A piece of Junk Sail- pt3 of the Ulua Proa project

Lookit!

I know, I know. You see a kid, Cheez-its, a tarp and a pole.

I SEE a sail, mast, hard-tack and my galley-slave-er-I-mean-second-mate... Yeah.

Ok, so the sail is just a tarp. It's a $30 heavy duty tarp that we cut into the right shape and then sewed "cambers" or darts into to give the sail a bit of a shape. I still need to reinforce all the edges and corners.  We were going to make the sail out of cotton but I think it will mildew if we don't get it perfectly dry every time. And that's annoying. Someday I'll drop the money into nice sail cloth but for now, all that money needs to go towards the actual boat.

I did discover that my sewing machine does NOT like the UV stabilized poly thread that I'm using. Then my husband tried to use it to make a button hole on a different project. Heh. That didn't work. Its good stuff that will hold up to the sun's violence, but its just thick.

The mast is a 12' aluminum windsurfing mast that I got on Ebay for $50. I'm not certain it will be tall enough to allow for the boom (the wood pole at the bottom of the sail) to clear our heads, so we might make a modified stub sail like this.

Why? Because I don't like concussions. 

The other thing I purchased of interest recently was three shark teeth. This is quite random, but so am I so don't worry about it.

I got one for each of our small family and I intend to sand down the edges a little so they're not as dangerous then mount them on the bow. See that little nubby thing on the tip of the boat? That's called the manu and sometimes its quite elaborate. Therefore, that means I get to have some fun!!

At first I wanted to put a dragon head on the bow, Viking style, cuz I'm a Viking. But then, considering that this is a Pacific Island boat, the Norse Firedrake didn't seem appropriate. So my mind wandered back to the time we sojurned at the Polynesian Culteral Center in Hawaii and visions of weaponry burst forth upon my minds eye. Sorry, the mention of Norse Mythology sometimes causes me to wax poetic. I'm done now.

We saw many examples of weapons like this. A tribal man's brass knuckles and dagger combo.

Carved wood, with shark's teeth lashed to a groove in the edges to create a beautiful weapon that I wouldn't want to be attacked with. For a pre-metal society, these were probably very effective. Well, I've always been fascinated by the history of weaponry, so incorporating something like this seemed appropriate to me.

The only challenge is to do it in a way so we don't damage ourselves on the teeth. This will be fun.

New dreams! Starting to build the Ulua Proa...

Long time, no blog! We're starting a new project over here, so trying to blog again seemed appropriate.

In the past few months we've made Pirate hooks... And giant lizard tanks...

 

Sold bunnies and bikes....

 

...To make room for new dreams.

Like THIS!!

This is a strip built sailing "proa" which is kind of like a catamaran with uneven hull sizes. Yes, we're probably biting off WAAAAY more than we can chew. But that's pretty normal for me. 

I've wanted to build a boat for 8 years or more. I have probably 3 dozen different boat plans saved on various computers. This particular one is called the Ulua by Gary Dierking.  There's debate around here on how to pronounce that properly. If you're at all interested in building one for yourself, this is his website, and this is the book we're building from. 

These are our other two favorite boats that we were looking at. The first one is the Light Scooner by Phil Bolger. There's a hysterical blog about some builder/sailers with quite a few fun stories. Please ignore the annoying music...

Then this is the other one we were looking at. The Arctic Tern by Tad Roberts. We loved the look of this boat and the plans were free but..... We wanted something we could sail solo and a 24 foot boat just isn't that. It was sailed to Alaska and back and that makes for major awesome points. 

So we landed on the Ulua. 

I like it. 

Our first step was anything but glamorous, but to us (me) it was exciting. Wanting to do something for 8 years and then finally getting to mark the first measurement on wood was like taking the first step on an epic journey. 

The road goes ever on and on, 

down from the door where it began...

Anyway, this was the first step. Lofting. It is NOT as scary or mysterious as some sites make it seem. If you can follow directions well and know how to use a tape measure and square, you're good. It's basically drafting a graph and then plotting the points along the curve, making the outline of the mold for the hull. 

Simple in concept, but overwhelming the first time you see one of these offset charts...

Yeah. That's all you need to build a boat hull. 

(These are not the offsets for the Ulua. Buy the book!)

So we got this. The outline for our first mold station. Only 16 more to go! 

Tell me now if it looks crooked to you. It totally does to me in this picture....

I'm going to try my best to take pictures regularly and post as we go. I think this stuff is interesting, maybe someone else will too! 

ps- I want to put one of these sails on it.

Because I can.

How we made a Photo Booth

So church asked us to make a photo booth. If you don't know what one is, it's so you can do this:

We're theater people, so naturally we looked at this like a set. We could make it like a theater flat, and then cut windows into the front and put frames on it. A little more complicated than that, but that was the general idea.

We started with the size: 7 feet tall by 8 feet wide. There was a lot of discussion about how to build it, using pvc piping or whatnot. We finally landed on traditional theater construction. If you're using this so you can build your own, you can learn more about that type of building here. I would recommend a 'hard' flat, but a soft flat would work too if you want to save a buck. You can make two flats and attach them so it will fold and store smaller.

Disclaimer - making one of these takes basic carpentry and basic sewing skills! But I believe in you.

We dug around in the drama dept. bin at church and found two flats we could sacrifice. One was 4' by 8', the other 3' by 8'. Perfect! Once we tied them together, we would have a 7' by 8' flat. We also found an 8' long piece of molding to use for a chair rail. Painted it white.

The next step was to figure out some frames. Garage sale time! I would have liked some round ones, but you make do with what you have. We ended up with 4 frames. The rule of thumb is variety is king! We removed the innards (some god-awful 'art' from the 70s) and spray painted the frames flat white. You could use a matte white also, but I prefer the look of flat. I'd stay away from gloss, but that's my personal preference.

The trick with getting a good paint job with spray paint is to do lots of thin coats. Too thick at once and it will drip! Also, watch out for leaves, like the one that's attacking my frame. Remember good ventilation and all that... 

So we had our giant flat, our frames and I went to the fabric store with one of the pastor to pick out the fabric. That was fun, haha. I don't know if he'd ever been in a fabric store before! Anywho, this is what he picked. 

Fun summery colors for the summer event this is for! So I did iron it, (you can iron on your table if you throw down a few towels first) but I now think that I wasted my time. It probably helped get out the big creases though. 

I got 3 yards of the yellow for the top (60" wide material) and 1.5 yards of the stripey stuff. I needed the stripey to be 3' wide and 8 feet long, so I cut my piece in half, long ways to get two long strips 3' wide. Then I sewed them together to get a single strip that was 3' wide and 3 yards (9 feet) long. You'll need to do the math to make sure you get enough material to cover what you want, and pay attention to where your seams hit!! I've found that it helps me to do little drawings of how things will work out. 

So you should have two long pieces, one 5ft x 9ft, and another 3ft x 9ft. Sew em together! Now you have one ginormous piece 8ft x 9ft. ps- you can totally do this with the same type of fabric so it all matches. Just keep in mind that if it has a pattern, you'll need to buy extra so you can match the patterns up.

Ok, next step! Once we had the flats built and tied together (we screws a long 1/2" x 1" piece of wood along the side and added small pieces of wood to tie the two together in the middle) we needed to figure out where to put the pictures! We just places the frames around until we had a layout we liked. Pay attention to how high they are, unless you're intending on having boxes available. 

Then, on the back of the flat, we cut and places wood 1x3s so that we'd have something to staple the frames to. We used the same techniques for building the flats to get the 1x3s in place. Make sure it's squared up! It ended up looking like this when we were done. You can see the top part is much more divided up from the bottom. 

Our already has the fabric on it because we're recycling old flats. Don't worry if your doesn't at this point.

K. Now flip it up and cut Xs in your window openings. Go right to the corners. (skip this step for new flats. If you have made 'hard' flats, now would be when you'd cut open holes in the plywood)

Next, roll back the triangles from your X, so you have several layers thick and staple the fabric back onto they 1x3s. We're using a pneumatic stapler, but a regular hardware stapler would work too. An office stapler won't. Sorry! 

Now flip it around an put it on some tables or sawhorses. You'll want to be able to access it from all sides. It should be face up. Lay out your big, beautiful fabric!! We knew we wanted our chair-rail to be 30" high, so we marked that distance on the flat, on both edges. Then we lined up the seam between the two different types of fabric on those marks. We folded it several times, so the staples would have something to bite into and stapled first at that seam. Then, using the artist method for stretching a canvas, we worked our way around and stapled the whole sha-bang down, pulling it tight as we went. (that's my man!) 

Our line was a little wonky, but we covered it up with the chair rail, making sure we got it level when we nailed it down to the sides and the one wood cross piece in the center. We used finishing nails that wouldn't leave big marks. 

Now flip it upright again, and cut out your holes, stapling the fabric back like we had to do earlier. 

Next, flip it around to the front side and nail your frames down! Make sure to use a level. 

We're going to paint the fabric that shows inside the frames white. We're also going to use traditional theater bracejacks to keep it upright. (there's info at the bottom of that link) These normally need to be sandbagged.

The last step is to set it up in front of some black drapery so there's a good background and then take a bunch of pics!!! Don't forget to get lots of fun and silly props for people to use. I'll post pictures from the event. I hope everyone will like it!

Got any suggestions for how to make this better? Let me know. Or if you have something you're not sure how to make, ask away!! I love a challenge. ;)

Due Diligence, whatever that means

So the other day, quite randomly, I found this:

5 acres only 15 minutes away from town. The land is completely undeveloped which is exciting on the one hand, but ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING at the same time.

Tomorrow we are talking to the realtor and making an offer on it, PROVIDED we have a good way to escape if something gets to scary in escrow!!

There is enough flat-ish land to put a house and a parking area. The rest is pretty steep, which is why its cheap! Ha! ...Poetry.

And because I'm obsessive, I've found a house plan I like.

I can get lost for days at that website. But I really like the lay out of this house. Big common room. Bedrooms and master suite on opposite ends. GIANT garage. I like garages... Oh! And see it has a spiffy spiral staircase? Anything with a spiral staircase is automatically cool. 

Who knows if we'll actually be able to afford to build this particular house, but if we do get to build, it will be along similar lines.

So, again, because I obsess on projects and I have no restraint... I did this:

Its an unfinished 3D mock up of the building, on the actual property, complete with topography, pulled from Google Maps. (the 3D model is a mirror image of the above plans, if you're wondering) No, I did NOT use crazy expensive programs to do this. You can get this 3D modeling program for free from these guys. It's called SketchUp and I love it!! Whenever I have a really complicated design that I need to communicate, SketchUp always saves the day! Ok. Enough with the product placement. ;)

Back to the property. I figure I'll just post as we go along this process. There's so much to learn!! Our first step was to befriend a General Contractor. We found two at church and got to enjoy watching them argue about how to put in a septic tank properly. The strangest things can be entertaining...

We went and walked the property with one of them, that's when I took the video. He was very encouraging and was interested in the dirt himself if we don't get it! That's a good sign, right? But they kept saying that we needed to do our 'due diligence' during escrow so we don't get screwed. Great. What does that mean!?

According to Google - 

due dil·i·gence

Noun Reasonable steps taken by a person in order to satisfy a legal requirement, esp. in buying or selling something.

Ooook.... Not at all helpful. So we asked them for a list. Its long. If you're curious, message me and I'll email it to you. It should apply to any property. It was just way too long, technical and boring to post!

But I'm grateful for the list, because the last thing we want is to get stuck with an unusable piece of land because we didn't do our homework!! See kids? Stay in school! It teaches important things, like following through and research! And grammar, which somehow escaped me... Spelling too. Oh well. 

Now for the spiritual part. There is that verse in Proverbs 31 about "she inspects a field and buys it," and that's really what I'm doing here. The hubby is at his job, so I get to do the leg work. It is quite empowering because so often I look to him to just make the big decisions as the Biblically mandated leader of the family. Yet here I am, driving this thing! Don't get me wrong, he's on board for this. I wouldn't be moving forward if he wasn't ok with it. But it's my baby. 

Hopefully, this baby doesn't destroy us financially... Risks are fun!! (we need a sarcasm emoticon) 

The plan is to go sllllooooooooowwwllly. Carefully. And hopefully wisely. Once we're in escrow I shall do my due diligence and may God's will be done. Amen. 

And last, for your viewing enjoyment: 

A staged picture of models and actors pretending to be architects and business people. Do you really think they're in a construction zone requiring hard hats? Why don't they all have hard hats? Maybe the two girls have metal plates in their heads so they don't need hard hats. It could happen. Twice. I wonder what shoes they're wearing... Betcha $5 none of 'em are wearing steel-toed boots. 

Have a great day.