Finishing the Body Mold

Today, we finished putting up the body molds, which shape the skeleton of the boat. We had a support beam put on it at the wrong water line (the lines parallel to the water) so we had to make another. It was glued too high, and the beam was glued into place. We had to make the replacement beam so a strip of wood could be put through the middle, adding structural stability. Another body mold was taken down yesterday to make changes, so we had to put it up again. The remaining three body molds were put into place today.

We also began construction on the oars for the boat. It involves gluing two pieces of wood together with poly-urethane glue, which is watertight, and clamping the pieces of wood together. Traditional wood glue is only water resistant. These blocks of wood will be cut into the shape of an oar. Because we have to use most of the clamps to hold the long strips together, we can only do one oar at a time.

The wood for the keel arrived today!

Shallop Ship Building Student,
Peter Kosakowski

The Ship Skeleton

Today in our boat building group, we continued to work on our molds, the skeleton of the ship. The molds are almost completely set up, at this point. We attached these molds on to three planks of vertical wood. It could get cramped for the people that were in between two close molds, because they had to move their hands backwards to screw in the screws. It turned out that a couple of these molds had been facing the opposite direction as they were supposed to, and we had to turn them around. Hopefully, these will be done by the end of tomorrow.
Shallop ship building student,
Wesley Blum

Body Mold Steps

Today we worked on the body molds. To create these molds, you start out with two pieces of wood, that when placed together, create part of the boat's hull shape.

Next, you create another copy of these pieces. Once you have the copies of the shape cut out, you put the shape together and create a new piece that joins the two parts of the body molds together.

Next, you create two corners that will fill in the rest of the shape of the mold. To create the rest of the molds' pieces, make another copy of the center and corner parts of the mold. Now that you have all of your pieces you should screw them together. Once you have your mold put together, you shape them with either a spokeshave, block plane, or chisel.

Lastly, you sand down the edges of the body mold.

Amy Franklin
Maine's First Ship Student
**Just added to the Friday, July 16th blog is a video made by Amy. Check it out here.