A place to share YOUR boat building story

• A First-Time Boatbulder Shares by Dean Toburen
  
  
• Glen-L Boatbuilder of the Month
  
  
• Designer's Notebook: Stem Caps
  
  
• Spring by ArtDeco
  
  
• Photos posted since the last WebLetter...
  
  
• Pennies
  
  
• Shop Talk: Rule Guide & Band Saw Shelf
  
  
• Recent email
  
  
• King Arthur's Dilemma
  

• Why Not Write Your Own Article for the Glen-L WebLetter?
• We would really like to include more articles, short stories, anecdotes, narratives and/or parables from you, our customers, readers and friends.
• Nothing enhances, enriches, (and often amuses) all who read the WebLetter more than hearing the actual, first-hand recounts of your trials, tribulations and triumphs! After all, Glen-L really is all about YOU, dreaming, scheming, planning, discovering, solving, building your perfect boat and then enjoying not only the use of your boat but also the admiring glances of all around when you proudly state "I built her myself!"
• You don't have to wait until your craft is 100% complete; if it is, all the better, but why not grab a pen and paper right now and just jot down a couple of thoughts about how you feel and see where it leads? You just might be surprised at what pours forth once you start!

Until next month . . .      
Editor      

A First-Time Boatbuilder Shares

by Dean Toburen

DEAN'S INITIAL REPORT ON BUILDING THE GLEN-L MONACO

I was unable to listen live to Bill Edmondson's Teleseminar but did listen to the replay. I found it very informative and since I am building the Monaco I understand his comments regarding everything not needing to be perfect and why some folks start but never finish.

Before I write about my boat building I would like to tell you a little about my self. I retired on January 1, 2008 at age 67. For some 13 years I worked as a Project Manager for a company that designed and installed conveying systems. For the last 20 years I worked as Regional Sales Manager for a German company that manufactures large process equipment. Now that I have retired I work about 25 hours a week at our local ACE Hardware and consult for a local company 1 - 2 days per week. As you can tell I am staying very busy but enjoying every minute of it.

Since I don't play golf I spend a week in Canada every year, fishing with a group that has been going for over 15 years now. I also spend a lot of time with our grandchildren doing whatever they want to do at the time. I have my private pilot's license but due to cost and time have not stayed current.

I started the boat in the winter of 2005. The decision was to either build an airplane or a boat and I decided that I would be safer in a boat, plus I could get my wife to ride in the boat. The winter of 2005 was spent cutting and fitting all the internal pieces. After everything was cut I applied a coat of Epoxy-Plus and did a light sanding. I then set up the fixture for assembling then glued and nailed each internal frame together. After assembling I gave each completed frame another coat of Epoxy-Plus. All the internals were completed in early spring of 2006 and photo at right shows the pieces setting on a ledge in my basement.

Continue

Glen-L Boatbuilder of the Month

Buddy Slack - Zip

by Margaret M. Lamb

THE MAN WHO NEVER BUILT A BOAT, NEVER EVEN NAILED TWO PIECES OF PLYWOOD TOGETHER…

B uddy Slack of Columbia, South Carolina, didn't get the retirement memo, the one acknowledging his years of service and urging the newly-minted retiree to buy a set of golf clubs, pick up the fishing rod, find a hobby and just let the good times roll.

No. When he retired with the rank of colonel after 29 years as a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, Buddy took an assignment to launch the Navy Junior ROTC program at Chapin High School, turning it into a two-time national champion.

And that's just his day job.

The man who never nailed two pieces of plywood together also has channeled his energy and considerable talent toward building a 1940's-era racing boat, as well as a replica of three train lines that snaked through the eastern Tennessee area where he grew up.

The boat building all started with an old family scrapbook Buddy and his wife, Susan, found when they were going through the belongings of his late fatter, Tom Slack, of Knoxville, Tennessee.

That's when they saw the photos: larger than life, black and white, capturing the golden era of boat racing in the Southeast in the 1930s and '40s. They showed Tom, chemist by day, racer on weekends, looking dashing behind the wheel of a Century Whirlwind, his striking wife by his side.

Continue

Designer's Notebook: Stem Caps C apping the junction of the plywood planking on the typical small craft can be accomplished in several ways. The old but tried and true method was to rabbet the planking in the solid wood stem (See Fig 1). The rabbet is at an ever changing angle and is chiseled into the stem. Accomplishing this is time consuming, and with the advent of plywood became quite difficult. Fitting a single plank in a rabbet isn't that difficult, but fitting the large area required for sheet plywood is very tedious and time consuming. The rabbeted stem, although still used, has been replaced by methods that are easier and possibly more durable. The seam on the plywood planking to solid wood stem invariably cracked open, so to prevent this from occurring stems made up of flat laminations of plywood are used. Cutting a rabbet in a plywood stem, however, is difficult, to say the least. The solution is to eliminate the rabbet and simply lap the plywood sides over the stem (Fig 2.). This created the problem "how to finish the exposed plywood planking ends?" If the boat is fiberglass covered, the stem can be rounded and usually the cloth lapped to provide two laminations over the stem seam. Flattening the stem and capping it with a trim strip of metal is another viable alternative. If the stem is a relatively straight line, as would be typical of most flat bottomed craft, a solid wood strip may be used over the flattened stem/planking junction, preferably put on after fiberglassing. When the stem has curvature, as in most vee bottomed hulls, the wooden cap may be laminated over the stem junction or made from solid stock then sawn to shape and pieced as required (Fig 3). Of course you can go fancy and install a metal cutwater over the stem. These were popular in the classic mahogany runabout and offer maximum protection when banging into a dock or other object. For more information see "Cutwater" in WebLetter #54.

Pennies

Have you been as puzzled as I have by the sizing terms of "fourpenny," "sixpenny" and "tenpenny" as applied to common nails?

Well, in our never-ending search to bring you, our readers, helpful and (hopefully) interesting information, we ran across a VERY old publication put out by the Ducommun Metals & Supply Company which provided an interesting array of useful (?) data, including "Ball Data," "Grades of Emery," "Rules for Finding Contents of Vessels," "Bars and Plates," "General Information" and "Pennies."

According to Ducommun, "fourpenny" means four pounds to the thousand nails (i.e. 1000 nails of a certain size would weigh 4 pounds), "sixpenny" means six pounds to the thousand nails, and so on. It is an old English term, and meant at first "ten pound" nails (the thousand being understood), but the old English clipped it to "tenpun" and from that it degenerated until "penny" was substituted for "pounds."

Next month, be sure to tune in to learn about "Ball Data" . . .

All great achievements require time.

Shop Talk: Rule Guide
& Band Saw Shelf

Rule Guide

Band Saw Shelf

Recent email:

Subject: Malahini
Date: 11 March 2009

I finished my Malahini in December '08 and dunked it in the water last week. Took it out for a ride today, March 11. Great fun. Rides and handles nice. Does not go as fast as I expected - I think I need to change the propeller - a 9 X 13P. The motor is a 1982 Mercury 50hp.

It was great to finally get it out and well worth the time and work(play) to build it. People followed me to the lake and one guy wants me to build him a boat.

THANKS Glen-L for a great boat!!

-- Chris Hodgdon
Edgemoor, South Carolina

Subject: 1969 Tiny Titan
Date: 5 April 2009

Dear Glen-L Folks,

Just thought I would drop you a fun note in these “fun” times. First, I hope you are doing well in the boat business. In 1969 my father and I built the Tiny Titan in our basement. I painted it orange with a black strip down the middle and we purchased a 10 H.P. Chris-Craft outboard and installed it with a steering wheel and dead-man’s throttle. Two years later I painted it red, white, and blue. Many weekends were spent on Hardy Dam Pond (the back waters of the Muskegon River near Morely, Michigan) and Bass Lake near Traverse City, Michigan. I felt pretty cool driving a boat that seemed fast at the time, but slow compared in today’s standards (60 mph on a jet ski?).

The boat was sold in approximately 1972 and in 1975 the fellow that bought the boat approached me and said he had never used it and wanted to give it back to me. I accepted and it sat in the barn for the next 34 years. A buddy saw it that owns a auto body shop, and his comment was, “Let’s paint it.”

So here it is 40 years later with a paint job that cost 10 times more than the boat. It is so nice that I haven’t decided if I should put it in the water or hang it off the wall as art.

Hundreds of good memories were made in the building and operating of this little boat. Thank you for inspiring my father and me years ago with the brochure.

PS. I still have that too!

Thank you,

-- Mr. Kim Thomet
Hastings, Michigan

Subject: Boat Show Win
Date: 11 April 2009

Subject: The Economy
Date: 10 April 2009

Subject: Glen-L WebLetter
Date: 9 April 2009

Subject: XP8
Date: 17 April 2009

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