Last Minute Details

Today is the third to the last day. Jared, Colby, Dusan, and Ormen worked on the oars. Wesley, John, Cody and Justin worked on tying the mast to Will’s car, which will be taken to the Freight Shed. Kate and Seamus worked on gluing the attachments to the lee boards. Dylan worked on the rudder and Will helped. Patti Irish and Mary Chapin work on figuring out the permission slips for us to go the the Freight Shed on Friday and Tuesday and details for the summer project. Shelby and I worked on taking pictures and video. I think that’s everyone. We worked on cleaning up and moving out also. On Friday, we will be moving the shallop and rigging to the Freight Shed.
Rigging and Video Student,
Kelsey Brick

Rudder, Lee Boards and Rigging the Mast

Today we took the rudder and chiseled out slots for pieces so that it could be connected to the shallop. Then we put holes in the lee boards so that we pull them in and out of the water. We filled the holes with epoxy so the bolts would not loosen. Others worked on the oars. Jon wrapped a foot section of the mast with rope. A lot of rigging on the mast has been done.
Student Shipbuilder,
Dylan Crowell

Pegs

Today we drilled some holes in the boat for the pegs. The pegs are the handles that we hold on to in case we roll over. I put little wood pieces on the spar, which hold the rope on the spar. Next class, we are going to rig the boat up and put the mast in the mast step.
Rigging Student,
Jon Brooks

Mast Stand

Today Colby, Dusan, Jared, and I worked on sanding the oars to make them round and smooth so they can glide through the water. Jon, Cody, and Justin are working on the mast and they keep going down to the shallop "Jane Stevens" to see if the mast’s stand fits in the boat. Brandon, Kate, Seamus, and Dylan are working on the rudder and the sprit. Today is a work day because the school year is almost over and we are trying to make everything perfect and make sure the mast stand fits in the shallop.
Rigging Student,
Shelby Martel

Movie, Mast Shoulder, Oars, and Lee Boards

Today we continued our work on planing the oars. Justin, Cody, and Jon were working on building a stand for the masts and rounding out the top. Wesley is still working on the sprite because he's is cutting it to fit a stand. Kate, Dylan, and Seamus are working on lee boards. Dusan, Colby, Jared, Ormond, and I were working on planing the oars down to the right size and circular index. Patti, Mrs. Chapin, and Kelsey were working on finishing the movie. Kelsey's movie on Worming, Serving and Parceling is below. Mrs. Weston and Will were supervising and helping people out.
Student Shipbuilder,
Shelby Martel

Lead for Ballast

Some people are sanding and planing the oars. John and Cody were working on the mast. Others were filling the holes and taking the tape off the lead. They also were grinding down the lead that was for the lee board. The lead is for ballast.

Shipbuilder Cody

Mast Head and Lee Boards

Today, we finished one of the lee boards. Some people were working on oars and some of us were cutting a shoulder into the mast head. I think this project finally looks like it is getting somewhere!!! People are starting to work much better together.
Shipbuilding Student,
Brandon Votra

Mast, Oars and Seizing Blocks

Today in boatbuilding we started to plane the last of the corners on the mast to make it round. We stopped using the auto plane and went back to a hand planer to finish up and get it ready to sand. While my partner and I were working on the mast, others were using saws and chisels to create handles on the oars and started to plane them to make them eight sided, then sixteen sided, and so on. Others are working on the sprit, trying to make it eight sided and getting it ready to sand. A few of the students are finishing up the rigging. They are seizing blocks which means they are putting ropes through blocks to make sure they don’t slip.
Shipbuilding Student,
Justin MacNeil

Busy Monday

Today is the first Monday of May. It’s a busy day in the shop. Everyone is working and talking. It’s loud, but it’s the sound of hard work taking place. Cody and Justin are working on power planing the mast. Colby and Jeremy are working on eight siding the sprit. Dylan is working on making the mast step, that’s what helps the mast attach to the Shallop. Kate, Jared and Dusan is working on rigging. Wesley and Orman are working on oars. Seamus and Brandon are working on the lee boards that are to help the Shallop balance. Will West is working on answering any and all the questions we have no matter how many times the same person asks them.
Patti Irish and Mrs. Chapin are trying to work out possible problems with voting for the Maine's First Ship Pepsi Refresh Grant. Shelby and I have been working on taking pictures. Mrs. Gassiline is a substitute for the day, I don’t really know how much she knows about what’s going on, but she’s doing a great job. Mr. Varney is working on helping our school vote for the Pepsi Refresh Grant money to go toward the building of the Virginia. It’s been a pretty productive day all together.
Shipbuilding Student,
Kelsey Brick

PS. We need your help in voting daily for the $50,000 Grant. See above for links.

Lots of Planing

Today in the Shallop Project, the wood workers were planing the mast. They had to take the edges off to make it round so its easier for the sails to rise up and down. In order to make it wider, they had to mark lines on it so they knew when to stop planing. Another thing that was being planed was an oar, to make it was nice and smooth. They had to mark it to get it right. Lastly, the wood workers are marking the sprit to make it 8-sided and then rounded. In the rope work group, they are finishing the worming, serving, and parceling. They are trying to finish and start all of the grommets left for them to do for the boat.
Shallop Student,
Shelby Martel

More Grommets

Today we made more grommets. Some people started splicing. We had to burn the ends of the rope so it wouldn't come apart. The grommets are different sizes to go on different parts of the rigging.

Student shipbuilder, Brandon

Bridle and Sprit

Today we finished the bridle which is part of the tackle used for raising and adjusting the sprit on the main sail. Now that we are done wrapping (worming, serving and parceling) the line, we can use pine tar so we can seal it.

Justin and John planed the mast to change the width on one side from four and a half to three and a half inches. Colby Dauphin planed the sprit.

We are now getting ready for a week’s vacation.
Cody Dickson
Shipwright Student

Seizing Blocks

This week we continued our grommeting. Others have began seizing blocks.
Kate Dube

Gluing Mast

Today we finished gluing up the mast. We glued it together because it is in 3 pieces. We started finishing the oars, which means we planed them.

Student Shipbuilder,
Jon Brooks

Beginning the Mast

How to make a mast? First, we started with two 2 X 4‘s. Then, we sanded them. After that we put glue on the two pieces of wood, put them on top of each other and finally clamped them together. We had to use 16 clamps so the boards won’t come apart while they are drying.

Student Shipbuilder,

Cody Dickson

Blocks and Boat Hooks

Today, I finished doing the parceling on the main halyards and started to seize a block into a grommet.
Student Shipbuilder,
Brandon

We have been planning oars and other things. We just completed a boat hook and sanded it down.
Student Shipbuilder,
Colby

Snowy First Day of Spring

Orman returned the shallop Jane Stevens from the Maine Boat Builders Show in Portland, to the garage at the school this morning. The Rigging class all helped lift it off the trailer and place it back on the blocks for storage. It had a fair amount of snow in it from the storm last night and yesterday. It is beautiful snow and will melt quickly.

Today we finished two of the shrouds, which are the pieces of rope that hold up the mast. There are three of them. The next class the rigging group is switching to wood working and the woodworking crew is going to be doing rigging. All of the grommets are done. Now they just need to be wormed and served.
Shipbuilder student,
Jon Brooks

Making a Square Oar Round and Grommet Movie

Animated Movie
Today, I worked more on the step-by-step video on how to make a grommet. I’ve been taking lots of picture as I make the grommet. The line was three different colors so it will be easier to see what exactly I am doing. The way we are making the videos is not with actual film, it’s just pictures. To learn how to make a grommet is very easy. The only hard thing about what I’m doing is taking good pictures. Patti Irish is very helpful to the process of making the videos. The other people that are working on rope stuff, are still worming, serving, and parceling. It’s takes a long time to do that. It’s nice though because as they do it, they talk a lot!
Student Shipwright,
Kelsey Brick

Rounding an Oar
Right now we are trying to turn a square oar into a round oar. There are many things that our group has to do to get the oar round:
1. At first, we have to 8- side the oar. We use a compass and draw circles. Then we use a 45 degree angle and where the line touches the oar that's were we put our mark. We do that on all the sides. Then we use a straight edge and connect them together. After that we plane down to the lines. We then have 8 sides.
2. After that we use the same method to 16-side it. We draw all the circles and connect the lines again. Then we plane it all down.
3. After all that is done we sand it all round and smooth. That is how you round out a oar.
Student Shipwright,
Dylan Crowell

Shrouds and Eight-Sided Oars

Check out our new Maine's First Ship brochure that will be with the shallop, videos, MFS t-shirts, hats and board members that are at the 2011 Maine Boatbuilders Show.

Today we continued worming the shrouds that will be used on the shallop. We are also parceling, and serving the shrouds to make them tougher and water proof, so they don’t rot.
The shrouds come down port and starboard to support the mast. Making these shrouds has been really repetitive. however they are very important to the shallop to keep the mast steady. There needs to be two shrouds to keep the mast steady one on port and one on starboard, which are called stays.
Student Shipwright,
Jared Gilliam

Today in boat building we finished cutting out our oars and started making them eight-sided by marking lines on every side of the oar. I feel that this project is helping us learn to work together more and learn at the same time. I have had some experience with woodworking from the Maine Maritime Museum and I hope that it will help me work better. Hopefully, next week we can try to start the planning and get as much done as possible.
Student Shipwright,
Justin MacNeil

Oar Shaping and the Line Stays

We are finally back in force after a mixed up week of weather and other school activities. The oars are starting to look like oars. Students shaped the oars with the bandsaw as much as possible, while others started to shape the handles with hand planes.

The line or rope stays, which are going to hold up the mast, are being wormed, serviced and parceled and are moving along quickly.

Rainy Day

We had a very rainy day and were minus the shipwright due to large puddles that shut down cars. Therefore, we looked at the websites, watched videos on the class and Popham colony. Orman shared some information on George Popham and the colony.
Here is great overview of the rope grommets that Shelby made and by the way she is really, really cool.

Setting Up Lines

We started the class as a group and everyone was here today. Our group is still working on oars. Two of the kids are setting up the lines for the oars . Setting up the lines means to make the lines so the people can cut the excess wood off. This has taken all of our time today.

Student Shipwright,
Cody Dickson

Today rigging continued on worming, serving, and parceling. I was searching on the internet for pictures of grommets and worming and found some of our own pictures!
Student Shipwright,
Shelby Martel

Fun Preview

A couple of rigging students are making a video about "How to Make a Grommet" so I made movie trailer for this upcoming movie, just for fun.
Patti Irish

More Worming, Parceling, Serving and Oars

Grommet Group:
We met as a big group today and we all listened to Patti. She told us about how its important to check and respond to the emails she sends us usually 1 day after the class and about doing our homework. Will reminded us of the safety we need to take in class, and getting our own tools out before class and putting them away after class. My group continued our rope work on worming, serving and parceling. We do this to make the rope waterproof that way we don't have to replace a rotted rope in a few years. For worming, we fill in all the open areas between the layers of the rope. After that we put double sided sticky black tape over the worming and rope. Then we take another strong middle sized rope and use that to wrap really tightly over the tape to make it even stronger then it is. I first thought that I was going to be miserable in this class and bored but once I got into it I was really excited I chose to do rope work over wood working because I wasn't confident with my measuring and cutting out. Rope work seemed like it would be easy but it's really not. It's fun and sometimes confusing learning how to make all the different knots and learning the names. I really like the class and would recommend it for people if they like to learn olden day boat building. If you are interested in boats you should take this class it's really fun you can work on building the oars or on making the grommets.
Student Shipwright
Shelby Martel

Oar Group:
Today the wood working group was laying out another set of oars. This involves a lot of measuring, marking, checking and of course erasing. We lay out two oars on each plank and then glue two planks together. Once this is done they must be cut as close to the line as possible. It doesn’t have to be exact because we can always use a plane to shave them down right to the line.
This has been a great course so far. It has been a lot of fun and I have learned a lot about the Popham Colony. History in itself, is good to know but it becomes more interesting when it has happened in your area.
Student Shipwright
Wesley Mellor

Have a fabulous week off!!