Building a Strong Back

Building a Strong Back

This Whitehall will be built upside down by attaching strips of wood planking onto temporary forms. The forms must be mounted onto a strong back which is nothing more than a flat and level table that can support a few hundred pounds.

I built the strong back with 1/2" x 4' x 8' sheets of plywood, cut them and nailed them to a 2 x 2 frame and once I had a 16 foot long box I added some legs and casters so I could move it around to work on it. If you have the room it would be nice to have it permanently set up so you could shim the legs perfectly level. I do not have the room but fortunately my garage floor is very flat so it wasn't a problem for me to make it mobile!  

As you can see above I've marked a straight centerline by snapping a chalk line lengthwise and then used a carpenter's square to mark perpendicular lines spaced according to the plans.  Each perpendicular line represents a spot where one of the molds will be attached.

Here is another shot so you can see the entire structure. I have a level on top to check it out and I also temporarily set up an upright 2 x 6 that is the same height as the boat forms to make sure I can reach over easily.  

You might be wondering how I'm going to build a 17' boat on a 16' table? I don't have room to work around a 17'  boat so I'm going to proportionately shorten the spacing of the molds so I'll end up with a 16 foot Whitehall.  Hull speed in knots is calculated by taking the square root of the length of the waterline times 1.34 so I'll be losing very little speed through the water.

 As I'm writing this I'm pretty far along with the boat and I can tell you that this was one of the hardest parts of the job so once this is built you are on your way!