Home |
Odds and Sods
Problem solving
|
Last update: feb 19 2008 Now that the hull is closed I can reflect on the various problems encountered and the solutions I applied. I have nearly forgotten about them because the finished result seems fine and does not reveal the stumbling blocks I experienced. Before starting this project I followed a week course in canoe building at Macboat in North Holland and there were no problems at all when we built a Bobs Special with 3 students and supervision.
Tumblehome Despite having planned to get round the tumblehome by starting at a point which would round the bend at a strip join, this need not work out and the fifth strip was obviouly not going to round the bend. I dismantled (one at a time, 3 stations, 0 and 1 L and R), shaved off about 2 mm from the form at the widest point, and put the forms back on the strongback.
Strip glued at wrong angle The third strip when filling the football required a lot of twist as it is flat in the middle of the boat and nearly vertical by the stem. At one end, the angle was not right and looked as if I would have a major dent in the hull. Using a very fine saw as used for model building, I cut along part of the join in the area giving trouble for a length of about 30 cm. This made the strip flexible again at that point and enabled me to twist it into the correct position and reglue by squirting glue down into the cut. The cut slit was less than 1/2 mm wide.
Fitting the football As I got closer to the centre, the strips appeared to be too wide. On some strips I shaved off some wood close to the area where it met the centre line but this lost me about 5 - 10 cm of the cove on each end. Spent hours adding a cove to the strips with a chisel. The strips are quite a lot wider than the strips we used for the Bob's special (2.6 mm vs 2.2 mm / 1inch vs 7/8 inch) and maybe this made them less flexible? The photo shows a cut-off from my boat (underneath) compared with a cut-off from the Bob's special (above).
|
