thompsondockside.com

I don't know the proper name of this board I am going to describe, sorry. On my boat, the sides come up to the deck. There is a "T" intersection where the vertical board meets the horizontal deck board. The deck board hangs over the side/edge of the boat by about an inch or more. There is a board which is mounted under the deck board which is attached through the plank to the rib (not sure if they are actually called "ribs" ) fastened by a screw from the inside of the hull. this mystrey board is long gone. It rotted to dust. What is this board called? The angle of this board from the bow to the stern constantly changes due to the pitch of the hull. How do you cut this angle? Do you take an angle measurement every foot or so, and then cut the angle? If you are then off horizontally, do you plane this? Then lastly do you plane the outside edge with some sort of jig to keep the angle 90 degrees off of the deck? I can't seem to be able to figure this one out, and without this board my hull is unstable. I need to get this in place, to replace some inner board under the deck. Then I need to replace the missing deck inorder to flip this boat over. Any help will be much appreciated. I have a lot of pictures which will have to wait until I get to the office t upload them. Thanks.

It would help to know what kind of boat you have. Lapstrake, cedar strip, royalex, etc... Made by whom and what year?

Sound like you are describing the gunwale. Is it steam bent?

Ribs and frames are interchangable terms. Altho "ribs' are in human bodies and "frames" are in boats. That's what old salts will tell ya!


Andreas

1960 Thompson Boat Company of New York, Cortland, NY 20' I/O with lapstrake construction. I believe yes, it is steam bent.

Sounds like you're describing the rubrail. 1 1/4" x 1 1/4" or so? Yeah, that's steam bent.

Cutting the bevel is not that hard. ( If you want to show off to your friends, it's called a rolling bevel. ) Lay it out as you've desribed, if you have a bandsaw and a helper you can cut it that way. Or, you can use a power plane or even a hand plane. You'll need to start with the straightest grained lumber you can find. If there is too much grain run-out it will most likely break while you're bending it. You may even want to make a back up just in case.

The most challenging part of this piece is fitting it. Since the old rub-rail is gone you have nothing to clamp onto. I suppose you could rig something up, but it would probably be easier to take a sheet of plywood (1/4" ) and make a template. Then use the template to make a clamping jig. (Blocks screwed to the floor or plywood, in the shape of your template, around which the rub-rail will be bent and clamped. ) To be successful, this has to be accurate.

When clamping it up, be sure to keep it flat. It's gonna want to twist. After it's dried in the clamps for a day or so there may be some spring back but that shouldn't be a problem. If you did a good job on your jig, you should be close enough that the attachment screws willl pull it back into shape.

T3 How do you do a rolling bevel?

Can you steam bend and clamp it directly to the boat at it's final location? If yes, do it, let it remain clamped for a day. Then remove it, do any shaping needed. CPES the heck out of it, and install.

Andreas

Well.......I thought I just told you. No worries, it can be a little confusing so I'll try to break it down.

Mill your lumber so it's slightly oversize, this will give you some room to fine tune the fit.

Now do your layout. You'll need your bevel square for this. If you can use the old rubrail or the one on the other side for reference that'll help.
Starting at one end, use your bevel square to determine that angle about every 8-10 inches. Then transfer these measurements to your stock.This is where the old piece will be helpful. Example: Looking down at the top of the old rubrail, say at the 10" mark the bevel starts 3/4" from the outside edge. This is your top mark. To find out where the corresponding mark goes on the side , let's look at a cross section. Say we have a square, on the top of the square we have our mark at 3/4" from whatever would be the outside edge, now take your bevel and place it at the mark and draw a line through to the inside edge. Mark it. Do that all the way down your stock and when you've finished, connect the dots. You should have a long line on the top and inside edge that starts out far apart and ends up nearly touching. Cut away the wood between the lines with a bandsaw or plane, BADDA BING!! rolling bevel.

Do this Before steaming/bending. Keep it flat while clamping and it'll stay at 90 to the boat.

T3 thanks. I did not think about using bandsaw. I will add that to the list of tools I need to buy.

A bandsaw is a handy dandy tool. I have done major restorations to 4 boats and I do NOT have a bandsaw! Most woodworkers think I am nuts not to have one. It is on my list of stuff to purchase, but I just have not had the spare cash to get one.

So, you can get by without one. In the few cases where I couldn't make cuts with table saw, circular saw, hand saws, and jig saw, I took the piece to a friend's to use his bandsaw.

Andreas

Oh yeah, bandsaws are great. But it's true, you can get by without it. And honestly, I wouldn't recomend buying one just to make this cut. If you don't have a lot of experience on one, a rolling bevel is probably not a good place to start.

What I would do is hack off the bulk of the waste with a jig saw or maybe a Japanese hand saw ( my personal preference ) and then clean it up with a plane, power or hand, whichever makes you feel more comfortable. That's essentially what I do anyway. I just happen to use a bandsaw for the rough cut.

Hey man, It's not about the saw, a good layout is what you need.

I took the boat over to a local professional restorer to get some advice, and a price to fabricate and install new rub rails. How does $1,100-$1,200.00 sound!
He basically said my boat was in need of an easy $9K of work. (Like this was a big suprise.) Anyway, I think we have different scales. He is loooking at restoring the boat to new based on the work he does on Gar Woods, Chriss Crafts, Hackers etc. I am looking to resotre the boat to be seaworthy again.
I really wanted to talk to him on the order of how I had planned to proceed, and get a price for the rub rail, as this is a tad tricky for me at the moment. $1,200.00 wow. He actually said he would have $800.00 in labor into the replacement. I just don't see it. Maybe I'm oblivious, but anyway i won't be subbing the job out, not when I can get a decent band saw for around $400.00.

Now the following is just my un-educated opinion, there are a lot of savvy guys on this site... but I'd bet that the factory didn't invest the time to pre-shape a rolling bevel on the rub rail stock before installing it to the hull. Seems that if you have a piece of sufficiently oversize , straight grained steamed stock one could anchor it at the bow stem and simply bend it around the curve of the hull. Once you got past the end of the deck simply clamp to the gunnel with bar clamps all the way back to the transom. Once its's set, remove and shape the outside faces, or maybe screw it in place and shape it right on the hull.
Comments?

Joe B

I wonder if Tom can help with this? Post the question at the Lyman cite.
http://www.lymanboat.com/agora/w-agora. ... &expnd=all





I just went to the cite and did a search using the words "rub rail"

This was posted jan 24 2005
Greg-The oak rub rail is one piece that has a tapered bevel machined on it and then is steam bent to wrap around the bow. The piece is three dimensional and I don't have a drawing to post. You'll probably have to take one side off and duplicate it with a hand plane marking the angle every few inches or so, so as to acieve the right tapered bevel. That's about as good as I can do without you actually coming down here and seeing how they are manufactured from the shaper jig. Regards-Tom

I hope this helps!. I wonder about the bowfair of a 63 Thompson as compared to a Lyman ofsame Year. More bow flair, more running bevel.

Well..... you have all the information you need right here. But, as I said it can be a bit confusing,

So.. What is it specifically that is giving you a hard time? See if we can clear things up for you.