Jan 27. Oars Mostly Carved

Shaping the oars is done for 3 reasons 1) aesthetics, 2) smoother hydrodynamics, and 3) to reduce weight on the part of the oar outside the oarlock. 1 and 2 are pretty obvious, but most people don't know about 3. In an age where oars have been almost completely erased from use by internal combustion engines, and by assembly line manufacturing, the art of balancing and adjusting oars to the person for a specific use has been almost completely forgotten. An oar is much easier to use when the weight of the human's arms resting in the handle, combined with the ratio of the weight of the inner to outer loom makes it balance with the blade partially in the water. Buoyancy of the blade also must be accounted for. A human arm, when rested from the shoulder onto an oar handle in proper position will weigh 2 to 4 lbs. Surprisingly little. The outer loom and blade will normally outweigh a perfectly tapered oar by significantly more than this, and that is why we shave as much material off the outer loom and blade as possible and leave as much material on the inner loom as we can. Some balanced oars have lead drilled into the inner loom, much like spin balancing a car wheel.  The flex of the loom and blade under load must also be accounted for. More on that later. 

Here are the oars, shaved on the outer loom and left square on the inner. Handles are still a bit rough. 

And here are all the shavings from just one oar. I used a chisel and a block plane for this, and a sander. It takes about 2 hours for each oar. Good upper body workout. 

The beautiful pine shavings. Great fire starter. Maybe I should sweep. 

I also spoon the blade a bit. I could taper the blade to the center, but I chose to spoon them by shaving only one side in order to test out the doryman's strike. Ancient wisdom says that you can get propulsion from chopping the blade straight down into the water and also raising straight up if the blade is shaped like this, much like an airplane's wing provides lift. So a doryman's stroke is much shorter and vertically choppy. We shall see. I don't expect much. Above you see the flat front side (toward the bow, or facing the same direction as the oarsman). That also means there is now a right and left oar. 

The shaved back side. Hard to see the rounding. 

Maybe this angle shows it better. 

Jan 26. Carving the Oars

Today was supposed to be a beer brewing day because Clay will be here is 3 weeks and that's just about the right amount of time to brew and condition an ale. But while cleaning up the brewing area I had to walk a few things out to the shop, where I got grabbed by the oar project. Honestly, that's how it is with me. A partially completed project just pulls me in like I'm a moon orbiting a planet. I spent two hours shaping the first oar before I went back in and brewed "Hey Porter", my best porter recipe (primed with molasses -- yum)

Here is the loom tapered and semi-rounded, and the blade still untouched 

And here is 5 gallons of porter. Only $35 and 3 hours of work. That's about 70 cents a pint. Cheap! And much better than store bought. 

Jan 25. Oar Blanks

Long-winded story here. Ask anybody. The best oars for a drift boat are made by Sawyer, out of Gold Hill, Oregon. They have many models, from HEAVY solid ash oars to nice, light composite (half ash, half carbon fiber), all of which sell for $350 per oar in the 9' length I need. That's $700 ($850 if you count quality oarlocks and accessories) for non motorized propulsion. That's more than boat materials. I recognize that it's not likely that I can beat the quality of their oars, but I have time and have been spending that rather than money wherever possible to reduce the cost of this project. So I guess I'll try my hand at carving some oars. I can always go back and spend the money on good oars later when these don't work out. 

The three quick decisions I made were 1) pine 2) 8' and 3) shoal-ended. All three are counter to currently accepted ideas on drift boat oars. 

I have made pine kayak paddles much thinner than these oars and they have yielded a long service life. And pine is much easier to carve that ash. And lighter. The right finish can harden the outer shell of wood so that it will wear quite well. Besides, I'm just trying to see if I can get the shape right. 

I chose 8' because. Gary (Max) said 9 1/2' I calculated 8 1/2'. We decided to compromise at 9'. 

Here is the drawing I used to calculate the 8 1/2' length. It's drawn to a scale of one large square = 2'. That means that the oarsman must put the handles up and down 8 to 10" on each stroke. That seams little enough. There should also be an optimum ratio of inner to outer loom (inner loom is between the handle and the oarlock). I'll check the book on oars I read (yes, I'm so anal about stuff that I read a treatise on oars and rowing prior to selecting the oars for this boat). 

This is my entire boating library (except for the jazz fake books on the left). It includes books on designs, construction methods, navigation, and even places to go. 

And here is my collection of Woodenboat magazines -- every issue since 1992.  And my airplane library is much worse. 

The oar book (Oars for Pleasure Rowing, Andrew B. Steever, 1993) did say that you need different oars for different conditions (and different rowers, but more on that later). Windy days require short oars with small blades, and easy days can allow longer/larger. I figured I'd make the windy day oars first, which worked nicely with the pine because they should shoulder less load that longer ones and so be made from weaker material. 

Shoal-ended. That was just a whim. On Saturday I went down the Palouse River in a canoe (http://bzadvents.blogspot.com/2016/01/canoeing-palouse-river.html?m=1) and thought "wouldn't this be fun in a drift boat?"  Well, the Palouse River, even at near flood stage as it is now due to rain and much melting snow, is barely 20 yards wide and lots skinnier than that in places. So going to 16' span oars would be better than 18'. And it's shallow and rocky in many places. Hence the shoal-end oars which are really supposed to do two things, the most important of which is balancing the blade in the water on either side of the loom centerline no matter how deep it is in the water. This prevents the oar spinning in the lock. 

Here's how I tried to achieve this. I'd done it well before on kayak paddles, but I didn't much like my result in this case. Notice the diagonal lines on the pattern. Those are an estimate of water lines at various oar depths based on the angle of the oar in the water (shorter oars have higher angles). Just make sure that each diagonal line extends the same length on both sides of center. I don't like this pattern because I made it a bit too club footed in an attempt to get more blade in the water at shoal draft. In hindsight I think this is a bad idea. Plus if you're really worried about imbalance, twisting oars, you can get a collar that has a tab on the top that will ensure the oar always stays right side up in the oarlock. So this whole balance/shoal thine is probably a waste. 

Given all those quick decisions described at length above, here is the oar blank all glued up and clamped. The loom (the middle part of the oar) has to be round-ish and about 2 1/4" at the oar lock (known as "the button" in the old literature). And that includes the chafe sleeve that extends at least 6" either side of the button. This can be made of leather or wound rope. To get the loom to sufficient diameter, I glued up three pieces of pine, the center of which has the actual blade. You can cut all this from one 1" X 10" piece of pine, which is the only size board that was reasonably clear of knots at the building supply. And that's the other reason I went with pine. $20 in pine for both oars. Ash would have cost $80 plus for each, mostly because there were no boards of suitable size. 

Here's the other oar. 

I'm amazed you've read this whole entry. A lot of thinking goes into oars. Look at it this way. When you buy a bike, you get one sized for you and then you have it adjusted to fit you. Think how inefficient it would be for a grown man to ride a 15" frame, not to mention how foolish he would look. The same is true not only for various-sized boats, but also for each different human in that boat. 

Jan 22. Launch and Recover on the Lawn

I have no photos or video of this, but the ultimate test of a boat trailer is to launch and recover the boat from the lawn. And this trailer does work that well. I was a bit afraid because I'm not sure of the holding abilit of the paints eye, and the winch strap gets pretty taught pulling the boat up the inclined trailer. If that thing were to detach, it would launch straight into my face. 

The "incline":  when launching and recovering from the grass, the trailer must be detached from the vehicle to let the tongue rise enough to let the trailer tail come near the ground, as if it were angled down to the water at a boat launch. 

Jan 21. Rear Roller and Painter Eye

The problem with the eye bolt is that I can't mount it with through bolts as I normally would because I already filled the peak of the boat with foam. So I have to mount this homemade eye hardware solely from the outside. Here is my solution. 

That's two pieces of rebar welded to two angle brackets and the whole thing is attached with 8 screws and bedded in thickened resin. It seems quite solid. At the end of the day I tested all of this page's mods by launching and retrieving the boat onto the grass with only the winch. The winch strap gets pretty taught and the strap is pointed right at my face while I'm cranking. If the eye lets go, I'm gonna need surgery. I duck my head and keep cranking. I think it'll hold. 

The winch is just higher than the eye so the boat lines up with the roller and the bunks as you crank. 

I'm sorta proud of this roller. Drift boat rollers from drift boat webs sites cost $100. I made this one from $20 in parts from the local building supply store. Two 1 1/4" flanged bearings and a 4' length of conduit. I would rather have used cast iron pipe, but that's getting hard to come by. 

Hand made brackets hold it in place. This whole system worked pretty well. Less that 5 minutes to launch and retrieve the boat from the lawn. 

Jan 20. More Bunks

Now that I had the measurements I needed to complete the side bunks, I took the boat out and launched it off the trailer onto the snowbank in the front yard. It slid right down the far side and almost into the street. Had me worried for a moment. Then it was back into the garage with the trailer to weld and wood up the final bunks before darkness fell and the boat would have to stay out for the night. That's why these pictures all show this ugly cut astroturf on the bunks. I would normally use a small cuts of outdoor carpet for bunk padding, but we are just now replacing ancient astroturf from the playroom also I recycled some to keep project costs lower. It's ugly, and I was racing daylight so it's not perfectly fit. 

I could either put an expensive v-shaped rubber bumper above the winch to hold the stem of the boat, or I could mount a couple of wood blocks on the ends of the front bunk, angled at just the right locations. I did the latter because it was free, and I think it does a better job of securing the boat. 

Side bunks installed. The side of the boat is curved, but the bunk is not. It's as wide as the widest part of the boat, which it has to be to allow that to pass through. Ugly cut astroturf. 

Temporarily mounted winch to get an idea of the best location. This will do. Drift boats have the painter eye mounted fairly low to get the forefoot of the boat up onto the roller when using only the winch. I haven't mounted (or figured out how to mount) the painter eye yet. And that's probably not the right name for that part anyhow. I'll look up the proper name later. 

I got the welding done and the new wood pieces painted and quickly covered then in turf before the paint dried so I could get the boat back up on the trailer and inside before dark. Barely made it. The winch is not yet operational so I had to push the boat back up the snow bank and onto the trailer by myself. It too two tries. 

Jan 19. Fitting the Boat on the Trailer

I have no pictures of rolling the boat over and moving it out into the driveway. Too bad, because it was kind of a cool process. I happened to have a couple of 2' X 3' dollies, high in one side, I made to roll the 28 ft wing of the mooney mite (http://bzmite.blogspot.com/?m=1). They were sitting out in the rain for years and the first one broke when I rolled the boat over onto it by my lonesome. I thought I was going to get the boat out by myself but then the dolly split. The screws pulled right through the wet wood. So I reinforced the second one and that held when we rolled the boat up onto it on its side. 

The vertical boat on the dolly rolled easily out into the drive where we rolled it off the dolly and onto its bottom on the concrete. Then me and Kenny just grabbed it by the side rails and hucked it up onto the trailer. The thing must weigh only 200 or 250 lb. I'll have to weigh it to see. I was trying to get it done by myself, but then Kenny rolled up just in the nick of time to prevent injury due to stupidity. 

I needed the boat on the partially completed trailer to determine where the side bunks should go. And while it was there, I placed the trailer behind the van to determine the necessary length of the trailer tongue. 8" shorter should be fine and the door of the van will still clear the boat by 8". 

Here is a picture of the plans I drew up in 5 minutes for this trailer. It actually turned out pretty close to the design. 

This is the first time I've been able to see the boat from more than 3 ft away. So here are a few shots from various angles to see how it looks. 

There's Kenny taking pictures of the boat from the other side. 

From the rear quarter. The curves of this boat look pretty good from just about any angle. 

Jan 18. Paint the Bottom

Ken originally said he wanted hunter green, but later he mentioned Seahawk colors. I looked and found no glow-icky green in enamel, so hunter green it is. Enamel is kind of sticky, gooey stuff, but it sticks to the plastic better than any other paint I've tried. It also finishes shiny and hard. This is just the first coat. We will have to roll the boat over and will scratch it a bunch fitting it on the trailer, so more coats (probably just one) later, most likely on a nice spring day on the lawn. It's green enough for now. 

Jan 17. Trailer Bunks and Boat Smoothing

You've seen boat trailers. Most boats have rollers and bunks all over the place. Drift boats are really tough because of the multiple, huge supporting curves. You can rest the boat on two thwartwise bunks near the quarters of the boat. So the trailer is just a box with a hole in the middle. 

I just had to cut a be so in the 2x4 bunk to match the curve of the boat at that point. Easy. Haven't said that word much on this project. Rear bunk. 

Front bunk. It's screwed from beneath onto tabs I welded on the frame. 

The quarter inch step was looking a little silly hanging out there by itself, so I tacked on a 1" strap. That looks better, and it won't cut your leg off when you bang your shin into it. 

Meantime, I also put a coat of fill on the bottom of the boat to smooth out the edges of the 10 oz Fiberglas corner reinforcements. I had to wet sand this by hand. A machine sander heats up the plastic and it melts, gumming up the sandpaper in seconds. "Wax On, Wax Off". I'm actually getting pretty tough. 

I have the boat in garage door #3, and the trailer in garage door #1, and I'm timing work on each so that they will complete at the same time. Then I can put the boat on the trailer without on waiting for the other. 

And the trailer lights are installed. See?  Cool, angry trailer lights. Yeah. 

Jan 15. Trailer Fenders

I thought this was a really clever idea -- to put steps on either side of the fenders. I thought this was cool for two reasons: 1) step up anywhere and reach down easily into the boat while it is on the trailer, and 2) the gentle sweep out from the team to the fender and back in again prevent sucking your knee bad on the fender. 

A third benefit I later moticed was that the angled step gave the round taillight a an angry-looking brow when viewed from slightly above. Cool. You'll see it in tomorrow's pics. 

Well, in hindsight the steps were not really all that great. The boat on the trailer is already low enough to easily reach into the middle, and the steps just make that a little harder by pushing you away or raising you up too high. 

Plus there were a couple other issues I didn't think about until I tried to implement. The extra steel I got from some quarter inch plate I salvaged from a house remodel. Eighth inch steel plate cuts like butter with a sawzall, but it's very hard to cut a straight line. Lots of filing necessary after. Quarter inch plate cuts very slowly with the sawzall and is also impossible to cut straight. So I talked to the tool guy down at Moscow Building. There were a couple options. 1) They sell a metal-cutting blade for a circular saw for $45. It looks exactly like a wood blade. I was skeptical because i learned a while ago that the secret to cutting metal without burning up the blade is to slow the rpm down to keep the heat down, and you can't slow down a circular saw. Option 2) was a $4 grinder blade for the circular saw. I chose two of those. Options 3, 4, and 5 were expensive new tools so I won't go into them. Maybe someday I should get a plasma cutter ($1200). Or better yet, a CNC plasma cutter $50k). 

I got 2/3 of the way though cutting out the first two steps when the grinder blade was already worn down to half its original size. I had to finish the cut crooked and slow with the sawzall. 

The other dumb thing I did on the fenders was that I failed to notice that they are not perfect half circles but have a flat-ish tail on the last two inches of one side. They're directional. I put the right fender on backward. Maybe nobody will notice. 

Jan 14. Trailer on Wheels

Musta got it all thought out yesterday cause I got a bunch done today. 

Lots to splain in this pic. First off, the triangle in front of the basic box is complete. I had planned for and purchased 6' lengths, but decided at the last minute to reduce to 5' to make an equalateral triangle out of the front. Looks more proportionate. Also, see the bathroom scale under the tip of the triangle. I had to place the wheels so that the younger weight would be between 20 and 40 lb. I'll explain that more later. Plus the axle is assembled which included the hubs/bearings, and the springs. It's just set aside on the frame and not in the proper location. 

The front bracket is the big one in the right and the front of the spring bolts directly to it. The rear is on the left and is attached to the spring via the two straps. I couldn't place the spring brackets on the frame until I knew where the wheel would be. That bar crossing under the frame is the fulcrum I used to place the wheels using tongue weight as a guide. I started with the gum runs centered on the basic square and ended with them 2" forward of center which yielded a tongue weight of 20 lb. this will grow a bit when the rest of the tongue is attached and may change more when the boat is on. The stem weighs a bit more than the stern. 

Whole frame upside down. 

And with very little more work it's right side up and rolling. The hitch is just resting there right now because I'm not sure how long the neck should be. 

And you near time enough to put a second layer of 10 oz fiberglass on the corners of the bottoms of the boat. You can barely see the line on the top of the photo. 

Jan 13. Begin Welding the Trailer

Not sure why I didn't get much done on the trailer today. I had the 2" x 3" steel pieces cut to the lengths I needed for the trailer. 5' wide and 6' long in the basic box. I didn't even check if he got the lengths correct. I just welded the basic square.  

The boat rests in a small square. The curved plywood is so tough the it needs little support and mostly on the ends. 

Good weld. I'm finally getting better at making good welds. It's taken a few projects:  an electric three-wheeler, an electric chopper, a teardrop trailer (http://bzprojects.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-teardrop-trailer.html?m=1) among other small projects. 

Your know, I do know why I got so little done today. It takes. Bit of time to work all the details of the project out in my head. Though I drew up a quick set of plans for the trailer to get an idea of the materials needed, all the little details still need worked out. In fact, I can tell when I've had a few days off, because the first day back is extremely productive. And even if I hadn't directly thought about the project in the interim, I'm sure my subconscious mind has been working things out all along. 

Oh, now I remember where the day went. I threw away the picture, which just looked like another boring photo of the bottom that purportedly showed the first layer of 10 oz fiberglass completely covering the bottom. It took a lot of work to prep the edges. They had to be completely rounded with a block plane and then hand sanded round. Then all the surface had to be sanded smooth and a primer coat of plastic cured prior to glassing. I finally learned that lesson. Coat it once, then glass it. Then the resin won't continue to soak into the plywood, leaving the glass a bit dry. 

Jan 12. Flipping the Boat Over

Everything on the top is done except for the oarlock blocks. Too bad. Those will have to wait. Time to flip the boat over and do the bottom. 

But before we do, let's pretend to be fishing for a bit, to see if it fits more than just me. Looks and feels good to Kenny. 

Yeah, this will work. He is the king of the world. 

Ken, helping flip the boat. 

Sharp edges yet. Good lines though. 

The back end. Skinny. 

The floor seam. Fairly smooth. Should present no problems. 

BTW, I went to Lewiston yesterday to buy parts for the trailer. How else will we get this thing to the water. Almost everything we need from Gateway Materials. $600. Where's my welder. 

Jan 10. Drink Holders

The importance of this step cannot be overstated. I spent an entire day designing, shaping, and affixing the drink holders. We're gonna be out there on the river all day. We will require refreshments. 

Another tough double bevel, not to mention a three-inch diameter hole drill just a 16th of an inch from the edge of the wood. Worked. 

Just fillets. No glass. Seems very sturdy. 

At the same time I glued the drink holders in place, I put a coat of plastic on the now-final-sanded mahogany leg supports and hooks. Nice color. 

From the back. 

From the front/side. 

Gluing in the small plywood drink support. It's beveled on the under side just so to seem to disappear beneath the can. 

Clamping the bottom support. The whole thing turned out nice and curvaceous, and well out of the way, yet near at hand.