Depoe Bay Crab Feed and Boat Show

On the central Oregon coast it can rain all year 'round. Sun breaks are most holy. If the rain stops for five minutes, everyone comes out. Where are they hiding?

The small coastal community of Depoe Bay, Oregon sponsors a Crab Feed/Boat Show in April which is amazingly popular, considering you might have to wear thermal underwear with rain gear as a top layer.

By Sunday you will shed the rain gear and umbrellas, guaranteed.

Friday we experienced a thirty-knot, on-shore Pacific storm. Saturday morning the early morning mist still remained. As a result, many of the small wooden boats which had been registered to be displayed on the water this weekend, remained on their trailers in the parking lot adjacent to the boat basin. You might notice, this did not dissuade visitors from enjoying the festivities.

Frequent visitors here on DoryMan will recognize the boat building display tent from previous years. This year Boatguy and DoryMan are installing steam bent oak frames to the round-bottomed pram they planked last year, at this same show.

The design for this eight foot, round bottom pram comes from Geoffrey Prout. It is specified to be planked in solid wood, but in this case 1/4" mahogany plywood is used. The frames are set at six inch intervals and they are milled from oak. They are riveted, buy hand, to the hull with copper rivets and roves.

The guide hole for the rivet must be drilled at the plank lap, with a shallow countersink for the rivet head. The rivet is driven from the outside of the plank, then the rove is slipped over the rivet, on the inside of the hull. The rivet is cut off about 1/8th inch from the inside of the plank, then peened-over with a ball-peen hammer. The peened rivet must be hammered into a tight, mushroom-headed shape, to capture the rove and pull the two planks together.

All of this must be done while the frame is flexible from being steamed for about half an hour. The time required to render the frame supple enough to bend in the shape desired depends on the dimensions of the frame. In this case, they measure 3/8"x3/4".

Steam Bending Oak Frames to a Round Bottom Pram from doryman on Vimeo.

Saturday is captured and stored on Flickr, just for you.



Please, Enjoy!
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