Building Silent Maid

Spars

2011-12-31T23:26:00.000-05:00

Most wood boatbuilding tasks begin with millwork and the spars are no exception. Our first step is to plane the wood to thickness then joint one edge. The sitka spruce piles are graded by dimension and quality as we work through them. The jointing and table saw work to follow are done with the aid of a power feeder shifted from tool to tool. This accessory helps produce even quality cuts as well as reducing the workload a little.
We are building a spar factory for this job and the more rote each task becomes the better we like it. The painstaking and really fun part is setting the routines up and seeing them work. In this factory the production run is relatively short so there is still some handwork and still the possibility of messing things up through human error. We have not yet brought on the automaton robot zombie boat builders or the next generation of software to replace them so we do have to be careful through each phase of this job

All of the spars we are building in this run will be of eight-stave birds mouth construction. We begin by cutting the staves to their widest dimension on the table saw then joining them with a slash scarf joint to make up the required length for each spar. The joints are roughed on a band saw then finished in a router jig and glued together on a bench

The staves are then clamped into a jig on the backboard of our spar bench. The taper is cut into them with a circular saw adapted to slide along that jig and smoothed with a router set up in a similar way. In this way each stave comes out exactly the same as the other seven that make up the spar. The position of the batten and its wedge clamps is changed for each spar. That position is determined by a little exercise in graphic geometry where we start with the diameter of each column and proceed to determine how wide each facet of an octagon must be to encompass that diameter. Remember how many times we protested the uselessness of geometry in high school? I loved geometry.

So far the staves are scarphed together, birds mouthed and tapered just as in any hollow wood spar of this type. Silent Maid 's spars will be lined with carbon fiber cloth and rod vacuum bagged to the inside face of each stave. In this way a very stiff spar of a smaller diameter, wall thickness and weight can be built. In this case the carbon is in the form of a woven layer, a 1/4" rod set in a groove down the middle of the stave, and a layer of unidirectional cloth. In effect the wood is now a matrix for the carbon fiber which is doing the real work. All of this depends on a good bond between the carbon and wood as well as keeping the amount of epoxy to a minimum, hence the use use of a vacuum bag.

After the carbon the first layer that is not part of the finished spar is the release fabric. This soaks up excess epoxy and can be peeled off the finished composite easily. Then a layer of plastic to keep the glue out of the breather fabric. The breather allows to vacuum pumps to pull evenly on the entire bag. There are two pumps one for each half of the bag. The air is drawn out through nylon tubing with the ends sealed and small hole drilled in it. The tubes are taped to a batten and care is taken to keep the tubes in contact with the breather fabric over the length of the spar.

The first step is to set up a group of staves so they are perfectly straight inside the vacuum bag. We joined plywood panels with strips of wood hot glued to their top face then hot glued spacers to that base to hold the staves in place. The simple jigs pictured to the right were used to align the staves. After the alignment was complete the staves were lifted and a sheet of thin plastic placed over the ply and spacers kept the staves from being glued to the set up. All faces of the stave that are not to be covered with carbon are sealed with packing tape to make the epoxy cleanup as easy as possible.

The Workshop has a large compressor so two Venturi type pumps are used to draw a vacuum. They draw this 40' long bag to 9 lbs of pressure per square inch and the compressor is up to the task of maintaining this pressure overnight. A close inspection for leaks is the last step in the process. These usually occur where the hoses enter the bag or where there are folds in the bag. Since everything is sucked into the bag these are easily plugged with mastic

There is something very cool about using the atmosphere for a clamp.

The finished staves are bundled and held in place with hose clamps so the fits can be checked and plugs for the ends fashioned. More geometry and handwork. Once this is done they can be glued. That is a bit of a gooey juggling act as the bundle of staves tends to fall apart until they are all together and at least one hose clamp is on. One of the basic tenets of boatbuilding is, Never ever cut a piece of wood to its exact length until you absolutely have to. I am sure Noah chiseled this into a tablet and it will be found someday. Because our staves are long we can tack them together with dry wall screws in the very ends. The drywall screw holes will be removed when it is essential that the spar be cut to length. Once the glue is set the spar can be 16 sided with a power plane and roughly rounded with a spar plane to prepare it for the lathe.

Deck

2011-12-31T21:46:00.000-05:00

By the time the boat was turned upright much of her deck structure had already been made.
The information needed to establish deck camber was all available on the lofting so cutting out the beams and carlins was not a problem. Of course they were all left long and fitted to the actual boat. With the beams in work could begin on the assortment of reinforcement and blocking needed to support various elements of the rig and to provide backing for the deck hardware. Work could also begin on the numerous plywood knees that would turn the deck hull connection into a box beam running the length of the boat. These knees are also part of the
cabinet work that will give the boat a great deal of storage space.
As much as possible the deck structure is designed to belp the boat resist torsional strains. A shallow beamy boat with a large rig and a crew sitting out will want to twist. One of the original Silent Maid's owners tells a story of sailing her in an ocean race between Manasquan and Cape May. Driving to weather and coming up on a mark his wife decided to use the head. Because of the boat's twisting she was not able to open the door to exit the head, the only solution was to tack the boat. Her doting husband refused to do so until he reached the mark which was still some ways off. I believe the marriage survived, no indication was given as to the Maid's placement in the race. We mean to build a boat that does not present such domestic conundrums.

The Cockpit

2011-12-31T18:16:00.003-05:00

When completed Silent Maid's cockpit will be the picture of traditional cat boat style with varnished mahogany staving, long bench seats and wheel steering. Beneath the sole and seats the heart of the boats systems will be packed into every bit of available space. There will be four tanks for fuel , water and waste and batteries. A 40 horsepower deisel under a soundproofed box will push the boat along at a comfortable clip. It will also provide power for battery charging, hydraulics to drive a couple winches on the foredeck, a vacuum system for the head and a refrigerator unit. As much thought has gone into fitting all of this in and keeping it accessible for maintenance as went into making the cabin a comfortable living space. Plywood mock ups of the tanks were made, and cardboard ones for the engine and steering gear. Considerable consultation with technical experts has accomanied this and now the carpentry work gets underway in earnest.
When the boat was turned over the process of fitting the cockpit beams began immediately. This was so a temporary work platform could be put down right away. It has been taken up to complete the framing once the technical decisions were finalized.
Next the structural work around the edges will be completed . The center of the cockpit will see a series of temporary covers as the systems are fitted then the final version will be scarphed in place. It will be dynel over plywood with strategically placed access plates to get at the systems below

Interior Joinery

2011-12-31T15:17:00.002-05:00

Getting around the inside of a bare boat hull is like walking around in a big salad bowl, everything tends to slide to the center. In the center of the hull all of those carefully wrought floor timbers become the work of an evil genius with a thing for sprained ankles. The first priorities are to make the boat easy to get in and out of and to provide flat places to walk as we move about the boat. First a couple planks are temporarily fastened to the tops of the floor timbers then the cockpit sole beams are fitted to provide the base for a work platform. As soon as possible a 14" bandsaw is moved into the boat to reduce the number of trips in and out of the boat as the interior progresses.

Physically the most demanding thing about making boats may be these innumerable trips in and out of that salad bowl. The staircase is worth every penny espescially on a project of Silent Maid's size. As we move along any number of stationary tools will be set up in our shop within a shop to reduce the need to clamber in and out of the boat. Before starting on the deck structure the ceiling and cabin sole will be finished. The ceiling in Silent Maid was an aesthetic feature of boats of her style and era more than a structural one. It is thin, 3/8" and only found in the living space. We did overlap the cockpit so it would help stiffen that part of the boat but it does end short of the mast

With the ceiling and soles in the next step is installing the deck beams. They were made to dimensions taken from the lofting as the hull was being planked. The beams will define the space the interior is to take up and enable us to build mock-ups and make patterns as needed. We have the luxury of being able to do much of the interior layout in three dimensions and plan to take full advantage of it.

In addition to looking at the human dimensions of bunks, seats, galley and head adding to the boat's structure is to be considered. When Silent Maid was built the interior was simply tacked into the completed hull, the interior did not contribute much structurally. In planning out the new interior every attempt is being made to maximize its structural usefulness. The interior components are a series of boxes that will be tied together and overlapped in a way that contributes significantly to the overall structure. Silent Maid will tend to twist and the interior components can be arranged and built in a way that resists this tendency.

To define the interior space of the cabin half of the previously fabricated beams are set up on posts clamped to the carlins. One berth has been mocked up so a person can sit or lie on it; most of the other components are being defined with bits of wood and string tacked together with drywall screws. This is the last chance to get everything right and every option is being mapped out and carefully considered. It is looking like the Maid will have four berths, a galley and enclosed head. The boat just isn't big enough for a dedicated inside navigation station, a berth would have to be sacrificed and that is too high a price to pay. There will be a nav station below but the table on the centerboard case will have to serve for studying charts and instruments can go on the forward face of the head bulkhead. The primary navigation will take place outside on the motor box forward of the helm.

The cockpit and the area beneath the side decks outboard of the staving will be utilized for a cooler with a cold plate on starboard and for the head's vacuum pump on port. The tanks and batteries will be beneath the cockpit sole. The galley will be just inside the companionway on starboard and the enclosed head just inside the doors on port.

Silent Maid's systems will be fairly complete with a vacuum flush head, and washbasin a galley with a basin, two burner stove and refrigeration. There will be a 30 horsepower deisel to turn a large alternator and battery storage necessary to run all this and three winches. As much of this as possible is placed in the cockpit area so the living spaces are free for storage and living.

Upright

2011-12-31T14:09:00.001-05:00

From the moment the decision was made to build Silent Maid's hull upside down we started thinking about how we were going to flip her upright when the time came. Several ideas were considered including bringing in a crane at $1500 a day and constructing a large plywood wheels to turn her with. Both of these seemed too labor intensive. The crane involved moving the boat out of the shop and back in; the wheel would have to be built. Often we start out with complicated ideas then move towards simplifying them. We decided to use a pair of gantry cranes we already had to do the job.

The cranes had come to us from the Sandbagger program and were each rated at 4,000 lbs. We knew the Maid's displacement to be 13,000 lbs and we also knew we have yet to build half of that. Also we could flip her over without lifting her clear of the floor. Still a boat hull is an awkward thing to grab and flip so we built a quick and dirty scale model of the boat and crane to figure out our lifting system. With two straps chokered to the hull we found the model would lift easily and safely to vertical then the aft strap would slip off the transom and the boat would fall in a most dramatic way. We needed to rig double chokers so the second strap would grip the boat after the first let loose at the vertical point. We also needed to put restraining lines on the straps to prevent them from sliding fore or aft. We also saw that the cranes were just high enough to do the job and that each needed to be fitted with a trolley to keep the pick point directly over the weight at all times.

With a clear picture of the physics involved we set about building the minimalist net we would use to maintain control of the boat. We borrowed straps from Olympia and bought a trolley for the crane that still needed one. It took a morning to get everything set and just a couple hours to do the actual turn. We moved very deliberately through the process. There is a little adrenalin flowing during jobs like this and pays to use it to slow down and focus. Any minor glitches need to be carefully considered, we only get to do this once. The only change from the model was to use come alongs to shift the trolleys across the crane as the vertical point was reached and to use a small electric winch
to slide the port side across the floor. Packing blankets were between the hull and floor to save our precious varnish job.

All went smoothly and there was enough time left in the day to level the boat and get the mold out of her so we could clearly see how large a container we had yet to fill with joinery

Planking

2011-12-31T13:40:00.001-05:00

Planking can be the most fun of all boat building tasks. While there are thirty steps or so to the making of each strake, it is a task that settles into a smooth rhythm. On a carvel boat the work starts at sheer and keel so there are four places to work at any given time until the shutter planks are reached. Work never stops while waiting for a steamed plank to set or for a glued scarph to dry. At the moment of this writing there the fourth plank from the sheer on the port side is spiled. The third plank from the sheer on port is being fastened. The third plank from the keel on starboard is being final fitted, soon to receive a caulking bevel, and the third plank from the keel on port has just been steamed to take the twist in the forward end and is about to be scarphed. So it will go until the boat is closed in and we are ready to fair and caulk.

Silent Maid's topsides are to be finished bright as the original's were in 1924. Since we were unable to find Atlantic White Cedar of sufficient quality for such a treatment Western Red Cedar is being used. This is some beautiful stuff, some of it 33' long and 24' wide. The garboards and broad strakes are full length and the rest of the planks will have one joint each rather than the two or three the shorter white cedar might require. We are scarphing the planks together partly to offer a better appearance when varnished and partly to get all the rigidity we can out of each strake. More full length planks might be gotten out of this wood pile but as we move away from the sheer and keel the strakes develop more curvature and joints are preferable to the cross grain that would result from a full length plank.

The planking is being riveted to the frames wherever possible. The rivets pull the kerfed frames together as well as securing the planks. This is the most durable fastening method of them all. To save time and produce rivet heads of even quality a pneumatic hammer is used to head over the rivets. When done this way it only takes a little longer to rivet than to screw fasten, rivets inaccessible to a ball peen hammer can be done, and the framing is not marked up with the missed hits of a ball peen hammer.

Take Care, Be Accurate, Move Quickly

Layout spiling batten on frames taking care to avoid edge set
Draw lines at each frame
Swing arcs with a compass defining width at each frame.
Move batten
Pick up bevels of adjacent plank at each frame.
Make patterns of the hollow on the inboard face of the plank
Select plank stock. The hollowing patterns dictate thickness and, “The inside of the tree is the outside of the boat”
Position spiling batten on the stock taking care to avoid imperfections and looking for a good sweep of grain over the entire plank.
Draw Frame Lines.
Swing compass arcs.
Add bevels.
Clamp a batten through the marks and draw a line.
Band saw, leaving the line.
Plane square.
Using this plank as a pattern draw a mirror image on another piece of stock for the opposite side of the boat that way steps 1 through 12 only have to be done once for each pair of planks.
Plane the bevel to match the adjacent plank.
Layout the scarph joints. This is a 12 to 1 ratio scarph with the inside edge lined up with a frame edge. Scarphs in adjacent planks will be 5 frames apart and no joint shall happen on the same frame for three planks. Use common sense though nothing is so uncommon.
Cut scarph.
Glue scarph, usually this happens on the boat.
Back out the plank if necessary using the patterns made in step 6.
Trial fit, scribe edge for a precise fit and plane.
Trial fit again until perfect.
Plane caulking bevel.
Final clamp up. Remember polysulfide at transom, cotton wicking if you’re all traditional.
Drill for fasteners.
Drive screws and nails.
Place roves, clip nails and head over,
Remove clamps and complete fasteners.
Do it all again and again until the boat is planked up.
Boat building is all about the short term goals, the ones between the drawing of plans and the sailing of a complete vessel. Those goals keep us going in the near term but they have a treachery all their own. When a boat is fully planked there is a sense of wholeness to her, she is a potential vessel for the first time. But after the shutter is in there is fairing with hand planes, then fairing with the aptly named torture boards, long sanding boards. Then there is a progression through finer grits, all by hand. In between the initial planing and the torture boards all those thousands of fasteners are bunged. When the fairing is done there are thirty seams to caulk. It is not daunting with enough hands but on the slow days this can all seem eternal. As the shutter goes in there is a bit of a party atmosphere but it takes character to push through all the work that was finished in the minds eye on the day the last plank was fastened in. It is a long haul across a dusty desert between the shutter plank and turning the finished hull upright but damn that hull looks good.

Deadwood and Ballast

2011-12-31T13:09:00.000-05:00

Deadwood is the wood outside the keel that doesn't contribute to keeping the water out of the boat. That wood does have other uses including the reduction of leeway, and in this case, contributing a certain Buck Rogers sort of style to the bottom of the boat. As originally conceived Silent Maid's keel ran along the outboard side of the deadwood. A separate piece with the rabbet cut into ran along the inboard side with its forward end ending at the keel. This was a combination of the old style cat with the deadwood stacked up on the keel and the more modern full length batten keel. We decided on the modern approach to reduce the number of seams through the rabbet and to make the overall backbone stronger and lighter.

The shape of the skeg is picked up from the lofting and transferred to a glued up stack of fir with a pattern. While the skeg was still square and not yet tapered the hole was drilled for the shaft. This was a 1" hole that was later widened with a boring bar. This method allows the hole to be correctly aligned while it is being widened to a final diameter of 2". The nerve racking part of the job is drilling the bolt holes to either side of the shaft without having them come through the shaft aperture or out the side of the skeg. Patience setting up and a block of aluminum with a hole bored in it on the drill press to align the drill bit got us through this.

Floor Timbers

2011-12-31T11:57:00.001-05:00

Floor timbers are one of the reasons wood boats are so expensive. They are important down there in the bottom of the boat keeping the starboard side connected to the port side, making it possible for the backbone to live up to its name. A floor timber is joined to every frame. In the forward part of the boat the floors are joined to the backbone structure with silicon bronze angle brackets. In the after part they span the keel and will be bolted through it and the skeg.

All of this contributes to their cost. The bronze is not a low rent material. Once purchased it must be cut, bent, and drilled. But the real cost is in the floors themselves. There are 36 sets of frames in Silent Maid. Each requires a pattern picked up from the lofting, that pattern is marked with the angle of the boats bottom to the floor. These angles change as we move out along the curve of the bottom and will be cut by two people, one pushing the piece through the band saw while the other tilts the table to the proper angle. Then the face of the floor must get cut square to the bottom so the frame sits tight against it, this is done with a band saw and a router.

All of these fits must be perfect, each floor must be tweaked to perfection. This is the bilge; it seldom sees the light of day. There can not be places for dirt and water to collect. Imperfect fits provide the perfect environment for evil fungi to grow, jeopardizing the union of port and starboard. The only thing for it is to devise a system for the production of floors, to go after the task in an orderly way, to create labor saving devices as needed.


Before we go out and buy that c&c router and transfer our data to cad remember there are 36 floors, not a thousand, not 36 million. The set up costs are only amortized over 36 units. This is what keeps wood boats fascinating and beautiful, the handwork in the bilge.

Ribbands and Frames

2011-12-31T11:49:00.004-05:00

The frames come from green oak flitches. In a boat of Silent Maid's size the rough lumber is 2 inches thick and 10 feet long. Handling these can be a brutal task for men and tools alike. The planks are wide and a good flitch will produce two frames along either edge. The centers are dried and used for other boat parts such as floor timbers.

While the frames are milled the ribbands are wrapped around the mold. Ribbands are temporary, just to bend the frames around, so the wood is rough and they are located to provide a good form for the frames and in a way that makes bending the ribbands themselves as easy as possible.

Our old steam box looked like it had been built to last one year but got used for ten, and it didn't have the capacity we needed for Silent Maid's inch and three quarter square frames, so we decided to replace it. This box is built of HDO ply glued together with the framing on the outside. The bottom is cambered so condensate drains back into the water can. It is in sections so the length can vary according to the job at hand. The end doors pivot on a pin so they are self closing as frames are pulled out. Every second counts. It is our deluxe model.

We started bending frames in the middle of the boat thinking the curvature would be moderate there. The steamer worked wonderfully but we kept breaking frames. The wood grain was good and we tried several clamping arrangements but it appears the frames are too heavy for the bend and most will have to be kerfed. So we moved forward to use up the frames we had in the box and that went well. When frames break it is important to remember this is a rudimentary physics problem and no reason to panic, get noisy, or otherwise ruin the afternoon. Steam bending frames is a great team sport requiring good organization as well as the ability to think on one's feet.

Framing is nearly complete but the better part of a week will get spent tweaking things and getting paint on the surfaces that will be inaccessible later. Every phase of building the boat has this small space to catch ones breath.The big push of framing is over and the loose ends are being attended to. The next big job is already started, making floor timbers, but that is probably worth another page. Real building doesn't go in a linear way, jobs overlap and sometimes efficient use of manpower causes things to happen out of order. A boat of any size built by more than two persons jumps around like the plot of a novel rather than like a train going along the tracks from beginning to end. So the patterns for the floors are made and the next narrative has been set up.

The Mold and Backbone

2011-12-30T22:18:00.000-05:00

Once the overall plan is decided on every complex project, such as a boat, is broken down into manageable tasks. On any given day the big picture goal isn't to set off on some voyage or even to launch the boat. It is to finish making the boat part du jour.

At the start there is a big push to finish the full scale drawing that is lofting. Sore knees and back and a brain freezing up from compressing three dimensions into two are worked through and the drawing is done. Then there are patterns and mold stations to construct. These are scattered around the shop until the long awaited day when an actual 3D shape becomes reality. The crew gets a moment to stand back and contemplate this first glimmer of what the finished boat may look like then every effort goes into the backbone pieces. These are the stem, stem knee, keel, centerboard bed logs, stern knee and transom. While we're at it the the centerboard case and skeg get started.

But once again the desire to see progress in some form other than alot of curved pieces of mahogany scattered around the shop takes over and the backbone is finally assembled, ready or not. And so it goes until there is finally a whole boat standing in the shop, about to be launched, ready or not. But we're not thinking about that. There are frames to make.

The Plans

2011-12-30T22:02:00.001-05:00

Francis Sweisguth designed "Silent Maid" for Edwin Schoettle of Island Heights, N.J. in 1923 /24. She was built by Morton Johnson of Bay Head with spars from the Pigeon Hollow Spar Co. of Boston. Schoettle is the author of "Sailing Craft" published in 1928 and in this volume he extols the virtues of boat and designer alike. Silent Maid was considered innovative at the time. Two rigs were designed, marconi rig and gaff. In 1924 the merits of each were still hotly debated. The gaff rig had attained a pitch of perfection only a thousand years of development could give but the marconi was based on the modern aerodynamic principles that would soon rule sea and sky. Silent Maid was built with the gaff rig and sailed with it all of her long life.

Another innovation, a large chunk of lead fitted into her skeg for ballast, would contribute to the severe hog the boat developed over the years. This beamy boat had a great deal of buoyancy amidships and would come to have to large weights placed in her ends, the original ballast being one of them. At some point after her racing career was over Silent Maid's hollow mast was replaced with a solid one. The backbone construction did little to resist these forces and there is a story circulating around the yards of New Jersey of the boat having been dropped at some time. In any case gravity alone could account for the deformation of the hull.

Aside from the structural issues the plans show how the boat had changed over the years. The galley is forward on the starboard side in the plans but was shifted aft to just inside the companionway. The head was aft on port where it remained but was expanded to occupy all the space between the centerboard case and the side of the boat. This had the effect of making that part of the boat something of a cave. The centerboard case itself had been cut down to make room in the cabin to the detriment of the boat's sailing ability. Also an Atomic 4 engine had been added, offset to port, just aft of the cabin bulkhead. It is apparent that the interior arrangements and the structure of the hull could be improved markedly in a new boat though the lines, basic deck layout and rig are great the way Francis Sweisguth designed them.

The Original Silent Maid

2011-12-30T21:45:00.000-05:00

A comparison of the 1925 picture and those taken at the shop about one year ago illustrate how Silent Maid has changed over the years. Note the bold sheer line in the older picture and the dented keel in the picture of the boat hanging in straps. That dent is not a result of the straps; it is years of gravity made permanent by decades of repairs.

The original Silent Maid is a perfect museum piece with all of her history intact for anyone to see. To rebuild her would be to destroy her. It is not likely a single piece of her would remain because she is fastened with iron nails. Once they rust into the wood the only cure is to replace everything. This is what prompted the decision to build a new boat. We will attend to her cosmetics and provide her with a cradle to support her through the years. Out on the Barnegat a new Silent Maid will shoulder her way through the chop, keeping both of their histories alive.