Building a Glen-L 15’ Sailboat

The spars are the wooden “poles” that hold up the sails and consist of two pieces: the mast (the tall upright post) and the boom (the horizontal member that attaches to the mast and swings to control the angle of the main sail).    The mast is made from a 22’ long piece of 3” x 4” Sitka spruce. It is tear drop shaped in cross section and tapered getting narrower at the top, so I will have to shape it out of a rectangular board. Sitka spruce was hard to find.  The only place I could find it was a boat building store near Toronto, Noah’s Marine, which is about a three hour drive and in a different country.  Luckily I had to drive to Toronto anyway so I stopped on the way. Even then, I couldn’t find a piece big enough to make the mast out of one piece (which I expected), so I had to make it out of several pieces. I bought 6 boards each about 1” thick by 4” wide by 12’ long, which I spliced in pairs to make three 22’ long lengths that I’ll stack and glue to make a single...

Having trouble agreeing on a boat name. Suggestions that have been rejected so far: Blow Me  -  the perfect name for a sailboat IMO Magnum Cockpit  -  it’s got 18’ of bench seating Nice Deck - the Mahogany deck is  beautiful Nice wood - Sapele brightwork does look great   15’ Woody - obvious for a 15’ wooden boat Morning wood - another wooden boat name Knotty Bitch - there’s all kinds of knots on a wooden sailboat (speed is measured in knots, all the lines have knots, and the wood is knotty) Peyronie - the mast has an unintentional curve Nice Aft

After installing the rub rail around the outer edge of the deck, all that’s left to finish the deck trim is to add trim to The top of the transom to hide the plywood edge Around the cockpit where the coaming meets the deck Down the center of the front deck to hide the seam where the deck plywood halves meet I started with the trim around the cockpit. This was challenging because it had to bend around the front of the cockpit, which is a semicircle with an approximately 26” radius. The trim is made of 3/4” x 3/16” strips of Sapele and will lie flat on the deck against the coaming. I installed the trim in two pieces of about 44” long each that meet at the front of the cockpit. Each piece needs to bend around half the semicircle (i.e. 90°). My very basic understanding of wood bending is that heating the wood softens the lignin in the wood so the fibers can slide against each other. In my first attempts to bend the trim, I used my new steam machine to heat each piece in a “box” made of a 5...

It took me a little while to decide how to design and make the rub rail and trim the deck. The plywood deck planking is attached to the frames with silicon bronze ring nails with the nail heads visible through the deck so I wanted to hide them (I tried to keep the nails evenly spaced and straight just in case). The seam between the decking and hull planking is also a little rough so I wanted to cover that up too. Finally I wanted to provide some protection for when the boat inevitably kisses the dock. This is the job of a rub rail – a piece of trim, usually rounded in profile, that follows the sheer and covers the seam where the deck and hull meet.  You can buy premade strips of rubber and/or metal rub rail, but I wanted to make them out of wood to match. The plans give two options for a rub rail as shown below. Neither of these options cover the nail heads on the deck, so I decided to deviate from the plans a bit and design my own trim and rub rails. I also wanted to make the rub ...

The coaming is traditionally a raised edge around the cockpit to keep water out. On this boat, the coaming is only 3/8” above the deck so it is mostly a trim piece to give the cockpit a nice finished look. The coaming is the first of many pieces of trim that I’ll have to make and install. The coaming is made of 1/4“ solid Sapele, so the first step is to make the 1/4” lumber I’ll need.  I started with 3/4” lumber, so I had to either plane or resaw it down to 1/4”.  Resawing means using a bandsaw to cut a board in half to get two thinner boards. Even though the coaming is only 3.5” high, it needs to be cut from a 6”wide board because it is curved.  I don’t have a big enough bandsaw but I do have a thickness planer, so I had to plane it even though it requires more wood. It took about 16 passes and multiple shop vacs of sawdust to get the pieces to 1/4”. I clamped the 1/4” side boards in position and traced 1/2” above the deck and along the bottom of the carling to get the f...

The cockpit in this boat is massive! It has almost 10’ of bench seating on each side. The seats are made of 1-1/4” by 1” Sapele slats. They follow the curve of the hull, so I had to bend them to fit.  The slats didn’t want to bend on their own, so I used steam to help. The photo below shows the slats temporarily installed.  I have to remove them once more to encapsulate them in epoxy for waterproofing and trim the ends to even them up.   I made a pattern out of a 2x6 to bend the slats. I just laid the straight 2x6 on the frame gussets, which also serve as the seat supports, and made a mark on the 2x6 at each frame showing the distance between the frame and 2x6.  A curve drawn between these marks will match the curve of the seat. It will actually be a mirror image, but can just be flipped over. Then I used a scrap piece of wood as a batten to draw a smooth curve through each point. I cut along the line with a jig saw and attached the two pieces together to get a full ...