foreward building frames
The Penobscot 14 is a rowing and sailing boat designed with the beginning boatbuilder in mind. The plans and building manual are very detailed, there is a video showing some of the key steps, and Arch Davis is happy to entertain your questions -- really, I have tried him out once already. As part of my grand scheme to justify building two sailboats (at least), this first one is a relatively simple design that I will rig with a relatively simple sail so that I can learn the basics of boatbuilding and sailing. The boat will be called Entropy Princess in recognition of the fact that much of boat ownership revolves around maintenance which is nothing more than the eternal struggle against the entropy-increasing processes that fall under the auspices of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Updated name: Enough of the Princess stuff, already, it's too precious. With a sarcastic nod to the Second Law, the boat will be named Isentropic.
foreward building frames
The first few steps which are not particularly photogenic involve making the building jig. The boat is built upside down and the base of support is the building jig which you spend a good deal of time making sturdy, square, and level. Attached to the jig at several stations are building frames made up from whatever bits of wood you have laying about like those from, say, a home remodeling project. A full size pattern on mylar is supplied with the plans and you spend a good deal more time making the frames and getting them precisely positioned and aligned with respect to the building reference line (in this case, the top of the building jig). As Arch notes in the building manual, the time you spend here will pay dividends later when installing the longitudinal stringers. He is right, of course -- I spent what seemed like an eternity futzing with the frames and bulkheads, but the stringers required only two very small adjustments after I got them on. Anyway, the first photo is a view foreward from amidships. In the immediate foreground is the Station 4-8 (measured relative to the stem) frame which is constructed from five pieces of wood held together with a bunch of gussets and screws. The shapes may seem irregular (and they are) but the important spots are where the stringers (which you can see crossing overhead in the photo) land at each frame -- those flat spots are very carefully positioned. Not visible in this photo are small cleats fastened to the other side of the frame through which holes are drilled into the stringers so that they can be temporarily screwed to the frame. In the photo background you can see the Station 2-4 frame which consists of temporary bits (you can see two cleats on this frame) and, more importantly, the foreward bulkhead with the funny shaped access hole sawed through it. The Penobscot 14 has fore and an aft sealed buoyancy compartments to help the boat float in the event of a capsize. I chose to make my access hatches to a custom shape since I did not want to install round plastic access hatches and cannot afford the bronze versions.
 foreward bulkhead |
 aft bulkhead and transom |
These photos show another view of the foreward bulkhead and a view of the Station 11-8 frame with the aft bulkhead and a view of the raked transom. The stringers in this design are meant to be an integral part of the finished hull, adding strength and making the planking process easier. They take a bit of futzing to install, though. The bulkheads and transom need to be notched to accept the stringers so the outboard edges of the stringers are flush. This is made somewhat more challenging than you might think by the fact that the tops of the notches ("top" relative to the finished hull in its correct right-side-up position, so "bottom" in these photos) must be at different finished depths from one side of the frame to the other due to the curve of the stringers. A nice dozuki saw, a coping saw, and some really sharp chisels put you in business. After butchering a few because you are a novice boatbuilder, you finally get the hang of it. You'd better, because there are twenty-six of them to do. After the fitting process is complete, the stringers are permanently glued and screwed into place.
 transom |
 inner stem |
The transom and stem were by far the most heavily engineered wooden assemblies I had ever constructed to this point. The transom is composed of four pieces of douglas fir joined by half-lap joints. I tried using the router on a couple of these but eventually gave up on that and used the tablesaw instead. I do not have a dado set, so I had quite a bit of cleaning up to do with a chisel. Neither method was entirely satisfactory, so there must be a better way (probably a dado set). The half-laps are glued up with epoxy. (Here is where having built the stitch and glue kayak first pays dividends -- having already dealt with the epoxy learning curve lets me do glue-up tasks like this relatively easily.) The transom shape is outlined on the mylar pattern sheet, so you can make a copy out of hardboard or plywood. I rough cut the transom with the saber saw and the bandsaw, and then I used a flush trim bit in the router table and attached the pattern using double-sided tape. You have to watch how the grain runs relative to the direction the bit turns -- this requires making some climb cuts which are always a bit nerve wracking for me at least. It helps to get pretty close to the line. The stem is composed of six pieces of douglas fir with butt joints -- the joint for the inner lamination is offset from the outer two. The inner lamination is made first -- it gets screwed to the pattern so you can use the flush trim bit in the router table to shape it. Then the outer laminations are glued on. After the epoxy cures, you can use the inner lamination as the pattern for the outer two using the flush trim bit again. Then you plane the bevel and notch the forward bulkhead to accept the stem. You can also see how the stringers land on the stem in front of the stem bevel. Cutting those compound angles is a real treat made all the more difficult by the significant force required to hold them in place for accurately scribing the cut lines.
 stringer |
 ready to plank |
Finally, before gluing the stringers into place they have to be taken back off and their inboard edges rounded over because they will be part of the finished interior. The places where they pass through the fore and aft bulkheads should be left square for stronger, better fits. All in all, the stringers involve quite a bit of work -- I dedicated about 30 hours to getting them installed out of a total of 100 hours dedicated to the project to this point. They will undoubtedly require some fine tuning when it comes to planking. Having never built a boat of this complexity before, I am unsure whether or not this time cost will be recouped in whole or in part in the planking steps to come. My first impression is it seems unlikely they will save that much time in planking. On the other hand, they also allow for the use of thinner planking stock, so they possibly decrease the weight of the finished hull. In any case, at this stage the shape of the hull is clearly defined by the stringers which is certainly nice to look at and gives the feeling of real progress. As I noted above, I only needed to make a couple small adjustments in the stringers to maintain fair lines. All that futzing with the frames did pay off. I reached this point in mid-October 2004 when it had become too cold in my unheated garage to go any farther. The keel still needs to be beveled, but the hull is largely ready for planking when the weather warms back up.
 rudder blade |
 rudder stock |
 rudder stock glue-up |
 tiller |
 rudder down |
 rudder up |
After taking a three month nap, I started making some of the other pieces for the boat in February 2005. I hope this will help me to finish the boat in time to take it out sometime this summer. The kick-up style rudder blade and stock have been laminated and cut out. I got to learn how to use a spokeshave to shape the rudder surfaces. The blade is made out of white oak as is the centerboard. My hands swelled up to about twice normal size from all the shaving I did. The tiller is composed of nine alternating laminations of white ash and mahogany. A jig with clamping blocks defines the shape. After cutting the tenon on the tiller and easing the edges of the rudder stock, the dry fit assembly actually looks somewhat boatish.
 centerboard |
 centercase w/ board down |
 centercase w/ board down |
I have the centerboard laminated and shaped. I sheathed it in 8 ounce epoxy-saturated fiberglass cloth. I am currently constructing the centercase, and I have decided to make rabbeted logs instead of letting the ply that makes the sides of the case rest directly on the keel. No particular reason other than a bit of extra time and some retentiveness on my part. I am making the centercase logs 1" oversize so that any minor deviations of the hull from the plans can be accomodated -- one usually waits until the hull is finished and the rear thwart positioned so the centercase height can be accurately determined. If this proves to be a mistake, I will cry. Update: If I could take my sawhorses out for a sail I could test out the lateral resistance of the centerboard... I still need to make the cap for the top of the case, and I am leaving the aft end roughcut because it needs to be fitted to the aft thwart which does not yet exist. I may put some oak trim pieces on to cover some of the screws and the plywood edges.
 log rabbet aft |
 log rabbet fore |
Update September 4: The one inch extra was just enough to prevent planing all the way through to the rabbet and ply at the aft end. My benches and thwarts are probably about a quarter inch higher in the hull than the plans call for which helped keep the aft ends of the logs from being planed into. I'll get it right on the next boat...
 mast glue-up |
 boom 8-sided |
 boom 16-sided |
 dozuki meets flesh |
I made the spars solid from douglas fir. I had a hell of a time finding the douglas fir and wasn't about to try for sitka spruce or some other exotic and expensive species. I will try making a hollow mast on the next boat. The mast is composed of three one inch laminations while the boom and the yard are single pieces. I had originally planned to make all the spars from two laminations each, but fortunately I sought advice on the WoodenBoat Forum and was advised that three boards with alternating grain direction is better than two, especially for remaining straight after glue-up. I can tell you with certainty, however, that the changes in grain direction make for some interesting planing. After ripping the blanks to four sides I used the tablesaw to rip them to octagonal shape. It is a straightforward geometry problem to get the forty-five degree bevels at the right widths. This is traditionally done with a spar-makers jig and planing the corners off by hand. I felt somewhat guilty for doing this step by machine, but after taking all three spars from 8 to 16 facets and then to 32 facets each my bad feelings had magically evaporated. When it came time to cut the tenon at the base of the mast, I was apparently not paying too close attention -- the dozuki saw slipped from its cut and just about took the top of a knuckle off. Fortunately, the doctor who tacked the flap of skin back in place with four tidy stitches is a wooden boat enthusiast himself.
 transom |
 notched pattern |
 checking bevel |
 top view |
It has finally warmed up to the point where I can start planking the hull. First, because I think I am not going to have enough plywood for planking, I decided to make a solid transom that I glued up from some mahogony that I planed down to 5/8". Having never planked a hull before, I have decided to take the tried and true approach of making a pattern for the plank first -- at least for the first couple sets. The first version was of cardboard just to get a feel for the shape, but since cardboard is not exactly like 1/4" ply I made another copy from Cheap-X lauan ply. The planking stock and patterns need to be notched at the bulkheads and transom to lay down properly -- you have to attach the plank and work toward the bulkhead at which point you have to scribe the notch and cut it upside down (if you are lazy like me and do not want to take the thing off and put it back on again).
 garboards aft |
 garboards foreward |
 mini gain |
The garboards went on without too much of a fight. Beveling the stringer at the bow so it matched the stem bevel was the trickiest part. I cannot seem to hold a plane flat from one stroke to the next, so I end up with slightly convex stringers. Oh well, thank goodness for gap-filling epoxy. I have planed the fore and after sections of the keel flats just to make it look good. I have butchered a couple of gains for the next set of planks (the bilgeboards?) and am ready to glue them up, too, should it ever warm up enough around here for such things. Speaking of gains, by adding a thick, solid transom to the boat I needed to cut mini gains for the reverse bevels. If the gains at the bow went half as well, I would show photos of them, too.
 five planks on |
 a set of gains |
 scribing a plank |
 shaping a plank |
 excess glue pot |
Planking Update June 1: Almost done. I have five sets of planks installed with one more to go. I got a bit better cutting the gains and getting the planks to lay down in them like they ought to do. That photo shows gains one, three, five and seven all fitted with their planks and number nine waiting for that last plank. It probably does not show up well in the photo, but they got better with practice. As the saying goes, a little putty and paint will make it what it ain't. To continue the stringer commentary, I think one of the advantages of the stringers is that you need not make exact patterns of the planks. A rough pattern that is somewhat oversize, say 3/8" to 1/2" on each edge, enables you to cut the plank blank from the plywood. clamp it in place and use the stringers to scribe lines directly on the ply. The upper edge (relative to the boat in its correct upright position) can be left rough because it will be routed off. The lower edge is defined by measuring out 3/4" from your scribed line for the overlap and then taken to a fair shape by rough cutting following by planing. It actually works quite well and probably ends up saving all that time invested in getting the stringers installed in the first place.
 spiling deadwood |
 planking complete |
 planking complete |
 cradle |
 aft seat risers |
Well, the turning turned out to be dramatically anticlimactic. I was all set to have a blowout party after getting the deadwood on and sealing up the exterior of the hull. But due to some time constraints and my spouse running into a strong friend at the YMCA we ended up doing it on a moment's notice on a Friday morning. The cradle was all set to go, and it turned out to be easy to do. Lots of fairing, sanding, and sweating involved in applying the clear penetrating epoxy sealer. I find it a somewhat frustrating substance to work with. It eats foam brushes for lunch and there always seems to be curtains no matter how long you babysit the stuff. Oh well. In an attempt to minimize the number of holes I drill through the hull, I installed the fore and aft seat risers without the benefit of screws. After the expoxy sets, I am sure they have a minimal influence on strength. I will have to use screws through the hull for the thwarts and side seat risers if only because they are so much longer and it would be difficult to get the risers to follow the shape of the hull without screws. The tick stick method Arch Davis suggests for getting the shape of the seats seems to work pretty well. It takes me quite some time to get the shapes, especially the front one where the stringer passes through it, and I have to sneak up on it by staying outside the lines and shaving off a bit here and there until I get tired and call it good enough.
I installed some extra supports for the aft seat. The photo shows one extra there in the middle. After fitting the plywood seat and testing its springiness, I decided to add two more so there were a total of three going from the bulkhead to the transom in addition to the two glued to the hull. Now, you would think somebody who went to all that trouble would remember to do the same thing with the fore seat, wouldn't you? Well, somehow my brain seized up and I forgot. After the fore seat was glued in place I tested it and came to the conclusion it could use one right down the center from the bulkhead to the inner stem.
 first passengers |
 aft thwart & benches |
 chock & knee |
 view from aft |
 view from foreward |
The boat has carried its first passengers, albeit while on the cradle and with a big hole in the keel. Those're Ellen, Pierre the Polar Bear, and Alice from left to right. The seats, benches, thwarts, knees, and mast partner have all been made and dry fitted. Rant On: I hate stringers. Any time savings in the planking process are completely lost in the endless futzing to fit risers, knees, thwarts and benches around the damn things. Extremely frustrating if you want close fits. Making laminated knees would probably save some time. In any case, my next boat will most definitely not have permanent stringers. Rant Off. Right now I am trying to decide how much of the interior hull to paint. Probably the two bottommost planks, possibly the third. Somebody has to find a trailer and a sail at some point, too. Oh, and I am thinking of renaming the boat VTB, an acronym for Vertical Transom Boards, to reflect my faux pas there -- it slowly dawned on me after looking at many pictures of wooden boats that I hadn't seen any oriented in quite that way. D'oh! Well, I have learned my lesson and I promise the next boat won't have that problem (mostly because it is a double-ender without a dang transom to mess up in the first place).
 varnished fore thwart |
 varnished aft thwart |
Update September 30: Further research shows you can orient your transom boards vertically should you so desire. How abaout that? I have decided to try varnishing various parts of the boat before gluing in the thwarts and benches. While the parts were dry fitted I traced lightly around the knees, risers, cleats, seat supports, and the centercase and then taped those areas off. The theory is to put a few coats of varnish on the pieces but protect the gluing surfaces so the bond is not compromised by varnish. The motivation, of course, is that it is a pain to varnish under the thwarts and benches once they are installed. I put four coats on the underside of each and three on the tops. I also put five coats on the bottom four planks of the hull in anticipation of restricted access later on. I meant only to do four coats, but the last one was a dust and bristle disaster. I gave up on the brush and chucked it in the garbage in favor of the black foamies. They tend to give what I think of as "dry spots" if you are not careful to keep the brush loaded with varnish properly. It is pretty easy to spread the varnish too thin and then it sort of "kicks" and won't wet out properly even if you go back over it with more varnish. A friend convinced me to finish the entire interior of the boat bright even though it is more work and there are some scarfs (like the garboard ones) that are not the beautiful transitions from one piece of ply to another they ought to be. And there are some screws from the planking that went through the keel and had to be ground off because I forgot to back them out before filling the countersinks and sealing the hull. Anyway, if I ultimately don't like it I can always paint it.
 installed fore thwart |
 benches & thwarts installed |
Update October 1: I installed the foreward thwart tonight and was pretty pleased with how my varnish held up. The tape came off without lifting the adjacent varnish which was a concern as I was building up the layers. The epoxy squeeze out from the mating surfaces wipes up easily and a little follow up with acetone leaves it like new. The real test will come during the full-gonzo side benches-bench supports-aft thwart-knees-centercase installation in a week or so after I get the case put together (don't try painting epoxy that has cured only a week (and at moderate temperatures, to boot) -- it just isn't worth the trouble to tempt the fates...).
Update October 15: The full-gonzo glue-up went okay. The couterbores are plugged and ready for varnish next spring when it warms up again.
 fitted breasthook |
 fitted quarter knee |
 rail cap glue-up |
 transom cap glue-up |
 finished aft caps |
 finished fore caps |
I finally convinced myself to stop working on the MacGregor Canoe and get back to the Penobscot after taking a couple weeks off from boat building after spring break. I have tackled the gunwale, breasthook, quarter knees, and rail cap and some other smaller bits like a mast step block on top of the inner stem. I have the same reservations about chopping a mortise into the stem that other builders have noted and decided to make the piece out of white oak -- at least if it fails it is more repairable/replaceable than the stem. I finally tackled my little issue with the top surface of the transom which had ended up canted backward either due to my error or some step in the building manual that lacks sufficient emphasis for me to take note. I put a rolling bevel on it, part of which you can see in the quarter knee photo. Judging from the great variety of finish details I have seen in transom photos of other boats this is a popular part of the boat to go your own way so to speak. I ended up putting a 1/8" thick veneer across the top that ends at the sculling notch. (The clamps you see beyond the transom in the glue-up photo are clamped to the edge of the veneer and are acting as the weights to make the aft edge of the veneer conform, more or less, to the shape of the transom bevel. It sort of worked, but there is a slight gap at points. It doesn't look to bad, or too good for that matter, but I am glad to be beyond it.) I also decided not to put caps on the breasthook and quarter knees and I made them somewhat beefier than called for in the plans (I have a thing for craftsman/arts and crafts furniture, can you tell?). Nor did I try my hand at the fancy birdsmouth joinery on the rail cap pieces -- that seemed an invitation to frustration and I am quite happy with my butt joints. The only one that stands out in the least is between the two sections of cap at the foreward end of the boat. I hope when it is all varnished it will not be noticeable.
 fitting mast partner |
 finished & unfinished |
 rudder, tiller, & transom |
 aft seat area |
 first coat of paint |
Update June 1: The boat is closing in on a mostly finished state. I have made some oars and blocks (forgot to take some photos -- I'll post those soon) and am going to make up some cleats. I spent quite some time varnishing the inner sides of the top two planks along with the gunwale, rail cap, and transom and another coat on the seats. Quite a bit of dust in the varnish, but perfection will have to wait for next year I guess. There are four or five coats of varnish on all the surfaces that are to remain bright (okay, okay, there are really only two coats on the undersides of the breasthook and quarter knees).
I hunted down pintle and gudgeon gear (Racelite) that almost fit the rudder stock. They are pretty beefy pieces for a small boat like this one, but I really did not want to try bending light weight pieces for narrower rudders to fit as Arch Davis suggests. I had to cut mortises in the stock but it came out pretty good. The rudder is pretty tight in the stock and I may have to adjust its thickness (again -- did it once already...). And just today I put on the first coat of paint on the hull. Kirby's #9 cream which I think is going to be yellower looking than I first anticipated. The photo shows it whiter than it really appears. I have to say applying this paint was a walk in the park compared to my experience with the one part polyurethane I used on my kayak. The oil-based paint may not have as high a durability, but right now I am willing to trade that for ease of application. Time will tell...
Update June 20: Although technically not finished, we launched on Fathers' Day in the rain and we spent a couple hours tacking about in Miller's Bay and in Lake Winnebago proper. Winds were light and the boat was crowded with five passengers, but she sailed well. A few small things like leathering the boom jaws are left to do (blue painter's tape simply is not appropriate). Not many photos under sail given the weather. More will be posted in the future. In the mean time, here are a couple sailing shots along with some photos of various details I haven't posted before.
 Brad rigging the sail |
 Miller's Bay & Ames' Point |
 at the dock |
 drying out |
 interior & fenders |
 how the hatch covers work |
 block |
 aft cleat |
 foreward cleats |
 oar |
 transom |
I have kept a building log of my progress on the Penobscot 14. If you want to see the gory details you can find a reasonably up to date account here. Rough sums for times to complete various chunks of the project are outlined in the table. Keep in mind that I ain't never done one of these before, so some of the times may seem somewhat outrageous to the more experienced. Also keep in mind the recorded times don't include all the extra time studying the plans, reading boatbuilding books, perusing the archives at the WoodenBoat Forum, and generally thinking about how to accomplish the next step. I have also spent a bit of undocumented time on the Moaning Bench which is an integral part of the building process for a first timer.
| Project | Time | Status |
| building jig | 8.50 hr | complete -- next jig will have casters and levelers so it can be moved around the garage |
| building frames, bulkheads & transom | 38.50 hr | complete -- a test drive will be needed to see if hatch covers are water tight... |
| inner & outer stems & deadwood | 34.00 hr | complete -- who knew a one inch thick, twelve foot long oak plank would bend and wiggle like a dang noodle? |
| install keel & bevel keel and transom | 24.50 hr | complete -- finally! need to borrow one of them power planers for the next one... |
| sheers & stringers | 31.00 hr | complete -- one stringer cracked at some point over the winter and required repair |
| rudder, tiller, & centerboard | 44.00 hr | complete -- all are sealed and varnished with hardware attached |
| spars | 38.25 hr | incomplete -- still need to make a cradle or have a canvas bag made |
| centercase | 30.75 hr | complete -- installed! theoretically I can finally float this boat |
| planking | 108.50 hr | complete -- I got modestly good at doing gains by the time the planking was done |
| sealing hull | 37.00 hr | complete -- epoxy sealer kind of finicky to work with... and a pain to sand |
| seats, benches, thwarts, knees, chocks & mast partner | 85.75 hr | complete -- damn the stringers! | sanding, varnishing, & painting | 85.50 hr | complete -- well, it will need maintenance forever despite its name, of course |
| stem, breasthook, quarter knees, gunwale, caps, etc. | 54.25 hr | complete -- now that's a beefy breasthook... |
| oars, blocks, cleats, fenders, etc | 50.00 hr | complete -- ...although there always bits to add and tweak... |
Last Update on 10 July 2007
