Wasioto Whitehall Build

[GladMax]

I am building what I call a Wasioto Whitehall.
Whitehalls were the ubiquitous water taxi and delivery boats in Boston and NY harbors from around 1820 to 1920. A fixed seat, one to two position rowboat tending to range from 13ft to 17ft I think ('m not an expert nor nautical historian, these are the ones I've seen). Though they have a ('wineglass') transom, the water plane is similar to a canoe: a pointy football. The length to beam ratio runs around 4:1 (canoes tend close to 5:1, traditionally large sail and powerboats aimed for 3:1, most motorboats these days seem closer to 2:1). They're an all-arounder: something designed to carry mild cargo, deal with decent chop, and be powered by human muscles at a 19th century East Coast business pace all day.
The boat I am building is actually a Shenandoah Whitehall, a Skin on Frame adaption of the NY Whitehall, as drawn by David Gentry, of Gentry Custom Boats. I'm not changing the shape any. Wasioto Whitehall is my own nickname name for my version, being built next to the river Caucasions call the Cumberland, and Shawnee referred to as Wasioto.
You can look at many pictures of many builds of this boat on Dave Gentry's website: GentryCustomBoats dot com, or at least I found many there at one point. I purchased plans and instructions from DuckWorks Boat Builders Supply, at Duckworks dot com, but the site doesn't seem to be working on my computer right now. Here are two pictures of the Shenandoah Whitehall. The first is from a build thread posted by Barry on Woodenboat Forum dot Com, the second is from David Gentry's site.

 

[Crawforde]

Very nice!
I’ll be following with interest.

 

[GladMax]

The boat is perhaps 20% complete at this point, today, July 24th. I'll bring you kind folks up to date, and hopefully keep posting progress till complete.
When I purchased the plans I worked at a Marina. They described me as Dockboy, I called myself Caretaker. Two of my three days a week I had a smokey barge to myself, but I didn't want it ever, and the other day a week I had to fight five mechanics for it. It could push a floating dock with 50 40fters if we ever needed it to, and envelop everyone in 50yards with caustic synthetic 2strk oil exhaust any time anyone needed to jaunt across the bay.



I asked if I could bring something of my own. After I was able to explain to the HarborMaster (who grew up with 60ft SeaRays) the difference between displacement and planing hulls, how much power they require and how much wake they create, and convince him I could go just as fast in a Shenandoah Whitehall as the Harbor 'Wagon, albeit with zero disturbance to the water or air, and told him Dave Gentry is a designer considered highly by the Woodenboat crowd, and many many boats of this type have been built, he approved the project.
At the time (oh, the difference one year makes!) I wanted to be a pro boat builder. Gentry's Shenandoah Whitehall is billed as a beginner's project, taking 60hrs to complete. I figured I could slap one together quick, display my wares around ppl with the means to buy, and start selling my way up. But after I ordered all the parts (wait till you see the wood I spent $250 on!) and paid for the plans, I read the legals that it can't be built for sale!
Oh well. This boat will still teach me water in a way canoes can't.

 

[Gamma1214]

...I read the legals that it can't be built for sale!

Get the experience with this hull & re-evaluate afterward. It really doesn't take much change in hull shape to become "unique" although some minor tweaks may change handling characteristics significantly (for better or worse).

 

[GladMax]

Thank you for your encouragement and positive support, Gamma. In my opinion: handling characteristics pro vs con are opinions thru the butt of the boater. Water is not a static medium and neither are humans, why should boats be? I like what Andres Segovia said about a custom guitar that wasn’t what he expected: “A guitar is like a woman: she is what she is.” I feel a pilot has to know their boat and how she responds to various conditions, and the operator's awareness and abilities have a lot more affect than the boat shape on whether the two have a good time out there and/or make it home.
Changing boat designs is a can of sticky worms. Its something I’ve studied and the answers I arrived at are a large factor in the decision not to be a boat builder for a living.
Nautical Architect/Artists may take offense if changes are made, as it could imply the boat was not as quality/pretty as it could have been. Or, the shape being changed, they may not approve of their name being attached. Conversely, if a builder changes a few lines, and declares the boat their own, educated viewers may say: ’that boat is actually a ‘DaveDesign,’’ and subsequently the builder gets a reputation in the industry as a thief, appropriator, etc. Boats and canoes have been around for centuries. Like music, where there are seven notes in a scale and three chords to cover them all: in boats there is a basic shape that works, and limited ways to make it pretty. My favorite designer is Paul Gartside, both form and function: anything I’d draw from scratch would seem a lot like his. When would it become mine?
I have been told: “in cases of Intellectual Property and Name, courts require at least four significant differences.” But ’Significant’ is not a number, a tangible: it is an judgement call. Judgement calls are formed as much by approval of the investigated individual’s personal characteristics as they are by facts. And gossip has more fuel for spread than facts.
Boats, and canoes, are a small world, governed by a culture of unspoken rules. A primary one being up and coming builders must conduct themselves the way those who arrived ahead of them think they should. So if I change a little bit but in opinion not enough, or row it around for a few months and try to call it used, and the observer is in a grumpy mood when they hear about it: I will no longer be able to attend a party with boat people in it, let alone get help on designs or obtain a decent professional reputation. I consider it best I do things the way Gentry said publically, even if he ever told me different privately.

 

[Boatman53]

If the boat turns out as nice as you hope and someone asks if you can build them one you can always reach out to the designer and work out a licensing agreement. Sometimes it’s the full price of a set of plans per boat often it is less. I sell plans and when I heard someone I knew was building multiple boats and actually teaching lapstrake building (at the Wooden Boat School in Maine) using my plans we worked out a deal that he would encourage his students to buy a set of plans so they had their own reference when they got home. That turned out to be far more lucrative for all of us.
Dockboy is much nicer than Wharf Rat, I heard that a lot. Being a skilled shipwright I often got called termite, much to my chagrin.
Jim

 

[GladMax]

Wow, Jim, your designs are being taught at Woodenboat School? That is some rarified air right there. Not too many in that illustrious category, guess I could figure out who you are pretty quick.
This boat is already turning out dramatically less nice than I hoped. Which is the real reason I called it quits on going pro. Is OK. There isn’t time in life to build all the boats I want for me. While ultimately I am more picky than nearly any customer I might scrounge from established folks such as yourself, imperfections are a totally different game when you didn’t pay for them.
Onto what I’ve gotten done so far.
I forget.
Recently someone asked me what keeps me up at night? I couldn’t think of any one category I could summarize it with at the time, but since I’ve decided it’s designing. I’ll lay awake and consider how this joins with that, in which order they then require completion, how to create them with the tools I have. I have three books on how to build Skin on Frame/Fuselage boats, two Instructables on this boat specifically, Gentry's detailed instructions, and an article from SmallBoats, all of which I studied indepth. I had this boat all built in 3D technicolor mindspace, a year ago. I even made notes of how I’d do things, jumping ahead in Gentry’s plans, so I could achieve a few small differences in assembly. But it turns out all those notes are in short hand: cryptic references I cannot discipher. I have some parts laid out in front of me, but I am not all the way sure why they look the way they do.
I am going to have to restudy all that stuff, recreate the 3D Mental-Design file, before I go much further than the step I know I stopped before.
David Gentry provided a fantastic idea I had never heard: laminating gunnels into permanently into the arc of their intended sheer. However, his idea of assembling them on the boat scared me. Real wood doesn’t bend evenly, there is no way two, or three, or the four I went with, layers of gunnel are going to be as flush as I demand. I can’t remember how I got the profile offsets, but I did, and stacked them up for epoxying on the strongback. Here is an Outwale: three strips of Mahogany, and one of Western Red Cedar clamped together, and clamped to small blocks screwed to the Strongback.



I did the same for the Keelson, with four pieces of Ash. There it be, holding on its own the arc it’s meant to live at. On a curved form in the background are the two Inwales (two strips of Mahogany and one of WRC apiece) and one Outwale, behind them with left end stuck in a milkcrate is one Outwale, displaying it’s ability to withstand gravity out a full length.
I do not think this boat will hog/oilcan.

 

[GladMax]

I cannot remember all the reasons I went from 1/2in plywood frames to 3/4in, there were a few but perhaps a primary was it allowed me to trim them down till their inner edge would be flush with inboard plane of inwale.
Or maybe the main is Gentry has chinelines at each stringer, the skin to lie straight point to hard point. I hope to soften the stringer print-thru. With rounded stringer corners, held at an angle that’d evenly display top and bottom of stringer, I worried they'd want more connective surface area.



I plotted out gunnel block placements to cap the frames and took 1/4in off the tops for that, and took another 1/4in off their inboard border for a mahagony cap. Barry’s CAD drawing of the plan view provided frame/gunnel-stringer bevel angles, I also accounted for those while redrawing the frames.



Pretty sure it was from Barry’s Instructable I found a picture of the frames, stem and transom laid out in a configuration that allowed all to be cut from one 4x4 sheet of plywood. That saved me $400 in shipping.



And that is where she is at right now, 7/25. Next I will assemble what I have, and start finalizing stem angle. Will probably be a week-2 before any further progress reports.

 

[Boatman53]

Looks like you ar off to a good start.
Jim