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Oh, my! That's a Goose! When last we left our Goose, she was a bare - but painted - hull. Now it is time to make her purty for her debut at the Depoe Bay Boat Show on April 17. But first, we have to do some things in preparation for the Coracle Build on May 2.
Coracles are inexpensive boats made from found materials. Their sole purpose was to get a person out on the water. They are not safe, fast, or pretty, and are just about the equivalent of an innertube. Just because they are not 'traditionally' pretty doesn't mean we can't make them as pretty as we can. Here's my interpretation of a coracle seat made of Alowood and Poplar laminated together.
I have to say, this Dewalt 12" Planer is one of the nicest tools I get to use at the Boathouse.
Here's something I made for the Goose on my own: A roll around cart. I want to store her inside the Boathouse, but I still need to move her around. Also, we don't have a boat ramp, so when I need to take her to a boat show, I'll need to lay her on the side and wheel her up the gangway to a trailer in the parking lot.
The secret to a good roll around cart is ONE pair of crazy wheels and a pair of fixed wheels. Trust me on this.
On to the Goose: Time to get her ready for coating the decks with epoxy. First I needed to rout out the mast partner. a 3/8 roundover will do nicely.
Making this stub mast was the best thing I ever did. The Boathouse is too short to allow me to step the real mast inside.
I tried to take a picture of me using the 4" Angle Grinder to round off all the deck corners, but it didn't come out. If you don't have one yet, get an angle grinder with a 36 grit sanding pad - BEST woodworking tool, evar. Thanks for the tip, John Welsford. I sanded the entire fore, aft, and side decks with 40 grit, mostly to remove pencil lines and paint drips., Then I hit it again with 120, and a final time with 180.
Sanding done, it was time to coat things with epoxy. I started on the coracle seats. I use small-headed finish nails to hold them up off the sawhorses.
Oh, my. That's purty. Time to break for the evening.
I saw Candice taking pictures on the docks and invited her in. I couldn't convince her to go paddling, though. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more of her and her family over the summer.
Back to preparation for the Coracle Build: We needed to rip (2) sheeting of 1/8 (4mm) plywood into 1 3/8" laths. Cutting 8' long, floppy sheets of unruly plywood is not fun. Geoff and I decided to rip them in half first.
Then stack them 2 at a time and rip off the laths. It worked shockingly well. 32 rips later, we had 64 laths of nearly identical width - AND all of our fingers and toes.
Geoff was checking the bend against one of the seats. We will NOT be making these round-bottomed like that - they will be far too unstable. We'll make the bottom nearly flat and using heat guns to do sharp bends all around.
Enough playing with the coracles. Here's my rudderhead and tiller setup. Big, beefy pintles and gudgeons from Duckworks.
While Geoff worked on lacing the sail to the spars, I . . .
. . . went to work on the mast. I am using this bow eye from Sea Dog because . . . that's similar to what others do. Why not a block? I don't know.
Holes in my deck! Downhaul and bleater cleat.
Time to see what she looks like rigged. This is her first ever appearance outside.
Oh, that'll be nice. Very nice, indeed.
Here's the downhaul for the boom. I'm lacing on the blocks rather than running a eyebolt because it looks 'salty.' The bronze double blocks I am using for the downhaul are from - you guessed it - Duckworks. Side Note: If you ever want to have a miserable afternoon, remove the clevis pin from that block and watch the little spacers bounce across the floor, then try to put it all back together again.
Leeboard in place. I still need to put on the outhaul which will run back to an Autorelease Clam Cleat. Why? Because I am a lazy sailor and terrible navigator.
Rudder installed. I'll need to make an extension for it, but that's no problem. And there we go - one nearly completed Goose, about to make her debut.
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