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Re: Is a little twist Ok?
By:Malcolm Schweizer
Date: 9/10/2001, 10:37 pm
In Response To: Is a little twist Ok? (Brian Ramoly)

Hello, Brian. Nothing wrong with a cosine wherry! You may have seen my post a few months ago about problems with my strongback. I am building mine outside and the wind blew the whole thing over while I was out of town. The strongback broke, causing a warp. I had screwed and glued my station molds to the strongback, and I thought there was no way to take it apart. I tried using a piece of angle iron to straighten the strongback, and thought I had it fixed, but the strongback was a little wobbly. I decided a wobbly strongback is not really a "strong"back at all. Much to my surprise it only took me a couple of hours to disassemble the whole thing, and a 1/2 day to put it back together with my NEW strongback. This time I used a laminate of two 1 x 4's glued and screwed together. That was the best thing I could have done. The laminated strongback was so straight that I was able to use the seam down the middle as the center line. (After first checking it for trueness) The key was using a lumber yard that knew me well enough to let me pick through all their boards until I found two straight boards with no knots (these days it takes hours). The boards were glued up with spring clamps holding them together and a jig kept the boards straight while gluing.

The main point I'm making is that if you think the board is going to cause further problems, then by all means replace it- especially if you have to move the station molds anyway. Did the board warp after putting it together? If so then is it "finished" warping, or does it plan to warp some more??? You can certainly offset your station molds to fix the warp to a certain degree, but you didn't actually say "warped," you said "twisted," which is a whole other problem. A twisted strongback will cause the molds to twist and can be hard to detect until you are about 1/2 way through stripping. If you use a try-square to square your molds to your strongback then they will be twisted just like it is. The main thing is you have to be able to get all your molds lined up straight lengthwise AND across. Let me know what you decide to do. I certainly feel your pain and wish you the best.

By the way, the yak has migrated from the yard to the porch. It's 19 feet long and the porch is only 17!!! It has made for some real conversation throughout the neighborhood. They must think I am building a nuclear warhead out of wood on my porch. Oh well, at least it keeps the salesmen away.

Good luck,
Malcolm

Messages In This Thread

Is a little twist Ok?
Brian Ramoly -- 9/10/2001, 9:18 pm
Re: Is a little twist Ok?
Carl -- 9/11/2001, 12:38 pm
Re: Is a little twist Ok?
Paul G. Jacobson -- 9/11/2001, 12:18 am
c'mon baby, let's do the twist...
Dean Trexel -- 9/10/2001, 11:20 pm
Re: c'mon baby, let's do the twist...
Brian Ramoly -- 9/10/2001, 11:31 pm
Re: c'mon baby, let's do the twist...
Rehd -- 9/11/2001, 12:23 am
Re: c'mon baby, let's do the twist...
Russ -- 9/11/2001, 10:58 am
Re: c'mon baby, let's do the twist...
Dean Trexel -- 9/11/2001, 12:11 am
Re: Is a little twist Ok?
Rehd -- 9/10/2001, 10:44 pm
Re: Is a little twist Ok?
Malcolm Schweizer -- 9/10/2001, 10:37 pm