t seems that quite a few of the readers here are “hands on” boat owners and like to do as much of their own work as is reasonable. I think that is great and would encourage people to do so if they have the time and are willing to develop the skills. Yes, much of the carpentry on a boat is considered “tricky” but if you are prepared to plan out the steps carefully and have the patience to take the time that is needed, you will probably do just fine.

Where am I going with this? Well, I thought that I would write a few posts that are aimed at people that would like to tackle more of their own carpentry projects. This will include some drawings for some basic shop fixtures, design details and some resources to help you get your boating projects done.

Shipwright Style Quick and Easy Bevel Board

Here is the first one: a Quick and Easy Bevel Board. I’ve made nice plexiglass ones, and lost them. I’ve used protractors and though they got the job done, I thought that they were awkward at best. If my bevel board was in my tool box on a boat and I was back in the shop, well I didn’t have it where I needed it. Not wanting to handcraft several of these or buy two or three at $20 apiece I started looking at alternatives. One afternoon I was at my computer drawing some cabinet details and a simple solution popped into my head, I could just draw one in SketchUp and print them out as needed. It took about ten minutes to draw. I have some 8.5×11, full sheet label paper, so I set up a pdf page with three bevel boards on it and printed it out. I cut them out on a paper cutter, though a sharp knife and a straight edge wold work just fine, peeled the backing off and stuck it to a a piece of 6mm Aquatek plywood. It worked great and is very accurate . I did cover the paper face with a layer of clear packing tape to protect it. You can download the pdf file here

If you don’t have full sheet label paper, regular good quality printer paper should work fine. Stick the paper to the plywood with a spray adhesive.

You will need a Sliding T Bevel to to grab the angle and then read it on the bevel board, as shown in the picture below.

sliding t bevel measuring an angle on a bevel board

Dan

• a mockup gives a good feel for the real space

• a mockup helps focus on usability and function rather than materials and small details

• a mockup allows you to interactively problem solve

• encourages experimenting, the materials are easy to work with and inexpensive

Mockups are commonly used by designers and builders to get real world feedback on a design or space. Yes there are drawings, but those don’t give the full-scale walk through the space experience. And in reality most people can’t visualize from a 1/2 inch to the foot scale drawing. In a yacht interior, often we are balancing taking an inch here and giving an inch there just to make everything work. Sometimes this is due to a constraint such as, the size of an appliance or equipment access and sometimes it is more related to what works for the specific customer. Is there room to walk through reasonably? Does that cabinet block my view? Will I hit my head going down the stairs? It really is much better to discover any problems before the actual building begins. Generally they are not that hard to fix, in fact you can work them out in the mockup quickly, then make sure that the changes are documented. This information does need to be incorporated into the build drawings and notes or it will do no good. This pdf, Mock-up notes , is from the documentation of a Northwest Trawlers 50.

IS48 Mockup

After the walk through and adjusting the basic spaces I like to move on to usability and function. Standing in the galley I’ll go through the steps of getting a pan out, opening the refrigerator for the eggs, back to the stove , where is the spatula. Are the steps convenient, is the layout going make the galley a pleasant work space? Would I like to cook in this space? One of the most common mistakes I see in the galley is that the dishwasher is placed too close to the sink, making it nearly impossible to stand at the sink and load the dishwasher, even though it looked reasonable on the scale drawings. I go through the boat area by area and act out different activities. Is there room to get dressed in the guest stateroom? Will I hit my elbow on the bulkhead when I stand at the head sink and shave? Do all of the door swings seem right? Go through everyday motions and see what works and more importantly, what doesn’t.

Hopefully you have found most of the problems in the previous exercises, lets work on fixing them. Going back to the galley, we need to rearrange things a bit so we can use the dishwasher more easily. What can we move? If it is a dishwasher drawer then it can go below the sink and work pretty well. Play with all of the components until it looks like it will reasonably well. A door swing that needs to be changed will potentially impact wiring, you do not want the light switches behind the door when it opens. Is there room for the switches on the other side of the door? Sometimes fixing one problem cascades right into another problem. It is much better to discover these things on the mockup rather than on the real build.

Master Head

Now that we have adjusted, pushed, pulled and tweaked things into order we can do some detailing and experimenting with the space. I like to go through and draw more details onto the surfaces, drawer faces, cabinet doors, appliance faces, sinks etc. Also if you have samples of hardware, such as drawer pulls, you can place them onto a few of the fronts and see which look the best in the space. Drawing in details such as the HVAC grills, switches, sconce lights all help give you a better feeling of the space. You can try variations in an area quickly and inexpensively while we are still in cardboard and sticks rather than lumber and veneer.

After going though all of that you should have a much better understanding of how the interior will feel. The arrangement should be locked down now, though to be honest there will likely be small adjustments all the way through the build. This new found understanding of the interior should help with final selection of details like wood species and grain patterns, architectural details, hardware and long list of other choices and decisions that will need to be made as the project progresses.

I do feel that this is an important step that almost always helps us build a better interior, build more efficiently, avoid going backward during the build and have a happier customer in the end.

Dan

Hard Maple, includes sugar maple and black maple. It is a hard,dense, tough wood. The weight ranges from 40 to 45 pounds per cubic foot. The working properties are generally good. Being denser it tends to hold up to high wear areas better, you can damage it but not that easily. It is generally considered a very good cabinet wood. This wood tends to lean towards the lighter tones to almost white.

Quarter sliced hard maple with some fiddleback figure

Soft Maple includes, big leaf maple, silver maple and red maple. The a weight ranges from 34 to 38 pounds per cubic foot. Overall its working properties are medium to good. From what I have seen the best highly figured maple veneers come from the bigleaf, especially the quilted ones. Western maple tends to lean more to the light warm brown tones. You can see a good example of bigleaf maple in the post A Table For the Salish Sea.

Plain Sliced Bigleaf Maple

Both of these are available in large quantities, veneers and solids. In solids you will get some figure, but mostly what most people would call “normal wood”. The veneers that are available cover a wide range and can be fun to pick through, at least for me. To the right is a picture with four distinctly different figured veneers. I have used each one on different projects. The burl looks wonderful in passage door panels . I’ve used the curly and fiddleback on counters and table tops. You do need to be carful not to overwhelm the interior with too much or too many figured ” wild looking” woods. Overall I like maple and prefer to leave the color natural, no stain. If you want to adjust the color a bit I recommend a clear sealer coat and then tinted top coats for color.

Some Exotic Maple Samples

If you want to do some research on woods there are a couple of good reference site here and here. If you are getting ready to build a yacht and want to have a better understanding of this process this is a good place to start. Be aware you or your designer may propose a particular wood and the yard might point you in a different direction. They might have good reason for this or they might just have a bias, with no basis, against a particular wood, or more likely a preference for something else. With the sites above you can at least get an idea as to what reality is. If you are building or refitting a yacht, you are likely spending a lot of money, time and effort and within reason, you should get what you like.

Dan

Brass Lift Off Hinge

I thought I’d mention these hinges and latches. Whenever I need traditional hardware, this is one of the first places I look. They make very nice parts, and for the quality, fit and finish, the pricing is very good. These hinges are machined extrusions. The pins fit tight , but not to tight.

The latch is also nicely machined as you can see from the pictures.

Dan

Brass Pantry Latch

Pantry Latch Mechanism

I like to start with the general color tones that are desired, and honestly I prefer to achieve the desired color with the natural color of the wood, not stain. I think that stain is fine for a few accent pieces but for the general interior, in the long run, the wood work will be easier to maintain and touchup without having to deal with stain. You need to consider what the wood will look like once it has aged for a while not what it looks like when freshly sanded and finished. Cherry, for instance, over several months goes from a pinkish to a warm reddish brown. Fir will go from a very pale light brown to a warm light reddish color.

Once you have picked out a few woods in the color range and grain patterns that you like, we need to look at their general working properties. Some woods machine very well and others chip and splinter badly others are not stable and warp and twist as they are machined. You are not likely to end up with nice flat doors from some woods, at least not without jumping through some very time consuming “hoops”. At this point we may have to eliminate one or two that are not really suitable.

Now we can look at what we have left. How is the availability of the woods, the builder should have some ballpark numbers for the volume needed. How is the quality of what is actually available. This is where it is important to get an experienced supplier involved, I usually work with Edensaw, they should have a clear picture of the market for the next few months. Remember if you pick the wood today and don’t start building for a couple of years, availability could be quite different. Political turmoil in third world countries, what is now the “must have” wood for kitchens or flooring and natural disasters can play havoc with the supply.

Once the project is started I like to lock in the quantity of veneer that is needed for the whole project. On most of the projects that I have worked on, we have picked the exact material from a specific tree, this gets us exactly what we want. When I get to this point I tell Ted Pike, from Edensaw, what I am looking for, he tracks down samples from different logs that meet the requirements, then we set up a meeting with the pertinent people. We lay the samples out and see what we like. We may pick something at this point or maybe this just helps narrow it down and do it again. This is, in my opinion, a much better approach than buying what is available off the shelf. You, the owner, get to be much more involved in the look of your project and we have much more control over the process of getting the veneers laid up.

If you would like to see good samples of some of the veneers that are available click this link. It is to a supplier of smaller amounts of veneers. If you click a on a type of veneer it will bring up pictures of samples of small batches. Look at several of the same type but from different batches, see how different they can be. This is why I like to pick my own veneers, you end up with what you want.

This is just a brief overview of picking the wood for a yacht interior . There are many more things to consider. I will go into more depth on each of these key points, along with a look at platform stock, book match vs slip match, quartered, rotary and plain sliced and a few other things.

Dan

Tables from Shipwright Style

The flier above is for my custom  and semi-custom yacht tables. I enjoy building these and would like to expand more into this area. Part of what make these so enjoyable to design and build is that the variations are nearly endless.

The small table at the top is intended to be semi-custom, the length can be adjusted but the width is fixed at 14″, 16″ and 18″. This helps keep costs down as there does not need to be new patterns made for each table. The solid wood, veneers and profiles can be tailored to mach your individual needs and preferences.

Tables tops are great places to embellish. I’ve done wood inlays, epoxy inlays, installed fused glass tiles and even installed an antique compass under a glass plate in the center of a pilot house table. Laser cut designs can also be a good choice with many possibilities. I would be happy to work with Mitercraft to add your design or one of their “stock” details.

It says ” The pedestal is not included” Why? This only pertains to metal pedestals, wood ones are typically designed to match the table and I will build them, but there are many choices and manufactures of Stainless Steel and Aluminum ones. These range from about $150 to—- well just about whatever you are willing to spend. Some of my favorites are made by Crown Ltd. I think that they only show telescoping ones on their site but they will also build very nice fixed pedestals if you ask. I have used several fixed Aluminum ones that are good looking , feel solid and are reasonably priced.

Dan

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Tricel Honeycomb

This is a small piece of a Tricel , a plywood skinned honeycomb core panel. It is a light weight, sound dampening, rigid material that is , in my opinion, perfect for bulkheads in yachts. I have used Tricel for many years on a wide range of projects. For more information contact the Tricel Honeycomb Corp.

Dan

Table Leaves and Hardware

We looked at what features were really important to the owner. It needed to go well with the contemporary interior, a Northwest wood was preferred, as big as possible for dining, shrink to get out of the way for more casual use and be easy to operate. When in the reduced mode there should be room to get around reasonably at both ends. This, to me, is important as I think that trapping somebody in the far corner is awkward at best. With this table, that will happen at meal time, if the table is fully extended. A high/low feature was not desired, which though add some functionality, also create some problems. The table would be 25 inches wide and 52″ long in the extended mode and shrink to about 30″. Oh — and can we do this without having removable leaves or other parts that we have to store ?

Table With Leaves In

As usual I started sketching and worked through several ideas, none of which I liked for this project. They were too complicated, didn’t look right for this interior or just were not going to work in this application. My next step was to sketch out a shape that I did like, and then work out the details. I wanted it balanced and did not want the top to hinge and fold out to extend the table, to me those always seem “fiddly” and constrain the shapes to much to make them work well. I remembered a table that I built several years ago, the constraints were different, but the end result would work here. After a little looking I found the hardware that was used and it looked like the smaller one would do the job.

Table Leaves and Hardware

The hardware is for a Parson’s Table, it is also commonly called Refectory Table Hardware. What it does, is allow an 11″ or 14″ leaf to pullout from under the ends of a table and pop up into place, level with the top. When you are done with it pull back and it will pop back down and then it can be slid back under the table, out of the way. It is actually very clever. It does have some parameters that you have to stay with in. The apron needs to be notched to house the leaves, the main part of the table needs to be at least 30″ long and the top can not be more than 1″ thick. Most of these work well with what I had planed, except for the top thickness. I had intended to use veneered plywood for the top and edge it with a solid wood sea rail and, unfortunately that doesn’t work well with this. While keeping the overall shape, I changed to solid Maple for the top and could go with 15/16″ to leave a bit of clearance.

I did not have time to build this myself so I called Mike Murphy, one of the best craftsmen  that I know and asked him to build it. As much as I’ve said about good clear drawings, I only did minimal ones for this piece. First I am very comfortable with Mikes work and we communicate well, also this piece was unique on the boat and the details did not have to match.

IS48 Table Drawings

A couple of other things we did on this were, a polished stainless steel pedestal and a laser cut inlay with with Maple and Pacific Yew.

The stainless pedestal, which is just a simple straight section, fixed height, was purchased from Crown Ltd. Everything that I’ve ever gotten from them has always been stunning, this was no exception.

We looked at a few choices for doing the IS48 logo and decided that the best course was to have Mitercraft laser cut the inlay. Ron does great job and is very easy to work with. His company can do a wide range of embellishments from simple to incredibly complex.

I think that the table works very well in this space, when extended it is very comfortable to eat at and with the leaves in the space is nice for lounging. The solid Maple is beautiful, especially with the multiple coats of medium rubbed effect Conversion Varnish showing off the wood grain.

Dan

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Door Jamb & Casing

I‘d like to go a little deeper into drawings and documentation in this post. What we will look at, is part of the drawing package for a door jamb and casings on a yacht. The total drawing package is not the minimum to get a the parts made, instead, it is what is needed so that everybody involved will have a clear understanding of the process. We want to insure our outcome of getting consistent, built as intended parts in the end. So what factors do we have to consider when designing this set of drawings?

Orthographic Door Jamb & Casing

Well, first most people are not very good at visualizing an object from looking at standard orthographic drawings.These are the flat, no perspective, front , top and side view drawings that are typical. See the drawing to the left. The drawing is, for most, is hard to grasp, and this is a simple piece! The next drawing, a perspective view, is much easier for most people to understand. I guess thats because the piece shown, looks like a sample of the actual part. That is easier to understand than mentally trying to assemble multiple abstract views together into a clear picture.

Perspective of Door Jamb & Casing

You might be thinking that this could be true for most people, but the crew actually building the pieces must be skilled at reading and understanding construction drawings. I wish this was true, but many of the skilled joiners I have worked with have done a great job of honing their woodworking skills, but often not their  visualization or drafting. Many of the people that have graduated in the last ten or fifteen years have never even taken a drafting or blueprint reading class, let alone several years of them. The more motivated, that would be the ones have a career not a job, are likely to have learned how on there own, but thats not the norm. The more complicated the part or assembly of parts becomes, the harder this gets.

So what do we do to work around this problem?

Header and Overhead Details

I have been building yachts and yacht interiors for over twenty five years and over that time I have learned a lot about communicating ideas and concepts. With customers, I really want them to know what to expect and clear easy to understand drawings are key to this. I don’t want a customer to walk into a stateroom on a project, blank look on their face and say ” uh– this isn’t what I thought it would look like” , unless it was suppose to be a surprise. Accurate easy to understand drawings are critical in this, along with good verbal skills.( In other posts I will discuss sample cabinets and full mockups, which are next steps in this process.) See the Header and Overhead Details drawing. This shows clearly how the jamb,casing and header come together and how the header engages the overhead fabric. In this case it is fabric in WhisperWalls track with a bead around the perimeter.

Door Casing Work Order

Just as important is the how the info is presented to the builders. It won’t do any good to have customers that have a clear, vision if that vision is not properly carried out. The information that was shown to the customers needs to be turned into working drawings and broken down into manageable steps and processes. The Millwork Work Order to the right is a good example of one step. This has all of the information that a reasonably skilled joiner needs to go forward and efficiently build these parts. This is all of these parts needed for this project, we only want to set up and do these once. There would be a similar drawing for each part for the door jamb package. The drawing at the top of this page shows view of the assembly “exploded” indicating how the piece goes together. There would also be a drawing and table giving dimensions of each of the door jambs. Once all of the parts are milled these would be assembled on a workbench, then installed.

So are all those drawings necessary? Couldn’t somebody knock out a “napkin sketch” and build them without all of the fuss. Sure, it’s done all together to often. Unfortunately consistency and efficiency tend to suffer. Coming up with details like this you have many factors to consider such as, bulkhead thickness , surface treatments on the bulkheads, door thickness, door hardware and how they will be installed.

I hope this helps. In another post I will go over a cabinet and show how a package is developed along with the related information and drawings.

Dan

A Custom Sapele and Sycamore Table

This graphic shows a design progression for a custom table (more here) that I designed a couple of years ago. The excerpts of the drawing package shown is only part of the set of build drawings. When I am building a piece myself, I really like to work from a fully developed set of drawings. When I am handing it off to somebody else to build this is even more important. If the drawings are not clear, it is hard to be to upset if the builders interpratation does not match mine or the customers. Often, what seem like minor deviations my have a major impact  in the end. If they have all of the relevant information in front of them, this is much less likely to happen. If they see what appears to be a problem they are much more likely to call and discuss it. If it is an issue, then a remedy can be worked out, if it is not an issue then after a brief discussion they can be back on task.

Table top details for a modernist table

The level of joiner that I would want to have build this is likely to be a “creative” and will always look for ways to improve what they are building, myself included. These  may be minor aesthetic tweaks  or changes in the joinery to make assembly quicker, easier, or to suit the methods and equipment of the shop. With most of the skilled joiners that I work with, this would be a minor issue usually, but not all joiners are that experienced. If the person that is building the piece does not have a high level of experience and skill, or worse, they view joinery as a job, not a career, things can go sideways quickly. This is where it is critical to have good, clear, locked down plans. With the skilled joiner this will save time and make their job easier. But with the less skilled, it gives us a better chance of the piece meeting the parameters that have been set.

Dan

In this set there are a few more detail shots. If anyone would like more information on something specific, leave a message or send me an email and I will try to answer promptly.

Dan

The basic cabinet laid out fairly easily, the tv and the refrigerator each were a fixed size and what was left between them was what we had to work with for drawer space and bar. That pretty much put the Blue-ray and Bose on top of the refer cabinet.

audio/video cabinet concept sketch

While building and installing the cabinets I kept thinking about how to mount the equipment and also make it look good. Usually I have been able to mount the audio/video equipment behind pocket doors in a cabinet, which makes for an elegant solution. I sketched up and laid out a few rough ideas but did not like them. They were boxy and hid all but the face of the Bose component, which bothered me. It is a very nice looking piece with a softly curved top. It seemed wrong, at least on this boat, to conceal it. This interior is very contemporary as is the Bose, I thought that we should accent that curved shape rather than hide it. The rough sketch to the right is my concept drawing. This was done one morning, while on the ferry to port Townsend.

After a little “tweaking” the curved sides of the cabinet were concentric with the curve on the Bose. There was a small shelf behind to cover the wires and to set the iPod doc on. The Blue-ray player was below and we had room to mount the refrigerator control on the left side at the bottom.

The completed audio/video cabinet

Rick, one of our skilled craftsmen, built the piece, then handed it off to the finishers. After the finish was complete he installed it and worked with the electricians to get the equipment securely mounted. To the right is the completed piece installed.

The system sounds great and the looks suit the boat very well.

Dan

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I spent Saturday on board talking to show attendees. The response to the boat was very positive, I think that people enjoyed seeing something new and a bit different.

I will start posting articles detailing some of the features of this boat and why we made some of the choices we did.

Dan

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Dash Design Evolution

Though the electronics are extensive, the dash itself, is rather uncomplicated, just two very nice 15 inch monitors. There are more bits and pieces in the face below and and in the upper console above the window. I thought that I’d take advantage of the thinness of the monitors and minimize the overall size of the dash. It really only needed to be big enough to mount the displays and fit the cables that go into their backs. I started sketching some ideas and ended up with the one shown to the right.

Accessibility on the electronics is important, you really shouldn’t need to tear much up to get them out. These are accessed from a removable wrapped panel in the overhead in the starboard guest stateroom. The rest of the overhead will be stretched in a track, but this will be a rigid panel held inplace with 3M Dual Lock. But even easier, the monitors are each held in place with two Southco Grabber catches. To remove the monitors you just need to grab the sides of the unit and give a quick pull and the catches release. There will be enough slack in the cables to get out to where they can be unfastened.

When I set the dash in place with the displays installed everybody liked the look and felt that this was very appropriate for this yacht. Most importantly, Pat, the owner, was very happy with the look.

Dan

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IS48 minimalist dash

I thought that I should add a picture of this dash now that is installed and complete. I am very happy with how it turned out, now if I would have just slide the screen covers out of sight before taking the picture. This relates to this previous post.

Dan

Pacific Yew on Douglas Fir

Above is a detail on the corner of the IS -48 nightstand. This is in progress. The finish is seal coats of Sherwin Williams conversion varnish. The final finish will be Medium Rubbed effect SW conversion varnish. I really like the look of the Yew against the Fir. For more info see IS-48 Look & Feel Concept

Door Jamb

Above is a detail of a typical door jamb on the IS-48. The wood is Douglas Fir and the finish is a medium rubbed effect conversion varnish.

Dan

a render to help with visualization

Above is a render from a refit that is happening in Anacortes Wa. The interior design is by GTH Design Techniques. I made construction drawings for this and built the sub assemblies, then they were installed by the refit crew. This view was just to help everyone have a better idea of what the interior should look like when done. The interior is mostly painted and will have a very clean European feel to it. The vessel will be headed to Italy after delivery.

Dan

IS-48

Above is the Doug Zurn designed Salish Sea Yachts  IS-48. Boat number one is down to punch list items and is off being shown around. She was built at SEA Marine in Port Townsend, Washington. I have been involved with this project for some time now, starting with a full walk through cardboard mock up to leading the joinery (carpenter) crew.

It’s launch day, and after months or maybe years of hard work by many people, the project is nearly done. The crew has cleaned every nook and cranny, the art work is in place and there are only a handful of items that must be completed after sea trials. If you asked them, most of the build crew would tell you that this is the best one they have built. We all hope that each is a little better than the last one. In short the new yacht looks magnificent. But really most new yachts look very nice on launch day, what I always wonder when I am looking through one is how will this look after five or ten years of use? Boats move and twist, wood work gets bumped and dinged, it all takes a toll. That toll can be minimized and over time the look will be more like that of a cherished antique. Aside from how the interior is treated by people on board, there are many factors that affect how it holds up, the following paragraphs cover some of them.

Initial design considerations

This one starts with the look and feel concepts. How the design elements interact with one another is very important, not just for the overall look, but this will affect how well it all holds up. Some core issues are, solid wood is tougher than veneer. Denser woods are generally harder to damage than lighter woods. Wood moves (expands and contracts) with changing humidity. Solid wood moves at a different rate than plywood. So what do these items have too do with the look and feel ? These issues need to be designed around, and , unfortunately not all yacht builders or even many interior designers really seem to understand this very well.

Once the initial parameters, general style, level of detail, budget etc. are established I like to work out some of the key joinery details. Typically I start with cabinet corner posts, bulkhead corner posts, sea rails, and door jambs and casings. This establishes the general direction that the rest of the details will follow.

The cabinet and bulkhead corner posts will be similar but typically the ones on the cabinets will be smaller. The three most common corner post to panel joints are: Flush, Offset and Rabbeted Offset (please see the images below).

Flush Corner Post

Flush: The Flush joint is difficult and generally more time consuming to do correctly, the adjoining faces of the post and panel need to be nearly perfect to look seamless. They need to be level, if when assembled the solid wood is a fraction of an inch to high it is not hard to level it out, but not so if the veneer is too high. Veneer thickness ranges at best from 1/32″ ( .03″) to about 1/100″ (.01) that leaves very little to work with. I usually opt for custom laid up veneers in the thicker range. The joint, if not well executed, is very likely, over time, to show cracking in the finish, especially if the finish is applied thicker than the manufacture recommendation. For conversion varnish, a common finish on quality yacht interiors, thats about .004″. For comparison, copier paper is about .004″.

Offset Corner Post

Offset: The Offset joint is a bit easier to build and it masks minor imperfections in the joint much better. The wood will still move around a bit but this joint will show it less than the flush joint. The solid wood protects the relatively fragile veneer edge.

Offset Joint With Rabbet

Rabbeted Offset: This is generally my first choice. It has all of the good attributes of the Offset joint but is easier to get a good quality, long lasting, tight joint with this type of joinery. The rabbet also forces the offset depth to be consistent, it is machined into the corner post. For another example look here.

With the above examples we are looking only at how the corner joins the panel, not the look of the panel, the style or profile of the corner post, or any of the many variations that are possible. This is just the basics. Next post we will take a quick look at several ways these can be assembled and which glues would be appropriate.

Dan

IS48 look and feel concept

I n December of 2009 I was asked by Matt Elder of SEA Marine to come up with concept for the interior of the upcoming Doug Zurn designed Salish Sea Yachts IS48.  Pat, the owner wanted a Northwest contemporary look inside on boat number one. The sample piece would set the tone for the interior of the first IS48, and be a cabinet for their Seattle boat show booth. We looked at a variety of woods and eventually settled on vertical grain old growth Doulas Fir as the primary material with Pacific Yew and Alaskan Yellow Cedar as accents. The document to the right shows my initial look and feel concept for the project.

Most of these initial choices have made it into the boat. The Vimar 8000 series has been replaced with the Vimar IDEA series. The flooring is now Maple with Teak strips between, we wanted something lighter toned than Teak and Holly. The cabinet doors are frame and panel with solid Fir drawer faces as shown. The various hardware, door latches, cabinet latches, faucets, etc. are either polished chrome or stainless steel.

IS-48 Pacific Yew inlay

As always I am concerned as to how well the details will “age” with use and Fir is a little bit softer than I would prefer for use on likely impact areas such as corners, toe kicks and sea rails. Pat and I discussed this and we decided to use Pacific Yew to accent the Fir. Yew is very nice looking and is extremely durable. It is being used as inlays on the sea rails and corner posts along with being used for all of the baseboards. See the detail to the right for and example of the inlays.

I really like the look of this interior and am enjoying doing an interior that is a bit different from the other boats in the general “lobster boat” market. As we go forward I will start posting details, drawings and pictures of the project.

Dan

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The drawing below shows the key details for a typical joiner bulkhead intersection along with furring on a fiberglass bulkhead. There are several different materials used in this construction, each picked for a specific purpose. Not shown is the insulation which would go in the spaces between the studs. This would normally be 2” thick rigid fiberglass, or for better sound control 2 layers of 1” fiberglass with sheet lead sandwiched between. In either case fitting the material tight to the inside of each cavity is critical, gaps allow more sound to come through.

section view from above

The bulkheads will be built on a bench without the veneer panels then installed in sections on the boat. The wire chases, pull-wires, outlet and switch box cutouts should be done while being assembled as should the insulation be installed.

The materials used are as  follows:

1. studs  & framing: Meranti
2. sub panel (first layer) of plywood: 6mm  6566 Aquatek
3. custom layup veneer face plywood  on 6mm  balanced 5 ply core
4. epoxy: System3 general purpose and Gell-Magic
5. Sikaflex  291
6. Titebond II woodworking glue.

corner joinery detail & adhesives

The  drawing to the right shows which adhesives are used where and how the veneer faced panels come together. The bulkhead section is glued to the keys with epoxy, this gives a rock solid joint with some gap filling properties and will allow for a small amount of flex without cracking. We use Sikaflex between the sub panels and the studs as it is strong yet flexible which in this case works well to minimize vibration and sound transfer through the wood. The Paneling is glued to the sub panel with thickened epoxy, this holds extremely well and does not allow  for any significant movement. The joints, veneer panel to veneer panel are glued with Titebond II. This makes a clean, crisp glue joint, that with the epoxy behind and and construction as shown, I’ve not seen fail. This construction takes a high degree of skill and planning, but is about the only way I know that makes seamless joints for the long term.  Epoxy though strong and bonds exceptionally well with wood needs a thick glue line, therefor makes an unattractive joint.

The corners are the other structure I would like to look at here.  The drawing below shows how the corner post fits and how the panels come together. The corner post shown has about a 2 inch radius and is a fairly large soft round corner. The overall size and detail of the post can be changed to match individual tastes. Note how the rabbeted joint under the small  radius corners lips over the veneer faced panels. Any difference in the seasonal movement between the plywood and the solid wood will not be noticeable. If the solid wood and the panel were flush it is likely a small, but noticeable crack will appear within a year or two. The hidden part of the joint would be glued with Gell-Magic while the visible part  with Titebond II for a crisp joint.

section view at corner post

This is a brief overview of  bulkhead construction, there are many more details and considerations. The overall system is designed to give consistent results, solid joinery, be efficient and  is self squaring, plumbing and leveling.

Dan

Sycamore and Sapele Table

This table was designed for a customer with a new 45 foot custom trawler. They wanted something that suited their tastes and would go well with the more contemporary feel of this interior. We felt that the table should be relatively simple yet be a focal point for the saloon. I made concept sketches of a few different tables, they liked the look of this one. We made some minor changes and I did the construction drawings. In the meantime we discussed options for the woods. All agreed that the principal wood should be solid Sapele.  I suggested highly figured English Sycamore veneer with a starkly contrasting inlay for the table top. After looking at several options for the inlay I decided to use black tinted epoxy rather than Peruvian Walnut or Ebony.

One design decision that the customers made up front that really helped was, the table was to be fixed height not a hi-low one. They didn’t like to fiddle with raising lowering and moving it from dining position to coffee table etc.

The first image shows the table along with some construction details. The second image shows a little more of the interior. Note the simple clean details and the brushed stainless steel tiles in the galley. The table looks very nice in their saloon and they have been very happy with it.

Saloon/Galley View

Dan

Dan

Yacht Cabinet Construction- The Basics

Most of the topics will likely come from my day to day work, designing, planing, directing a crew and building yacht interiors.

The following is general list of topics I will cover;

• Design considerations
• Hardware
• Woods
• Other materials
• Adhesives
• Finish basics
• What makes a fine yacht interior
• Picking an Interior Designer
• Scheduling, organization, good signs/bad signs

These all break into several subcategories which I will cover. I am open to questions and suggestions.

Dan