How to Build a Boat

by Jonathan Gornall

  Not unreasonably, Ron asks me why a boat like the Nottage dinghy even needs ribs. I asked the same question back at the beginning. After all, the overlapping planks have taken shape with the help of moulds and now the hull is a single, strong shell. But it’s all about unseen forces, as Eric McKee explains. ‘The first duty of a frame,’ he writes in a paper published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration in 1976, ‘is to hold the shape of a boat, expanding it outwards against the upthrust of the water and extending it upwards to provide reserve of buoyancy’. The second duty ‘is to share local loads with as much as the rest of the hull as possible’.

  In other words, if a hefty crew member – a daddy, say, rather than a Phoebe – puts all of their weight on a single, 10mm-thick plank, there’s a good chance it will break, or at least pop its copper rivets and pull away from its neighbours. Either way, the result is undesirable: catastrophic ingress of water. But with ribs laid at right-angles around the interior circumference of the hull, linking each plank not only to all the other planks above and below it but also to the spine of the boat, the load is spread throughout a wide section of the hull.

  As a consequence, the Nottage plan calls for nineteen equally spaced pairs of ribs, each to run from the top edge of the uppermost plank (the sheer) down to the centre of the boat. Each rib is to be 20mm wide by 12mm deep.

  I spend the day before Ron arrives setting up what I hope will be a smooth production line. I am using lengths of unseasoned green oak, supplied ready-sawn by Fabian. The idea of using unseasoned timber is that it is still flexible enough to be bent into improbable curves without snapping too readily, but there are several steps that have to be taken to improve the odds against that happening. The first of these is to store the ribs in water, which helps to preserve the flexibility of the fibres. A large, heavy-duty plastic bag, long enough to be folded over on itself and kept half-full of water, does the job.

  The next job is to bevel the corner edges of each rib, which discourages fibres from tearing at points where the wood is being asked to bend and also removes any sharp edges that will be prone to damage once feet start tramping around inside the boat. Sharp edges also don’t hold paint so well. I do this with the small block plane. It’s a slow but somehow mesmerising job, which takes half the day and leaves the sole of the plane and the palms of my hands stained black with the tannin that leaches from the wet oak. By the end of it I am up to my ankles in a giant bird’s nest of wood shavings.

  Finally, the tip of each one of the 380 copper nails that will be inserted into pre-drilled holes in the planks and then driven through the ribs must be subtly blunted with a few gentle taps of a hammer. Again, like many things in boatbuilding, this is counterintuitive. One could be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that the sharper the nail, the easier it would be to bash it through a piece of pre-softened wood. But not so, apparently. A sharp point merely pushes the wood fibres aside, encouraging the wood to split, whereas a blunt end chops clean through the wood, opening a hole through which the rest of the square-shanked nail can pass without causing further damage. Blunting 380 copper nails, I can report, is a finicky business, requiring just enough force to dull the point without bending the shaft, which renders it useless. I lose count of the number of distorted nails I fling into the corner of the shed with a curse.

  The final preparatory task is to mark the position of each of the ribs on the inside of the hull, which I do using one of Phoebe’s washable-ink felt-tip pens (she reluctantly lends me a couple, pink and violet, on the strict understanding that I bring them home again afterwards) and the trusty plastic curtain rail, now trimmed to the same width as the ribs. As each rib will lie midway between two vertical rows of rivets holding the planks together, this is easily done by eye.

  The final act, which I complete just before Ron’s arrival, is to drill and countersink all 380-plus holes in the planking for the nails that will be driven through the ribs. This, as it turns out, is perhaps the most tedious of all the repetitive jobs involved in building this boat. Repetitive it might be, but there is no possibility of day-dreaming on the job. As I discovered during the months spent riveting the planking, each hole must be drilled not only bang in the middle of the 20mm overlap between the two planks, but also at precisely the correct angle to ensure that it emerges exactly 10mm from the edge of the outer plank. Few do. Then, when all the holes have been drilled, each one must be revisited with a countersink. This, too, must be applied at the correct angle, to ensure that the head of the nail will lie just below the surface of the plank and will sit square to it – an incorrectly angled countersink will set up the head of the nail to bend as the rivet is tightened, increasing the possibility of a failure.

  Countersinking is relatively easy on the top three or four strakes, but increasingly painful the further under the boat you go. I start out standing, then bending, kneeling and, finally, lying alongside the boat, testing muscles and ligaments by attempting to apply sufficient and accurate pressure to the drill from a series of ergonomically improbable positions.

  But eventually it is done and now here we are, each wearing a pair of rigger gloves with all the self-assurance of chimpanzees tricked out in pitcher’s mitts for the first time and anxiously watching clouds of steam billowing out of the open end of the long, narrow steambox. In a few more seconds our first, experimental rib will be cooked. Ron, frowning, stands fiddling with a quick-release clamp, a device he has never clapped eyes on before, ready to fix the rib in place on the gunwale once I have bent and teased it into position. There’s a palpable tension.

  ‘How long has it been?’ he asks.

  ‘Not sure. Twelve minutes? I thought you made a note?’

  ‘I was going to. But it’s definitely been a while. Shall we give it a go?’

  ‘Okay . . .’ So here goes nothing . . .

  I whip off the old tea towel that’s been partially blocking the end of the box and pull out the rib in a cloud of steam. I can feel the heat through the gloves. Carrying the rib quickly to the boat I wedge its bottom end up against a temporary block screwed to the centreline of the hog and, with one hand at the top end, start to push down. With my other hand I’m exerting gentle force in the middle of the rib, bending it and hoping to coax it down until it’s touching every plank from garboard to sheer. Ron hovers with his clamp, shifting from foot to foot. We have a couple of minutes, maybe less, before the elasticity created by the steam starts to wear off and . . .

  Snap!

  The sound of the rib breaking is like a gunshot in the confined space of the shed and we both jump. I think I know where I went wrong. Instead of starting at the bottom end and gradually working my way up, using my fingers to gently persuade the timber to bend, I went straight for the middle, and with too much pressure, with predictable results.

  Fifteen minutes and another steaming session later, we try again. To hear our shouts of triumph as I bend our second effort into position without mishap, you’d think we’d found a cure for the common cold. We congratulate ourselves as Ron tightens the clamp. Then we remember we’re still on the clock. It’s a trial run but we’ve given ourselves just five minutes to get this rib fixed in place – our plan, once we get into a groove, is to put a new rib into the steamer once every five minutes, so there is always another one ready to go on the boat. We are about to enter the Henry Ford phase of traditional boatbuilding.

  All the copper nails are already in place, ready to be hammered home through the ribs – right now the hull resembles a porcupine with a buzz cut. Grabbing the hammer, Ron slides under the boat. It’s my job to lean down hard on the rib with the fat end of the heavy, lead-filled dolly. I shout ‘Ready!’ and Ron bashes the first copper nail through with a few sharp blows. ‘Next,’ he shouts, which is my cue to move the dolly to the next position. ‘Ready!’ I watch anxiously as each of the nails erupts through the rib. So far, no splits or breaks, and each nail is, more or less, in the middle of the rib, where it shou
ld be. Soon, all ten nails are through and we swap tools.

  Now Ron, still lying under the boat, holds the pointy end of the dolly hard against the countersunk head of the first nail. With hammer and roving punch I drive the circular rove down the shaft of the protruding nail, snip off all but 2mm of the point and then use the ball peen hammer to flatten out what’s left. The copper mushroom that forms pulls rove and nail tight together, with planks and rib sandwiched snugly between.

  Again, ‘Next!’ and ‘Ready!’ and all ten roves are on in just under six minutes – pretty good for a first run. More wild, premature celebration. Then we agree we’re ready to throw ourselves in the deep end. From here on we will be on a self-imposed mass-production treadmill, aiming to knock out one rib every five minutes, from beginning to end.

  I top up the water in the steamer, which experience tells me will run happily for at least forty minutes, and let it come back to the boil. I’ve lined up six ribs alongside it and now the first one goes in. As we plan to allow just five minutes for fitting each rib, we will be popping them into the steamer at five-minute intervals. At fifteen minutes the first rib will be taken out and fitted, and a fourth rib put in the steamer in its place, and so on. Each rib and its corresponding location on the boat is numbered, one to six, because the required lengths vary at different positions. Using this method, we figure, we should be able to do six ribs for every full tank of water.

  It’s a lot to remember and it’s hard work. We swap roles every couple of planks, but lying under the boat, whether hammering in nails or trying to exert sufficient pressure on a nail head with the dolly from a horribly unergonomic position, is a painful business. But though we’re a bit clunky at first, we quickly improve and, growing in confidence, in no time we’re rattling out ribs like seasoned professionals.

  I’m amazed and extremely pleased to see how well Ron has adapted to this. He is, in fact, clearly delighted to be doing something so creatively physical, and seeing the fruits of his labour taking shape before his eyes. And I’m right there with him. Plus, after so long spent toiling in isolation, the sense of achievement and the camaraderie of working side by side with a friend is a heady cocktail.

  Yes, we have some cock-ups – quite a few, actually. Some of the ribs don’t lie quite as true as they might, and in places nails have come through on one side or other of that ideal centreline. And, as it turns out, there is nothing quite like the process of steaming-in frames to highlight shortcomings and failures of symmetry in the shape of a hull. In some places, it is clearly hopeless to expect a rib to touch a particular plank, usually because the plank has been laid against its neighbour at too extreme an angle – the product of a now-forgotten battle to close a gap in an overlap. We don’t even try driving nails through at these points – the rib would almost certainly break and, besides, it can be done later, after a small wedge has been made to fill the gap between rib and plank. Invariably, we find, the error is not repeated on the plank’s opposite number on the other side of the boat, which means that something went awry during the supposedly symmetrical planking process. No surprise there.

  Towards the front of the boat, there’s an extra wrinkle. Here, in addition to being curved along their faces, the ribs must also be twisted edgeways, in order to follow the curve of the planking as the hull turns in to meet the stem. This is as tricky as it sounds, as witnessed by the number of ribs I manage to snap, either in the boat or while trying to persuade them to change shape over my knee. But this, I am assured by Fabian during a brief telephone consultation, prompted by a fear that at this rate we might run out of ribs, is par for the course.

  We break late on Saturday evening, with about half the ribs in place. Ron has borrowed Kate’s bike and we cycle home in a buoyant mood, telling ourselves how well we’ve done and that our target of completing the ribbing by the end of tomorrow is well within reach. Phoebe’s in bed, and the three of us sit down to a dinner at which there is only one topic of conversation. Kate can see how fired up we are and listens patiently as we regale her with tales of the day’s events and proudly show her countless near-identical photographs of the end result. At about 11pm she takes advantage of a brief lull in proceedings to excuse herself and head off to bed. I produce the one bottle of whisky I have each year – a predictable but welcome Christmas gift from my mother-in-law – and Ron and I keep going for another couple of hours.

  We have slight headaches as we creep quietly out of the house at 6am the following day, but the fresh morning air works wonders and by the time we reach the shed the cobwebs have all been blown away. It’s just as well – we’ve got a long day ahead of us.

  At about seven o’clock that evening, with the last nail in the last rib roved tight, Ron emerges from under the boat, sweating, sore from head to toe and his clothes covered in sawdust. I’m in no better shape. Both of us are cut and bruised from various encounters with the boat, the concrete floor and the occasional protruding nail head, and our arms, hands and backs are strained from wielding the heavy dolly in unnatural poses. Thanks to the ceaseless hammering I have developed a kind of instant repetitive strain injury in my right wrist and something has gone twang in my shoulder. Ron, who as far as I know has never played a game of tennis in his life, announces he has tennis elbow.

  But we are both grinning inanely. We’ve done it. In just two days, we have ribbed out an entire boat. We down tools, climb painfully onto our bikes and wobble to the nearest pub. The Mortifying Incident at Willen Lake, unforgotten though long forgiven, has finally been supplanted by an altogether more positive maritime memory – The Unlikely Triumph in The Shed.

  22

  A SHIP AT LAST

  ‘From keel and keelson,

  Strakes and sails

  From floors and decking up to mast

  We’ll pull together, stem to stern

  We are the ship, a ship at last.’

  – Martin Newell, The Song of the Waterlily

  15 JANUARY 2018

  Back in July last year, with the hull complete and the ribs fitted, it was hard to resist the feeling that Phoebe’s boat was finished. It wasn’t, of course. There was still a great deal of relatively challenging work to be done – the ‘basic carpentry’, as Fabian had put it, somewhat dismissively, of seats, centreboard case, floorboards, etc., to say nothing of the rudder, tiller, mast and spars and, when all else was done, painting it – pink, or whatever colour Phoebe would let me get away with.

  But there was no avoiding the conclusion that, barring the addition of such ‘mere’ details, I had built a boat. Furthermore, I had finally figured out the difference between a swift and a swallow.

  After Ron returned to Germany, several days passed before I could get back to the shed – the looming need to work for a living, put perilously on hold for more than three months, couldn’t be ignored any longer. When I did go back, Kate and Phoebe came with me. The last time the prospective owner had seen her boat was in March, when it was little more than the skeleton of a stranded beetle, all spine and no shell, and I was keen to see her reaction to the transformation.

  But it was my own reaction that took me by surprise. I’d been there just three days earlier, wreathed in steam and wrestling with ribs, but only now did the cumulative impact of the past seven months strike me. I knew, intellectually, that I’d built a boat. I was, after all, intimately – and, occasionally, agonisingly – familiar with every inch of her. Working largely in isolation, I’d sworn and cheered, despaired and delighted, seethed and celebrated over every bevel, joint and rivet. But I just wasn’t prepared for the sight that confronted me when I pulled open the door to the shed. With my eyes torn from the detail of the plans and my mind freed from contemplation only of the next daunting challenge, for the first time I saw the sum of the parts as a whole.

  And, well, wow.

  A little dumbstruck, I stood in the doorway of the shed as Kate released Phoebe from the car. I had about ten seconds before the piratical captain of the Swift storme
d in to lay claim to her prize and I spent it just gawping. I knew I had made this little ship, but its creation by human hand seemed no more credible to me now than that of any other clinker boat I’d ever seen and been seduced by, whether skimming the sunlit waves on a breezy summer’s day, hauled up on a beach, or being slowly digested by the undergrowth at the graveyard margins of some abandoned east coast boatyard.

  This was a thing of simple, ancient beauty, derived from the bounty of aged trees and the sweat of good, honest toil – my toil. Nothing machine-made or shop-bought could ever be its equal in value or worth. I had made this. I was completely taken aback.

  Kate appeared at my shoulder, our daughter wriggling free from her mother’s arms. Neither of us was convinced that this place, littered as it was with casually discarded tools, razor-sharp wood splinters, broken drill bits, copper nails and so on, was exactly the perfect playground for a three-year-old, but there was no containing Phoebe’s determination to get stuck in. Jump-started out of my reverie, I lurched forward and managed to place a shielding hand over the head of a copper nail protruding from the hull, a fraction of a second before Phoebe started drumming energetically on the planking.

  Deciding the safest place for her was in, rather than under, the boat, I scooped her up and, piping her aboard with an imaginary bosun’s whistle, set her down inside. Fittingly, Phoebe was the first person to actually set foot in the Swift. I snapped off a salute, which she returned with a big grin on her face, and that was the Kodak moment right there. Kate took the picture, and then took my hand, squeezing it hard. ‘Well done,’ she said quietly. Silenced by the lump in my throat and the tears welling in my eyes, I could only squeeze her hand right back.

  Phoebe, who’d found a pencil inside the boat and was making her mark on one of the planks, broke the brief silence. ‘Daddy,’ she said, now running the pencil back and forth over several ribs with a satisfying clack-clack-clacking sound, ‘is this my boat?’