Amphora - Putting it together
We have started out by dry fitting most of the pieces together to see how they will look. All in all I am pleased with the way that things are going together. But the transom will need to be re-cut. The plans mark the dimensions from the end of the top and bottom deck, but do not account for the angle of the deck. To re-cut, I measured the angle of the top and bottom decks and used whichever angle was greater. This allowed the sides of the transome to be flush with the sides of the boat after a little fairing.
Here is Mike posing with what we have managed to get together so far. According to the plans, the bottom deck when attached is supposed to be flush with the keel. Ours hung over about an inch too far. To fix, we extended the notch in the bottom deck to allow it to lie flush with the keel. This in hindsight was not the thing to do. You will soon see why. But alas, the end of our night of work brings us with the bottom deck fastened to the keel, both the forward and aft bulkhead fastened in and the top deck fastened down. Tomorrow comes a trip to the store to get some more transom material to cut a new one with.
Here is Mike cutting out the side panels for his boat. Looks like he is intense to me. :-D
Finally, he cuts the front angle of the sides.
A little more done. Here the transom is in, the stringers at the stem and finally a little modification we done. We added stringers at the inside edges of the cockpit opening hoping this will give a little strength to the short side deck area.
Remember me saying that cutting the bottom deck to make it come flush with the end of the keel was not such a good idea? Well here is where my best laid plans came to folly. The angle that is cut on the front of the side panels does not work with the new angle I created when I cut and shifted the bottom forward. A better idea would have been to go ahead and notch the top deck a little deeper to keep the original angle at the bow, or to have figured out the new angle that I created before cutting the side decks out. The net result was that the side pieces did not want to fit correct. Either I could use the angle cut into the sides and it come up short in the back or keep the sheer in line and come up short at the bottom. Well, the decision was made to let it come up short in the back at the top of the transom. If you click on this picture for the slightly larger one, you will see the piece that was added as a filler. I will glue a but block to the back to keep it from leaking. I chose to come up short on the back because it would be above the water rather than below it had I chosen to do it up front.
Here it is from the other side. You can see a couple of things here. First, the sheer of the side should be two inches, this one has been cut down to one inch. And second if you follow with your eye the sheer of the top deck you see it is out of kilter. One of the problems of having one big person helping your small builder is that you cannot hold the boat still, mark locations of screw holes, drill and counter sink them and screw in the screws all before the glue kicks. I strongly suggest that if you can find some more help when you go to attach the sides, bring them along, preferably another big person. ;-)