"woolding' or wrapping spars... how to?

[austi012]

Hello, new member here.

I am converting a canoe into a sailboat as a first step into sailing.

I need to strengthen my tiller handle by wrapping it with rope, which I believe was called 'woolding'. I have been unable to find out how to properly secure the ends of the line.

Any instruction on how to secure the ends would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Thaddeus

[GordMay]

Many years ago, I wrapped all my axe and hammer handles (about 2" near head) with monel seizing wire, to prevent splintering when I missed (and hit the handle instead of the head).
I believe I used the same method as in “Whipping” a rope end.

http://www.goddardkansas.us/troop776/whipping.html
or
http://www.boats.com/common/display_...ersubactivity=
Perhaps you could do something similar with rope on spars.

When using a rope/string whipping on rigid parts, it could be strengthened with an over-coating of varnish, or epoxy, (et al).
Thanx, I never knew it was called “Woolding”.
HTH,
Gord

[Rick]

The first thing to do before serving a "woolding" is to make the underlying wood as smooth as possible. Beam failure under load always occurs at a surface defect and migrates along the "fault" before a break causes failure. A rough spar will fail under a side load well before another with a fine grain and finish with even smaller diameter.

"Paint" a layer or more of penetrating epoxy. This will aid in the above phenomenon. If you still feel the need for adding woolding the "high tech" approach would be to select a high-modulus line having the greatest tensile strength and lowest "creep" and smallest diameter. Vectran (see Yale Ropes) is one example. You will have to demonstrate some skill in applying the serving with constant and sufficient tension during the entire process and may have to construct a custom serving mallet to do the job for your particular handle mean diameter.

Using the simple whipping methods for securing the bitter ends of a line will not work for you because after applying sufficient tension against the hard wood handle there will be no way that you could pull a line beneath the serving as you can with an underlying rope. If you could then you don't have sufficient tension on the serving so as to aid in preventing a break.

Knots which work well in nylon and dacron do not work well in slippery high-modulus line and, even then, reduce the overall strength to around 70 per-cent or so...take that into consideration. You can use either a clinch knot or a scaffold knot to attach to the middle of a short lenth of small diameter metal rod at each terminus. The rod is placed longitudinally with the tiller and each end is served with ordinary whipping line against the whole tiller. Obviously the starting end is the easiest to do. The finishing end must be temporarily clamped against the tiller until the whippig is finished.

There are more ancient techniques that were used by the Inuits, the North-west coast American indians, and the polynesians. Some examples I have seen in museums yet do not know where is the documention for the techniques. Sorry

Rick

[Alan Wheeler]

Mate!!!. That's like---really a canoe---Dude!
That's want I want to see, someone reaaal keen to get out and sail. However, I ain't going to wish you "may the winds blow you long and far". I reackon you don't want to be going to farr

[austi012]

Thanks for all the insights, folks.

As far as the canoe goes... I really want to sail this year (just took lessons) but have no budget or place to put a sailboat even if I could buy it.

Anyways I thought I'd learn fast about sailboats, what works and what doesn't, by putting this thing together. And one way or another I'd learn about marconi rigs.

So far it's been a lot of fun, and it's been an excuse/motivator to burrow more deeply into various topics to solve issues as they've come up. I'm reading a book on designing and making high-performance sails now...

Thanks again to all!

Thaddeus from Minnesota

[boredinthecity]

Rick

If I understand you correctly you said that it would be difficult to use the normal whipping techniques to finish to whipping. In archery (a past life) we used to start the whipping by tying a square knot in the starting end and then serving over the top of the "tail". The finishing end we used to either "back serve" or use the technique shown in the web link to draw through the bitter end without pulling back through the total length of the whipping (serving). There is a better technique referred to as back serving but I don’t have a diagram for. As the different materials apply we found that with dacron serving we could only come back under about 15 turns and with fastflight (spectra) we used to come back about 32 turns because it was more slippery as well as being stronger.

http://www.mac.asn.au/string_making....e%20Serving%20(Nocking%20Point)

The serving tool that archers use allows for very tight and neat whippings to be made. It is possible to make a larger scale tool to use heavier cordage

As far as techniques in traditional societies go they made use of the shrinking tendency of natural materials. ie rawhide, wrapped tightly when wet would tighten when dry. I don’t know how reversible the processes are but as you well know every thing on a boat will et wet!!

Regards

Paul

[captjohn360]

ashleys book of knots....

[Starbuck]

Thad,

A sailing canoe with PVC spars and outrigger, plastic tarp sails, and two-by-four framing. I love it!

I'm not going to assume that your pic shows your completed effort. I'm just curious. And I want to encourage you as much as I can.

I never was a great physics student (and have some scars to prove it), but I think you're going to need a much deeper slot for that lee board to slide down through. It's there to prevent leeway (side slip), which of course you know. With 2 inches of flat-bottomed draft, the canoe is going to want to slip downwind, and the board is going to want to track straight ahead. What is going to hold it in place?

Hold a table knife at the tip of the handle by your thumb and forefinger, and let the blade hang straight down. It's easy to wiggle it with your other hand. Now wrap your fist around the handle and try to move the blade. This is the kind of reinforcement that is needed.

If you can lift the canoe body up, lower that board, and wiggle it toward you and away, you've got trouble.

Even another slot screwed in underneath the top slot will be less than adequate, because the two points of restraint will be so close together, and the lever arm (the length of unrestrained board underneath the slot, in this case 95% of it) will exert too much force for it to control. I think something much stronger is needed.

The hull in that section of the canoe body looks relatively flat. Maybe finding some way to use that surface would provide the needed stability. A couple of rails running straight down, and a piece of ply screwed in on top of the rails, would create a nice little trunk that the board could slide down through. Or establishing a flat surface with a piece of ply, then building the rails and outside of the box from there, to create a more complete trunk. Either way, I can't see this being done without drilling through the canoe.

The sabots out here use a pivoting lee board, which is locked down with friction (in effect, a large wing-nut on the outside of a very large washer). That approach may work as well, but will still require lateral resistance of some kind.

Guys, isn't that wood going to need to be sealed?

And I'd love to see that lee board faired to an cutting and trailing edge.

Is that an outboard rudder? Just like a Viking longboat!

You must update us on your progress. Good Luck!

[austi012]

Here's the results from last weekend, the first sea trial:

Took it out to Lake Calhoun and set out. I had an 8-10 knot breeze coming from the shore where I set sail from.


The craft's performance can be rated thusly:

Run = A. I was able to keep pace running downwind with the other boats on the lake. I took great pleasure in the open astonishment on people's faces as they saw my odd little boat roariing along.

Beam Reach= A-.

Broad Reach = A-. Again, I was keeping up with everything out there.

Close reach = D-. It won't point into the wind very well at all. Bad Lee Helm!

Here's my analysis:

(1) My rudder totally bites. Complete redesign needed. It's buoyant and tries to come up out of the water. If I'm heeled to port (because it's mounted to starboard), it comes up out of the water. The tiller needs to be longer. It was bad news.

(2) The mast is stepped too far forward, so the center of effort is too far forward. This means that the wind is pushing the nose away from the line I want it to take, my rudder is all the way over creating too much drag, etc.

I discovered if I let the Jib luff and sail on the main alone I could point better, but still not well at all. And I lost speed because I was cutting my sail area in half. And it looked lubberly. Feh.

(3) I think my daggerboard needs to be longer and needs to be shifted forward or back to compliment the new center of effort, once I relocate the mast.. I need to read up on this and think hard about it. It did not waggle from side to side, but it was inadequate.

BUT:

The rig worked well. I had all the power I needed and then some! I was pacing a bunch of people in small sailing dinghies who were doing some around-the-buoys racing and I was holding my own. The looks of surprise and amusement were priceless.

The floats were big enough, but just barely. The boat felt very stable except during a couple of sharp gusts on a broad reach, then the float completely submerged. I wasn't anywhere near to capsizing, but the strut that holds the float was causing a lot of drag and it slowed me down.



It was quite a sight to see the leeward stays go all slack. With both sails full on a broad or beam reach, the thing just moved OUT.

But I had fun. A lot of people said I was nuts, that it would never work, and it's 3/4 there.

[Alan Wheeler]

Wow, 10 points for trying. It sounds like you are learning a bunch as well.
Now others are going to have waay more knowledge and advice here than I have. But I suggest a couple of points to sort out, before doing to many radicle changes. Firstly the last point you made about the rigging going slack. I think this is an indicator of many things that could change the performace of the boat. I think you are getting too much flex in your hull and cross members to the outriggers. This can be rectified very easily by usign a "bridle type staywire"(for want of a better term) . It's a stay that comes from the outer end of the outrigger boom and comes down to the hull and another up above the gunnale and over to the other end of the outrigger boom. A spacer lifts/spaces the stay, so as you get a "guitar string" effect. This gives great strength in both up and down driections, without adding weight to your boat. Making the boat hull "stiff" will solve many issues.
The next issues is the daggerboard. It isn't central to your laterial centre of effort. You will improve that by making two dagger boards and placing one on the opposite side. They also need to be held more verticaly. You will notice it tries to skew off. This will stop it from being hydrodynamic and lean towards stalling, thus creating drag and it won't allow you to point.
Now here is a radicle thought and it may not work, but seeing as you are thinking radicaly. With two daggerboards, Make both a little sleaker and shape them a little more like daggers. As in, not so much width and better at cutting through the water. This will reduce drag and cavitation around their leading (cutting) edge. Then place a thin rail with a slight airofoil shape to it, from the bottom of one to the other, right under your hull. This could solve you problem of the boards wanting to skew and it will help stopping the water wanting to corkscrew out from under the bottom edge of the board.
And finally, buy two 45degree bends for the front of your outrigger pontoons. This will stop the noses digging in and will aid in them lifting up abit as well and give you a little more floatation effect.

[austi012]

That's an interesting idea about the stays, but I doubt the outrigger is flexing much at all. They are red oak and I can pick the whole boat up by lifting one float. The flex is probably being introduced in the mast itself, as it is only 1.5 inch PVC. Strong enough to withstand a 50 mph gust (at least in my back yard) while fully rigged, but I can't put any more tension on it than I am now.

The daggerboard idea, of the duals with the airfoil crossbar, is really interesting. One of my design imperatives is to keep the canoe a canoe, i.e. no permanent mods. My wife has spoken. As it stands now, I can remove everything (mast, outriggers, floats, tiller) and have a plain old canoe by undoing 6 wing nuts. The whole shebang goes on the roof of my van. Total weight: 140 lbs. And since I am setting this thing up and knocking it down on shore, running another strut underneath the boat could be a challenge.

I also like the fact I can lift the daggerboard when I get close to shore.

But!

If I were to put some sort of foam pad between the daggerbooard and the side of the boat, and connect the 2 with a wire under tension.. that might address the concerns about the boards skewing off. Drop the boards/pads in place, run the wire, done.

Hm...

[Starbuck]

Thad,

Thanks for the pics!

Looks as if my concerns about the floppy leeboard that I went on and on about had no substance. Good news.

The foam block you describe can stabilize the lee board, and if it (the foam) is high enough to keep out of the water, won't add any drag. That idea is promising. Not being able to damage the canoe hull mean you'll have to be creative.

Sounds as if you understand your center of effort issues, and are encouraged to continue the experiment. Keeping the leeboard close to CE I think is wise.

All in all, a great first outing. Congratulations!

And yeah, with 8' of PVC tubing, you're always gonna have some mast bend. I'm sure you'll figure it out. Your current shrouds look like braided nylon: that's going to stretch quite a bit under load. I think the key here is replacing with a low-stretch material.

InRe to boards: shallow-draft boats like this have been sailed for a long time with only one lee board; keeping it in the water seems to be tied to the buoyancy of the outrigger and the resulting heeling angle. Fixing that (doubling up? larger diameter?) may make mods to the board unnecessary because of a flatter ride when the board is to weather. And reducing its surface area will just make it less effective. I say leave it as it is.

Keep us posted!

[austi012]

I have figured out the new rudder. Instead of shallow and long, mounted to starb'd, it will be deep and (relatively) narrow, mounted in the centerline.

The unit wraps over the stern and is secured with 3 wingnuts. It includes a sternsprit.



There will be a length of 3/4" electrical conduit that runs up from the rudder, through the sternsprit, and is then attached to the tiller.

The purpose of the sternsprit is to stand my backstay off aft, so when I move my mast (sometime this week, I hope) I can use the same rig without having the boom foul the backstay.

Here's another shot:


I am going to 'dress up' this unit a little. Note the indents at the outermost end. The narrower part will have a metal ring woolded to the top, which the backstay will attach to.

I may run some line from the.... (for lack of a better term), skeg... to the crosspiece that has the wingnut bolts. This will keep the unit from moving from side to side under stress.



More pictures when I move the mast.

[GordMay]

You might be interested in reading:
“Evolving the sailing canoe rig for cruising” ~ By Meade Gougeon (WEST Systems ©)
http://www.westsystem.com/frames/tier1/usesforepoxy.htm
Under the Heading "Epoxy Techniques & Materials"
and
another artuicle under the heading "Boat Construction"

[Steve Kidson]

You need to be congratulated and encouraged to continue. You are out there doing while many just look and dream!

A couple of things that I remember from my dingy days that may help;
- I had a rudder with a pivoting blade, it could be locked in the down position with a pin that was then removed when approaching more shallow water
- I have sailed on catamarans with rudders that had shock cord connected to the blade, and once again, when into deeper water, this was tightened and pulled blades into the water. Shock cord is used as it will be a little forgiving if you for get to release when approaching shore.

Keep up the good work

Fair winds

Steve