Building a pair of Humble Bee’s

This particular saga started on the 5th September 2004. This was the day my neighbour Mike and his daughters were available to provide the muscle power to get the first boat I had built for myself ‘Polly’s Folly’, more usually known as the Folly, into the water at Ardmair north of Ullapool NW Scotland for the very first time.
Another local popped down to watch the event and take some photographs. After we had successfully proved she floated and had a gentle waft around the Loch ‘Mrs X’ was impressed enough to ask me if I could build a small tender for her Husband’s Yacht moored in the loch. Seeing this as a way to carry on boatbuilding without the problems of financing and storage that this particular addiction brings I agreed. I passed over a couple of designers’ catalogues expecting a nice quick and dirty stitch and tape using basic DIY materials. I was somewhat shocked when the choice was Iain Oughtred’s Humble Bee design. Since I had intended that my next build would be Iain’s MacGregor sailing Canoe I saw this as an opportunity to learn a bit about clinker ply techniques before the big one. I explained that I would build it at cost but because it was such a pretty boat it deserved to be done with good quality materials and to the best standard I could achieve which I thought was agreed to. I priced the wood and fittings from classic marine, the only demur was the rollocks which the ‘customer’ thought would be better in galvanised iron.
Wood was ordered from Robbins and due to supply difficulties took quite a while arriving, initially I wanted Kayah but in the end had to use Sapele.

Whilst awaiting the hull materials I took tracings of the station moulds from Iain’s full size drawings. I then transferred them to white painted chipboard and started cutting the moulds and putting together the building jig

 

To save the complexity of building legs into the jig I used a couple of cheap saw benches clamped onto the cross bearers.

 

The station moulds were then firmly attached to the longitudinals. I had already decided to use T J Hills method of building in clinker ply, as a complete novice I wanted a bit more certainty on the individual plank shapes, his modification to the block plane to cut the winding bevels on the plank lands also appealed to me.

 

 

 

I had to arrange stringers along the position of the plank lands. I also incorporated false transoms at each end to take these stringers.

 

 

All this took place sporadically between mid October and mid November 04, activity ceased for a while at this stage whilst I chased up the timber.

 

One unexpected consequence of this was that becoming more enamoured of the curvaceous skeleton in my workshop I decided that I would like a Humble Bee for myself as well – I had fallen into the trap of false appearances. In the confines of the workshop any boat always looks far bigger than it is when on the water – why does water shrink boats? And the Humble Bee looked to be quite a big small boat if you see what I mean. So the timber order was doubled, Kayah changed to Sapele and it duly arrived in late November. When the big day arrived and all the timber arrived, the ply beautifully packed as it always is from Robbins, I was finally able to start in earnest. The first problem was the Sapele, I had thought I could do my milling with three tools, Circular Saw, Jigsaw and a tryplane for the final squaring off. Having cut the rough sawn timber to the approximate size I needed for the planks to form the transom I tried planing it true. This produced a major shock, the Sapele grain was so twisted and convoluted that the plane kept tearing the surface. Time for a rethink, as I saw it I had two options either sand or get a power plane of some kind. Clearly the orbital sander I had was not going to even look at the job – I needed something with a lot more grunt. A quick journey over to civilisation produced an economy model belt sander and a selection of belts. I also picked up an economy router as I could see some jobs coming up that I would not be able to do without it.
A fairly steep learning curve in belt sanding soon had some planks that were approximately flat and the right size. The edges were finished square and more or less straight with the router against a straight plank clamped to the transom plank. A 6mm slot was then routed along the edge of each plank to take a ply tongue when they were glued together to help position and strengthen the joint, the end appearance is of a clean butt joint but much stronger. A combination of sash cramps held the assembly together whilst the glue set overnight.
After the glue had set it was back to the belt sander to level up the planks and get rid of the surplus epoxy on the joint line. Once I was satisfied I transferred the outline of the transom onto the timber and cut it out with the jigsaw remembering, just in time, to leave enough ‘meat’ where the planks lie to form the bevels.

 

The two transoms were then clamped on the building jig against the false transoms and protected against stray epoxy drips with polythene taped in place. The bevels were formed using a combination of Japanese saws and a Japanese saw rasp and the first plank shaped up and glued in place.
Each stringer was covered in brown parcel tape just before gluing up the plank to avoid the planks sticking to the jig. I found the planks could be held in place using cheap plastic spring clamps if a short piece if wood was placed across the stringers under the planks for one leg of the clamp to bear against. After seeing that it was possible to glue up without the aid of pins or screws holding the components together I decided that one of my aims would be to build a hull entirely held together with epoxy, any metal fixings would only be used to attach fittings to the boat.

 

 

 

After the first plank had cured I marked out the limit of the lands running along the plank edge with a simple wood gauge made to the required size.

 

I then used the modified block plane to create the winding bevel, I found that, provided the plane was kept sharp, I could create a perfect bevel in a couple of minutes without really thinking about it. The secret is using the next stringer down to rest the wooden extension on whilst taking the cut. The correct angle is thus maintained all along the land. The cut is taken to just shy of the pencil line marking the land limit.
Using the stringers the next planks are marked out (add the thickness of the land to the upper edge of the plank) and cut out, smooth up the edges and glue in place. To start with I tried fixing the glue line along the lands with staples (fired over string for easy removal) but later found that the plastic spring clamps were adequate with the advantage of not marking the planks.
Planking continued apace, I found that I could cut, trim and hang a pair of planks, one each side, during a day which left the epoxy to cure overnight. This shot shows two strakes to go, it also shows the tongue joint between the transom planks – completely hidden once the planking is finished

 

The sheerstrake required a larger amount of twist on it at the bow so an arrangement of string and spanish windlass was devised to pull the planking home against the transom. A similar arrangement was created for the stern.
This completed the hull planking. I was pleasantly surprised by how fast the hull had appeared. Mistakenly had the feeling that we were almost there, forgetting that by far the greatest part of building a boat is the fiddly fitting out of the interior.
The next stage was to define the sheerline, the sheerstrake had been deliberately left over depth to allow for a bit of adjustment. The strip of sapele for the outwale was clamped in position and eyed up. A number of photos were taken and flipped on the computer to see it the ‘right way up’, adjustment continued until I was satisfied. The line was then scribed on the plank and the depth at each station measured and transferred to the other side after which a flexible batten used to join the dots and define the opposite sheer. I reasoned that the hull should stand a fair chance of being symmetrical that way.
A combination of all my clamps, wedges and bits of string were used in gluing the outwale in place, I found that a great deal of pressure was needed to hold the bow end in place. A month or so later I found that the aspiration of a screw free hull had to be abandoned in this area. The tension created was more than the ply could resist and a short length of the surface lamination slowly parted company so in the end I had to re-epoxy and use a bronze screw to hold the outwale in place against the bow transom.
The two strips cut for the keel lamination were next. A beam was fixed to my shed roof trusses in line with the centre line of the hull to provide a solid line of resistance to wedge the keel against. Lots of epoxy, clamps to hold the two strips in line and a combination of struts and wedges held the whole slippery concoction in place until the glue cured. I worked mainly from one side of the boat so only masked the hull against drips on that side, probably optimistic but I just about got away with it. That just left the skeg to cut and fit before I could lift the hull off the building mould.

 

This is the hull after cleaning up the keel and the glue lines on the planks. Thankfully this was not too demanding due to the quantities of masking tape used. I found that gentle use of a hot air gun helped enormously in getting epoxied tape to release. The same gun was used to persuade any surplus glue to come free with a scraper, it just needs to be gently warmed to turn it to a slightly rubbery texture which comes off clean as you like. Overheating will see the joints part company, useful when you get it wrong.

 

A router was used to clean out the slot to take the skeg, because I was trying to avoid screws I needed something stronger than a simple butt joint. Note the overlength keel, this helps to get a clean slot at the transom.
The G clamp visible beyond the router is used as a stop to control the length of the slot.

 

The skeg was the first item produced using my new thicknesser. I found using the belt sander so unpleasant that when a flyer dropped in my letterbox from Axminster offering a thicknesser at a very affordable price I didn’t hesitate. This has proved to be the best tool investment that I have made – possibly.

 

Getting the Skeg glued in place squarely was reasonably easy with masking tape and a bucket of weights popped on the front end. The end result has had some really rough treatment since and is as solid as a rock. The epoxy was well thickened with microfibres, which filled any small gaps well.

Having fixed and cleaned up the skeg meant that I could now prise the hull off the building mould after first drawing the station mould positions across the planks with a light pencil to provide reference points for the interior fitting out. Here is the hull after that interesting moment – had I used enough parcel tape to allow release or would she stick to the mould? As can be seen all went well. I had started planking on the 26th November and lifted the hull on the 11th December. Time to put her to bed for the coldest part of the winter and head south following the geese that had been formation cruising overhead whilst I was planking. I returned from the south mid January resumed activity. Whilst I had the building jig still in place I proceeded to skin up the second hull which at the cost of a fairly high electricity bill to heat the workshop, not for my benefit but to cure the epoxy, moved even quicker the second time. By the middle of March I had two skinned hulls waiting fitting out.

The first thing to do was create the dagger board slot. I have read all manner of ways of doing this all of which seem to have great potential to get it wrong, especially for somebody with my lack of joinery skills. I reasoned that if I had got the keel in the right place then it should be possible to rout the slot through the keel and garboard plank without getting too worked up over measurements. A small (3mm) hole was drilled through the keel on the centreline to define the fore and aft limits of the slot measured from the station positions previously marked across the planks. G clamps were then fixed across the keel to provide stops for the router such that the cut finished at the small drill hole. The router was then worked along with the fence bearing against the keel alternating each side adjusting the position of the fence until the width of the cut matched that specified on the drawing. That left a nice round ended slot in the right place and absolutely central on the keel, the round end didn’t matter as the dagger board edges are rounded to create the foil profile. It would be sensible to have made the daggerboard prior to reaching this stage – I didn’t and it made for all kinds of problems later. If you have made and finished the board first it is easy to make the case to fit, not so easy the other way round.
I found I needed to glue an additional thin strip of sapele to each side of the keel where the slot was for strengthening. Once they had cured the last item on the outside of the hull was the bilge runners. A mixture of temporary screws and reversed clamps eventually tamed the wood strips and persuaded them into place.

 

The hull was then turned right way up and the interior fitting out started. The glue lines along the planks were cleaned up with the hot air gun, chisels and scrapers finished with a gentle hand sanding. The sheerstrake was planed back to the gunwales and gently sanded smooth. Floors were shaped up and glued, held in place by struts from spare stripwood wedged against timber beams clamped across the gunwales.
The components of the dagger board box were cut out and assembled before the completed box was glued in place over the slot, the side logs were glued in place after so that lots of thickened epoxy could be used to fill any gaps between the sides of the box and the garboard. Short lengths of stripwood the same width as the dagger board slot wrapped in parcel tape held the sides apart and exactly over the slot whilst all this was being done, when everything had cured they were removed and the inside joins cleaned up with files and rasps.
The six knees were laminated up from 4mm strips of sapele, in the end I made ten because the sapele kept breaking due to the wild grain structure. They were only successful when I could isolate and use the straighter grain run pieces. The correct bevels were cut to match the transom angle and they were glued in place held by a variety of clamps. Gunwale spacer blocks were glued to the inside of the sheerstrake and as much cleaning up as possible done before attaching the inwale strip. The thwart supports were shaped up to fit the hull and glued in place. At this stage , the back end of April, I suffered an emergency hospitalisation resulting in major abdominal surgery which pretty well knocked out the summer as far as boat building was concerned, heavy lifting and strenuous work was way off limits.
My ‘customer’ had been pushing me to finish the boat for use before the autumn vanished despite my convalescence being far from completed. Nonetheless I pulled out all the stops to complete the first hull in rowing mode as soon as some level of strength returned towards the end of July.
The centre thwart was glued in place before the inwale strip so that the thwart knees could be glued in place as the inwale strips were fixed. This took all of my clamps of any type and reasonably quick work was needed. It was important to ensure that the gunwales were held apart by a spacer beam of the correct length whilst the thwart knees cured as any slippage at this stage could distort the final line of the hull. I know cause I forgot, in my hurry, on the second hull; as a result she is an inch narrower in beam and has a slight tumblehome as a result.

 

Fore and aft thwarts were then glued in place, again lengths of stripwood wedged under timber beams clamped to the gunwales held them in place while the glue cured. A mast step was fashioned from a spare block of sapele and glued in place. Rollock blocks were quickly fashioned and glued in place.

 

It had been intended to finish the hull with International Deks 1+2, an oil finish which with enough coats dried to a reasonable sheen. This was to provide an easily maintainable finish when the inevitable scratches and wear from use on stony beaches occurred. Unfortunately the stock I had was exhausted after two priming coats in and out, when I tried to buy more I was told it was no longer made. Contact with the technical department of International produced a helpful response and the boat was finished with Schooner varnish. Experience has shown that provided enough coats are applied initially a quick rub down and another couple of coats at the end of the season is all that is required to keep her looking good, any scratches or wear vanish as if they had never existed.

 

Here is the first hull finished and ready for delivery in rowing mode.
After the usual Christmas in the South, there is not much to be said for cold wet weather when daylight is limited to about four hours, I had a late return in March to find that diplomatic relations had been broken off by my ‘customer’. This was unfortunate as I had been so chuffed with the finished hull that I had volunteered and been accepted as an entrant in ‘Watercraft’s’ amateur boatbuilding competition at Beale Park in June 2006. Now all I had was a hull skin and 8 weeks to finish in. Panic is a wonderful motivater – long days of steady work ensued, anyway by mid May I had the second hull pretty well finished, spars had been made and the remaining challenge was how to support them.

 

Iain’s design for the mast partners bolts them to extra timbers glued to the gunwales; I did not like the appearance of this when in rowing mode. I thought the applied forces when under sail would be lateral, not vertical so I tried an idea I had to make a removable partner locked firmly in a lateral plane but only held vertically by a length of ash rotating against wedges to apply securing pressure against the underside of the gunwales. This has been sufficiently strong to withstand a capsize in about a force 5 with no problem.
This is the underside view showing the locating blocks, rotating ash arm and the wedge inboard of the fulcrum.
Here we see it in the normal position. It has proved quick and easy to install and remove.

 

The last bit of woodwork was fabrication of the laminated tiller and the rudder.
Since the boat was to be bright finished, after all the grain of the sapele was just too attractive to cover up, I wanted the name to be scribed in gold. A bit of research in a back issue of Watercraft (no 31, Jan/Feb 02) turned up a superb article by Mike Hanyi, following the directions soon had my amateurish attempt in place, Unfortunately lack of time meant that a second, an hopefully improved, attempt was out of the question so a few coats of varnish were quickly slapped on. I was reasonably pleased with the final effect. B (Bombus) Monticola is the zoological name for the Bilberry Bumblebee which we occasionally see in my garden .
There remained stepping the mast and rigging her before we hit the road to Beale.
The night before we headed South we loaded the boat on top of the car, reasonably easy with two but probably too much of a handful single handed. It is not so much a question of weight as beam, at 4’1″ she is too great a stretch for easy lifting. I then slept dreaming of her leaving the roofrack at speed. In the event it was a rather slow and tedious journey with no unexpected excitement. The lump on top of the car meant that as soon as we hit about 65 mph we hit a brick wall, the wind resistance was an unexpected brake on our progress. It also adversely affected fuel consumption by about 20%. The only event of significance was the very great pleasure in being passed on the M6 by the previous years Beale 2nd prize-winner ‘Njuzu’. It certainly demonstrated the benefits of a sleeker hull form on top of the car. I had my foot pretty much on the floor and she just sailed past.

 

We duly arrived at Beale the afternoon before the show opened and set up. Here is B. Monticola at the show on her cradle.

The three days at the show were some of the best boating related that I have experienced. It was great to be able to really spend time looking and learning instead of trying to rush round seeing everything in the one day. The interchange of ideas with other builders and the wealth of knowledge gained made the whole trip well worthwhile. Lots of very nice people giving freely of their experience – you just can’t buy that kind of education.
On the Sunday afternoon when things were winding down a bit and relaxing I decided to give Monticola her first wetting – we still didn’t know if she would float. I think I have had that same nervousness with the first wetting of every boat I have built. It was at this stage I found out how big I was and how small she was. There was just too much of me and to little agility to be comfortable in her.

All said she rows much better than I had expected, it is possible to make very reasonable progress in her and she does feel very stable. After I had played my grandson, Liam, had a go – his first excursion on the water. The only question as I shoved him away from the bank was ‘how do I turn?’. All too soon his time was up and reluctantly he returned to shore. Another convert and definitely not a duffer.

 

 

 

 

After returning to the North after Beale I took her out a few times at Ardmair, one occasion turned out more entertaining (for those on the beach) than expected. Gentle wind f2 – 3 turned rapidly into a f5ish. Given that I was learning to sail with Monticola this was a bit overwhelming. Finding myself heading towards the broader reaches of Loch Broom I tried to turn and forgetting the basics managed a violent gybe. There is nothing like green water coming over the stern quarter for rapidly improving ones agility. Having balanced the boat, now half full of water, we headed for the beach at what felt like great speed, concentrating on reaching safety I forgot the dagger board with the inevitable consequence. It became a pivot point in about 3’ of water, swung her broadside to the wind and over we went. Thus do we learn.

To complete the tale of the first hull last seen delivered to my ‘customer’. Several attempts to have her returned for completion, fitting the spars and sailing bits, met with negligible response.
She had by then sat unused for two years, left to fill with water and composting leaves. Eventually this summer she was returned with the impression that she was not the boat that they thought they had commissioned! I think that they wanted her on a spur of the moment impulse and when it came to using her they were frit. It left a sour taste in the mouth and a rather large hole in the bank balance; it was a valuable lesson on human nature. Considering the condition she came back in I’m glad they didn’t complete on the deal, she would probably have been used as a flower tub! I am now finishing her off, complete with Gilded name – she is ‘Bumble of Lochdubh’, Loch Dubh is the largest stretch of freshwater near her birthplace and was probably the source of the electricity used in her build. Spring 2008 should see her launched at last, following that I shall see if any local families want to take the two boats over, the pram is an ideal first sailboat for children. I have pretty well given up hope of recouping the build cost, after all who would spend over £800 on a tender when you can get a perfectly adequate plastic one for a fraction of that? The build took 300 hrs for each boat and the materials cost including the sails was a little over £800 each.

If you reached this far thank you for your patience. I hope there are one or two helpful bits among the dross.

 

Responses

  1. WD
    The beauty is all down to the designer’s genius – Iain Oughtred has yet to draft an ugly boat. The only problem he ever gives me is deciding which to build next! So many boats – so little time.
    Chris

    By: strathkanchris on November 9, 2009
    at 10:40

    Reply

  2. Sweet beautiful little prams! The patience it took to read this account is far less than what it took to build them.

    By: Wavey Davey on November 6, 2009
    at 15:41

    Reply


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