May - June 2012

Now starts the boat’s actual building process. I have decided that I’m going to strip build this boat with cypress that will be edge glued. Many builders like to use the canoe cove and bead process but I found that it’s an extra step that really isn’t necessary. Edge gluing the strips works great as long as each strip is secured to each station mold and has additional clamps to assist as needed. The cypress strips are 5/16 inches by 1 inch wide. My lumber is in various lengths of 10 – 12 feet so I’ll need to scarf these strips. To assist in the scarfing process I built an eight to one scarf jig that fit on my mobile stationary disc sander. This worked really well and aided in the scarfing process. All of my cypress lumber was rough cut and needed to be planed prior to cutting the strips. After the planing was completed I jointed one edge of each board to acquire a true edge. Then I made a ‘run out ‘sled for my table saw and ripped the 5/16 inch strips. This can be a tedious process so to prevent any machine errors; I only cut 18 strips at a time. Of course my shop buddy Gunther, our standard poodle was on hand for moral support.

Once the strip situation was solved it was time to think about building the transom. I purchased a piece of mahogany with these dimensions; 5/4 x 7.5 x 13ft. @ a cost of $6.95 per board foot or $88.88. I then cut the board in half and edge glued the two pieces together with epoxy to form the transom. On cutting out the transom, sanding the surfaces and edges I took a suggestion from one of the other Melonseed builders and fiber glassed the inside surface of the transom for added strength. The difficult part of the transom was cutting the beveled top edge to meet that profile of station mold # 12. So I measured and then measured again and went ahead and cut the bevel. As it turned out the bevel was perfect on the sides but a bit short on the lower area of the transom, so I decided to just fill these areas with thickened epoxy as I went through the building process. The next step was to place, level and attach the transom to the boat mold. I thus made several supports to align the transom to station mold # 12 and to conform to the sheer of the boat.

Begin an old fashioned builder type I than went ahead and started building a keelson for the boat. The plans called for a ½ inch piece of plywood to be attached to both the transom and that of the stem, thus stabilizing the boat molds. Not wanting to use plywood I purchased a piece of clear white pine with the dimensions of 4/4 x 11 x 12 feet for $16. Then I made a 4/4 x 2 x 14 foot keelson to join the transom and the stem. To attach the keelson to each station mold I glued small 2 x 2 x 4 inch blocks to each station mold and attached the keelson to these blocks with ¼ inch carriage bolts. I guess some of my building friends would say that this was ‘overkill’ but I must tell you the building form was extremely ridged and completely aligned on all angles.

April 2012

Now it was time to make sure that the station molds created a “fair line” for the boat and that the sheer had a nice fair line. Although each station mold was created from the plan’s drawings, I found a number of ‘hollow’ spots in the station molds. I believe part of the problem came from adding the additional 3 inches to each station mold and I didn’t have a ‘fair curve’ at the sheer with the additional 3 inches. Therefore I had to determine; “was I going to add the 3 inches to the stem or the transom”. I decided I’d add the 3 inches onto the transom and therefore assumed that the overall hull’s shape would ride better in the water with a fuller stern. Using the new transom sheer line as a reference I created a fuller aft and center for the hull and kept a fine entry on the stem. Now I determined a new sheer line for the starboard side of the boat. This entailed adding and subtracting shims on the side of the each station mold. I used the starboard side as a reference and then transferred these measurements to the port side of the boat. At last I had a fair sheered boat! Now the task of making sure that each station mold did not have any ‘hollow’ spots. I did this with battens placed both diagonally and lengthwise on the boat’s hull. After a few shims were added to the station molds the boat’s shape received my final approval.  At this point I have invested 73 hours in the construction.

 

March 2012

Wouldn’t you know it we had several weeks at the beginning of March that were mild enough to start placing the molds on the ladder back frame. My fellow boat builder friends; Bud and Ben came over one day and we temporarily placed all the molds on the ladder-back. We attached 2x4x 48 lengths of lumber to the edge of the mold that met the ladder back. Once these were attached we attached them to the ladder back with 3 inch screws. You know, all the books make is sound so easy to place the molds on the ladder-back and instantly they’ll be aligned both laterally and horizontally. Well, that didn’t happen in this case! It’s a real job to make sure that each form is aligned to the center line. We needed to use a shim here and there but we did it. All the molds were in place and the stem was attached to the 1^st and 2^nd station mold. At this point I had spent 57 hours working on the boat and spent $866.20.

February 2012

The next step was to build the stem’s mold. I followed the plans and built a plywood form to bend the stem. For a uniform bend I have found that you need many, many clamps and since I didn’t have sufficient clamps, I made clamps using two 5/16 x 6 inch eye bolts for clamps. Here’s what I did: I drilled 1” inch diameter holes in the bending form and then used ¾ dowels that went through the ‘eyes’ of the bolts and attached a short length on wood to the top to form a U bolt type configuration. These bolt clamps work extremely well as they don’t leave a ‘cupped’ area in the middle of a piece of wood like a C clamp does.

To make the stem I purchased a white oak board that measured 2x6x60 and ripped the oak into 17 1/8 strips. The white oak board cost $37. As you may know, white oak bends extremely well but it needs to be soaked in water prior to bending. I then soaked 8 strips in water for 3 days and bent them around the form. I found that the white oak bent easily without having to steam the wood. The downside of water soaking the wood is that it took a long time to dry; particularly in March. So to speed the process I decided to glue the strips together with Gorilla Glue. The moisture content in the wood aided the polyurethane glue to form a tight bond and formed an interior stem that had little if any spring back.

January 2012

Over the New Year’s weekend I started cutting out the boat’s permanent molds to the lines drawn on each mold from the ¼ luan plywood. This was quite a process balancing the 4x8 sheets of plywood in my workshop and then cutting them out with my jigsaw. I soon found out that a standard ‘up cut’ jigsaw blade doesn’t lend itself to a clean cut line.  The plywood splintered terribly so I changed to a ‘down cut’ jigsaw blade. Using this type of blade is harder to start but the end result is much better to work with, all the splintered edges are on the inside of the mold. I was able to make a jigsaw cut to 1/8 of an inch from the ‘traced line’.  By the end of January all the molds were cut and sanded to their individual mold lines. The sanding was challenging and I found the best solution was to build a mobile stationary disc sander from some parts I had hanging around my shop. It is important that the surface be square to the sides of the mold. While taking a break from all the sanding, I thought a change of pace was in order, so I built the 16 foot mold ladder back. On completing for ladder-back I found that it was quite unwieldy and decided that I would make legs for the mold with 6 inch wheels. This worked great.

January 2011

The first thing I did was label the plans per the one page list of instructions.  After reading other boat plans, schedules, lofting requirements, tables of offsets, etc., I found that the labeling process is very helpful in understanding how the boat is put together. I than started a “Cut List” to determine how much lumber I would need and the type of lumber that I would need. I quickly found out that this wasn’t the place to start. There are so many pieces of various wood types and lengths that it’s hard to get a realistic list together. So I decided to make a model of the boat to the scale of 1 inch to the foot. Here’s the sequence of events that followed for the building of the Melonseeds hull.

March - June 2011

I purchased a sheet of 1/8 inch birch plywood, a book of tracing paper, a can of spray adhesive and started tracing out the scaled plans for the Melonseed. I than cut out the station molds, formed the stem and transom and assembled them to a ‘to scale’ ladder back form. After doing all of this and recovering from bronchitis I started to put ‘to scale’ planking on the model. As I was moving along on the planking process I happened to drive up and see Mike Wick’s new melonseed project and he suggested that I add 3 inches to the sheer line of the boat. So I decided to experiment with the model. This worked well, so I thought, why not, and I gave it a try. I thought the extra height of the hull looked good so I decided to keep it as part of the boat.  Adding the ‘to scale’ station molds, stem, transom and planks really got me to thinking about the lumber size and requirement for the real boat. Between work, family and spare time I finally finished the boat’s hull about the beginning of the Summer of 2011.