Shaldon rowing boat gunwale replacement

A local artist approached me with a view to renovating a 14' rowing boat that he had just bought. The wood work was in a sorry state and one gunwale was broken in two.

Once the old varnish was removed and the surface sanded, it was clear that the Iroko that I had in stock wasn't going to match. So I got a plank of Sapele and machined it up to make the inner and outer sections. The inner has a lip on it that hooks over the edge of the GRP and the outer is screwed and glued to the hull and the inner section. The old one was held on with lots of clenched copper nails and was hard to get off. I had to cut it into about thirty pieces to break it free from the hull. 

The knees were plywood and were in surprisingly good condition but the boat would look so much better with solid wood knees. Something for the future perhaps.

 

The new timber wouldn't bend to the bow section of the boat so it was steamed for an hour and then pulled into shape and clamped up for a day in the sun. Once bonded and screwed, it was then sanded smooth and all the wood work was coated up with a product called Rapidcoat. It leaves a "hint of teak" semi-gloss finish but best of all requires no sanding between coats and you can put 2 or 3 coats on each day in warm weather. 

Shaldon Regatta Dinghy Project

The past 4 weeks have involved working with small groups of children from Shaldon Primary School to build 2 Shaldon Regatta Dinghies to sell in the village. This fits in with the ethos of giving the kids real life learning experiences. Each morning 2 groups of Yr6 kids would come to the old ferryboat workshop in Shaldon to help fit out the bare GRP hulls that were sold to the school by River Teign Rowing Boats in Teignmouth. We were provided with the sapele hardwood, keel bands and fittings needed to fit out both boats. It was quite a challenge for all of us, the main stumbling block being that the tools required a little more strength than many of the kids could muster. After trying various hand saws we ended up using fine toothed Japanese saws that cut on the pull stroke.

The bare hulls as the project began

 I was really impressed with how motivated they all were and some of the templates they made for knees and breasthooks were very accurate. Many of them had never used any tools (although they were reluctant to admit it in front of their peers!) but soon picked it up with excellent results.

Taking shape

 After many hours of cutting, planing ,drilling, glueing and sanding the boats were finished and one was put on display outside the school. Both boats were sold by the end of the day and the project was declared a success! Well done to all of Yr6, Ben Miles ( the school governor who got the whole thing organised) and also Jack Haywood who brought his wealth of knowledge and skills to help us for free.