The Tardis Project

August 30. 2014   Hours spent building to date:  76 The big bulkhead at station 13 is done.  This separates the main cabin from the head and sleeping area.  It is 3/4-inch plywood and demonstrates why I will never build a boat bigger than this — it is the absolute most I can carry without serious

Took a week off from boatbuilding to build boats — my great friend Ray Gaulke and I were the organizers of a family boatbuilding workshop from Friday afternoon to Sunday at the Connecticut River Museum.  With wonderful help from Chris Dobbs and the museum staff and some great volunteer instructors, we launched four CRM 12’s

In my past life, I would wake up in the middle of the night worrying about market research results, client presentations, whether John would get into college.  Now I worry a lot about deck camber. Decks have a curvature so they shed water (and look good) and the degree of curve is called “camber.”  The

I was zooming along cutting frames and bulkheads when I made what I thought was a little mistake on 8.33, the end of the bunk area.  I cut to a grid line instead of the sheer line — the top of the hull.  It was just 2 inches off, so I cut off the offending

Mark has given permission to post the Olga 28 arrangements and profile drawings.  So this is what Tardis will (should?) look like.  Click on the pictures and they will get bigger. When I write about “Station 5” or “Station 8.33”  it means I’m talking about something at 5 or 8.3 feet from the bow.  The boat is 28 feet long,

It feels good to be finally cutting plywood into boat parts — great big boat parts that I can just about carry. The process is similar to laying out for laminations:  draw a grid on the plywood, measure carefully to the points given on the plans by Mark, join the points and cut.  The forward

August 11, 2014 As a boy, I liked to watch those suspenseful war movies where the brave men of the bomb disposal squad had to disarm that bomb or torpedo or rocket by cutting just the right wire or getting the fuse out without it touching anything.  They always seem to have succeeded, since I

August 10, 2014 Since large, curved timbers even for a boat the size of Tardis are hard to come by these days, many pieces of wooden boats (and even whole boats) are laminated.  Lamination is simply gluing together strips of wood with epoxy after bending them around a form.  The stem, keel and fore-and-aft stringers

August 9, 2014 Last winter and spring were ridiculously busy:  getting Memsahib ready for her new owners, building a boat for the Connecticut River Museum, refinishing and refurbishing three of my own boats so I could get them out of the shop.  Oh, and going to Scandinavia for 10 days to look at Viking boats.

August 8. 2014 $5,000 worth of beautiful Bruynzeel marine plywood showed up at my shop today, so I guess I’d better get going on a project that’s been in the planning stages for a long time:  building Tardis, a 28-foot “maxi trailerable” designed by Mark Smaalders  (www.smaalders.net/yacht_design). There are permanent pages at the top of