And now back to the trailer

Remember the trailer? This one, the one that almost killed us?

We left the shantyboat hull pretty complete. Now that the boat is ready to be flipped, we turn our attention back to the trailer.

It is really a rusty, janky old thing. Ive owned it for fifteen years or so, or sorta owned it since I bought it with Sean for our Burning Man theme camp, the Costco Soulmate Trading Outlet. Its been stolen and recovered, broken and repaired on the road. We used to haul that thing back and forth loaded to the gills over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, taking our lives into our own hands. Then we realized that if we stored it in the desert, we could save wear and tear on our mortality. So there it stayed for about ten years.

When the camp realized it could buy a shipping container and have it dropped off at their campsite every year without the hassle of dealing with That Trailer, the poor thing got abandoned for a few years out in the Nevada wilds. You remember that I drove out to the desert with Alex to rescue our friend the trailer, a trip with nearly fatal results.

So here it is, a 20 foot flatbed, maybe suited to my shantyboat, maybe not, needing suspension work, a coat of paint, deck repair, and maybe some repair welds.

The first thing I did was fire up my cutting torch and cut off the weird distinctive triangle things, and ground down the cuts. I always assumed they were there as a token gesture to structural reinforcement.

I replaced all the deck bolts that had rusted through, grinding off and replacing any that had loosened. The deck needed about 50 new bolts. This alone made the deck much more stable.

I gave all the metal on the entire trailer, top and bottom, a new coat of Rust-Oleum. I had to get suited up to prevent myself from being painted too thoroughly, climbing under the trailer and applying paint overhead.

It looked pretty good when I was done. Though crawling around under the trailer, I saw several places where the metal was cracked, principally around the lateral beam that joined the two pairs of leaf springs on either side.

For a while, Id been sweating how to make the skids that would hold up the boat. I considered using recycled railroad ties since I could get them for free at the local trainyard, but their height and condition were too inconsistent. Eventually I got a ridiculous deal from a friend at the local lumberyard who found me some 6x6 treated lumber seconds that had a barely perceptible twist or were split a bit at one end.

I positioned the skids so one set would lie just inside of the skegs, and the other set so they lay at the outside edge of the trailer, as far out as could be secured. I figured this would support the boat along the stringers as well as give it side-to-side stability, something I thought would be extra important as we were trucking down the highway.

I drilled bolt holes through the skids and into the support brackets under the trailer.

I put big long 8 inch carriage bolts through the skids. For extra measure, I painted the bottom and tops of the carriage bolts. Lawrence joined me for a bit and serenaded me with excellent banjo tunes.

To prevent the skids from damaging the surface of the hull, I chamfered the sharp edges of the skids with my skill saw.

I cut the ends of each skid at an angle to guide the skegs while the boat was being trailered. Though honestly, I dont think the skegs at the back of the boat will be anywhere near the skids, since that end of the trailer will be deep under water and the back of the boat high above it during a boat launch or trailering. But it seemed like a good idea.

Then I covered the skids with indoor/outdoor low-pile carpet, stapling and using roofing nails at the edges.

The result was surprisingly legit looking.

Then Jen and I sat on the trailer and had a beer.  Something about this trailer makes you want to sit on it and have a drink.  Whats that about?

Next, the superhero of heavy duty welding flies the trailer high into the sky and melts it with his heat ray vision!

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Those Troublesome Skegs Bolt Holes and Finish

Here we drill all sorts of holes in our newly made skegs and finish them.

You know, it really helps to have the right tools. And you know what helps having the right tools? Money. I dont got none of that, so I have to make do with the tools I have. And sometimes that is a ridiculous process.

Here I am trying to level my handheld power drill in a slightly broken garage sale drill press with a bit that isnt quite long enough to go through the piece.

I have to drill bolt holes in the skegs. Then I have to drill through the newly fiberglassed and sealed hull to insert the bolts through structural members in the frame.

First I drilled a countersink to hide the head of the carriage bolts, then a hole through the skeg.

I placed the skegs in position on the hull, and then used a long bit to drill through the skeg into the hull and into the structural member of the boat.

Then I went under the boat and countersunk all the receiving ends of the bolt holes.

Actually, Im lying. But thats probably how I would do it now if I did it again. I doubted the accuracy of drilling down into the hull from above, so I marked the desired hole locations under the boat and drilled up. Then I marked the locations of the actual holes on the skegs. Then I took the skegs into the barn and used my sketchy drill press to drill the bolt holes in the skegs.

After all this stressful drilling, I finished the skegs with stain and a couple of coats of UV blocking polyurethane.

Next we install the skegs in the hull. Not once, but twice. Ahem.

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Those Troublesome Skegs Part the First

When we built punk rafts and floated several big rivers, we powered the rafts with canoe paddles and our own arms.  Though the big innertubes that floated the rafts provided so much flotation, they drew no more than a few inches of water, it was still like pushing a truck.  After a long day of avoiding Swirlies (eddies) and River Sharks (snags), we were exhausted.

Since the raft had no keel or centerboard, it had nothing to provide lateral stability.  So when we were going forward, we had to synchronize our rowing or else wed be zigging and zagging all over the water, which we did plenty of anyway.

As an aside, having no keel did have one advantage:  We could rotate on a dime. So for example, avoiding an object in the water dead ahead, the Caller might call, "Okay, give me one easy backward stroke," while paddling forward herself to pivot the raft toward the hazard.  Then shed call, "Okay, now give me three strong backward strokes," to put the raft out of the way of the snag. Facing the hazard forward thusly, we could always push off if we hadnt rowed fast or strong enough.

In short, it was a big pain.  And exhausting if we had to row any distance, for instance in still water.

The plans for the shantyboat have long skegs (sorta like double keels) that run the length of the bottom of the hull. This gives the boat lateral stability when it is powered and keeps it from skipping all over the water when the boat is turned.

While it really didnt seem like a big deal to make and install the skegs on the finished hull, it turned out to be a bit of a long process.  Heres why:

1. The skegs had to be made out of a rot resistant wood that turned out to be hard to find in the lengths I needed.
2. I ended up having to splice board together to make adequate lengths.
3. They had to be bolted through the beautiful hull Id just finished making watertight, and I was scared.
4. I screwed up several times and had to redo stuff.
5. I had inadequate tools for some of this work.

It sounds like Im making excuses, but it feels more like:  "Haha, look how dumb I am, yet I still got it done."

The plans called for any of a variety of woods, none of which the local lumber yard had in anything approaching the lengths I needed.  White Oak, Yellow Cedar, Port Orford Cedar, a few other ones that are found on the East Coast. Ideally, I was looking for 16 foot lengths. But these are increasingly rare hardwoods that simply dont come in those lengths.

I found a specialty hardwood vendor only a half hour away. They had the Port Orford Cedar and what they called Alaskan Yellow Cedar. Neither of these are actually cedar, but are cypress. For you botany nerds, Port Orford cedar is officially known as Lawson cedar or Chamaecyparis lawsoniana. Alaskan yellow cedar is Cupressus nootkatensis.

Of those, the longest they had was 14 foot lengths. A conversation with the hardwood dealer goes like this:

"Can you get either of these trees in sixteen foot lengths?"

"We get what we get."

"I mean do you ever get 16 foot lengths? Can you order that length?"

"We get what they bring us."

O-kay.  That didnt sound too hopeful.  I knew if I had to, I could splice a longer length together.  There was lots of frantic maths at the lumberyard trying to see what lengths gave me the most efficient use of wood.  While still expensive, the Port Orford cedar was half the price of yellow cedar, so that decided it.

This was expensive wood, so I wanted to make sure I got the best use out of it. I had to use the cedar for the bottom skegs, the fore skegs, the trim boards along the bottom side, and the edge boards all around the top edge. So I created a cut plan so that every bit of the wood was put to use.

Then I spent days cutting and ripping and making lots of sawdust, sure that every cut I made was going to render this expensive piece of wood unusable.

Next well talk about the splice that turned four shorter pieces of wood into two long 16 foot skegs.

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