I am currently building an 18' LOD yawl-rigged, turn-of-the-century cutter designed by W.P. Stevens in 1883. The boat was designed by Stevens as a single-hander and this is how I intend to put it to use. I have modified Stevens' design parameters fairly extensively however, since this boat is designed to go to the ice; Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland. These will be among the first stops on a voyage around the North Atlantic Rim which also includes the British Isles, Northern,  Central and Southern Europe, North Africa, South America, the Caribbean and a return to Philadelphia.

My contributions to this web site, will concentrate on specific building experiences, tips and special projects; the first being how I created a laid deck for a surprisingly small amount of money and using some (probably) surprising choices of materials.

Together with his robust double-hull construction, TOAD HALL is also equally strong on deck. The sub-deck is made up of three layers of 1/4" fir, ACX plywood purchased from a local lumber yard. I prefer to use multiple layers of thinner plywood rather than lesser numbers of thicker material because you gain in the number of plys. A single layer of 3/4" lumber-yard plywood would yield only 5 plys. Half-inch would yield only 4 and 3/8" would yield generally 3 plys; the same number as quarter inch but slightly thicker plys. By using three layers
of1/4" to attain my desired sub-deck thickness of 3/4", I ended up with 9 plys! Since the strength of a plywood panel is directly proportional to the number of plys, this is clearly the strongest choice. If I had used two layers of 3/8", it would have been only 6; a third less! In addition, the thinner 1/4" allows for smoother bending over the camber and less stress. By changing the orientation of each sheet, I was also able to continue the change in grain orientation which gives plywood its great stiffness and strength.

This chapter however is not about laying the sub-deck. That's pretty straight forward. Putting down a laid deck on top of the plywood however raises some questions and I thought it would merit a short monograph. It will appear here in two parts over the next two months; 1. Laying the Deck Planks, and 2. Paying and Finishing.

LAYING THE DECK PLANKS

At the turn of the century, teak was not anywhere near as trendy a material as it is today. The deck planking of choice for everything but the rich man's yacht was pitch pine. After the turn of the century, when pitch pine became less available, the average sailor and builder turned to yellow-pine and even white pine for his decks. White pine was extremely popular in the forties.

As you can see from the sail plan and profile which begin this article, TOAD HALL is a very traditional boat, and that's the way I like it. I also wanted to spend traditional money to build it! I wanted a laid deck, but to use teak on a boat with very traditional galvanized iron hardware would not have been appropriate. This left pitch or yellow pine. Pitch pine is a little hard to come by but I came up with a really great source for yellow pine which is available everywhere and best of all it's cheap! I use those yellow-pine landscape ties you see at every home center; the ones with the rounded sides. They measure about 3.5 inches by 5 inches and are pressure treated. The pressure treatment however is superficial at best; it only penetrates about 1/16" at the end grain of the tie and much, much less on the surface. It is no problem at all.

These ties cost me $2.85 each at my local Home Depot and used exactly one and a half ties to do the after deck of TOAD HALL and I expect to use just a little more on the foredeck; probably
two in all. That's $4.27 for the material for the after deck and $5.70 for the timber for the fore deck. Just my speed!

These ties clearly come from young trees grown for the purpose and it is easy to quarter-saw these in order to rip the planks with the grain standing vertically which is the way it was done then and the right way to do it now. (See sketch). It is also very comforting to know that one is not using old growth tropical woods which are in danger, and instead is using a renewable resource.

From Cruising and Ocean Racing, edited by John Irving
 

I start by quarter sawing the ties, then I rip them to the width and thickness that I have decided to use. In my case, I wanted planks 1 1/4" wide and 5/16" thick. It doesn't matter if the saw is a little off and the material wanders a bit; if some are a little thicker than 5/16" and some a little thinner, it's ok. That happened to me, but I had always planned to belt sand the deck planking after it was laid anyway, and when I did this it evened everything up very nicely.

Roughly Fitted Planks
 

I took quite a little trouble to get everything to look right. In fact I rough cut and fitted all the planks TWICE!. The first time I had no king plank and no covering boards and of course it didn't look right. So I took them up, made covering boards of the same material but 2 1/4" wide and a king plank 3" wide. I put everything down again and that looked a lot better! I tacked everything down using a plank guage to keep the seam about the same size all along.

I found that it was most beneficial to start in the center with the king plank and then lay each additional plank outboard to the covering board, trimming them as shown in the photo where they met the sweep of the covering board. This of course is a straight-laid deck rather than a swept one. It would be next to impossible to do a swept deck in this fashion due to the inability of the thin but wide planks to take the bend of the sweep. Anyway, I like straight laid decks just as well.

Fitted to Covering Board
 

When I was planning the deck, I tacked down each plank leaving the brad standing proud about half its length. When I was ready to epoxy down the planking to the sub-deck, I just pulled the brads and lifted each plank. I didn't want to pick up the whole deck and put it down  again. A slight variation of spacing and the whole design could have got haywire. If you do this, use a very slow epoxy or mix small batches at a time.

Skin Friction of Epoxy
 

I did NOT glass the sub-deck. When you coat the sub-deck with the epoxy and tack down the deck planks, the epoxy forms a shallow u-shape because of skin friction and surface tension. This forms a very effective water- stop in itself. And this seam will also be covered with another coat of epoxy and a layer of caulking material, (more on this next month). Usually, plywood exposed to the elements should ALWAYS be fiberglassed because it will eventually check if only coated with epoxy. But here I believe it is fully protected and glassing would be overkill.

Trimmed and Fitted Around Mooring Bitts
 

With planks only 5/16" or 1/4" thick, secret nailing is obviously out of the question. (See previous sketch). I did give some thought to using bronze boat nails and varnishing over the bright heads but I thought that would be too visually busy. I ended up using common steel brads, 3/4" long. These fastened down the deck into the epoxy very well and after everything set up I set the brads below the surface, filled the holes with a mixture of epoxy and yellow-pine sanding dust to match the colour, and sanded smooth ready for the finish.

Overall View of After Deck

Another View of the After Deck

NEXT MONTH: Sealing, caulking, finishing.