Currachs are in the details...

Welll nothing too exciting to report at the moment ..have been attaching bits and getting ready for the final assembly.

There's a lot of details to be taken care of before the boat can come together.. all the silly stuff that you don't really think about when ya start building a currach .. and currachs are some of the simplest boats to build in a lot of ways cos they are quite forgiving.









So  what's left to do?

The upper gunnel has to come together. All the wedges of the thole pins have to be done.
The mortices for the ribs and the holes for the thole pins have to be made.
All the wedges have to be cut for the thole pins. Another breasthook has to be made.
The reinforcing gussets for the upper gunnel have to be made.
All the stringers have to be glued together.


We have had a lot of problems with the gunnels cracking when we are bending them. We cracked another one the other night cos I lost the thermometer and didn't know what temp the pipe was at. Looks like it was too low. Anyway instead of buying yet another one we decided to cut it in half and then soak them again and steam and bend the halves while cutting out the bit that cracked, this worked out pretty well and it's all bent up now waiting to be epoxied back together.
We always set this blog out to be a true record of trying to build a currach from scratch having never built a boat before. Hopefully people who are thinking of attempting this will be able to learn from our mistakes. God knows we have made plenty so far and I'm pretty sure there is more to come, they don't bother us though, both of us like working through them.

Scarf joints and stringers

Right so, once the gunnels are done (and we are getting closer I swear) we will move on to constructing the body of the boat that your feet rest on as you row. This consists of ribs and stringers. Ribs are exactly what you would think by the name and on our boat we are making both them and the stringers out of cedar. They will be running in the same direction as the seats and are steam bent into roughly half circular shape as you would have seen in much earlier posts.

All clamped up and nowhere to go...

Original split

You may remember a couple of posts ago we had a bit of an auld problem with the prow splitting apart on the boat... this is not only before it has hit the water but before it has even been assembled!

Anatomy of Currachs: Tachtaí

I realise the rowing terms and seeing individual bits being made may not make a whole lot of sense so for those of us who like a visual aid here's a kind of infographic I did this morning to explain the constituent parts around where the oars go.