First I needed to find some wood.  John Brooks gave me lots of sound advice so I settled upon Sapele as my timber of choice.  I searched among the building supplies in Ireland, but my timing was poor - Ireland was going through a horrific economic downturn, where its construction industry had come to a complete standstill - so traditional wood suppliers were going out of business or closing down.

However, I did manage to source some nice larch and spruce for my jig and molds from a local sawmill.  He also sourced some Douglas Fir for me but only in 10' lengths.  

So at last I could get started by building my molds.

This proved to be a far more complicated process than I had envisaged.  Not having seen boat plans before nor indeed molds, I was hard pushed to understand how to fabricate the molds.  I didn't realise that the only important lines where those on the outside down as far as the sheer - anything below this could be any shape you desire and the inside shape of the molds was entirely immaterial as long as they are strong enough.  However as a first time mold builder, these now obvious questions were slowing down progress:-

To get started on the boat proper I had to bite the bullet and send in my order for the Sapele and plywoods which totaled an eye watering sum..

Nothing for it but to import my timbers from the UK - and Robbins Timber proved to be the best supplier I could find - they had everything and were used to dealing with amateur builders.

Unfortunately John's plans are in imperial measurements and here in UK/Ireland our timber suppliers have gone metric.  So I spent quite a time spread-sheeting the materials list and translating into metric equivalents.  I also bought a small software program called CutListPlus which I used to estimate what lengths of timber and quantities I needed.  The system gets you to input the parts' dimensions and type of material and then allows you configure this to optimize your layouts.  John Brooks GLWB book shows how to do this manually, but I got bored after about one night of fiddling with pieces of paper and thought there had to be an easier way.  In addition, the software translated the imperial sizes into metric. Scrap the spreadsheets.......

I spent countless hours amusing myself with this ingenious program...however after much to a fro-ing with the timber suppliers I stupidly ordered the timber rough sawn and ended up with a tonne of huge timber planks occupying my garage.  

For about a week, I crawled around this pile of wood trying to match the wood with the delivery docket.  Not having seen Douglas For before, I was still trying to figure out which was Pine/Fir - at least I could identify the plywood and Sapele.  I'm still wondering how I am going to manage the 12' lengths of 3" by 14" planks.  Yikes...there's no going back now!

Quickly I realised my thicknesser (or "thinnesser" as my wife calls it) wouldn't be up to the task, so the small saving I made from ordering the timber rough sawn was eradicated by the consequential purchase of a heavier 12" planer thicknesser.  I read all the various reviews and most of the highly recommended machines were 3 phase, which I don't have in my workshop.  A 12" thicknesser seemed to be about the largest size one can get in single phase.  Constant bidding on eBay UK and searching Ireland's version of CraigsList - Donedeal.ie failed to throw up a suitable second hand machine which everyone tells you one can pick up for pittance...

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My mold material was Spruce - but it seemed very green when delivered to my shop from the sawmill, with moisture content around 18%.  So armed with my plans and my GLWB book, I set about assembling the molds.  I decided to use biscuit joints to join the boards.  John Brooks describes a method of using yard sticks joined together to work out the best angle to optimise the wood lengths.   This was confusing initially, because I didn't appreciate the end product, so I stressed over this unnecessarily. I was introduced to the science and trigonometry of using a bevel gauge, transferring it to a Bevel Boss .  I railed in my engineering minded friend Bendan to figure out how to transfer the measurements off my BevelBoss to my MitreSaw...

John shows how to create your own Bevel Boss in his book, but this tool has proven to be a very accurate companion for me and I am doubtful if I could have recreated this with the same level of accuracy.


The biscuit joints proved to be insufficient and unnecessary so I ended up adding the blocks to place over the joints.  My reason at the time for using biscuit joints was so I could lay the molds accurately down onto the top of the plans.

I became obsessed with accuracy and bought aluminium channel to allow me screw a straight edge over the FSP so that I could align the bottom of the mold on the line which represented the jig side beam. 

Accuracy - John had warned me at the workshop about the cone of accuracy - a half millimeter out at one end of the boat could wind up to by 8 millimeters at the other end... perhaps an extreme example, but I got the point and heeded the warning!

Cutting the molds in pairs on my new jig saw proved quite satisfying, but I struggled to understand which marks I needed to transfer to the molds, so I ended up copying the entire plans on to the molds.  

When I was finished with the molds, I re-read the introduction on the plans which stated that the boat is built over 7 molds, 3 of which are permanent frames and 4 and just for the jig....I had built 5 out of spruce, so I had missed that in fact #6 was a permanent frame to be built out of marine ply and reinforced with DF cheeks.  

It was about 3 months later when one of the molds fell down from the loft in my workshop that the folly of relying on biscuit joints alone was evidenced.  So I reinforced each component with an additional brace.  Also the full import of the 18% MC of the spruce revealed itself when I saw how nicely warped some of the molds had become when they dried out!  That didn't prove to be a problem as I was able to straighten them out when placing them on the strongback / jig.

One mold does deserve special mention - #14.  When you come to positioning the transom and the transom knee, you need to cut a section out of the top of the mold to allow the knee sit in its correct place.  As I write I don't have the plans in front of me, but I am 90% certain that this is not explicit on the plans.  A seasoned boat builder wouldn't think twice, but for a first timer, it took me a while and some advice from Bob to go ahead and cut out the recess.

This is the mold in action showing how the transom knee sits into the top of the mold.

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Initially I thought I'd like to build one of these -  a Herreshoff Watch Hill 15', which I naively assumed was just a small 15 footer...since my garage was 18 by 18 I thought it would fit nicely!  This insight might afford those of you (if anyone ever reads this) that I am a complete newbie to the world of wooden boats and boat building.  I digress - but I came to sailing relatively recently - sailing family cruisers, and began to recognise the beauty of wooden boats and thought - yep I'd like one of those!

So first I reckoned I needed to clear out my garage - by building a new shed to accommodate my motor bikes and mechanical tools etc..  That simple week-end job took about 6 weeks, but finally I got my workshop cleared and a work area of sorts outside on a newly paved area in the form of a "car port" attached to my garage.  

The video is yet again another insight into my naive optimism of building my boat in this tight space.  

Roll on 3 months when my supply of timber arrived and I could hardly get into the garage - and that was before I have set up my strongback and molds!  Oh well, naivety has proved to be a positive attribute in my build so far - had I really understood the nature of the challenges, I probably wouldn't have even begun...that said it has been a really fascinating and enjoyable learning curve.

 

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Landing in Boston Logan airport on a cold wet wintry afternoon with a 9 hour drive ahead, I began wondering (yet again) what have I let myself in for?  Armed with GPS navigation  ("Never Lost" as my American friends call it) I drove straight into evening rush hour traffic in Boston city before I finally found the right highway for Maine.  

I arrived in Brooklyn which seemed at first to be just a cross roads with a store, church and inn: my destination.  

Although there appeared to be no one around, I followed my ears downstairs to the enticingly named Dublin bar and found the entire staff and local fisherman having a rights "knees up".  

The following day, I drove around the locality and immediately noticed the laid back atmosphere of the community - everyone saluting you as they leisurely drove by - it could have well been back in Ireland 20 years ago...very charming.

As I had a day in hand before the workshop commenced, I decided to find the bay after which John Brooks named this boat - Somes Sound.  I'm sure there are countless more beautiful photographs taken of Somes Sound, but this is mine:-

The workshop commenced early next morning, where I met Bob, Bruce and JohnC - all four of us were about to embark on building the SS, although JohnC had already made a head start.  JohnB gave us an overview of what he intended covering over the 2 days.  

This was my first time in a boat shop - so it was a real Alladin's Cave - so many interesting looking nameless thingymejigs!

We studied the plans and John gave us demonstrations on building the jig, cutting gains, and a variety of techniques which we would need during the build.  John was in the process of finishing a SS12.5, and so we were treated to a par excellence display of finish work and varnishing.

However, because the boat was at an advanced stage of completion, I did not really get to see how the build looked like during its early stages.  I was still reeling under the confusion of a new language - stems; deadwood; keelson; gains; dory gains.....so it was a drinking from a fire hose event for me!  

I was introduced to the wonders of a Frearson screw...couldn't wait to get my own stock!

Back to John's beautiful finish work - the color was a gorgeous off white, with a steely satin hue.   I really love this finish:-

John explained that the coaming would probably prove to be the most difficult part of the build (10 months later having stumbled on most every stage, I am not looking forward to the coaming!)

Ruth (John's partner and co-author of How to build Glued Lapstrake Wooden Boats) came to the rescue with an excellent lunch when we took time to get acquainted with each other.  Ruth & John's children joined in and we were all made feel very welcome.  

Back to work:  John brought us through the build of the seats; lockers and sole - beautiful workmanship which did little to boost my confidence, such was the excellent standard of his work!  Oh well, now I knew to what levels I had to aspire!

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I decided to start this blog to share my journey on building my first boat.  I wanted to build a wooden boat to get acquainted with how wooden boats are built, as I have a (waning!) ambition of buying a wooden cruiser to replace my lovely Jeaneau...

It is a John Brook's design, called Somes Sound 12.5 - based on a Herreshoff design, in glued lapstrake construction.  Apparently, it's a bit more advanced than usual for a raw beginner, so that's my excuse for slow progress and bountiful questions.

When I first received the plans around October 2011, I wondered what I had let myself in for.  Very little of it made any sense to me (still lots of it doesn't!) and so I took off to one of John Brook's weekend workshop in Brooklyn Maine.  Living in Ireland that was quite a trip but I can safely say without it, I wouldn't have been able to even get started.

I am currently starting to plank the boat, so the initial stage of this blog will be retrospective.   I have been taking photos and also some short video clips, which were taken more as a means of communicating with John Brooks and my fellow class mates at the workshop.

I do not have any real carpentry experience other than I am an enthusiastic DIY'er and so I had to build out my workshop - or rather build a new shed to house all my clutter and motorbikes (another passion of mine) and gather a selection of new tools: bandsaw, table saw, thicknesser among others.

Do not rely on my approach for building your Somes Sound - but hopefully you will maybe avoid some of the pitfalls I made along the way.  Whatever, enjoy the journey...I am!

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