update on the Lassie

So I've been a bad blogger. I've let many days of work pass without an update. I guess between a choice of working on building a canoe or writing about working on a canoe, the choice is obvious. I'm assuming people will be reading this and might be interested in building their own. A lot of the techniques I am using I have learned from building a few SOF boats already. If you are interested in building your own boat, a website or two and a few books are definitely worth looking into. Most skin on frame boats are made as Greenland kayaks and therefore most the directions are for building a Greenland yak. They are an excellent design and fairly easy to build. I have built two of them and like them both. The same techniques can build just about any boat, however.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Greenland-Kayak/ Its free and written by a very knowledgeable builder.
http://www.qajaqusa.org/Equipment/kayaks.html qajaqusa's website if very informative and the books listed here are the complete listing. I used Morris's and Cunningham's books. Unfortunately Morris's book is out of print. Star's book apparently uses similar techniques to what I'm using (by setting up forms to shape the ribs).
http://yostwerks.com/ Tom Yost does something very different but very functional. I have built a ribbed boat and a Yost boat, so I can recommend both techniques for building. The biggest problem with Tom's building technique is you need Tom (or someone else) to make the patterns first. For this reason, the Wee Lassie had to be ribbed.
So on to the building updates...

Day 4
Short day involving lashing the gunwales to the stems and the keel to the stems. I love using artificial sinew (waxed nylon). It combines my love of sewing with my love of wood working.
Day5
Very productive day. My goal was to set the stringers (stringers are longitudinal strips of wood to give the boat its shape, the keel is the middle one). I started on form 4 because its the widest one. I basically eyeballed where the stringers should be and marked them. I transferred the marks to the other side and drilled holes into the form. I figured I could adjust the placement of the stringers if need be, but found that it was not necessary.
Cable ties secured the stingers. I then proceeded to one end and secured the tips of the stringers to the stems with cable ties and did the same thing to the other end. That was the basic extent of placing the stringers. I really thought it would be more complicated than that, but it wasn't. I continued down the boat until all the stringer were cable tied to all the forms. Up next was shaping the stringers to fit the stems (much like the step of shaping the gunwales to the stems). After shaping the stringers, I lashed them to the stems. While it only took one paragraph to describe that, it took most of my day off to do it. It definitely looks like a boat now.
Day 6
Day 6 was supposed to simply be taking the boat off the strong back, but I could not stop at that. I had to do more. So I started off with unscrewing the stems and forms from the strong back (tip, screws with the star head kick ass). I lifted the boat up and off the strong back and then rolled it over. In the back of my head I heard a yell of "FREEDOM" as the boat rested upright for the first time. In no time flat the strong back got turned back into a pile of lumber to be used for deck beams and chicken roosts (long story).
This was supposed to be the end of the day, but I started looking at cutting the stems away from their support and couldn't resist myself. It turned into the hardest two inches of the entire boat. As described in Day 3, I left the stems attached to the plywood it was cut from. In the past, my stems ended up crooked. To prevent this, the Lassie was built using a strong back and the stems were firmly attached to the strong back. Now I just need to finish cutting the stems out. Unfortunately a pair of stringers blocked the final two inches from being cut. My solution was to remove the blade from my jig saw and attach it to a clamp turning it into a hideous but very small saw.
Needless to say, it took a while to cut the stern end free. The other couple of inches needing to be cut off could be reached with my pull saw and came off easier. I finished the stem by cutting the top flush with the gunwales. For the bow, I decided to use my 1/4 inch drill bit and just drill the be-jesus out of the two inches. While not pretty, it did work. My Dremel tool will finish the stems off and make them look pretty.
Although I say this at the end of every day, it really is looking like a boat now.
It looks like I could just jump into bending the ribs, but I do need to install deck beams first.