20 years later, construction photos of Toroa. Better late than never?

 

I finally acquired a 35mm colour slide scanner.

I've enjoyed reviewing these photos. they have brought back many happy memories of my collaboration with my lifelong friend Mike Toy.

We set up two heavy timber rails, parallel, straight and true. We then crossed them with rungs at each station. Finally we set up the station forms, each transferred from our lofting board. Each form is trued to a taut string line.

The stem was wired to the forms at each end, then the sheer line batten is fixed in place.

the remaining jig battens are fitted. These battens are part of the jig not the hull so they are not connected to the stem or keel.

Jig is now fared, keel and stem are shaped ready for the first layer of plywood planking.

This close up reveals the planing that went into faring prior to planking

We chose to use a recycled 4 mm hardwood exterior plywood which we sourced from a demolished skateboard half pipe. the sheets were damaged at the edges so we cut strips across the panel to maximise the amount of planking. Traditionally double diagonal cold moulding is done with the planks laid diagonally across the jig at 45 degrees from horizontal and 90 degrees to each other. we figured that the individual plywood veneers are already at right angles to each other so vertically overlapped planks should work just as well. This turned out to be true as Toroa is as sound now as when he was built. the glue we chose is resourcinol resin glue which is water based and suited to this type of lamination provided your connections and fitting are fair and true.

Planking begins. Cling film was applied over the jig to prevent the planks from adhering to the stringers.
The planks are glued to the keel, stem and gunwale stringer only.

Tens of thousands of staples were used to temporarily hold the two layers of planks whilst the glue cured. Before a second layer of planking could be fitted the staples had to be taken out one by one and the surface faired ready for glue application and second plank stapled in place over lapping the joint seem of the first layer.

The final stem capping is fitted, glued and faired.

Shell of Toroa's hull removed from the jig and turned over to reveal the hull shape for the first time. An exciting moment for us. No one pretends that this is an easy or quick way to build a hull. This construction technique was chosen because of the materials we had to hand. Mike and I were determined to build as much of Toroa from recycled materials as we possibly could.

Decking completed

Dash boards in place.