Passagemaker hull stitching

 

I’ve just stitched my hulls parts together for my Passagemaker Standard. Is it possible  to wire the parts too tightly? My stitched hull has quite a U-shaped look, from stern to bow, at least more than the picture in my manual.

Since I’m a visual person, and not sure of the “look” of the boat, I thought I’d throw my question out to the Forum. I’m trusting that as transoms and bulkheads get added the boat will pull into alignment.

Thanks for any feedback.

Scott 


11 replies:

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RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

Is it possible to over tighten? Absolutely.

Did you? Maybe, maybe not.

The PM is supposed to have a curved sheer (higher at the ends than in the middle). For many boats the 3D shape seen by your eyes is different than the 2D shape captured by the camera, so what you're seeing could be absolutely normal.

The easiest way to tell is by doing the measurements for twist, symmetry, fairness and squareness in the manual. If you've over tightened, it'll show up as either a twist, an asymmetrical shape, an unfair (with a bump in it) curve or an unsquare (fore an aft transoms don't match up) hull. If none of that is the case, you have a perfect hull.

If any of that is the case, then you start fiddling with the stitch tensions to fix things.

Good luck,

Laszlo

 

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

She is a curvy  thing.  The completed boat does actually rock considerably on her bottom "rocker," even once the skeg is in place.

If you are building from a kit, if the plank laps are all mated correctly, and if the ends of the planks come out pretty much even, you can't really go to far wrong.  You do want to leave a little wiggle room as you wire things up so you can make sure the transoms and bulkheads can fit in correctly.  You will need to jiggle things a bit to get everything to mate up, then sort of go around and tighten up all around, checking measurements to make sure you don't introduce some twist.  You'll want to take your time with that before you start gluing things up.  Don't try to tighten each individual wire all at once, is the main thing.

This is a part where extra hands may help, but they need to be patient folk who don't mind standing around at times until you sure you know what you need them to help you do.

Trust the kit.

.....Michael

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

Great advice above, as usual.

You can overtighten the stitches, but that usually results in the wire either breaking or damaging the wood.  A snug fit at the seam is obviously ideal.  Copper will will break relatively easily.  I used stainless wire, which was much tougher, but was also able to damage the wood more easily.

As mentioned above, there is quite a bit of rocker built into the design.  Here are a couple of pics of my PM, that hopefully shows that while on the sawhorses during the stitching phase and another of the completed boat on a flat surface.  I would say about 12" of vertical difference between the bow and the contact point on the ground, which is a pretty large curve across 12'. 

Good luck with your project, keep us posted and feel free to post pics if that helps illustrate your question.

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

 

 

 

Thanks as always to the amazing Forum Folks.  As I said my strong visual orientation sometimes messes with me so I’ll take what you’ve all shared and keep assessing. To your point about the various measurements, Laszlo, I don’t see anything with that kind of specifity in my manual. In a conversation with Nikki, in Tech Support, I discussed that my manual may be an older version since it calls for drilling wiring holes every 4” and my kit parts came with holes pre-drilled at 6” intervals. Is the detail you mention about twist, symmetry, etc., available online via CLC?

I’ll start with other measurements you folks mentioned and maybe have another conversation with Tech. And I’ll try to post a pic too!

Again, I appreciate the Forum so much.

Scott

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

I forgot to mention the use of "winding sticks" to make sure the boat doesn't have a slight twist.  With the boat right side up on the sawhorses or floor, place straight edges (levels) square athwartships at the bow and stern, then back up and lined up the top edges.  If they're perfectly parallel, then the boat should be straight. 

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

CLC's kayak building video, showing how to use winding sticks to check for twist.

 

 

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

Finally trying to send a pic for my Forum friends to view my Passagemaker in early “stitch.” Not sure if the pic will arrive in a format that is viewable so please alert me if not. I’ll try again. The link someone sent about attaching photos in Forum was not functioning.

  

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

Well, that was me posting this link:

https://www.clcboats.com/various/posting-photos-forums.html

...in another thread regarding how to post photos.  Sorry that didn work for you.

The link does take me to the correct page, but now that I'm looking at it more closely, the illustrations about how to do this using "tinypic" and the little photo insert button in the "Add A Reply" form aren't showing, using Firefox browser.  Tried looking at the page with Chrome and MS Edge with the same results.  I was able to get the illustrations to show coming at it with old Internet Explorer, for all love.  Weird.  That''d be all of the browsers I have available on this machine to try just now.

Anyway, if you can't get to the page or can't see the illustrations, it's no help at all.  If you want to email me your photos, or links to them on some photo sharing service, I'd be happy to put them in here for you.

.....Michael

[email protected]

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

May be a firewall thing, it's working fine for me with FireFox.

A long story made short - put your image on a server somewhere, copy the image's URL, click on the photo insert button (just to the left of the "?" in the CLC "Add A Reply" form) to bring up the image form and paste the image's URL into the form. If all is good, there'll be an image preview. Set the displayed width to 575 or less and click OK.

Laszlo

 

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

Turns out it was my over-agressive add blocker.

Here's a photo Scott sent me of his mostly wired up Passagemaker:

Here are his remarks from that email:

You’ve been very helpful in the Forum regarding my Passagemaker question. I’ll try to send a pick here. Since this pic was taken I’ve removed both transoms per Nicky in tech support to try and tighten up some of my hull pieces to achieve a better fit for the transoms. My first fit of the transoms found the aft one a bit more matched to the hull pieces, whereby the fore one seemed pretty funky. That bulkhead is just sitting there with no wiring done yet.

What do you think? My original concern had to do with the “rocking chair” look of the boat but that may have been my naïveté since my other build was an LT17, so I was not sure what to expect once the Passagemaker was wired up.

Thanks again,

Scott

...and my response to him:

Curviness looks about right.  If you have all the "lapstitch" plank edges mated correctly, it's got to be pretty close to right.  Looks like you next need to concentrate on getting the gaps around the transoms closed up.  The whole business should seem a bit wriggly at this point, and you will likely need to jiggle things a bit as you progressively snug up the transoms and the frames to get the final shape established.  Lookin' good so far.

I'll put your photo up on the CLC forum later today, and I'll try to dig out some of my own photos from our build when we were at this stage to share with you.

.....Michael

RE: Passagemaker hull stitching

Nice save Michael!  Yes, overall the curvature looks right.  With me sitting on the aft thwart, she sails with the bow up in the air a bit.  That way she can ease her way into the waves.  I also agree that some serious tweaking needed to be made to close up that daylight. 

Regardless, once she's straight with no twist, the fillets will lock her in place and are very forgiving.  Of course a lot depends on if you're planning a bright finish or not.  I knew I was going to paint my PM, so I was pretty aggressive with rounding off the outside corners.

BTW, my 12 minute PM build video is almost ready to publish.

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