Building the boat, Chapter 1: The bulkheads

All the needed wood (oak) is cutted, planed and sanded. In addition the drawings of the bulkeads are transferred 1:1 onto a special white-coloured table (see Preparations). Following the drawings of the bulkheads the exact need of wood for every bulkhead can be found out. The circular saw is a very good help to cut the pieces of wood very precisely:

The circular saw is used to cut the wood precisely.

Two pieces of bulkhead B fitting quite well. Now it's time to prepare the epoxi. Therefore the table is wrapped by plastic to protect the drawing.

Here you see the my special table with bulkhead B. The packages are bricks wrapped in plastic bags. These bricks are needed to fix the different pieces of wood for the first time. Than the squared timbers are applied to ensure to get sufficient pressure - but be aware that the pressue must not be to high - otherwise the epoxi runs away...

Bulkhead A and B are almost ready!

Bulkhead A is rather simple to build - instead of bulkhead B and so on. Bulkhead C and the following ones are better to be build in two sections. First the lower part, than the upper one.

The lower part of bulkhead C on the table. A piar of compass is used to draw the arc:

The band saw is very appropriate to cut the arcs:

Bulkhead C is made out of three layers of oak.

Veneers of larch are arranged on the drawing table.

These veneers are to be prepared to build up bulkhead E. The lines help to arrange the different pieces later on when using the epoxy.

Underneath the timbers four layers of veneers are under pressure...

The building site: More and more a store for big amounts of wood...

This selfmade plywood will be part of bulkead D.

Bulkhead D almost finished. It's quite heavy due to the oak frame. I decided for this heavy construction because bulkhead D plays an important role within the whole construction: The keel box will be fixed here, in addition the wires holding the mast will be fixed near this bulkhead. In case that the keel gets in touch with the ground big forces or momentums will be transmitted onto bulkhead D. The heavy construction provides some additional safety for this case.

Bulkhead G is a little bit more complicaed than the rest. The frame made out of oak wood is at least 20mm strong. This provides the big opening underneath the cockpit.

This picture shows some details from bulkhead D and G.

The collection of bulkheads is almost complete now. It's quite time consuming to make all the playwood and frames by myself. But it's also satisfactory to work with "real" wood!

Here you can see an example when it is recommended to have many clamps. The picture shows the doubler for the transom. The pieces of polythene sheets help to aviod that clamps are glued.

The transom doubler.