New web site and Blog

[Dutchman]

Ahoy friends,

First, thank you all for your continued support of our project. While we are three years into construction we are indeed making progress- admittedly slower than we would like. Once floating we hope to host as many pubsters as may wish to visit upon Luna's deck! We are very happy to report that we have outgrown our old website, blog, and membership data base! The website address remains the same, but our blog has changed.

Without further ado, I present our new online home!

www.colonialseaport.org

http://www.colonialseaport.org/blog/?p=156

We are still working the kinks out, so please let us know what we can change to make it easier to navigate.

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

It even loads on my dial-up! Yippeee! Looks nice. Congrats to the Luna project.

Bo

Edited March 12, 2011 by Capt. Bo of the WTF co.

[Dutchman]

Ahoy all,

The past weekends have been a bit light around the yard as our family of volunteers spent time with their families. We hope all have enjoyed their time and are safe. In the quiet the shipwright and I spent some time with the blueprints and notepad in the workshop putting together this winters construction plan. Once the coffee was gone we headed out to the wood pile to identify what needed to come out and head to the cutting area. The next few weeks will find us on the following projects.

• The keelson beam and floor timbers are ready for the seascouts to begin work.
  
• Aft cabin decking to be moved and have a two man team begin closing in the captains cabin.
  
• Pine tree trunk has been skinned and dried. Start marking and shaping for bowsprit.
  
• New deck beams to be cut and placed in the cargo hold to begin decking forward of the engine compartment.
  

The last bullet is a noteworthy step. Except for the bow, or front of the ship, this is the first step of hull reconstruction forward of the engine compartment. In short- this is the half way mark of hull rebuild! I’ll get some updated pictures this week.

Please visit our blog to follow along with construction of Luna. New members and donations are always appreciated and welcome! If you have any questions or suggestions please drop an e-mail to jhcollamore@colonialseaport.org or visit our website at www.colonailseaport.org and use paypal to contribute!

[William Brand]

I love your photos and updates. That said, you need more photos!

[Dutchman]

Ahoy all.

It's been an action packed week around the boat yard. I'll do a full account Monday after the dust settles. In the meantime here are some teasers!

Floor timber templates being laid and holes being packed with epoxy

Deck beams 12, 11 & 8 cut and shaped down.

Deck beam #8 being dressed and sanded. Next stop- ON BOARD

Be sure to follow along Monday. Wait till you see whats coming up!

[Dutchman]

O.K. my brain is fried tonight and I'm just not getting the blog to transfer over. Below is the link.

http://www.colonialseaport.org/blog/

[Dutchman]

new video is up!

https://www.facebook.com/ColonialSeaport

[Dutchman]

Where do I even begin. . . . .

The past two weeks has been amazing for us! First, our long hunted for storage container came to fruition as a twenty foot shipping container was donated to us. This will allow us to store the resins and paints away from the barn making the whole operation safer. Now, here is the kicker. It apparently was a yard box as it came to us with shelves, lights, and power outlets.

Now onto construction updates.

-Tony has installed the port, or left, bulkhead half separating the main hold from the galley. We were working on the starboard, or right, side and we were pressed for a bit of time. But it looks great!

-The shipwright was in the captains cabin working on framing knees. These are all now either permanently mounted or roughed in and ready to mount. Once that is done we can install the roof on the captains cabin.

-The floor timbers which support the keelson have all been installed and the keelson is now laid in place. We have another days work of fine tuning and bolting before we can claim it as finis! One of our Sea Scouts, Joanna, installing the first of her floor timbers. This has been her Quartmasters project for her Scout promotion

- A final picture for the day………

That warmly dressed blob on the foredeck is no other than our board member and pirate living historian extraordinaire, Pern. He is checking out Tony’s work on the bulkhead previously mentioned. Due to various issues, he has not been able to board Luna in over eight months. It was a grand day to have him back on board. Now if we can just get him to do some work.

I’m going to do a new video tomorrow and get that posted so stay tuned.

[Dutchman]

We have been onboard Luna a couple of days this week so rather than doing a timeline of the projects I’m going to review the projects themselves.

Lets head back to the aft cabin. We have two things going on there this week.

First: The remaining knees for the captains cabin have been completed. In this photo, the knees have been fared out and are awaiting paint. They will then be installed.

Second: A new project has begun. Brian, another Sea Scout has begun working on the aft cabin windows. He spent part of the day making templates for the side window frames and we actually began making the aft window frame. We are making the frames out of a rotproof fiberglass reinforced foam. Once the box is shaped in place we are going to remove it and fiberglass it. It will then be reinstalled and finished in place.

Third: Now back to the keelson! This part of the construction project is almost done! That arm belongs to Joanna who is waterproofing the keelson. Note the floor timbers going from left to right. They are all in place!

We had to make some blocks to fill spaces where bolts connect the keel deadwood and keelson. Even though we are using huge chunks of white oak, we are concerned about rot. Typically, the rot occurs where these blocks and the dead wood meet. To remedy this we have added a few layers (1/4 of an inch actually) of fiberglass to the bottoms of the blocks. This also gives us some reinforcement to the block as the epoxy will soak into the wood and make it strong as nails.

one big block of wood will be turned into many small ones.

the two smaller blocks will be fillers and the larger is the beginning of the mast step

the blocks are now fiberglassed. The block on the left shows how many layers are going on and the block on the right has been glassed. it needs to be trimmed once dry

well there ya go! A weeks worth of little things add up to a lot of good work by all

[William Brand]

Wooohoo! I recognized all the important nautical terms in the last post! She's a beautiful ship and she's really making headway.

[Dutchman]

Ahoy one and all! Despite not posting lately we have been hard at work onboard Luna between our festival obligations. Here we have a couple of pictures from our latest efforts.

This is the poop deck, so yes, the Captains cabin is now roofed over! The clamp at the back is holding a stick which will mark the railing height. ( 42 inches). It's not really obvious in this photo but the deck has a heck of a camber, or curved slope, to it so we will not be regularly using this area- also the boom will be at chest height here so under sail it will be a no go place. The main companionway is to the left forefront and the deckhatch is about center.

And here is a view of the cabin top/poop deck from the port side looking back. Pretty, isn’t she!

Our shipwright coming up from the cabin! what a great look! the cabin face is spanish cedar and it is beautiful! The camber is evident in this shot.

[Dutchman]

Ahoy all,

Today found Tom W., Larry, Talon, the shipwright and myself onboard Luna. We split our efforts and made progress on projects and getting ready for new projects. We have a major project beginning a week from Monday (yikes, thats a week from tomorrow!). We have found someone who is going to rebuild the bowstem, or front end of Luna! We knew from the start that we had to replace this huge chunk of oak and kicked many ideas around about how to do this. Here are some of the discussions:

• A solid replacement piece of oak weighs close to a ton and would take almost two years to dry once it was cut…. IF we could find a solid piece to start with.
• Piecing smaller blocks of oak together would be weak.
• Marine plywood would be manageable and lighter, but would take a long time to fit and could possibly rot.

So with this in mind, we now beging the dissasembly of the bow. Below are some pictures of what we will be removing.

Luna’s original bow stem, or front of the ship will begin her rebuild next week. The flat beam going top to bottom in the picture is coming out.

The interior of the bow. the beam running up and down the middle of the picture is rotten and is coming out. The worst is visible at the bottom of the picture.

Our gentle reader, you may be asking what we are going to do with this bow….. Stand by for more pictures next week. You’re not going to believe how were doing this!

Talon and I were in the aft cabin installing new but blocks. Not much exciting there but a necessary job. The but blocks ensure that two ends of planks are solidly joined. The ones we worked on today will be visible so they need to be just right.

Now onto exciting work. Tom W. and the shipwright joined forces and began installing the railcaps! These are the tops of the rails on the deck.

The shipwright installing railcaps on the starboard side. We are able to reuse most of the original material. This will be fiberglassed over and a new wood one will go ontop of it.

A new cap is cut and being glued together in place. Unfortunately, we had to use new material rather than the original, but this will be fiberglassed over and great!

A thing of beauty to come! This is the point where the shear, or side profile of Luna changes and where the two sections of rail cap come together. This step will be fiberglassed, but looks mighty plain. Traditionally figures are carved and placed here. Often they are mermaids, fish, animals, ornaments of some sort… Our youngest shipbuilder, Pere, will be taking these two carvings on (one to port and one to starboard) and we can’t wait to have them on board!

And finally, what is Larry working on and whats it for? You’ll see shortly!