Painting the Inside

Yesterday, the pram came out of the cellar and into the garage where she will be painted. I fine sanded her all over and cleaned up all the dust until I could run my hand over the planks and only feel wood, no grit or dust. Tonight, I taped the knees which will be varnished and rolled on the first coat of cream colored paint. This is the first time I have ever rolled paint on a boat. It does a nice job. I tipped out the streaks made by the roller with a brush. I also used the brush to get the places the roller didn't.


The end product looks nice. I used Epifanes marine enamel. I will do three coats in the end. I plan to sand the first coat with 220 grit sandpaper and then not sand between the second and third coats.

Fitting The Seats

Yesterday wasn't a boating day, at least on the water boating. Since it was raining, again, we took the time to work on fitting the seats into the pram. John had brought some pieces of mahogany up from the mill to use for seats. We trimmed the edges first. Next we calculated the angle that each end would have to be cut to. Then the bow to stern angle. The picture below shows one end of the stern seat already cut and John marking the other end.

Here is the stern seat after cutting and placing.

We went on and used the same process for all three seats. The middle seat had to be fitted around the midships frame. The plans call for the middle seat to be removable to give the sailor more room to work while under sail. We will eventually take our middle seat out, plug the screw holes and make it removable. One thing I should add is that in the plans, it calls for the seat supports to be 1" on the support surface. In the hand drawn sheet which shows how to make the removable middle seat, it calls for two inch support surfaces. We found the size screws called for in the plans to fasten the seats would be way too big to fasten to the 1" supports. However, they probably would work with 2" supports.

Now we will sand out the seat surfaces and round over the edges before putting three coats of varnish on. After one more coat of epoxy and a lot of 220 grit sandpaper, we will finally be ready to paint the inside of the pram. Then we will fasten the seats into the boat.

Seat Supports

The next project on the pram was to create the seat supports. These are nothing more than blocks of wood about 8" long, fastened to the sides of the boat. The seats are laid on top of and screwed to these supports. We are using scrap pieces of mahogany for the supports. Our seats will be 1" by 8" mahogany. The seats are fashioned so that they may be removed for refinishing as needed over the life of the boat. We will varnish the mahogany seats and install them after the boat has been painted. We plan to just paint the supports and not fuss with varnish. Below, John is measuring the lengths before he cuts the small pieces to fit. After they are cut to length, we will have to sand and shape them to fall flat on the curved sides of the boat.

Last night, we went down to install the supports. We drew lines on the side of the boat to mark the proper positioning of each support and did final sanding to make them fit snug against the side of the boat. We carefully marked on each support where it's home would be (port stern, port middle etc.). Then we drilled the holes through the sides of the boat from the inside out using our positioning marks as guides. Below you see John countersinking each hole from the outside of the boat plank.

At this point, we discovered that we didn't have any of the proper sized screws left to fasten the supports to the side of the boat. Next we looked at the fasteners called for in the plans to secure the seats to the blocks and discovered they were way too big to do the job. So it was off to the computer to order another box of 1" #8 bronze flat head wood screws and some more appropriately sized screws for the seats.

Rubrails Part II

Tonight we screwed the second rubrail on the side of the pram. This one went on a little easier, but it didn't twist quite as nicely as the first one did. We had to put an extra screw in the very last position at the bow transom to hold it tight against the shear strake.


This morning, I took the clamps off the first rub rail sanded everything smooth. Now we will do the seats. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that we are puting off making the sailing parts until next winter in the interest of getting her in the water this summer.

Knees and Rails

This weekend we made some real progress on the pram. We had installed the stern corner knees during the week and on Sunday we worked on the bow knees. As you can see below, we got those all done before we broke for lunch.


Next we began drilling the screw holes for the oak rub rails. That involved drilling holes from the outside into the knees on each end and from the inside out into the rails for the sides of the boat. Then we countersunk all the screw holes. Below, John is drilling near the bow knees.


Next, I mixed up a batch of epoxy and spread it onto both mating surfaces. We worked along the side of the boat clamping and putting in screws until we had them all fastened in tight. Then we cut off the remaining lengths of rail at each rail and I sanded them smooth. Below, you see our sea of clamps holding the whole project together until the epoxy hardens.

Slow Progress

The past several weeks most of our free time has been devoted to getting boats ready to go in the water and mowing the lawn. I have had some time to work on the inside of the pram and have managed to smooth all the places that needed smoothing and get one barrier coat of epoxy on the inside. We cut the sculling groove in the stern transom and drilled the hole in the bow transom through which the bow painter will be threaded. I have put one coat of varnish on the knees and will fine sand it for another one as soon as time allows. We have ripped the rub rails out of a piece of oak and bent them around the side of the boat to see how they are going to fit. They have been set aside to await installation.

Launch date for Whitecap is on Sunday June 21st so at least that part will be done and we can devote a little time to the pram. If it doesn't stop raining, we will have plenty of time to work on her.

Barrier Coating

Yesterday I did some more hole filling and smoothing on the outside of the pram. Today I was able to sand all that smooth. I also cleaned up a lot of sawdust from the cellar floor. I decided to paint one barrier coat on the mahogany knees so they could be soaking in and drying. I did that and they looked mighty pretty when I got done.

Then tonight I rolled a barrier coat of epoxy onto the outside of the pram. This process really worked better than I expected it to. I was able to get a thin enough coat with the roller so it went on smoothly and I didn't have the problem with drips that I have had while putting the stuff on with a brush. I will do another coat when that one is about as tacky as masking tape, probably tomorrow night. She looks like a honey nut now. After I get two or perhaps three barrier coats of epoxy on, I will go over the outside with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth things up and she will be ready for three coats of paint. I have read an article on painting wooden boats (in Wooden Boat magazine I think) and I think I will try the process outlined in the article. More on that later.