Forward Cabin Sole

The forward cabin is painted, the water tanks are installed, the firing lumber is bolted to the frames, and now its time to install the forward sole. Sole is to a boat what a sub floor is to a house ( it is to me).

Ive had to make the choice of screwing the plywood sole down directly down to the steel flange I welded to the frames or build the steel frames up with 2x lumber, then screw the plywood down to that lumber. I will loose 1.5" of headroom by using lumber, but I feel as if Ill also loose a lot of future complications by using lumber vs straight to the steel. Using a firing strip over the steel flange costs me some headroom, but it also gives me more square footage on the floor since Ive raised the floor profile and allowed the plywood to "slide" more outboard against the frames. Its amazing how much more room I have since the sole grew outboard when I mocked up the sole framing system. Screwing the plywood directly to the steel in my opinion will make lifting pieces of the floor a real pain in the ass years down the road as screws rust and break. Ill end up with about 6 2" of headroom once the finished ceiling is installed. This 6 2" seems to be my minimum as some areas will be a little more ( 6 7" in some areas). Im 5 11" tall and Im totally happy with the headroom I"ll end up with.

The forward cabin are is where my cabin will be, the kids cabin, and the common bathroom/shower shared by both cabins. Both cabins will be carpeted and the bathroom/shower room will be hardwood or tile.

Im using #1 southern yellow pine as my firing lumber, and CDX for as the plywood on the sole. The firing lumber runs perpendicular to the frames and is screwed to the frame flange using a self tapping screw of sufficient size and thickness. Even though the salesmen who sold me the self tappers said I would not have to drill a pilot hole, I found things went much faster by drilling a pilot hole. I also used polyurethane adhesive to glue the firing lumber down to the frame flange. I dont want to rely totally on the self tapping screw as I could see the lumber shrinking, the screw getting loose on the lumber, and a squeak developing. It if for all the reasons I just listed that I think the adhesive will give me some a little better job.

Ive also had to make a decision on how Im going to frame my partitions that will make up the cabin walls. My current boat just uses plywood stood on edge for the partition. This boat is much bigger and has more in her regarding systems and things like wiring and plumbing. I posed this question on metalboatbuilding.org and after receiving the usual good comment, I decided to frame the partitions out of 2 x 3 lumber. The reason Ive had to decide this now is because I want to be able to remove all of the cabin flooring without having to remove any partitions. For this reason Ill have to frame the cabin sole in a way that allows the sole to be supported from below while the partitions remain in place. I also have to frame in all my access panels in the floor for access to water tank valves and whatever else I need to maintain below the floor. In a nut shell the cabin sole is basically made up of lots of small pieces that fit together to make the sole system.

I knew where all the access panels had to be located so framing those areas of the sole required very little layout. The partition walls on the other hand would take some more thought. I decided to handle this by framing and installing the sole, then once the sole was complete I will be able to get more precise with the various cabin partitions and cabin components. Once I new where most everything will go regarding living space, I will put layout lines down on the sole and alter the sole to accept the framing above. Doing it this way allows me days to ponder locations and do mock ups to see how things fit. Now is the time I start fighting for every square inch so I want to make sure it works for me and works for the boat. Most of the decisions Im making have me giving most of my consideration to how easy things will be to service and maintain.

I screwed the sole down with a # 12 stainless steel wood screw using a tapered bit with a counter sink that had a depth stop so all the counter sinks are at the right depth.

The sole is now complete and Im loving how much better the boat feels now that I can walk around on a firm flat surface. The sole is very solid and has no give or squeak as I walk across it. My next step will be to start the framing of the interior partitions so I can have all the cleats and nailers installed prior to insulation.

Conall

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Forward Cabin Framing

Im now walking around on a nice level floor. The floor feels very firm and is squeak free while only being fastened down with maybe 50% of the screws. Im very pleased with the amount of head room I ended up having. So now it is time to lay out the various partitions and interior walls. Just in case anyone is wondering, Im talking about the lower forward area of the boat in this post. The other thing I should probably say about boat building is that there are very few things that are plumb, level, or square on a boat. Certain things might look skewed or goofy, but thats just the way things work out on certain parts of a boat.

I have a two cabin layout in the lower forward area of the boat. The master cabin witch is amid ship on the engine room bulkhead, and and a cabin in the "V" for the kids. There is a shared shower and head between the two cabins and each cabin has its own sink. The spaces worked out better putting the sinks in the cabins vs a sink in the shower area. It might not make the most sense, but it made more sense to me to have sinks in each cabin.

Coming down the four steps from above one will stop at a landing. By turning left you will pass through a door and enter the master cabin witch measures 11 x 11. There will be a full size queen bed with drawers underneath, a sink/vanity on the right side along with vanity/dresser for Shannon also on the right side. On the left side will be a desk for me and a locker to hang things in. Bookcases and shelves will make up the wall above the bed, and a flat screen TV on the wall opposite the bed. A watertight door leads to the engine room on the left side of the bed and another door leads to the common shower/head on the right side of the bed.

If you choose to go straight vs left while standing in the stair landing, youll enter a hall leading to the "V" cabin area. In this hallway will be a small sitting area and a vanity with a sink. Past the vanity you enter the kids cabin with its bunk beds and storage underneath. There is room on the bathroom wall for a small TV, and there is also an opening hatch in the kids cabin. I laid out this cabin so there will be a bunk area and the hallway area, so people could have some privacy to change or be by themselves without having to go into the bathroom. The hallway/sitting room works out nice in my opinion and it gives this area a much needed private space.

There is a port light in the landing, a port light in the hallway/sitting room and two port lights ( port and starboard ) in the kids cabin. There is a port light in the bathroom, and two port lights in the master cabin. All the ports are fixed and cannot be opened. Ill post more on ventilation later down the road, but in a nutshell I have a hatch in the "V", and two six inch vents for the master cabin leading up through the wheel house. The bathroom has force ventilation leading up to the Portuguese bridge. The lower forward area will also have its own dedicated air conditioning system.

I framed the partitions with 2x3, and will sheath them in 3/8 Cherry veneer plywood. The outboard walls will get a 1x6 ceder plank, and the ceilings will be a painted bead board. I decided to frame now vs after the insulation because I think this is way makes more sense. Once the insulator gets finished with his work it will be extremely difficult to attach anything to the steel frames. I used screws to fasten all the framing together in case I needed to take something apart while I move forward with the finishing work. My insulator stopped by the boat one day recently and commented that I was getting a little close to the steel with some of the framing. He suggested I hold some parts of the framing a little farther away to give him some more room to work. The insulator also said Id be a lot of the lumber would still be clean when he left so more blocking could be added after he finished.

My next step is to layout all of my boxes for my 12v and 120v fixtures. Once I know where all my various light fixtures and appliances go, Ill run conduit and boxes similar to conventional house wiring only Ill use stranded wiring instead of the solid wire one would see in a house. I also will run as much of my waste and water lines along with anything else I feel comfortable having buried in the foam. Ive been using urethane adhesive to glue nailer blocks to certain parts of the hull on the recommendation of the insulator. He told me to go ahead and use only adhesive, because once he sprays that particular block into the foam, Ill not be able to get it out and that block will become part of the insulation. Because of the ease of just slapping some glue on a wood block and sticking it to the hull Im putting up blocks any place I remotely think I"ll need one.

Having the framing completed really closes the boat in. But for all of those who know boats I know youll appreciate when I say that the areas Ive created are very roomy and very comfortable. The "V" cabin is a little snug, but it still works good and Im able to move around with ease. Id love to have another 10 to work with, but I must say Im very happy with what I have and the spaces Ive created.

Conall

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The Cabin Has a Floor

Lets put in a floor!  This is the floor that will be inside the cabin.

Remember the beautiful old redwood I got from the chicken shed that Jen, Kai, Alex and I salvaged last year? I wanted to use these thick 1x12s for flooring in the boat. The also have the advantage of putting some weight down into the hull of the boat.

I had a worry that using straight boards for floorboards, there would be little cracks between them that would constantly filter dust into the bilge and possible squeak when you walked on them. So I had the idea to route the edges to make them lap each other.

Ten boards, eight foot long, two edges each. Thats a lot of routing.

Actually, none of the boards were eight foot long, so they had to go in piece by piece.

I used construction adhesive and exterior nails to secure the flooring down. The adhesive will keep the flooring from squeaking and slowly coming up. Modern construction adhesive is so strong, that when you take up plywood that has been adhered down, it comes up in pieces.

It ended up having a neat look.

I wanted to put hatches wherever I could under spaces that were not occupied by fixed objects such as the head, the galley, and the woodstove. After the first three boards aft, I had to start getting strategic with my flooring installation.

It slowly came together. I tried to make the hatch covers match the surrounding boards best I could.

Heres a really bad idea: Using wood that has been nibbled by termites. Some of the wood when I routed it, not only revealed whole termite empires, but actual live buggies.

I went to the lumber yard and drenched everything in Copper Green. This is a special (and more expensive) clear preservative. By clear they actually mean, kind of a deep amber -- but thats preferable to the bright green of the regular stuff.

After all the flooring and the hatches were in, I attacked it with the belt stander, knocking down edges and leaving the different shades a bit more uniform.

I quite like how it came out. I made mismatched hatch handles for each of the four hatches. Can you spot all four?

Heres one of the adorable little hatches open.

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More Cabin Planning

If youve been following the blog, you know that one place that Im diverging from the Glen-L Waterlodge plans is in the cabin.  While I have been true to the plans while building the hull, I am increasingly going off into the wild blue as I design and build the cabin.  The original plans called for a cabin that looks like this:

My modifications look like this:

Here are the details I didnt mention in my last musings about the cabin. It always surprises me that finish details often end up having a bearing on the framing of a structure.

Wall Construction

Cabin wall exterior finish:  Board and baton (with beautiful ancient redwood)

Cabin wall interior finish:  None, boards exposed inside

The cabin is almost two foot lower than the deck. Doors open outward at the top of stairs at deck height -- or maybe they should open inward. I will bring the studs down into the hull to secure them.

I was fretting about the wall design, whether to use 2x2s, 2x3s or 2x4s.  I was worried about the wall being burly and strong enough to hold the cabin together, but thats just because of my history as a home builder and familiarity with standard stud construction.

In standard frame construction, I imagined the 2x4s forming little natural nooks inside the cabin, that with a cabinet door could hold the innumerable things that clutter up a boat. Broom, fishing poles, gaff, a million other things.

Chicken John, always ready with an opinion, opined thusly:

"Im not looking at your design. I didnt read the other comments. Whatever it is you are building its too heavy. After your 5th revision and youve got your weight down to less then 800 pounds, then we can start talking about the simple fact that whatever is on top of the water you need kinda the same thing under the water. Or you will be punished. Get an apple. Bite into it, deliberately  Understand the leverage that your teeth are using. Bite again, even slower. Identify all the physics involved. All the muscles. The sharpness of the tooth, the rigidity. Feel when the apple surrenders to the teeth. Then ask when you boat surrenders to which force? And remember that the kayak is the result of 10,000 years of nautical design."

Chicken poetically argues for lighter construction on the topside. So I guess steel armor is right out. I heard others, including the boats designer Glen L. Witt, similarly expressing concern about weight.

My friend Scott was worried about the weight of the board and baton, but not the sheer strength:

"Boat and batten convey a surprising amount of sheer strength. Im not so worried about diagonal bracing; and a pair of X-crossed cables could provide lightweight sheer if needed. Theres also two feet of stud locked to the hull thats providing sheer, and its locked in a hole in the deck. Its not going to parallelogram no matter what you make it out of."

Bob on the Shantyboat list offered some great suggestions regarding wall width, insulation, and construction technique.

If you are going to use 2-bys I would use 2x3s perpendicular.  You would still have some space for small jars, containers, etc.  I have done that in a Tiny House build, leaving the inside open and gluing in more horizontally for shelves. Works great. I would make any shelving easily removable and live with it that first year with your heat source.  That way should you decide insulation would be better you can remove them easily to make insulating easier.   

I will probably do board and batton secured every two feet to spacers without plywood. This is ancient redwood and having that redwood facing in will feel sweet. Only worried a little about water/weather proofing, but there is always construction adhesive and caulk.

Roof Construction

Roof style:  Gabled
Roof finish:  Corrugated metal

The cabin will have a gabled roof and yes, I know that its totally absurd on a boat for a number of reasons, including height, weight, and wind resistance.  However, I really appreciate the aesthetics  It is this absurd vision, in fact, that inspired me to build a shantyboat.

Impracticabilities aside, a gabled roof is really quite practice in a number of ways. Lots of storage space, an overhead bunk can fit in the gable, easy to hang stuff from the rafters. It feels big and beautiful and homey.

The roof will be gabled fore and aft.  This gives a view forward from the bunk through a small window in the gable.  It also keeps the height lower at the edges most likely to have a brush with overhanging trees.

Ill be skimping as much as possible on the roof to save weight.

• 1x6 roof center beam
• 2x4 rafters on 24 inch centers (to support corrugated metal)
• 2x4 cross ties on 24 or 48 inch centers, to support an overhead bunk

Perhaps that gives you a little better idea how things will likely be constructed, and what kind of self-imposed constraints I am working with.

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Guest cabin update 1

Ive found that one of the problems with my plan is that I really have no plan other than making the boat look like the picture ( for the most part). It seems that every time I get going on finishing a wood project, I have to stop and attend to a metal project Ive been blowing off. One of my biggest goals has been to build the boat so I can always easily get back to critical systems for future maintenance. Since I dont want to bury some things behind wood work, I wait until Im doing the wood work before I finalize some of the metal work decisions.

The bow thruster resides under the sole of the guest cabin in the bow of the boat. Because of the extreme hull shape in the bow and me wanting to get the most space out of this area, I waited until now to install the bow thruster and finalize how the sole interacts with the bow thruster compartment. Im using a hydraulic thruster ( Key Power Inc. ) and from the start of the build, I knew I wanted the thruster in a water tight compartment so that is what I framed. I cut the hole int the thruster tube to accept the thruster saddle, and once I saw the saddle installed I felt the water tight compartment I had framed was too large for the hydraulic thruster. This are of the boat is where my ballast gets installed so I decided to re work this water tight box and give some of the box area back to its original purpose of holding ballast. I cut the box lid in half, and welded in a bulkhead to create a bow thruster box alongside the ballast box. This ballast compartment is one of seven ballast compartments ( the bow thruster occupies the eight ballast compartment). I have a gut feeling that the boat is going to trim heavy on the port side, so I decided to put the thruster on the port side and re activate the starboard side ballast compartment.

The boat designer calls for about 5200 lbs of ballast ( increased by 900 lbs due to increased fuel tank size). The cubic footage in my seven compartments is more than enough to accommodate all of my ballast.

I welded a tab on to the bow thruster lid and ballast compartment lid so I could bolt on cleats for attachment points for the sole. I also held the hull liner up off of the sole by 1.25" in this area to allow me to remove the sole in this area to access the bow thruster. This was a tricky part of the boat in regard to having a removable sole, but it did work out nicely. Ive been holding all the wood 1/2" off of the sole so I can have a place to tuck the carpet vs having to add base board later.

Ill install the thruster later this summer once Im back into the mechanical systems mode. All the cutting and welding is finished regarding this area so I re painted the compartments and lids before I screwed down the plywood sole.

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Guest cabin complete

Ive finished the work in the kids cabin, and Im moving my tools back to the engine room. All the major wood work is completed in the cabins and bathroom except for the building of the passage doors. Ive got to decide on the door hardware before I commit to building the doors. Im a little burned out on wood work, and a little time away from wood working will do me some good allowing me to finish some of the mechanical systems.

I had a visit from fellow boat builder Brian Russell last year and took some of his comments to heart. Brian is building a Dix alloy sailboat and you can check it out here:Welcome to Odyssey YAchts
While Brian and I were looking over my build he had some concern about the lack of ventilation in my hull. His concern had been gnawing at me for a while and so I started to make some choices about how I was going to keep air moving in the cabins. Since Im blogging about the kids cabin, I might as well talk about the ventilation plan for this room. The guest cabin has a 20" x 20" Lemar Ocean Hatch as its primary source of ventilation. I wanted more vents in the cabin that would work while under way and while we were off of the boat, so I added two six inch vents in each corner of the cabin. I found some 6" SCH.40 galvanized pipe at the scrap yard and purchased eight feet to fabricate the passive ventilation system. I carefully laid out the vent locations then cut away the insulation two inches larger than the pipe. I wedged a metal bucket with a little water in it tight to the ceiling @ the cut area, then used my plasma cutter to cut out the deck large enough to accept the pipe. I welded in my pipe vents and extended them up to an elevation lower than the cap of the Portuguese bridge. Because of the high bulwarks and me wanting the vent intake up where it will actually catch some air, I want to make sure the cowl is above the Portuguese bridge when Im finished . Ill fabricate some Dorade boxes to work with the 5" cowl vents Im looking for. When its all said and done, the air intake will be above the Portuguese bridge, and the cowls will look quite shippy. I primed and painted the below deck pipe work then glued some plywood on the below deck pipe ends to act as a nailer for the bead board ceiling. Because Im paranoid about sweating metal, I wrapped the pipe in closed cell foam gasket material I had in the shop, and spray foamed the rest with some of those cans you get at the hardware store. Doing metal work in a finished section of the boat is a bitch and really slows me down, but this was something that had to be done. I also added a 12 volt fan in each corner of the cabin that will be controlled by their own switch. The kids cabin also has one four inch duct for air conditioning and heat when the weather calls.

The last wood working project in this cabin was building the drawer unit under the port bunks. There was really not enough usable space to build the lower of the two drawers so I built a cubby and installed a drawer front on the cubby. I installed two self closing cabinet hinges on this cubby/drawer along with a catch to hold the drawer front fast. The drawer unit is built against the bathroom bulkhead, and that angle turned out to be 28 degrees. Building the angled drawer was a challenge that took more time than one would figure, but I think the effort was worth it as this drawer added a fair amount of easily accessible storage. The drawer will have one inch of clearance as it slides past the bathroom door casing. The bathroom door will have to be closed to use the drawer unit, but Im pretty sure it will be closed all the time since having the door closed makes the room just a fuzz larger.

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