The Tardis Project

October 1, 2014   Hours spent building to date: 155 After a long weekend in Newfield, Maine digging up material from 1748 for my cousin Gail, the official family historian, and a reconnaissance of the wonderful Maine Maritime Museum for the Connecticut River Museum, back hard at it today putting all the frames and bulkheads on uprights that will attach to

September 24, 2014  Hours spent building to date: 143 There’s an old boat builders tradition that a bottle of whiskey is passed around when the last plank of a conventionally built boat (the “whiskey plank”) is driven home. Being an old boatbuilder myself, I think something similar is needed for sawn frame/egg crate builders when the

September 20, 2014   Hours sent building to date:  131 Finished the final frames — 25 and 27.  Transom is next, then onto a totally new phase, setting up the strongback. Sawing up frames gets pretty repetitive after a while, so I’m glad to be moving on.  That’s one of the few frustrating parts of amateur

September 16, 2014    Hours spent building to date:  117 I had a group of people at the shop over the weekend, and they asked the same question everyone else always asks:  “How long do you think it will take to build the Tardis?” I really don’t know.  I think at the pace I’m going, I

September 9, 2014   Hours spent building to date:  103 Back to the boring stuff — done with frames 17 and 19.  They are toward the aft end of the pilothouse above the fuel tanks. I have been very wasteful of my plywood, cutting everything I can from full sheets for strength, but producing a lot of big offcuts. 

Sept. 8, 2014   Hours spent building to date:  103 My favorite by far of all the boatbuilding blogs is “Sundowner Sails Again.”  Tate and Dani are talented, self-taught boat restorers and wonderful young people who let you into their lives a bit so you can understand the relationship between their “real” selves, the Sundowner refit and their

September 5, 2014   Hours spent building to date:  98 I have worked my way back to frame 15, which sits under the driver’s seat and fridge.  The holes are for lightening and running plumbing and electrical.  Just noticed in posting the picture that it still needs slots for heavy fore-and-aft girders that run from the cabin

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