Master shipwright Jim Kricker working with the Rondout Woodworking & Clearwater crews to move, mill and organize the thousands of square feet of beautiful white oak.
One of the many woodpiles after a light dusting
Captain Nick at the helm of...a forklift.
A large timber - hoisted and ready for the planer.
Master shipwright Jim Kricker making a new frame
To build a new futtock, first a template is made from thin plywood called luan. That template is used to cut the oak to roughly the right size and bevel gauges and hand planers are then used to get all the angles right and surfaces shaped and smooth. Bear in mind here that there are no right angles and no two futtocks are exactly the same. Once the frames are cut and shaped to fit, they are coated with a rot inhibiting primer and installed side by side, called “sistering”, with galvanized steel nuts and bolts and galvanized steel lags in fasten them into the keel.
Getting measurements for the template
The shaping template laid over the white oak stock.
Primed and ready
Shipwright Wayne Ford installing a new futtock
In addition to what might pass as the frame-making assembly line, the “stem knee” was replaced this February. This is the piece that ties together the stem and the keel – a linchpin of structural integrity. This was no easy task as the location of this piece is deep inside the belly of the beast and the shipwrights had to both remove the old one and install the new one while minimizing damage to the good surrounding timbers. Never mind the fact that the size of the piece makes it one of the heaviest, requiring serious mechanical advantage – in the form of a small crane built into a small truck – to move it from ship to shore and back again.
the stem knee template laid on white oak stock
The truck and crane required to move this timber
Knee on the barge, ready to be hoisted with cables, chains and pulleys
Captain and Mate wrestling the knee into the opening in the hull
...and in it goes
almost there
The stem knee bolted in place, spanning the bulkhead between the forepeak and foc'sle
And just in case you weren't sure how tight the fit is - looking at the stem knee through the hatch in the bulkhead
Look for more photo galleries as the we finish up the framing and get started on the skin, the hull planking.
