The Deck




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	The basic tools I use most.


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The deck by far is the hardest part. There are angles and joints and beams that have to become a structure just as strong as the nice smooth hull. This is a shift from relatively forgiving epoxy and parts trimmed in place to close tolerance joinery where every part is different. Each corner and joint has to be thought out as to how it will be stressed and how to make it strong enough to resist that stress.



				Working from bow to stern, the first challenge is the carlins. Mine are made up from 1x6 cherry. The longest FAS cherry I could find was 10' so a number of scarfs were required. I decided on a lock scarf because it eliminated the thin taper that can be easily damaged and when locked with dowels is very strong. Notice that the ends of the scarf are square with the slope so that when closed up, they wedge against each other and resist bending. To cut them all accurately, I built a jig to hold the router with a 3/4" straight bit. The end of each board was cut to the correct angle on the miter saw and the slope roughly cut. Then the end was placed in the jig and routed to the finish line.





							The scarf was clamped together and drilled for dowel pegs using another home made jig.

Clamping up took a bit of ingenuity. If you look close you can see the white oak dowels that lock the joint in place.

Before clamping each board was ripped at an angle to match the cabin sides and the edges were rounded over. This helped keep track of which scarf was up.

Gluing up a pair of 33' long carlins in an 18' long shop takes some imagination. This photo is looking from the far end of the metal work room through the wood shop and out past the foundry porch.

I bribed my 13 year old daughter and her friends to help me move the finished carlins to the boat shed. I wish I had a picture of a parade of teenage girls hauling these long parts.

After they left, I discovered that we had moved both pieces into the shed going the same direction! I had to wait until the weekend and get my son to help turn one around so it would fit the starboard side.

I have to remember to think ahead.


	I seem to have lost a couple of rolls of film here. They covered running the carlins and side deck beams. When I find them I will expand this area.


	The side deck and cabin top beams are laminated from mahogany and spruce individually cambered so that the center of the cabil top forms a straight line tapering to the peak of the bow. Rather than attempt to make 20 or more jigs with different cambers, I braced a 10'x2' piece of melamine with 2x4s and cut slots every 6" through which I bolted chunks of angle iron to serve as clamping blocks. The blocks could then be adjusted up and down and tightned in place. I drew each camber on the melamine and adjusted the blocks so that the top of the beam to be laminated lay on the proper line. A batch of spring clamps held the lamination together against the blocks while some 1" square bars held them tight against the jig. As there were about 40 pieces to laminate, this process went on for about two months. The jig fell apart on the last piece. .

Once the framing was done, the actual deck laying went pretty fast. I cut patterns from the big cardboard sheets that the Divinicell and plywood were packed in. The patterns were taped to the 4 mm okoume and the skins were cut.

		Site last modified:04/12/04