Page 32 - Folk Boat Year Book 2021

height. I built a long table around 7.5m long using 20mm shuttering board clamped
down to two sections of an aluminium ladder clamped down to trestles.

Step 2 is to lay the drawings on the ply and
with a sharp point, prick the shapes through
leaving dot/prick marks on the ply. Joining
the dots gave the shape of each of the six
planks which I cut out using a Japanese pull
saw. This is a saw which cuts on the pull
instead of the push as in traditional
European saws, and so is ideal for following
a pencil line in thin material. I tidied up the
sawn edges with a low angle blade block
plane. The low angle of the blade planes
much more cleanly than a conventional
plane. Of course, the edges of each plank are
joined at an angle to each other to form the
shell’s cigar tube shape which requires a 45-
degree bevel to be formed along the long
edges, again I used a block plane to cut the
bevels.

Adopting the same process, step 3 is to cut the seven moulds which each have a top
and bottom half out of the 6mm ply which need not be marine grade as they are
eventually discarded.

Step 4 is to similarly cut out the other structural parts of the shell from the ply, for
example the cockpit deck, three bulkheads, cockpit coaming, forward coaming, skeg,
transom, foot stretcher assembly.

The shell is constructed by separately building the top and bottom halves which are
eventually joined together like a clam. The top and bottom halves are built by fixing
the planks inside the moulds which are fixed vertically and accurately on their precise
stations on the construction table and then laying the planks which form the shell’s
top and bottom halves so that their bevelled long edges are touching.

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