Silva Bay Shipyard School Blog

Here is where we will be building the boat. Notice David’s fine, fine half model in view.

… our bench, with cedar planking above…

David with plans for our boat: a 12′ 6″ take on the Beetle Cat, designed by west coast naval Architect William Garden. Gaff rigged with -sigh- a curved, raked transom. A beamy little craft, 6′ wide… it probably won’t be able to beat the 18′ dory on launch day, but what we lack in speed will be made up for in sailing skill and pure aesthetic superiority… and unlike art, there are real ‘truths’ in naval aesthetics’! yep – i said it – Deleuze can put that in his pipe and smoke it. I am become aesthete, destroyer of worlds.

Our first task is to lay down the lines of the boat on the lofting floor. This is done from the table of offsets in the plan, or, if you are Trevor, you adjust them as you go… creating a hybrid super-cat boat, spitting fire and venom, perhaps a hellcat? I digress, the lines are done on 1/4 ply screwed to the floor and painted white.

It is then necessary to stand around and look at our triumph…

… which is absolutely necessary…

Al (right) and Trevor, 2 of the instructors, survey the scene.

A detail shot of the lofted boat. Easily a weeks worth of work. All lines must be faired in 3 dimensions before any patterns can be made. Good thing we did this in 1″-1′ scale four times earlier. Hardcore.

After the boat was lofted, we made patterns for difficult parts of the boat out of doorskin. This is done for the stem (pictured), centerboard housing, deadwood and the stern knee. The patterns will be used to cut the actual parts out of clear grain Fir. Here you can see the stem, stem knee, mast step, gripe and keel.

Today started out with a pile of spruce 1×6’s. These are going to be used to make the moulds for the Catboat – which will eventually have the moulds taken out, after the boat has been built around them. The 2x spruce will be used for constructing the strongbacks for the moulds to stand on.

The spruce is rough cut and laid out on our lofting floor. The nails are stapled to the board and the spruce laid over the nails – hit with a mallet – and removed. This transfers the line from the drawing to the wood. The following detail picture shows the spruce ‘faired’ up to the nail lines.

This line is faired using a spokeshave on the bench.

Here is the bench with mould in vice. Notice my latest antique-shop-score Stanley bench plane. Only took a day to sharpen? $30 vs. $275.

David ‘killin it’ on mould station #2.

… and like magic, five station moulds appear. They are doubled, so that each side of the boat is PERFECTLY symmetrical, because we ONLY do things perfectly. We will unfold them and gussett them together before moving on.

Here are the moulds completed with notches for keelson… with bevels! Transom pattern is in the fore.

A momentous occasion. The lofting comes up!

The next task is building up a mould for the transom. Luckily? the transom on the catboat is curved and raked. We will use this mould to laminate the transom out of Fir.

Here it is almost finished. 2 layers of ply will be added before we begin to glue up the transom.