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45 degrees today at sunset. A bit of rain forecast for the next couple days, which we need badly. Our creek is bone dry. The ground is so hard that when I attempted to pull up metal fence posts with the front end loader, the posts stayed put and the rear of the Kubota lifted off the ground...

For the second time, Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage: Across the Atlantic in a Leather Boat. The author and his companions recreate the 6th Century travels of St. Brendan the Navigator, in a boat made of oxhides sewed together over a wooden framework. They successfully sail from Ireland to...

Glenn, it looks like we have a spam bot following this old thread.

Michael, connecting with like minded people is what this forum is all about. Gamma, thanks for the clarification. Local knowledge is always helpful. I need to amend what I said about boat launching in Virginia. "Officially," to use boat launches maintained by the Department of Game and...

Thanks, Michael. It's encouraging that the pollution has been cleaned up. We don't have to register canoes in Virginia, nor other manually propelled or sail-only vessels, just power boats. OTOH, I don't think it would be prohibited. Reciprocity would be an issue to research. The...

What? No jokes since July? Once upon a time, a man was having dinner by himself in a fancy restaurant. He looked around and saw a gorgeous woman with red hair, also dining alone. "Gosh," he thought, "she is beautiful and I sure would like to meet her." Just then the woman sneezed. Come to...

Two 12-15 ft. painters for each canoe. One 50 ft. throw bag. All are polypro and float. What would you use the static line for? IIRC it is non-floating and has minimal stretch; probably polyester with maybe some high-tech fibers. I can't think of a use on the river, except for a pulley...

Michael, thanks so much for this TR. The Allegheny is a river I'm interested in, and not too far away. Please tell us about PA boat launch permits. Does it really cost $22 to put your canoe in the river there, as shown on the state website? Here in VA the state owned boat ramps are all free...

Maurice Leblanc, Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar. Inspiration for the Netflix series. Borrow and read online with a free archive.org account: https://archive.org/details/arsenelupingentl0000lebl_u9d5 William A. Tidwell, April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War. A former...

I really amazes me how people can be such slobs. Our local conservation organization looks after one small river which is entirely in one county. This year we collected almost 2 tons of trash and 204 tires. We get the usual plastic bottles and plastic wrappers from hay bales, as well as wire...

Glenn, thanks for all you do. Today is Sunday, so the check will be in the mail tomorrow.

Yes, Glenn. Stripperguy, I just found your building thread and discovered that you also have a Shopsmith. And your workmanship is so much better than mine! The awful crunching sound you experienced is one reason I decided to build a boat with a pivoting centerboard. If you are able to...

You can see the centerboard of my boat protruding below the hull in the designer's drawing. The centerboard goes through a hole in the bottom of the hull. The centerboard case, or trunk, keeps the water on the outside, and also provides structure to take the lateral force of the board...

OK, back to centerboards, and time for a simple physics lesson. If a boat is to sail in any direction besides directly downwind, she has to have an underwater structure that resists sideways drift. Remember vectors from math class? A sailboat's direction of motion is the resultant of the...

I will explain centerboards shortly, Glenn, but first I should show how to make wedges. They are easy on a table saw, radial arm saw (shown here), or bandsaw, using a simple jig made from scrap lumber. Two identical wedges with their sloped faces together will have their outer faces parallel...

Changing the pulley gave the saw 25% more torque. This was just enough to enable it to cut the centerboard case, a 5 inch thick sandwich of hardwood, plywood, and fiberglass. However, the cut required a very slow feed rate and the saw protested. Don't try this at home, guys, find a bigger...

The bandsaw could, in theory, make a more accurate cut. But the little Shopsmith saw from 1957 bogged down in the cut. I needed more power. A trip to the farm co-op yielded a 5 inch pulley to replace the saw's original 4 inch driven pulley. The new pulley had a larger bore than the original...

I made a mockup centerboard case from scrap lumber for practicing my cutting techniques. Using the circular saw yielded a pretty ugly cut. This was not the way.

Thanx for the "likes", Gamma!

Moving from stern forward, it's time to trial fit the centerboard case. I won't be able to accurately determine the height of the center thwart risers until the CB case is fitted. I sure don't want to install the CB case as designed, with big screws going through the bottom of the keel. That...