Flipping the Tongass
Chuck,
Named after the Tongass National Forest (secret:
I'll rename her the "Heidi B" after it's finished after
all that my wife has done to help build the boat), my Tolman Jumbo
Alaskan Skiff has now been flipped. Folks
say that you are one third done at this point, but most do their
fairing at the completion of the project right before painting.
I, on the other hand, believe in fairing at every opportunity
along the way by scraping, filling, sanding. When I get to the
finish coat, there is little to do (see the bottom coat on in
the picture sequence of the flipping). I suspect that I am closer
to half done, although that remains to be seen. Of course, I could
go with tiller drive and no decks and be done right now ... ;-)
In any case, the boat weighs somewhere between
500# and 700# when it is flipped and we did it easily with old
tires, cheap blankets, and about 10 people. We rolled the boat
on the building jig, which has casters on it BTW, out onto the
driveway. Then we lifted the boat and rolled the jig out from
under it. Next, we set one edge on some tires and turned her over.
I used blanket-covered old tires as a soft landing pad, but the
boat really came down softly anyway. I was a nervous wreck the
night before the flipping, but in the end it was actually pretty
easy to do it. Many hands make a light load.
After the flipping, we went back into the garage
and fastened the pre-made carpet-covered cradles for carrying
the boat upright on top of the building jig. My building space
is rather limited, so I need to keep the boat on a movable platform
all the time. It's easy enough to re-level for the more critical
work.
After putting the carpeted cradles on the jig,
we just placed a tire under the transom end and fed the jig back
under the boat just like loading it onto a trailer, then back
in the garage it went. Full story can be found at:
https://www.reelboats.com/tongass/step18.html
.
Brian Dixon
Albany, OR |
Click Thumbnails for larger versions |
