Making progress on my Monaco.

[sscobra]

It has been a productive holiday. I managed to get the motor stringers installed and leveled and mounted all the frames except the transom. It went better than I expected, even managed to get the stem/breasthook assembly in the right location! Now I just have to epoxy it all in its final position. Next I guess I will have to face the task of cutting all the slots. Skip

[John56]

That shop is way too clean!!

[mrintense]

Hey Skip,

Looking very nice. Looks like you have the same space challenges that I have, maybe even more so. We're going to have to get together some day and swap stories.

[alycat]

Very nice! That shop is clean!

[Roberta]

Look's Great!!!

Roberta

[cusoak]

We all need more space and HEAT. To darn cold this winter here in Columbus and every where. got thins I wanted to do to get my Zip finished.
But Your shop Looks nice all dry walled. Is it heated too
You build looks great.
Jeff

[sscobra]

Thanks for the compliments. My shop is narrow but should be "just" wide enough. It is heated and cooled so I can build year round. I built the addition onto my existing shop and added the carriage doors so I can get the boat out when finished. Skip

[sscobra]

Made a little more progress. Mounted the keel and cut most of the bottom batten slots. Just need to do the hard ones where the battens bend in three dimensions! Everything lining up well. I thought I would include a couple of pictures before I sweep up to prove that my shop does get quite messy! Skip

[slug]

Looking good Skip.
Just an observation; Make sure any screws left in the keel don't interfere with your hole for the shaft log....knocks the heck out of an expensive bit!
( I have mine done now without problem so I'm feeling smug )
Doug

[Roberta]

Look's Great!!!

Roberta

[sscobra]

Thanks Doug. I haven't thought of the prop shaft hole yet! I will look into that and remove any screws in that area. I know what you mean about ruining a bit. I "discovered" a silicon bronze nail edge with my new 1/2" spiral up-cut router bit in one of the batten slots. Totally ruined the bit in a split second. Roberta, I have monitored many of your posts and you do very impressive work. I have a question for you on cutting the slots for the forward parts of the chine and battens. I can see where to place the batten slots in the athwartship direction, just following a natural curve toward the stem. I am not "seeing" how to determine how much to angle the slots downward toward the floor through the frames. Is it an iterative process, cut a little, look at it, cut some more? Is it better to completely install and fair the chine and sheer before attempting to cut the forward batten slots? Thanks. Skip

[Roberta]

I basically angle the saw towards the next frame making the cut on the high side the thickness of the batten, chine or shear material. The low side will be deeper so the longitudinal will arc toward the next frame. Basically, point the saw in the direction where the piece will land on the next frame. This may be up, down, in, out, or a combination, depending on the direction the piece is headed. I make multiple cuts and then break them out with a screwdriver. Then I use a sharp chisel to clean up the notch, scraping the bottom of the notch to remove material that did not break off til I get a smooth bottom that points in the direction necessary.

I try to fair as much of the keel, frames, shears and chines as I can before setting battens. This gives me more direction on how they should lay. Some battens end on the stem, so I don't fair that area until the batten has been landed on a proper setback so I can fair it in properly.

Roberta

[mrintense]

You are making great progress Skip.

[billy c]

looking great! could use some of those floor scraps to get my wood stove started!
...on the slots for the batten, you can attach a thinner temporary batten to the frames and cut on both sides of that batten. it will show you the angle of the cut that you need to make and save a lot of trial and error on the angles.

[sscobra]

I have been making a little more progress since the last post. I have now got the chines ready to install, thanks to a lot of help from Alan Close (from Australia). I just wasn't seeing all the angles! All the battens and chines have been lengthened using scarf joints. I can install the chines without steaming them but I have decided to steam them anyway to take some stress off of the frame. I decided to do something a little different than any posts I have seen here. I decided that I am going to fair the keel before installing the chines (at least for the first 6 frames). I built my boat stand about 10" higher than suggested to make it easier to work on the sheers. Because of this it made it a little difficult to reach to keel from bending over the chines and I felt it would be a pain to try to fair the keel from that distance anyway. The first 5 frames have straight bottoms and I didn't see why it would matter whether I faired the keel now or latter. I decided to build a router jig to do this and it worked very well. It took about a hour to make the jig and a little over an hour to fair the keel. The first photo shows the jig in place. The second photo shows the underside of the jig to show where I added braces to keep it from bowing under the weight of the router. I clamped the jig down to two of the frames and set the router bit depth to just touch the frame near the keel. The third photo shows the result after routing one side of the keel between two of the frames. The next photo shows the result after routing the other side of the keel between the same two frames. It is important not to push down on the router or it would bow a little. Just let the router do the work with a sharp spiral up cut bit. I was able to do the keel all the way to frame 7. I will have to do the rest by hand because of the curvature of the keel in the region near the stem. As long as the keel was installed in the center of the frames and the frames are positioned correctly the router jig works fine. The positioning of the jig on the frames is not critical at all. Just position it fairly parallel to the keel and then put the far edge of the slot (as you are facing the keel) past the center of the keel. Routing both sides automatically creates the correct angle and they meet exactly in the center of the keel. Skip