Recent content on Building a Beg-Meil
Woodworking is rife with clichés (“measure twice, cut once”). I’ve heard these more than once: Your IQ drops 50 points when the glue bottle is open. The mark of a craftsman is how they recover from a mistake. Here’s a little story that involves both of these. As you may recall, I recently glued the garboard planks to the keelson. Turns out I made a mistake, and one of the…
The garboard planks are the two closest to the keel, or in this case, on top of the keel. Since the boat is planked upside down, these are the first two planks to go on the boat. The planks, in case you forgot, are made of marine-grade plywood. A sheet of plywood is about 8 feet long and the boat is 14 feet long, that means that each plank comes in two pieces that need to get joined.
Before I can think about fitting the garboard planks, I need to bevel the keel so the planks fit at just the right angle. To prepare for this, I watched an Off Center Harbor video ($) from Geoff Kerr’s Caledonia Yawl series. The Caledonia Yawl is a larger boat, but the the construction process (glued lapstrake; plywood) is pretty similar. A few minutes into the video, Kerr says “if you…
In our last episode, I’d expressed some concern about the springback in the keel impacting the alignment of the transom, at least until I was able to add the sheer clamps and planking, which should lock everything into place. I came up with something to hopefully address this concern: a simple ratchet strap. I looped the strap around the building frame and through the opening in the stem…
It’s been about a month and half since my last update on this site. Progress has not been rapid. Mostly, that’s because I’ve been scared overly prudent. I’d argue that it is wise to be careful before breaking out the epoxy and doing something that’d be complicated to walk back. But, I’ll also admit that the complexity of this phase of the build has me doing more…
Boatbuilding can be a solitary affair. As a bit of an introvert myself, this doesn’t necessarily bother me. But, from time to time, it is nice to have a few extra hands on hand. With that in mind, it’s been fun to be joined by my brother, nephew, and father on a few recent occasions. About a month ago, they helped to plane down some 1x2 Doug Fir that’ll make up the the sheer…
As a part of dry fitting the keel to the boat prior to breaking out the epoxy and doing anything permanent, I decided I needed to steam bend the aft portion of the keel. As you can see in the plans below, the keel (which is about an inch thick piece of Doug Fir) takes quite the downward bend from the middle of the boat to the transom. I clamped the keel to the centerboard case (and to the stem,…
I have a t-shirt that has the old saying “measure twice, cut once” on it. That’s decent advice, but I’m finding myself measuring a lot more than twice before I get out the saw. To start with, in the cliffhanger to the last episode, I’d determined where to cut the centerboard case, but hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to actually cut it. Since then, I’ve made…
Let’s talk about the keel. This boat actually has two “keels,” plus a couple of bilge keels. But let’s ignore those bilge keels for now. The two keels are an inner keel and a “false keel”. The inner keel is just called the “keel” in the plans, although an inner keel is often called a keelson. Since Vivier refers to it as the keel, I’ll stick…
Over the years(!) that I’ve been working on the project, people often ask me “how’s the boat going?” And for most of those years, I haven’t had anything that looked vaguely like a boat. I’ve had big sticks (the spars). I’ve had a collection of parts in a pile, and some of them were even recognizable as boat parts. It always felt a bit silly to talk about…
I promise I’ll get back to talking about the boat build soon. (There has been some progress, albeit modest.) In the meantime, I have yet another side quest to share with you. I was mostly motivated by wanting a little project I could complete quickly, and I’d had my eye on a contraption described in an article from the WoodenBoat Skills site: A Magnetic Lap-Planing Guide .…
It’s been a couple of months since I’ve made progress on the boat, but I have a good excuse. My wife asked me to build a little free library. (It was originally designed as a Christmas gift, but here we are in mid-January!) I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow recap of the build. Mostly because I didn’t take pictures during the build and the build itself isn’t that…
At a recent family gathering, my father’s cousin Stu slipped me an object in a brown paper bag. Contrary to the opinion of some observers, the bag didn’t contain a bottle of hootch. Instead it was an old hand plane. Stu’s father and grandfather had run construction companies, as has Stu, and he found this plane amongst the old tools. Knowing that I’m a woodworker, he passed…
Let me regale you with a story of bulkhead number 2. (This may be more interesting to people who are actually building Beg Meil. In fact, I write this mostly in hopes that it makes it easier for future builders.) A few things that are helpful to know: Each of the bulkheads is numbers, with station 1 being near the transom (stern), and station 8 near the stem (front). So, the bulkhead in question…
Last Friday I took the day off and crossed the Puget Sound to head to Port Townsend, WA. Port Townsend hosts one of the largest gatherings of wooden boats and wooden boat people in their annual Wooden Boat Festival. I don’t have any profound insights to share, other than there are a lot of really wonderful wooden boats out there and I had a great time looking at them. So, instead, I’ll…
Sometimes I wonder who I’m writing these posts for. Every writer needs to have an audience in mind while they write, so who am I writing for? On one level, I’m writing for me, to create a record of the project. I’m also writing for friends and family who are interested in keeping up with the project, or want a little more detail about how the build is progressing. Even so, I…
More thinking about precision In the last post, I talked a bit about precision. I’m going to continue the theme here as I start to stand up the bulkhead supports. One of the keys is to make sure each bulkhead is placed at exactly the right spot. To do this, I decided to buy a couple of stick-on measuring tapes. I used FastCap’s Peel & Stick measuring tapes, which weren’t too…
You may have already figured this out, but one does not simply build a boat on the ground. You need some sort of a platform or frame. And, so, I’ve built a frame to build the boat. The frame is just over 15 feet long, so I picked up some 16 foot 2x6 boards. While one could have joined a couple of 8 foot boards together, it just seemed easier to buy the longer boards from the get-go.
After a little more research, I’ve decided that varnish-over-epoxy is the way to go for the transom. West Systems (which is my epoxy brand of choice) has a nice article on the topic: “Varnish Over Epoxy”. Having some sort of “official” indication that this is valid choice is helpful. I also uncovered a few old threads on the WoodenBoat forum on the topic. The…
At this point, I’ve precoated most of the bulkheads with epoxy, but I was worried about the end grain. Not all the end grain, as a lot of it will eventually get glued to other pieces (planks, deck, etc.), but especially the tie-down holes and the limber holes. Both will have the opportunity to come into contact with water on a regular basis, and I figured that a few coats of epoxy…
I’m still spending most of my time encapsulating various bulkhead parts with epoxy. It looks like this: And this: I don’t have quite enough bench space (even temporary benches, like these) to do all the parts at once, so I’m rotating through them, and trying to give all the pieces three coats with some light sanding between coats. I’m also trying to hit exposed end grain –…
Look, it ain’t all going to be exciting. Sometimes you just have to grind. I’m in a phase of the project that is turning out to be a bit of a grind. It’s not bad, but it isn’t particularly interesting. There’s no glamorous-looking curly shavings of clear wood. No carefully chiseling away wood to get the perfect fit. And no novel problems to ponder. And there…
There’s a notion in technology management spaces (where I spend my working life) of “one-way doors” and “two-way doors.” A one-way door represents a decision that isn’t easily reversible, whereas a two-way door is one where, if you don’t like what you see when you walk through the door, you can turn back around. As I prepared to epoxy the centerboard case…
“From stem to stern.” The last few posts have been pretty stern-focused, so now it’s time to talk stem (aka, the front of the boat, or bow). On the Beg-Meil, there are actually two stems. There’s an inner stem, where the planks actually land, and what Vivier calls the “false stem,” which is the part you’ll actually see. The inner stem is made up of three…
It turns out that the hard part was getting the board prepared because these last steps were pretty straightforward, and not too time-consuming. To be fair, having the transom already cut out in plywood made the process much easier. The plywood transom came in two layers (which were to be glued together) – an inner layer with a mortise for the stern post, and an outer layer. The outer layer is a…
In my last post on the transom, I detailed the issues I’d had with the first attempt a gluing up a “blank” to cut the transom from. I basically made three mistakes in the process: I started with 4/4 lumber, which ended up a bit too thin once I’d milled up the stock. I used a really wide board, which ended up cupping a bit, even after I’d milled it flat.
I’ve recently started to think about power. Specifically, auxiliary power. Of course, the sails are the primary power source. And I figured that I’d include oars as a backup. But, the Beg-Meil is, I think, a bit heavy to be great under oars. So, I’ve been planning on some sort of electric motor, too. I’d also figured that this was a topic I could push off until farther in…
As I hope I’ve made clear on this site, I’m very much still learning boatbuilding and woodworking. And when you’re learning, you make mistakes. It’s just a part of the process. So, I thought it’d be illustrative for me to narrate my latest mistake. In the last post I outlined my plan to make the transom out of solid wood instead of plywood. More experienced…
I an earlier post, I mentioned that Vivier specified “marine sapele” plywood for the sheet with the rudder and transom parts. None of the suppliers I checked had sapele plywood, at least not anyone local, so this sheet, along with the rest of the sheetings, is okoume. Now, okoume is a softer wood. (Not a softwood. It’s a hardwood. Believe it or not, hardwoods can be soft and…
The thing about building a boat like this is that there aren’t super detailed step-by-step instructions. On the scale from “building Ikea furniture” to “you’re totally on your own,” this process lands closer to “on your own” than to Ikea. (To be fair, it’s still somewhat at the mid-point, although leaning to the right.) I am, however,…
Now that I have the plywood, it’s time to start planning the next steps. In his book Every Tool’s a Hammer, patron-saint-of-makers Adam Savage extols the virtue of making lists. (See also: The Checklist Manifesto.) I’ve been known to make a list or two in my time, and this post is no exception. To be fair, this post may not be the most interesting to people who aren’t me…
In an earlier post, I outlined some of the things I was considering around the big plywood purchase. (By “plywood,” I mean “marine panels,” which is apparently the term of art here.) I’d made a brief aside about tariffs, and some concerns about how the new administration’s trade policy might impact the cost of goods. (Yeah, this is small potatoes, and there are…
One of the little side-quests I’ve had on the agenda is to build some clamps to help out when the eventual planking process. Now, you might say, “hey, there are plenty of clamps available for purchase in stores, why would you want to make your own?” Fair question, and to answer it, we need to remember that this particular boat uses lapstrake (or “clinker” for those…
The next big step in the boat project is buying the plywood that will be used to construct the hull. There’s a few things to note about the plywood: This isn’t the stuff you buy at the big box store. It’s marine-grade plywood, which is higher quality and more expensive than the normal stuff. The plywood gets CNC cut – think: a computer that controls a router to cut out precise…
Sometimes I wonder why this project takes so long. (Most people I talk to are too polite to ask why the project takes so long, so these are mostly conversations I have with myself.) After all, I prepped the wood for the mast back in February, and here we are, a few days from Halloween, and I’m still finishing up the mast. (Of course, I did take a bunch of detours, building a guitar, a tool…
The release of the Lost Art Press “Make a Swedish Tool Chest with Whitney Miller” video course coincided with an expansion of my free time. And so, it was an easy decision to take this on as a new project. (And before you ask “what about the boat??”, yes, I am still working on the boat. I’m still doing final finishing on the mast, which is rather tedious. And the next…
In the last post, I’d expressed some concern about the bow in the wood. I’d had two solutions in mind: clamping the bow out, and just making the diameter a bit thinner. I ended up going with both approaches. First, here’s what it looks like to clamp the first layer of the four-layer glue-up to a cleat: This worked pretty well, at least until I got to the later stages where the…
Near the end of my last boat-related post, I described my plan for a “spar bench” – basically a really long flat surface that I can use to glue up the mast. The spar bench is made with 2x4s, on edge, topped by plywood. One of the keys is making sure the bench is flat and not twisted. It’d be a shame to go to all of this trouble only to make a twisted spar.
I’ve devoted a decent portion of my shop time over the past six months to building a guitar. Now, you may note that a guitar is not a boat, and this blog is about me building a boat. And you’d be right. But, the older child plays guitar, and he’s outgrown the cheap guitar we bought him a while back. He had his eyes on a ’70s style Telecaster Deluxe, which combines the…
While a good deal of my woodworking time is still being taken up by the guitar-building project (which is progressing nicely, even if I’ve decided to not blog about it), I haven’t forgotten the boat. In the couple of months (!) since my last post, I’ve been working to prep the wood for the mast. Given that the longest mast board I have is about 17 feet long, I needed to be a bit…
I’m fortunate to have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off work, and that affords me the opportunity to spend some quality time out in the garage, working on various projects. I knocked together a little cart for a new drill press using leftover wood from the workbench project. I was also able to build in some extra storage, which is always welcome in the workshop. My other…
The boom is “done.” Well, there’s a couple of things I’ll need to do before actually rigging it, but I’m calling it done. According to this very blog, it was way back in July when I started to apply finish to the boom parts. In the intervening months, I put a bunch of coats of varnish (D2) on the boom. I didn’t exactly keep track of how many coats, but the boom…
When last I reported on the workbench, I’d flipped it right side up, applied some finish, and drilled the dog holes. My next step was to install the shelf boards. Like everything else in the bench, they’re made up of 1¼" boards. The only trick was to notch out two boards to fit around the legs, which wasn’t too tough. I didn’t bother to screw them into cleats. I suspect…
You know how, in the last post, I decried the price of Sitka Spruce and hatched a plan to make the mast out of fir instead? Well, Reader, I bought the spruce. Now, you might ask why I paid $20 a board foot? The short answer is that I already had about 40% of what I needed in Sitka Spruce, and so it turned out to be about the same price to keep going with the spruce instead of starting over with…
Remember that boat I’m building? The one this blog is ostensibly about? Well, I haven’t forgotten about it, despite the litany of workbench posts. In between putting the finishing touches on the workbench (of which there will be one more post when all is said and done), I’ve been slowly chipping away on boat projects. Specifically, I’ve been varnishing the boom and…
I’d been a bit worried about how exactly I was going to flip the bench over, but between my wife and teenage son, we were able to get it flipped over with no injuries to either the workbench or the workers. Below, you can see it in the permanent location under the one window in the garage. Fits just perfectly in the space. (It’s almost like I measured and planned it!
The next big task I had was to drill two holes into the front (and back) of the benchtop in front of each leg. The holes are for the drawbores (pegs) that help keep the whole thing together. I once again used my drill guide, only this time clamped to the side of the top, and propped up with some scrap wood. This method worked pretty well. (We’re going to ignore the holes for one of the back…
(Don’t let the one day between posts fool you. The last post reflected about a month’s worth of work, and this one was about a week’s worth, including a long weekend.) After gluing up the stretchers, I needed to clean them up before trying to fit them to the legs. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to get the two boards perfectly aligned, and, of course, there was glue…
It’s been about a month since my last post, but I haven’t been idle as we enter the dog days of summer. When last I reported on my progress, I’d just glued the three sections of the benchtop together. The glue-up was mostly successful, although if I had to do it over again I’d have jointed the faces that were glued. The gaps between the three sections aren’t bad, but…
The next step in the workbench project was to take the 20 boards I’d bought for the benchtop into the Tool Library shop and mill them to size. Neighbor Joel and I threw the boards into the back of his truck, and headed to the shop. Knowing that the wood I’d bought wasn’t of the highest quality (it was #2 lumber, all Douglas Fir), I’d bought a couple of extra boards.