Thursday, August 11, 2011

Planing Deck Lumber and Building Parts for Another Tiki 26

I spent the afternoon surfacing all the cypress lumber that will be used for the slatted forward deck and aft boarding ladder.  This is something I planned to do a long time ago, but just got around to it.  It was a big job with my little 13-inch bench-top planer:


It's getting hard to find clear cypress like these select planks that are 8 and 12 feet long.  Even this stuff has a few knots and splits, so I bought and processed more than I think I'll need to get all the support rails and deck planks out.


Good cypress like this is not cheap, but it's a whole lot less than teak, and while it might not look quite as good or last as long, it's also much lighter weight than teak and I think it will certainly make for a nice deck.

The other thing I've got going on out in the boat shed is a paying job building Tiki 26 parts.  These are for a friend who is refitting his Tiki 26 in preparation for extensive cruising.  I've contracted to build two new rudders, the mast and the three connecting beams.  Yeah, I know I said before that building these Tiki 26 style beams is a major pain because of the difficulty of glassing them, but here I go again - building another set exactly to plan.  Here are all the center webs:


The cutting and assembly of these goes fairly fast.  It's all the filleting, glassing, fairing and sanding that seems to take forever - just like everything else on these boats.  In a couple more days, I'll have all the basic assemblies done:


Here you can see I've cut the rudders out of a sheet of 18mm Joubert ply.  Since I still have not hung my own rudders, also shown, I was able to use one of them as a pattern.  


 This job will of course cut into my building time, but will also add funds to my project.  It's a welcome change of course, from all the book writing I've been doing.  I just finished up the final revisions for my latest book that will be released in October, but I have a deadline for the next one looming in less then 6 months.  My plan is to work on my own boat alongside the construction of these parts, and hopefully complete the cockpit and decks and get the mast stepped during that time period.  

4 comments:

Last Paradise said...

How much width do you gain in the bunks when you raise them 3". I was just on a Tiki 30 here in St Augustine and surprised on how small the cabin was. I also read that the Tiki 26 bunks are almost as big and a lot less boat to build.
Cheers,
Jeff

Scott B. Williams said...

Hi Jeff, The width gain at bunk level is probably 3-4 inches after raising the bunks. The biggest difference is the floor area in the main part of the cabins where you step down. Raising this 3 inches makes for a wide flat area to stand on under the open hatches. There's not a huge difference in the bunk size in the 26 vs. the 30, and both only have sitting headroom anyway.

Boat Wax said...

Always nice to see a boat being built! Looks like you're doing well with it!

Last Paradise said...

Just received my Tiki 26 study plans. They mention raising the cabin sides 1.5" and putting some camber in the cabin top to increase headroom. Did you do this to counter the higher bunks. There is a Tiki 28 for sale on the Wharram blog that looks to have a really high bunk therefore an almost double berth. Did you use Cypress for any framing in the boat or just the decks. There are supposed to be some good local sources for Cypress here in NE florida, but I haven't looked into them yet.