Kaimusailing

This is a response to a comment that someone made, I couldn’t get to sleep but I forgot to read your blog. OK then, the blog will continue. Got trouble sleeping? Read on.
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When I finished the dinghy in the boatyard I started thinking about the next small boat project. The dinghy up at Somers Cove should have been my focus, but I wanted to make an outrigger canoe. I had already done so with a gradual drift from making proa types, which can sail in either direction, to making tacking outriggers. Makes sense. Optimize a boat to sail in one direction and forget about trying to make it sail in both directions. The bow is the bow, the stern is the stern. Design a boat with a bow and a stern that sails in just one direction.
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I had old software that wouldn’t run on the newer PC’s and I had old PC’s that wouldn’t run what software I could download now, too new.
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It took a lot of work to get something called Freeship to run and when I got my outrigger canoe hull in there, the program wouldn’t generate 2D patterns from the 3 dimensional hull shape. Bummer.
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The hull is a narrow “sharpie” hull, flat bottomed, double ended, simple. I could create it without a computer program, that’s what they did in the old days. I realized I could build it without a lot of complicated offset drawings. The main variable is the displacement. How much do you want the hull to carry.
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I ended up with simple parameters, 9 inch draft, 18 inch beam, at the waterline amidships. So the hull would taper from there to the ends, double ended, simple. No need to be marking up a lot of offsets.
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I envisioned taking a couple sheets of plywood, end to end, and laying a 16 foot batten on them and marking a bottom edge along both sheets. The real bottom, zero, would be in the middle where the sheets butted up against each other. The batten would curve up to the other edges of the sheets at a level equal to the draft of the boat, so in this case would be 9 inches. You could clamp this batten down and run a router down the edge of the plywood and cut an arc, perfect.
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At 18 inches above the edge of the plywood, just now routed off into an arc, you have another edge, just cut it off. Now you have one side of the hull, curved on the bottom and seemingly straight on the top edge.
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You have to make another, the same way, make them identical. The lower curved edge is the chine and the batten could be a ¾ square stick 16 feet long, screw and glue it to that bottom edge, then put another on the top edge on the other side of the panel. You now have a side panel with a stringer at the bottom that is inboard and on on top that is outboard, a gunwale.
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Attach the two panels at the ends and spread them apart to accept 3 bulkheads. These would be 2 at 4 feet from the ends and one in the middle. The one’s 4 feet from the end are about a foot wide and a foot and a half tall. The middle bulkhead isn’t necessary, but we need a beam across the gunwales, also the hull panels need some reinforcement there.
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When you get the bulkheads placed in between the hull sides and a small beam spacing the midships at about a foot and a half, you can plank the bottom. You can put a small 4 foot deck on the bow and stern, the hull is essentially done. Of course there is a lot of fairing, glassing, but you could put it together in a weekend.
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There is the outrigger float, called an ama by the Hawaiians, and it is 12 feet long and banana shaped. The offsets were made in a program called Freeship on 3 inch intervals. The stern is just a mirror image of the bow. When you run a batten through those points, you make a pattern that can be mirrored into the other side of the outrigger float, and the other end, and the other end’s other side, one pattern fitting those 4 faces of that hull. The deck of the outrigger float just fits over it, about 1 foot wide, trim off any excess.
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The crossbeams are 2X3 lumber 8 feet long and lay across the gunwales of the hull and are attached to extensions of the #1 and 3 bulkheads of the float. The other ends of the crossbeams get an 8 foot long box, 1 foot square, that acts like and end beam to the crossbeams, but also acts like an emergency float if the boat should capsize in that direction. You could stow it with camping gear and additional sails for stormy weather.
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The offsets for the 12 foot outrigger float were posted on this blog a while back in 2017. I used that float on 3 outrigger canoes.
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I found a HUL file that included the offsets for a sharpie hull 18 feet long, but the depth, etc., were wrong. I couldn’t use Delftship to create a 16 foot hull, but I could use hulls.exe, 16 bit version, and manually put the curser on the chine and get offsets on 1 foot intervals. So now I had measurements that I could transcribe onto sheets of plywood to build a boat. Maybe next Fall.
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I was digressing into this outrigger design instead of doing meaningful work. I needed to get the Atomic 4 engine running again, but I had cluttered the area that I needed to get to the engine. I began throwing things away and then decided to use my trusty small shop vacuum to get the small bits off the carpet that was left. The vacuum didn’t vacuum. What’s wrong with it, I opened it up and it was basically empty, wasn’t choked with stuff. The filter bag though was completely clogged with debris from boatbuilding, bottom paint, sanding residue, old rust, and just compacted dirt. I shouldn’t have touched it, it immediately stained my hands and anything it touched.
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I called the local hardware store to ask if they had shop vac filters and they said yes. I drove up and brought a plastic cover for coffee tin that was almost the same size as the filter cage in the small shop vac. They didn’t have anything in the right size, but I bought a pack of 3 filters that maybe I could cut apart and tape in place with gorilla tape, the stickiest tape known to man, and so I did.
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The vacuum now performed way above its 1.3 HP level, sucking up all sorts of things. It was very satisfying to get those old coffee grounds from 2 years ago off the carpet. Maybe my enthusiasm will continue, there is more to do.
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I had cleared out the space in front of the Atomic 4 engine and I felt good about removing that debris. I found somewhere in the pile Cornelia Marie’s old service records for the Constant Repair Vehicle, Honda CRV. I could take a break and read them over, noting when repairs were done, what was repaired, and what was missing. Transmission fluid replacement? I had doubts about that one.
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I kept dripping 3-in-One oil on the head studs while I pried with a pry bar and hammered with a stout hammer. Things moved, 3-in-One oil disappeared along most of the studs. The head was about 1/4” separated from the block but was reluctant to come up higher on the studs. If they had used bolts to attach the head it would have been off by now, but they didn’t and it’s not.
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I felt good, though, that the head was not solidly stuck to the block. I know other boat owners who DIY have their problems with the Atomic 4 and frequently post on nautical forums about it. I am posting here, but if I succeed it is incumbent upon me to post out there.
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My scheme of pulling the head with 1/4-20 bolts threaded through spark plugs that have had their porcelain innards removed, including the central electrode, works great. The bolts are kept in the plugs while the plugs are threaded into the head, then the bolts are bolted to angle iron with a ¼ hole, a washer, and of course a nut. The angle iron is cut to length that fits over a couple of studs. When the bolts are tightened the head might rise off the block. It worked for me. You have to take it easy. Knocking the head with a stout hammer helps get it moving. Keep dribbling the oil onto the studs.
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When I got the head up about ¼” off the block I couldn’t get it any higher and snapped one of the bolts. I knocked off work and retreated to the Legion where I could apply the pinot noir solution. I had the food special, reuben sandwich and chips for 8 bucks. Cuddily and Teri arrived and I had too much wine. We had a good time, forget about that old boat engine, Cap’n.
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The next morning I was up early to go to Pocomoke for bloodwork prior to my annual physical. I planned to shop also. I was tooling along and early, stopped in Sysco to get 6 bottles of Saddlebred pinot noir, a box of Nighthawk pinot noir, and of course Barefoot on Tap pinot noir. I made it to the clinic on time and was out of there before my scheduled appointment time.
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I went to Harbor Freight and ate 2 double chocolate donuts and drank a cup of coffee from Dunkin. I bought a new fiber radial brush for the drill, an interesting pry bar that caught my eye, and a pair of electrical test leads. Then to Walmart for groceries. I wanted more salad with protein, steak, shrimp, avocados, roma tomatoes, cucumber, and more bread.
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When I returned to SUNSPLASH I immediately made a steak sandwich. I had fasted for the bloodwork. I resumed work on the Atomic 4.
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The new pry bar had a round pointed end, but it was thick enough to raise the head further off the block. I was able to get the head up about 3/8” above the block. I needed to find another way.
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I decided to bore out the empty spark plugs and tap them for whatever bolt size would fit, then get long, maybe 4 1/2” bolts that I could screw into the spark plugs when they were screwed into the bock and thus pry the head up further, or, since the bolts would be pressing pistons down below, get the crank to rotate, that’s the goal anyway. It turns out I need a 3/8” tap and bolts.
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It was time to make more food and I marinated frozen cooked shrimp in some of my Italian vinaigrette dressing with some added lemon. I made a salad and used the shrimp with the marinade as dressing plus a little mayo.
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The next day I measured the holes in the hollowed sparkplugs and it looked like 3/8-16 bolts would fit. I would need a tap for the bolts. I went to the local hardware store and found 6” all thread bolts, bought two, and a 3/8-16 tap. While I was checking the bolt size with the little hollowed spark plug from my pocket, I realized the counter guy was observing me suspiciously. I put my items on the counter and got out the hollowed spark plug and told him, “I got a marine Atomic 4 engine and I’m gonna tap threads into this spark plug and run a bolt against the piston, either the piston or the cylinder head will have to move”.
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It worked even better than I thought. The pistons in the Atomic 4, like most in-line 4 cylinder engines, go up and down in pairs, this balances the engine, so #1 and #4 go up and down together while #2 and #3 go together and are up when 1 and 4 are down, it balances the engine. So, I tapped two hollow plugs and put them in 1 and 4 and screwed in the 6” bolts. When the bolts came down against the pistons I hammered on the head. It gradually came loose and rose as the bolts were further tightened. It’s kink of like a seesaw, hammer on one side of the head, then the other, and the pressure from the bolts raise the head a little bit, hammer again, repeat until the head comes all the way up off the studs.
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It took about an hour and a half to go to the hardware store, go through this procedure, and get the head off. Time to celebrate. The image is of the bolts and hollow spark plugs lifting the cylinder head. The rust is because the Atomic 4 is a Constant Rust Vehicle.