30' plywood sharpie

go earl
that thing is really nice looking
did you build it?
cause you did a great job

cheers
B

 

Bravo Earl!
Troy, looks like you've got a little competition!
Chip.

 

Doesn't look to me like there's any competition at all...he's up in the majors, and I'm still putzing around in summer ball.

I've been down pretty sick for the last couple of weeks. I've been working and sleeping, working and sleeping, trying to shake it off. I finally got this week off, and the first night home I slept fifteen hours.

So I haven't been real ambitious. But I have the deck about half-framed, and I'm looking at the centerboard and cockpit construction. Hopefully I'll have something worth taking pictures of by the time the weekend is over with.

 

the cat is just waiting for some fresh glue to be handy and then will undoubtedly be making another appearance

 

No, wish I was that good. It was done by Tom Pratt in Ohio. He set up a build program at a local senior center and they did a half dozen or so. Another bunch exists at Solomons Island, MD, at the club that builds and sails out of the Calvert Marine Museum.

Cheers,

Earl

 

if a sharpie could be built with some decent head room under the 40' mark I'd give them more consideration
thing is even with that nice deck house there is not room to stand

 

Well, they are what they are. At least the traditional ones are, or those closely based on them....

It depends on what you want in a boat. I want trailerability, shoal draft, low cost and ease of construction, something that'll get up and move under a simple rig, etc. It will probably never see salt water, much less do any serious voyaging. It's going to be a weekender, a fishing platform, transportation to swimming coves and shade trees for BBQ's, something to button up and take out to play with in the afternoon winds.

For my purposes, headroom isn't all that important. I'm not going to be living aboard or taking long cruises, and I live in a climate where I don't need to hide from the weather for extended periods of time. To me a cabin is storage, a comfortable place to sit down with friends in the evening for a drink or two, somewhere to stretch out for a good night's rest, a bit of privacy for going to the head, somewhere to retain retain my dignity while putting my pants on in the morning. So the length of the cabin is more important to me than the height, as long as I have comfortable sitting room.

 

OK, time to pick brains. I laid out a deck beam pattern for my sharpie model, using the traditional method. I'm making a pile of deck beams to the extreme width of the boat, and cutting them down to fit at each station.

Because of the sheer, and because the boat tapers at each end, sticking strictly to the pattern is giving me a bit of a 'dished' deck crown fore and aft, that's a compromise between a straight line and the sheer of the boat.

I don't think it looks bad, but I'm thinking it might be a booger to deck with sheet plywood on the real boat. Should I set a deck beam at the front of the cabin, lay a straight edge from there to the bow, and fudge the intermediate beams to that straight line?

And ditto, aft: should I set the forward beam of the bridge deck, lay a straight edge from there to the transom, and fudge the deck crown to that line?

I've been a little casual about it so far, since I'm building in balsa. I can glue strips of balsa on top of the low beams, and shape them to fit with a sanding block. Or sand down the high ones, or whatever.

I went back to balsa for the deck beams, by the way. The ply had horrendous voids in it (that I wouldn't have expected in something from Finland). So I glued pairs of sheet balsa together for a thickness of 3/16", and cut the beams out of that.

I spent a couple of minutes slapping myself around, for forgetting the basics of woodworking tools just because I'm working in miniature. Then I took a fine stone and dressed the sides of the teeth on the blade of the coping saw, like I used to do with full-sized handsaws after setting and sharpening them. It cured most of the raggedness of the cut, and also most of the tendency to catch and turn off-line while cutting.

But if I had this to do over again, I'd go back to what I've used on my models in the past. I'd go buy a stick of 1x12 sugar pine, put a good-quality plywood blade on my table saw, and rip out the miniature lumber and planking I needed from scratch. Sugar pine is soft, even-grained and almost as easy to work as balsa, but several times stronger.

Of course, back then I was still contracting, and had a full wood shop--including an antique, tilt-top, furniture maker's table saw in one corner, that was perfect for that sort of thing.

 

oh I can see the sharpie as having a definite advantage for your intended use but as you pointed out Im going to at least be coastal cruising, if Im lucky and can claw my way back to being financially comfortable again, fingers crossed.

B

 

if you put any rocker at all in the beams then no matter how you slice it the deck with end up with a rocker as well
so a straight edge to build to wont help you much
just measure and cut each from the center out and you should be fine at least to get them down
fairing them shouldn't be to much trouble

 

Well, obviously each beam has a rocker; I cut them that way.

I'm talking about the high center of the deck crown being dished fore and aft. On a smaller boat there would be no question; I'd straighten the line out and be done with it. On one this size, I'm not sure whether I should or not....but not doing so introduces a compound curve that I would think is significantly harder to deck with sheet plywood. On a planked deck, no problem.

 

I'd want some crown to it just for the strength
at least in the full size one

Dam just finished a chunk of buffalo I had marinating in Saki and red onions for a few days
grilled it up on the barby and yum
I am wallowing in culinary bliss at the moment

 

That sounds good. The last buffalo meat I had was ground. So I made patties with a pat of herbed butter in the middle of each patty, and grilled them over mesquite.

I'm not sure we're communicating here. Athwartships, the deck is crowned. But since the height of the crown on each individual beam is dependent on how long it is, and also on the sheer of the boat, I'm getting a 'dish' in the centerline of the deck fore and aft--which has nothing at all to do with structural strength.

Visually, that's no problem. After all, it somewhat follows the sheer. But it introduces a compound curve in the deck, which could be hard to sheet with plywood instead of planking.

 

Well, I was talking about the deck, not the cabin top. But double diagonal planking would certainly work in either case. Although it's significantly more time-consuming, and a little more complicated, than anything else I plan on doing to the boat...

 

hmmm
dont recall dealing with that one before
or if I did I dont rememeber it being an issue
although I never used ply in building till I got to the residential industry
I'd be inclined to take Par's advice

cheers
B

and ya
dont go for ground
try a pot roast and cube it next time then marinate it for a few days in Saki
you will love it
shitaki mushrooms maybe and some asparagus or broccoli
that and jalapeno mashers
red russets of course skin on in heavy cream and with gobs of butter

worry about the heart attack later