sharbour's blog

We're finally getting closer to having the fuselage finished. I'm cutting the pieces slightly wider than the actual fuselage.

After finalizing the position of the panels, I rigged up an offset jig to space the screw holes at three inches apart. Screw the panel into place, then sand the outside edges flush with the sides. Take it all apart and route the outside edge with a rounded profile, then reassemble with glue.

 This is a boat, after all, and it needs to float. So, I'm filling the torsion box with Styrofoam (tm). :-)

Here's the skinning of the torsion box top. I used a router to put a nice round profile on the edges of the mast pocket cutout. I needed some weight on the panel, so yes, that is an anvil...

Hmmm. I had no idea glue was so messy.

Alignment is critical in this step, so I had my fingers crossed.

Not much to say here. Lots a of sanding and aligning. I'm using my number one son as a model to show the approximate seating position. I did modify the plans a bit to reinforce the mast base area. They originally called for several separate blocks of wood in the bottom, one small piece under the mast, another next to the mast to hold a pulley block. I combined them both into one solid piece that spans the width of the hull.

It's really starting to look like something. At this point, everything is held together with wood screws while I finish the trial fitting.

The assembly begins with bulding up the runner bases on the side panels. These are triple layered three quarter inch plywoood on the rear. They were extremely difficult to line up. As soon as I would start to clamp, they would slide up to a quarter of an inch. In retrospect, I should have made a temporary jig to hold everything in place.

And, we finish up with joining the two main side pieces.

Okay, so I think I'm learning how to work with wood. Measure once, cut way outside the lines, and then sand it all down to fit. I think it would be easier if the plans had more than just the occasional measurement on the templates. To make things even more fun, the hull not only tapers from the middle to the front and back, it has a definite "V" shape from bottom to top. This combined with the guesswork on the templates is making it a bit of challenge to get everything to fit right. Here are some progress shots.

Preparing to build the ice flyer took a few days. First, I had to download the plans. The designer released the plans to the public years ago, however, his website has been offline for quite a while. It turns out that some of the ice boat forums maintain copies of the plans, and they are also still available online via the Internet Archive.

 Once the plans were printed out, I was able to take a close look. The plans are not in a step by step format. Once you read through them a few times to get a good understanding of how the boat goes together, they are reasonably complete.

 The first item on the agenda was to print out the templates included in the plans. This was entertaining, as each template is divided into multiple six inch sections. You have to print out all the pages, then break out the scissors and start literally cutting and pasting everything together. And, to make things even more interesting, all the dimensions were slightly off when the templates came out of my printer.

 The second item on the agenda was to pick my materials. The designer recommends Sitka spruce. It turns out that Sitka spruce is like gold, rare and expensive. In the end, I decided to substitute a good quality 11 ply zero defect Birch plywood for the fuselage. Now that I've purchased it, it seems fairly strong, though I'm not impressed with how the plys completely separate under catastrophic failure. Guess I'll have to overbuild.

 For glue, after a fair amount of research I settled on Titebond II. It's well established, has a decent working time, is stronger than the wood it bonds to, and is waterproof as long as it isn't used underwater for extended periods.

Here's a picture of my first completed template, ready to trace out and cut. This is the one of two side boards, and it is approximately eight feet long.

Hello! I'm building an Ice Flyer, a simple wooden ice boat. This is my first foray into serious wood and glue, so it's going to be a heavy duty learning xperience on my part.

I choose the Ice Flyer because it met several of my criteria:

• Suitable design for a beginner.
• Proven design. The Ice Flyer design was refined by the designer over a decade or so.
• Cheap. (The plans are free)
• Versatile. You can put wheels on it. I wonder how it would do with hydrofoils? :-)
• I liked the look of the finished product.