{"id":181,"date":"2014-06-11T21:19:57","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T04:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/projects.mykos.org\/?p=181"},"modified":"2014-06-15T10:27:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T17:27:54","slug":"strongback-assembly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/?p=181","title":{"rendered":"Strongback Assembly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"joining<\/a><\/p>\n

Now that the Strongback halves have done their duty as support for machining the strips it’s time to assemble them into their proper form. In the photo above I’ve got the halves laying on their sides with the middle section clamped in place. You can see there’s a 1\/4″ drill bit taped to the corners with a string clamped tight over them to give a straight reference line along the length of the whole box beam. Then by using a 1\/4″ steel rod and making sure it just fits between the string line and the edge of the strongback I got the whole thing aligned straight before driving screws into the middle section.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"strongback<\/a><\/p>\n

Next the legs get attached and the whole thing is stood up where it’ll be located on the floor for the rest of the build. I used a level and a pile of shims to get the whole assembly as level as possible in both directions. It took quite a bit of back and forth as each shim changes the measurements all over. In the next photo you can see the levelling feet between the two long strips of plywood that make the bottom of the legs. Once everything was as level as I could get it the feet get pushed down against the floor and screwed through to lock the position. Then I am free to take out all the shims and the strongback stays as I want it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"strongback<\/a><\/p>\n

To put the top on I cut spacer blocks the width of the overhang and clamped them flush with the tops. When cutting up the plywood I made sure that each of the pieces that were to become the tops of the strongback kept one factory edge. The spacer blocks are clamped to those factory edges and then all my measurements I make for putting these tops on are referenced from that side. Once I get the centre line put on that becomes the reference line for everything else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"riser<\/a><\/p>\n

The strongback is sixteen feet long, being made of two sheets of plywood. Because the canoe I’m making is 15’9″ the stems don’t hang over the ends of the strongback so I need to raise all my molds up two inches to allow me room to work right down to the tops of the stems. I decided the best way to do that was to make riser blocks out of 2×4 with a 2″ dado in them that is exactly the width of my plywood molds. These are real 2″x4″ blocks, not ‘nominal’ size 2x4s like you’d buy at a lumber yard. I’ve jointed two sides and then ripped them on the table saw (in both directions) and crosscut them on the sled to make sure they’re all six-square. I cut the dado with a 1\/8″ blade and flipped the blocks side for side with each pass to ensure that it is perfectly centred in each block. The plywood fits the dado with a snug friction fit which will let me make adjustments easily until I drive the screws in to lock the molds.<\/p>\n

These riser blocks are not something that Canoecraft mentions other than a passing note that if your canoe is less than sixteen feet you’ll need to bring it up to work the stems. It’s left to the reader to implement that. We’ll see if this solution works out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the Strongback halves have done their duty as support for machining the strips it’s time to assemble them into their proper form. In the photo above I’ve got the halves laying on their sides with the middle section clamped in place. You can see there’s a 1\/4″ drill bit taped to the corners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-huron-cruiser","tag-strongback"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mykos.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}