This week I finished cutting out the third sheet of 3/8″. Scoring the lines with a knife before jigsawing does stop the splintering, but that quickly got old. I’ve started cutting out the parts within 3/8″ or so of the line with a jigsaw, then doing a more precision job at the bandsaw. I’ve had really minimal splintering that way and I can get it accurate enough that just a few swipes with a plane takes things down to the line. I also had time to epoxy the two stiffeners on either side of the stem.

If there are a pair of parts I only draw one and cut that out as accurately as I can. Then I use it as a pattern for the other side and jigsaw that out. A few temporary screws holds the two together so I can run it through my router with a follower bearing. This has worked really well and is an easy way to get things symmetrical.

Like a lot of boatyards, there’s an abandoned Fuji 35 in the corner slowly rotting away. I’m trying to keep costs to a minimum so the boss let me salvage anything off of it I could.

So far I’ve got some 14″, 10″, 6″, and 4″ cleats. Three fairleads, assorted blocks, a tether, and some bronze. I’m toying with the idea of casting a few things for my boat… I’ve wanted to give that a try for a while. Not sure what I’ll do with those big cleats though. Maybe mount one to the mast for the flag halyard?

I guess it’s official, I’m starting a new build! In 2019 I launched my Ross Lillistone First Mate and I’ve put a bit over 600 miles on her. It’s a great boat, especially single handing or for a pair who know how to sail but lately I think my use case has changed and I want something different. After a ton of research I settled on John Welsford’s Long Steps and in December 2022 I bought the plans. It was a little unnerving since I could only find one or two that had been launched, but I figured if this is what John was designing for himself to circumnavigate the north island of New Zealand it should be good enough for what I have in mind.

Here’s the size difference between my 15′ First Mate and the 19′ Long Steps. I really want to do more camping and Long Steps will be a lot easier to get set up. The open cockpit will be simpler to sleep in and I’m excited to try out the benefits of the mizzen. Last summer I motored out to a sandbar quite a bit with my wife and son and some more room would be nice.

Unloading 21 sheets of Hydrotek plywood. Of course it had to come right as we were getting ready to fiberglass up an old through hull on a boat, hence the gloves. My plan is to build this thing on my lunch hour.

Over the last year I’ve been slowly converting the hand drawn plans to CAD. I then ran the drawings through nesting software and let my computer crunch on it for half a day. It got me a little closer, but it was still better in the end to do it by eye. There’s just so many pieces and I found it easier to use the software on the big ones and then squeeze in everything else. If all goes well I hope to save 1.5 sheets of 3/8″ ply!

A benefit to 3d modeling everything is that I can add the stiffeners to the bulkheads and get a good idea of how things are supposed to fit together. Better to get this figured out digitally than to try figuring it out with a cup of epoxy in hand.

I started with the easiest sheet first and plotted out all the points with a T square made from the shipping crate (the rest will become the strongback). I later sharpied lines every 100mm on the blade to help me gauge where to put the mark. This is my first project in metric and there’s been a bit of a learning curve since I have no feel for how long anything is.

Eventually I got six parts jigsawed out and planed down to the line. I knew meranti was supposed to be pretty splintery and it certainly is with the jigsaw set in orbit mode. Changing to a straight cut helped, but I eventually found cutting downhill to the grain worked the best. Sometimes I plunge cut in the middle of a part to get a more favorable angle.

A lot of the bulkheads have doublers where the stringers pass through to give you some more meat to screw into. So I cut out a bunch of circles with a 4″ hole saw and split them down the middle with the bandsaw. It’s been good way to use up the odd shaped offcuts. Then I epoxied them on with a single screw through where the notch gets cut out.

Cutting 70 some odd notches sounds tedious to do by hand and a good way for errors to creep in so I made a jig for a router. I first draw a line perpendicular to the lower strake right at the corner, then align my jig and mark out the notch. I score the line and jigsaw out the waste so there’s less to cut with the router and then clamp down the jig.

My little trim router does pretty well with a 1/4″ bit. When I first made the jig it cut a little deep so I glued a strip of paint stirrer along the fence and redid the notch.

Farther aft the plank angles are more extreme and the jig really sticks out a lot.

Lately I’ve been putting some of the bulkheads together. I’ve got numbers 1 and 3 just about done while I’m still working on number 8. I drew a centerline on a sheet of plywood and screwed the ribs to it so I could glue on a piece of hardwood. I’m happy to see that the gunnel ended up being less than 1/16″ off of where the plans say it should be. I also tried routing a groove in the access panel for a surgical tubing seal but my jig slipped and I wasn’t happy with how it turned out. So I filled it with thickened epoxy and I’ll try again after making a better jig.

This is the “complanionway” into the little cuddy cabin. The deck beam is laminated from four pieces of 3/8″ ply and I had about 1/2″ of springback after it was glued up and out of the jig. That’s a little more than I expected, so I’m thinking I’ll laminate on another strip and saw it to shape. The missing cleats on the starboard side of the bulkhead is where the off centerboard trunk will go and you can also see the self draining floor with what will become the end of the water ballast tank.