making the keel up from thinner pieces and glue it. What are your thoughts?
Here again, I think it depends on how big the keel is and how hard it is to find solid pieces of wood (oak again, I would think). There's nothing wrong with gluing up the keel. Gluing oak can be tricky - I guess because of the resins - so you may want to experiment with different glues. In the shop I worked in for a while, we had a hard time getting epoxy to work on white oak, so we used resorcinol. It can be very important to do the gluing at the proper temperature, but that ought not be a problem in Texas (more of an issue here in New England right about now). For more on this, try the Woodenboat Forum (http://media5.hypernet.com/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi) and try searching under "glue" "oak" "epoxy" "resorcinol". As usual in that forum, you will find contradictory remarks, but you'll see a general pattern emerge.
I want to build it upside down, seems less daunting, thoughts on the way to do it?.
I have built all my four small boats upside down. It makes many of the procedures much easier - especially riveting. You flip it over once the hull’s complete and it’s time to work on the interior. Most of the books on small boat building will show good procedures for setting up the boat. A common method is the “ladder frame” where you have a couple of 2x6s running parallel to each other the length of the boat, with cross pieces where the stations (molds) are. Takes a while to get it all lined up correctly, but once you do and it’s all secured completely, it makes a good rig.
I hope these thoughts are helpful, but please don't just take my word for it. I hope you have a couple of good books about building small boats close to hand. You will also get advice from the crowd on the Woodenboat Forum.
Cheers, Jonathan