Huon for Transom.

The Huon boards, (two) for the transom have arrived.
They were slightly dished, and as they are 380mm wide, they won't go through my thicknesser.
So with a slab of beer in hand (under arm actually), I repaired to the local timber yard and they kindly ran it through their thicknesser, with the computer dialled up to 38mm.
What a great thicknesser. I need one of those in my workshop.

Huon Plank for transom.

Then I attacked them with my belt sander, gently actually, then the orbital sander.
At this stage, faint rays of light under a straight edge showed they were no longer dead flat.
I went looking for a longboard at the local hardware, but could find nothing over 300mm. So I just bought a roll of 240 and 600 grit and went home to make my longboard.
Looking around for a suitable piece of material, I spied my #9 Stanley hand plane. Perfect.
I soon had the sand paper fitted . . . after removing the blade.
This has to be the perfect sanding board. The weight is just right and the bed dead flat.

That's a #9 Stanley, which gives you an idea of the plank size.

Surprisingly, an hour of easy sanding had the slab flat and very smooth with 600 grit.

In fact it went so eel,l I might get some 1200 grit to finish it off.

#9 Sanding board.

Huon Pine, God's gift to boat builders.

Jeff,

Yes,I plan to do the boat predominantly in Huon pine.

It is a delight to work. Planes, saws and drills superbly.

It lends itself to very easy steam bending.

It’s strength and density is similar to Mahogany, but at the same time has extremely high durability.

However, supply of Huon is very limited and the cost astronomical.

Huon pine is extremely slow growing and following 150 years of harvesting, standing timber is now protected.

Plantation growth is, of course, inconceivable.

Regarding your query, I doubt if I could find a couple of planks big enough to do the coamings and if I did the cost would be around $450 for the pair.

It would also probably look better in a dark (red?) contrasting timber.

Pete.

Growth rate

The 2” x 2” piece of Huon I used for my Somes Sound tiller contains 101 growth rings in 70mm (less than 3”).

Recent samples taken from a 25cm (10”) diameter, dead Huon log at Mt Read, Tasmania contained over 1,000 annual growth rings.

All the Huon that is available is solely from stockpiles and that recovered from fallen trees and sells for $16,000 per cubic metre; approx. US$400 per cubic foot.

So I need to be selective as to where I will use it.

2" x 2" Huon used for Tiller 101 years of growth rings.

Distribution.

Huon pine is only found in rugged South West Tasmania.

The extent of remaining stands is estimated at a mere 10,500 ha.

Pollen samples from lake cores show that Huon was widespread across Victoria and Tasmania half a million years ago.

Dendrochronology.

Trevor Bird from CSIRO Forest Products Division, Hobart, a dendrochronologist, has taken a core sample from a living Huon pine, dubbed BHP (Big Huon Pine) and dated it somewhere between 2500 and 3000 years old.

Sub-fossil logs

Dr Mike Barbetti of Sydney University, Dr. Ed Cook (Columbia University) & Mike Peterson, Senior Forester with Forestry Tasmania, have found buried sub-fossil logs, carbon dated 38,000 years in which the wood is still solid and the growth rings are still visible.

The incredible resilience of Huon pine to decay is due to the oil, methyl, eugenol which protects the wood from insect and anaerobic decay when buried, such that it will remain solid for tens of thousands of years.

Managing Huon pine.

For the last fifteen years the target limit for harvesting has been 500 cubic metres per annum. However, the average in this period has been about half that limit.

There is also a stockpile of timber cut from the flooding of Lake Gordon.

The two resources will provide sustainable volumes for the next 50-60 years.

Characteristics.

Class 1 (refer to AS 1604). Extremely high durability.

Density 550kg.m³

Huon pine is very easily worked, may be highly polished and is a very good bending timber.

Cuts cleanly and accurately with low feeding force. 

Surfaces very smooth and lustrous.

Huon Slab 314 years old 32cm radius.

Huon Pine for Transom

I have found (and bought) two fabulous Huon Pine planks for the Transom.
The planks measure;
     1580 mm long x 370 mm wide x 38 mm thick and
     1670 mm long x 340 mm wide x 32 mm thick,
and will enough to do the whole Transom

I will need to reduce the thickness, but besides the fact that they won't fit through my 300mm thinesser, I could't be so criminal as to turn so much Huon into saw dust. So need to find someone with a large enough bandsaw to re-saw them.
I am considering simply re-sawing the 38mm plank down to the 32mm of the thinner plank and accepting a thicker transom the JB's plans. I can't see this as a problem; my rudder will simply be 7mm further back than the plans.
But opinions are welcomed and invited.

I plan to spline the planks so I have ordered a Veritas Plow Plane.

Pete.

Reading Plans and locating Part references.

I seem to spend as much time looking for references to particular parts as I do trying to extract the information from the plans.

John's plans are excellent, particularly the reference numbers for each part. All the info is there, once you find it.

So in order to reduce 'searching' time, I have made up a spreadsheet showing each Part and ALL the references to it. At least the one's that I could find.
Anyone who would like an Excel copy can email me and I shall email it in return.
Here's a tiff of page One.

Pete.

Pete's Somes Sound Parts List.

Inner & Outer Stem.

Inner Stem.

I was fortunate to be given, generously by fellow woodworker Paul, sufficient Celery Top Pine for the Inner stem.

My son Tim was down from the Philippines for christmas and so was on hand to assist with the stem, which was a blessing, as Tim has lot’s of experience with epoxy from restoring his GRP fishing dinghy, (family skeleton) in particular with making ‘peanut butter’ grade thickened epoxy.

Firstly, we sawed the Celery Top into 4mm laminates with a hand held circular saw (no bandsaw. Yet?) and then put them through the ‘thinesser’ and simply continue making laminates until we had a sufficient stack of them.

We set up the ‘Brooks’ adjustable jig and did a dry bend. It looked good to the inexperienced eye.

Inner Stem Dry Fit.

Donning biological warfare clothing we mixed the epoxy. John said, ‘use lots and squeeze it out’. We used one litre and squeezed half of it out.

Inner Stem Glue up.

And it worked. We did not overbend the jig and on releasing the clamps there was zero spring back.

We fed it through the thinesser to bring it down to the required width. The outside face was then marked and planed off with my fabulous new Veritas® NX60 Premium Block Plane. What a machine. The Porsche of planes. (still no bandsaw).

The same was used to plane the bevel to take the planks.

Inner Stem Shaping.

 

Chuffed with success, we then started on the Outer Stem.
I had settled on Spotted Gum (hard as nails) for the outer stem as in would protect the boat against imprudent running ashore.
Now to find out how workable it was.
We prepared the laminates as per the Inner Stem and then tried a dry fit. It certainly took more effort to bend the Spotted Gum and the Celery Top. Even so I decided not to over bend it as any 'under-bending' could be sorted out when screwing it to the Outer Stem.
When taking the outer stem off the ‘inner stem mould’, it did spring 10mm at each end.

Inner & Outer Stem 

Australian timbers for boat building.

In building a Somes Sound in Australia the first thing to establish is what available timbers are suitable equivalents to timbers specified by John Brooks in his Somes Sound plans. That is, equivalents of oak, mahogany, Douglas fir, spruce and Sapele Ply etc.

God bless the Internet.

Finding Oz timbers suitable for boat building was not difficult, as there are plenty.

But which to use as a substitute for each specified American timber took a lot more research.

Hardness.

The first thing I discovered was that the hardest North American timber is less than half as hard as many Australian timbers. I thought of Oak (with a Janka hardness of around 6.0 kNewton) as a hardwood, until I found that Australian Spotted Gum has a Janka of 11.9 kNewton. Double the hardness of Oak. Not only that, but is is highly resistant to rot. But it’s bloody heavy and barely floats, even when dried.

Workability, steam bending ability, & stiffness

Then I had to consider work ability, steam bending ability, stiffness and appearance for bright work timbers.

One excellent guide was had by checking which timbers professional Australian boat builders used for various parts of their boats.

So the list grew to include Spotted Gum, Huon Pine, Celery Top Pine, King Billy pine, Hoop pine, Hoop pine marine ply and African Mahogany, which is plantation grown in the Northern Territory in Tropical Australia.

Huon Pine.

Of course Huon Pine is gold. God’s gift to boat builders.

Huon is splendid to work and emits a gorgeous aroma and takes on a golden shine when varnished. Some pieces have the appearance of marbled salmon and others feature contrasting birdseye.

Rot resistance. Buried Huon logs have been dug up and carbon dated at 38,000 years old.(No not 3,800yrs, 38,000yrs). One 25cm diameter log was found to contained 1,000 years of annual growth rings. This extraordinary slow growth rate has led to total logging ban. So any Huon available is from dead logs salvage from deep in the rugged Tasmanian forests or Huon cut prior to flooding of rivers by dams for hydroelectricity. This Huon is stockpiled and allocated, by the Forestry Commission, to millers for sale in limited amounts each year

Hence the price of $16,000 per cubic metre . . . . or more.

So regardless of the price, obtaining Huon ought to be treated as a privileged entitlement and only used where it’s truly golden beauty can be displayed and enjoyed for years.

For me,it will be used for the Tiller, and hopefully, if sufficient size planks can be obtained, the Transom and Coaming.

Celery Top Pine.

Celery Top to is extremely slow growing and also has a logging ban placed on it, and so only available in limited amounts.

Model Yacht.

Tim & I became divert from the Somes Sound when we decided to restore a model yacht I gave him 30 years ago. It was worth the effort.

I have now completed the tiller in Huon pine.
Steamed easily, followed by slowly, slowly carving out the shape.

Aussies are blessed with God's gift to boat builders. Huon Pine.
The 2" x 2" blank of Huon I started with had 100 rings of growth across it.
What a privilege to be able to work such beauty.

Stambox as per JBs suggestion.

Roughing out with my new Veritas Porsche GT3 plane.

Tiller and my Homebrew Irish Stout