Beveling

[tchiffriller]

I am building an eleven foot canoe and am very confused about beveling the molds. Could somebody please explain to me the process of beveling and some tips about beveling.


Thanks,
Tommy

[DGentry]

Hi Tommy

Designer Jim Michalak has an online essay about this very subject. Check it out here (scroll down a short bit): http://homepages.apci.net/~michalak/1jun07.htm

Good luck!

[JimConlin]

For molds, not bulkheads, if the shape of the boat is easy and it won't be necessary to clamp the planking hard to the molds, i often don't bevel them at all. Rather, I set the molds with one face on the station and toward the fatter part of the boat. I.e., in the forward half of the boat, molds' forward faces are on the station and in the aft half of the boat, molds' aft faces are on the station.

You can't always get away with this trick and little canoes often have places where the twist of a the planking demands pretty firm clamping and an un-bevelled mold might bruise or misalign the planking.

[dmede]

For smallish boats it’s pretty easy to do this by sight. Once the molds are set up you simply use a short flexible batten to sight from one mold to the next narrower mold (applying some bend to the batten or having it contact several molds to hold a true plank shape will help). Take note of the gap at the station face of the mold and transfer that to the face to be beveled. Do this in several spots, up and down the mold from bottom to sheer then connect the points free hand or with a straight edge depending on weather your molds are straight or curved. Use a spoke-shave, small hand plane or file to bevel the edge of the mold to the new line, being very careful to not shave any of the original station face off the mold (mark it with heavy ink to be sure you don’t cut into it).

Repeat for each mold (and of course you only need to measure off one side, the measurements can be transferred to the other side). Use a batten to constantly check your bevels as you cut them.

[tchiffriller]

Thank you. The batten trick seems to be the way to go.

- Tommy

[merlinron]

it is customary to indicate in the detail specs that the molds should be set with the aft face on the stations or the forward face on the stations to facilitate not having to bevel the molds. sometimes both, as... "molds 1-4 forward,5-9 aft".... to follow the curve without any beveling. setting all the molds to the same face will result in having to bevel one half of them, any way you look at it. it will also result in a slight deviation in shape, unless lofted dimensions are listed or obtained, but then it is necessary to call for thier positions fore or aft to keep shape true to plans. either way , on a small craft the small amount of shape deviation won't amount to much at all.