Monday, October 17, 2011

Compass Project Week 4: Work on the Morbic 12 begins!!!

The parts for the Morbic 12 finally arrived and you could feel the excitement in the workshop when we walked in and saw the girder (or strongback) and molds for the boat set out!  Shane and Wendy led a lesson in the basic boat parts, including the girder, stem, transom and bulkhead, all of which we would be working on today.  We then grouped around the girder to discuss what the goals of this exciting day would be. 

While we look on with amazed expressions, Shane explains that in only 25,746 steps, this wooden endoskeleton will be a beautiful sailboat...

A draft of the Morbic 12 from the instruction manual...

We then learned about the many wood materials that are used in building this boat.  Discussion centered around OSB, marine grade plywood, and laminate materials.  The students divided up into four groups.  One group worked on the girder with Allen, while the other three groups would work as gluers and laminators for the transom, bulkhead and stem.

James, Conner and Allen look over the plans and begin work on the girder...

James and Allen problem solve a difficult mount on the girder...

Molly and Elena work on gluing and laminating the bulkhead pieces with Shane...

Elena uses the band saw to prepare a caul, a wooden clamp tool, to use in clamping the laminated parts of the bulkhead...

Marissa and Mrs. Duddy clean the surface of the stem to prepare for gluing...


Marissa, Hannah and Greg glue the various stem piece together and prepare to clamp them to complete the lamination process...

Wendy discusses registration marks with Andy and Ahmed...these useful marks will help keep the transom parts lined up correctly during the lamination process...

Andy prepares to glue the transom sections...like a true athlete he focuses solely on the task at hand and checks his equipment to ensure that he finishes in first place...

Working hard on applying glue to the transom parts...make sure you cover it thoroughly - Wendy will be checking for "squeeze out" to ensure that there are no "voids" between the layers...

Elena curls a clamp...it's important to keep strong - boat building is hard work!!!

4 comments:

  1. Awesome Blog! Tomorrow we will continue working on setting up the molds on the building girder. The stem and transom parts that we laminated last week will get beveled to accept the planking.

    Any luck finding info about the OSB, MDF, marine plywood, Epoxy or any other synthetic materials that we used last class?

    Also check out Clint's page about boat design and CNC cutting: http://www.clintchaseboatbuilder.com/CNC.html

    See you all tomorrow!

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  2. I checked out your boat and you guys are doing great. It looks really good. Keep it up and remember...WE LOVE SQUEEZE OUT!

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  3. hello im from argentina and im going grazy with my dad because we cant get the plans her.we are trying to found someone who could send the morbic 12 plans as a favor in the internet.anyway thanks and i loved the photos of the construction of the boat

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  4. if you read this here is my gmail for comments lopezalejoj1@gmail.com

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