The Transom

The Transom is another of those psychological hurdles. It needs to be done but it is a daunting prospect. Get it wrong and the boat is spoiled. Her original one had been played about with over the years. It was made of oak with a replacement section at the top. Parts of it had gone the same way as a lot of the  frame futtocks and turned into compost.In addition the iron drifts had chemically attacked the oak and destroyed its structure.

I can't believe this shape in any way conforms to the original lines.

 The top couple of planks although rotten are, I believe, very recent. The shape however seems to differ from the original lines. This is where the 3D model came in in making a judgement on what the transom should look like.

New planks in Iroko splined and bonded with epoxy

The new transom is Iroko and bonded together with epoxy from Von Corvin resin supplies. Great product and service from Herr Von Corvin. To help with alignment during the glue up the plank edges have splines. Very long spar clamps were used to clamp the planks together during the glue up.

Spline fitted as a trial to test the fit.

New transom after initial shaping and, I think, nearer to the original intent of her lines drawing. It is slightly more rounded at around  deck level than the drawing however to get the model fair this was necessary and hey it looks fantastic so what the hell. Hopefully the purists will forgive me.

Laminating Frames

The most recent deliver of oak was all straight grained and the frames under the engine which are going in at the moment have some pretty tight curves so I decided to laminate them. I started out using resorcinol as its the standard where oak is concened but keeping the temperatures high enough proved too difficult so I used epoxy instead. The issue with epoxy and oak is that the acids in the oak prevent the epoxy from curing. My remedy is to wash the oak with alcohol which, after testing the bond,seems to do the trick. The epoxy bond is as strong if not stranger than the wood itself.

Laminating in situ using the hull as a former.

The finished product prior to cleaning up.

 

 

 

It's Just One Fram After the Other

Just a few pictures of the frames as the work progresses.

A Slightly Better Than Typical Nail Sick Futtock

All Nicely Primed Ready For Installation

A view looking aft showing one of the few good parts that I can re-use, THE ENGINE!

The moral here is if you want to have a boat like this in a shorter time period build a new one! Rebuilds take twice as long. Removal of the old parts to use as templates for the new is time consuming. A designer's fee with computerised lofting would have been cheaper than the cost of the full sized template and certainly a lot more healthy than breathing in 70 odd years of dust and lead paint.

A bit of reverse engineering

As a bit of fun I created a 3d model of Providence's hull from the lines published in book The Little Ships of Dunkirk.

Published Lines Drawing

The program I used was DELFTship which will also compute the various design coefficients which adds a bit of interest to the whole project.

Line Drawing produced in DELFTship.

 The lines drawing wascreated in an early version of the program that did not allow diagonals at anything other than 45 degrees hence these are a bit meaningless as far as fairing goes.

What a babe!

And a basic version in AutoCAD

I created AutoCAD "as built" drawings however my computer gave up the ghost and I did not have backups. There is still a slight chance of recovery however.

More Supplies

Another delivery of wood, roughly about 7 m³ of Siberian Larch.

 

All nicely stacked ready for a roof.

 

One of the deliveries of oak. I think this was about 3 cubic meters.
 

Getting out the frames with a Kress Duo Saw

This is the first outing with the Kress Duo Saw- a fantastic tool

It will cut up to 200mm (7.5 inch). I am hopeful it will speed the job up and save on a bit of wood. Currently I rough cut the frame with a chainsaw and then bandsaw the approximate bevel and then tweak it with a plane.

First fit and looking good.

7 frames out of 21. Its going to be a long summer.

Keel aweigh Joe

Time to drop the keel. This baby is about 3.5 tons

Starting to see the light.

And shee's down.

Deepening The Rabbet

The original Rabbet was a bit narrow with, it seems, no fastenings. At a later stage someone had added galvanised screws. No doubt she leaked like a basket under sail.

The line for the deepened rabbet was easily marked with the help of a laser.















Once the line was marked the long slow job of cutting the rabbet could begin.

However life is too short so a router was used to speed things up.

Rabbet being cut with router.

To get the proper angle of cut, it should be normal to the section curve at the keel, two battens were screwed to the keel and as the router moved along the keel the changing bevel was accurately cut into the wood.

Down Below

Down below.

The smell of dampness was the first thing to hit our nostrils. The deck leaked like a sieve (the deck fittings had not been lifted prior to fiberglassing!!). The water level was just below the floorboards and had obviously been a good bit above just recently i.e. just before we arrived.






























She has a nice traditional layout below with a Queeny Stove. (Just for show, it had never been connected to the deck fitting)

High, Dry and Sad

And here she is as seen for sale and on the hard.

Looking rather forlorn with rust streaks coming from here iron fastenings and it would seem having been out of commission for a number of years.

She's Launched

First Build 2

Seeing her being put together from his own design must have been a fantastic thrill. I wonder if he thought she would still be around after 73 years. 20 years in those days would have been considered a useful lifespan.