Starting my battens

  • 30 Apr 2011 17:14
    Reply # 581316 on 572744
    Deleted user
    Update:

    Ten days just flew by. I joked elsewhere that the hollow part was easy, whittling them to look like bamboo would have been more difficult if it hadn't been for taking up Pencil Carving so long ago. But it got me to thinking about bamboo.

    Batten #10, the 21'er, is on the ways. And I use "ways" in the strict sense of the word. The risers on which I'd assembled the previous 9 battens relied only on the levelness of the table, which was pretty good but not perfect. For #10 I stretched a stringline and screwed additional mini-risers to the level-line. Then I re-stretched the stringline for a dead-straight line to adjust for side-to-side clamping.

    Bamboo, right, the other 9, 18'-2" long, are hollow from end to end with the exception of solid 8" sections at the ends for bolts or "fasteners - to be installed by others", as they say on architectural drawings I've dealt with for eons. You gotta love architects, "If I draw it, it will become." To which my reaction always was, "sure buddy, as long as you have engineers to clean up your mess." But I digress.

    For #10, I made 8" filler blocks for the ends, the section at 18'-2", and 4" blocks every 30" along the way similar to the solid parts that stiffens bamboo along its length.

    About 1-thru-9: I got way too complicated. or maybe mentally involved. They are made from 2 pieces, L-shaped and mortised and tenoned, the mortise at the "top" of the L, the tenon at the foot. It all worked out OK. They fit perfectly, but it could have been much less work making them simple 4-sided boxes like #10. #10 is rabbeted corners accomplished with a small laminate trimmer. And despite 85 clamps at work, I remembered to clean up the squeeze-out (glue) before it's had a chance to set up.

    Time to reupholster a chair for She Who Puts Up With Me.

    Later Taters...
    "MD!"
  • 19 Apr 2011 13:31
    Reply # 573337 on 573183
    Deleted user
    David Tyler wrote: I'd go with a single batten to PJR scantlings on the starboard side of the sail. I have a strong preference for pockets, but if you want to bolt through the sail, you really only need a thin strip on the port side. How about further ripping a 2" x 1" batten into two for this? 
    I feel that you really won't enjoy hoisting the equivalent of two full sets of battens into the air every time you sail.

    You've hit the nail on the head, David, the weight is what I'm becoming concerned about. The 2x1s are the starting place because the stock is 1". And I'm not thrilled about adding a couple hundred bolts to the mix, both from the weight aspect, and from the aligning that many holes to make the battens interchangeable. But I still want stiffness. I'm coming around to the idea of ripping or planing and laminating, or laminating then ripping... or more likely planing until I see what the ideal thickness should be. I have a pile of battens now sufficiently cured to experiment with and clamp two together to simulate glue.

    The shelf-foot method of cambering does appear to make pockets less tedious than attempting to add pockets to barreled panel edges. So perhaps instead of the flat lap described by D.A. Clarke, as the base for screwed battens, I can use the laps as pockets.

    Paul wrote:

    If I were doing the rig, I'd be using Aluminum tube, 2in diameter by 1/16in wall.
    Light and affordable. Also a lot less work than making wooden battens.

    If you are really a glutton for punishment, make them hollow.  You'd want about a 1/2in wall on a 21/4 x 21/4 section.

    I'd put pockets on the sail and not split the battens.


    Too late for the aluminum, Paul. I don't have a fireplace. Brilliant! Hollow wood battens answers the weight AND the two-parts problem in one swell foop. And pockets it is.

    ~~~~
    O/T: Testing to see if I can post the HTML code for a JRA link (itself copied from Yahoo's "Promote" feature.)
    <p align="center">
    <a href="http://www.junkrigassociation.org/join_jra">
    <img src="http://www.junkrigassociation.org/
    Jester_Challenge_2010.jpg
    "
    style="border: 1px;"
    alt="Click to join Junk Rig Association"/>
    <p>Click to join the Junk Rig Association</p>
    </a></p align="center">


    (Hope this works)

    Edit: It works out in the world, but breaks the margins here. A workaround could be to copy "Jester Challenge 2010.jpeg" (Right-click>Save Image as... from the JRA header) and paste it to whomever's website or blog... then change the code to the simplified 'img src="Jester Challenge 2010.jpeg"'

    Edit II: I just broke the 'img src=' piece of code to repair the margins.
    ~~~~

    Thanks for the food for thought, guys.

    "MD!"
    Last modified: 19 Apr 2011 13:31 | Deleted user
  • 19 Apr 2011 02:14
    Reply # 573183 on 572744
    I'd go with a single batten to PJR scantlings on the starboard side of the sail. I have a strong preference for pockets, but if you want to bolt through the sail, you really only need a thin strip on the port side. How about further ripping a 2" x 1" batten into two for this? 
    I feel that you really won't enjoy hoisting the equivalent of two full sets of battens into the air every time you sail.
  • 18 Apr 2011 20:56
    Reply # 573034 on 572744
    Looking at your rig, the battens are quite long (around 17ft?) so I'd say that 2x2 total is about right for wood. With a cambered rig you do not want any batten bend.

    If I were doing the rig, I'd be using Aluminum tube, 2in diameter by 1/16in wall.
    Light and affordable. Also a lot less work than making wooden battens.

    If you are really a glutton for punishment, make them hollow.  You'd want about a 1/2in wall on a 21/4 x 21/4 section.

    I'd put pockets on the sail and not split the battens.
  • 18 Apr 2011 13:53
    Message # 572744
    Deleted user
    I just finished ripping 370' (5 10' boards and 3 12' boards) of yellow pine* into 1"x2" battens that will be screwed together through the shelf-foot seams of the coming sail. It seems excessive. Together they are (will be) as heavy as the boom. According to PJR, I should have about 1"x2" in total for flexible battens, with the exception of 2"x2" fore and aft of the mast.

    I've just started gluing up the scarfed pieces. I'm conflicted on how to proceed. On the one hand, the sail being cambered, I don't need the flexibility of thinner strips, so they could stay 1"x2" on each side of the sail, totaling 2"x2". But just moving the boards around the shop it seems like an awful lot of weight to add aloft.

    On the other hand, I'm wondering if I should run the lot through my surface planer and bring the strips down to 1/2" or 3/4", but thickened at the mast of course, to arrive at a total batten thickness approaching JPR's scantlings for my battens... 1"x2".

    Any thoughts or recommendations? Or warnings of peril?

    * Until I actually measured how much stock I'd need for battens I was hoping to use the scraps of redwood from the mast building. But it's not nearly enough. Y.P. is straight, clear and reasonably priced.
       " ...there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in junk-rigged boats" 
                                                               - the Chinese Water Rat

                                                              Site contents © the Junk Rig Association and/or individual authors

Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software