Tom, Dick and Harry

Here's the official record of the Swanson-Harris Whirlwind Windmill Building Event!
[Published in the Jouster April 1993]

At some point in the early Fall of 1991, Mark and Emmie Swanson were treating me to yet another free meal in way of reprieve from the Washington College Dining Service. At the time I was stalled in the middle of a boat building project and was already fantasizing about another boat. Over dinner I brought up how easy it looked to build a Windmill, and Mark recalled his uncle building one in a week. Why not set up a jig and build a couple of hulls? Why not build three? The sale of the third hull would pay for the others!

We chatted for the entire evening, all the while the scheme getting more and more elaborate. May seemed so far away (months and months to plan!), and we were transfixed by the vision of gleaming wooden hulls popping one after another off the mold, assembly line fashion. By the time I headed back across the Bay to my dorm room in Chestertown, late that night, we had proceeded as far as ordering blueprints.

Of course, it was December by the time we got around to talking about it again. Hunched at Mark's drafting table in his attic, we pored over the plans. We were convinced that if we were going to spend this kind of time and money, these were going to be stateoftheart boats.

To this end, we were both disturbed at how outdated the plans seemed; since they were drawn, epoxy had revolutionized wood construction. We spent hours, scribbling on notebook paper, figuring out ways to exploit the virtues of the wood-epoxy recipe without abusing the bylaws. Stitchandglue construction came up among other exotic ideas, but we concluded, as we did throughout the process, that too much was at stake in time and money to risk raising the ire of the Chief Measurer.

That doesn't mean we didn't push the outside of the bylaws envelope. We decided at the beginning to loft the hull, that is, draw the plans full size. This would allow us to take full advantage of the Class' hull tolerances, optimizing the boat for speed. From the lifesize drawings we could make reliable patterns, assuring that the complex hull would come out just as we drew it. Later, we would discover how this sort of accuracy could be as much of a misfortune as an advantage.

In February, we bought two sheets of 4x8 drywall (easy to draw on) and Mark drove them up to Washington College to get the lofting going. We cut a skinny cedar batten in the Tawes Theater workshop, and went at it on the concrete floor of the College boathouse, working around racks of rowing shells and ergometers. When Security chased us out after dinner, we dragged the heavy sheets of drywall up to the campus and into the Gibson Fine Arts building. We handed the long batten up to Room 9 through the window.

To the sound of scratchy violins rehearsing in adjacent practice rooms we traced lines late into the night. When we ran out of time Mark carted the panels back down to his house, 75 minutes away. It was dreary work, and in fact we wouldn't finish lofting the details until the final days of construction in June.

As our late May starting date loomed, more questions were popping up than we were summarily solving. One thing we finally fixed on was the construction site. My parents' house in Wilmington had the best equipped shop and a good lumberyard nearby. And if we worked there, Mark's four year old twins would be spared toxic fumes and saw blades. Besides, even the greatest kids in the world can demand more attention than the most engrossing boat building project.

In Spring we started tracking down the materials; we wanted everything at hand on the first day of construction so that none of our carefully scheduled three weeks was wasted.

On April 24th, Mark withdrew $1000 in cash and we met at Harbor Sales in downtown Baltimore, nervous but ready to carry away a pile of Okoume plywood. Mark had forgotten to bring the sheet on which we had exhaustively planned how to cut up our plywood for best economy, but we managed to reel off a long list of miscellaneous sizes. They were delighted at the size of the order and especially at the cash, but, sorry, the next shipment of panels wouldn't be arriving via container ship from Greece until late May, and that was questionable. Customs, you know, the girl behind the counter said.

This pushed our starting time back and we had a hasty conference in the parking lot. We concluded that it was time to fish or cut bait, and with trembling hands Mark handed over his cash for 640 square feet of plywood, fourteen sheets of varying size. We exacted an agreement that when it cleared customs, they would ship it to a DuPont facility near Wilmington, where my Dad worked. They wouldn't ship to a non-industrial site like my folks' house.

With money spent, there was no turning back. Next on the agenda was epoxy,lots of it. WEST System was running at $70 a gallon, and this got us shopping around for a better deal. It occurred to us that since we were supposedly selling a boat, we were officially a commercial operation. We found a wholesale distributor in Annapolis and on the spot became 'Swanson-Harris Boats'. We drove away with seven gallons of epoxy, all the accessories, and more plywood at 60% the retail cost.

At this point everything was happening entirely too fast, and the excitement of those evenings back in the Fall had dissolved into an aura of dread. With a mounting pile of materials, spiraling overhead, and months of lip service to everyone in Fleet 4, we were committed to building Windmills, one way or the other.

I got out of school the first week in May, and went to work in Chestertown for two weeks to accumulate some money.

On the evening of Friday, May 23rd, Mark piled every tool he owned, the drywall lofting boards, and the gallons of epoxy in the back of his Suburban and met me in Chestertown, where he followed my own deeply laden truck north to Wilmington.

The next three weeks were certainly an adventure, but, reading over the above, I'm reminded that simply getting a project of this magnitude underway was a substantial feat.

On Saturday morning, May 24th, we didn't waste any time. We moved my Dad's big Delta table saw up to the garage, then jumped into the Suburban and headed to Boothwyn, Pennsylvania for lumber. This time I carried the cash, a significant chunk of my wealth. We cleaned out their stock of 2x8 clear Western Red cedar, and stocked up on pine 2x8's and cheap plywood for the jig. It was garbage day in North Wilmington, and on the way back we stopped in front of several people's houses and picked junk lumber, good for braces and patterns, from their garbage piles.

By the end of the first day we had the ladder frame of the jig fastened together with the drywall screws that would become ubiquitous and indispensable. We used a big hydraulic jack to level the jig on legs a foot off the uneven concrete floor.

I remember the first few days as seeming unproductive. Much of it, as the official photographs record, was spent bending over our lofting boards pondering how to turn our complex two dimensional drawings into an even more complex threedimensional jig, suitable for mass production. Fortunately there simply wasn't time to deliberate too deeply about anything, and by midweek we had (with much consumption of Maalox and no shortage of coarse language) created a jig. We were dismayed that the ladder frame could be easily kicked as much as three inches out of true, and Mark ended up spending money on wire and turnbuckles to truss the thing up like a bridge.

The plywood arrived at the DuPont plant on Monday, the 26th. Collecting the sheets was a nightmare in itself. When we arrived, visitor badges, leather gloves, and safety goggles were thrust into our hands, and an entourage of managers skulked around, begging us not to hurt ourselves or damage anything while carrying our plywood out to the Suburban. Apparently DuPont is so safety conscious that any injury invites a witch hunt of the Salem variety, and the managers were wringing their hands, wondering who would hang if a non-employee, handling non-DuPont material, incurred an injury while on DuPont property. To add to the ulcerating scene, it was pouring rain, and Mark was aghast at the thought of the panels, for which he had exchanged the equivalent of a month's mortgage, getting water stained.

The episode at DuPont set the tone for the first week but by June 1, we were actually looking at a planked hull inverted on the jig. There was no celebrating, however. With a sense of dread, we brought out levels and tape measures to see if our prototype measured in.

It didn't!

There were a few moments in which we stood staring numbly at our creation. Both of us were trying to form in our heads the advertisement with which we would sell our non-Windmill: Fast daysailer. Very similar to Windmill Class. $100 or best offer. Finally someone came to, and we measured again, and again. Things started to look better, and when small wedges were driven in at two points, it became clear that the hull was comfortably inside tolerances everywhere.

Subsequent investigation revealed that it had not been a bad measurement or a hasty saw cut in the hectic days proceeding, but a drafting error in plain view on the lofting board, created months before. It's ironic that the worst mistakes we made in the entire project were on the lofting board, where the work was careful and leisurely compared to the madness on the shop floor. It was also irksome to think how accurate the work could have been if only the lofting had been correct.

Despite the measurement headaches, the first hull was a major milestone. With 'Tom', we had solved a constellation of problems and made many mistakes that would be corrected for 'Dick' and 'Harry'. Most importantly, with the first bare hull completed we had patterns and procedures set up. One example was our station molds. With the Windmill's many stringers, the molds are geometrically locked in when they are unscrewed from the ladder frame and the boat righted. We found a way to cut the plywood molds into sections so that they could be gently removed from the interior of the hull, pieced back together, and refastened to the mold without the slightest loss in accuracy. We also exercised foresight in building patterns and jigs that made setting up for the next hull as quick and troublefree as possible. One of these was a neat frame for the transom, a difficult piece, with its rake, to set up. Our method allowed the plywood transom to be dropped in place and fastened with Cclamps (which wouldn't mar its finish later) in a matter of minutes.

Attending to details of this sort made the whole show go more easily. Little things like glue spreaders can cause a hectic moment if they are in short supply while the epoxy is setting up. I made them by the hundred and kept them in a box close at hand. Likewise with pads for the Cclamps-we kept a hundred or more in a bucket and before glue was mixed staged them alongside the clamps, ready for instant action.

Our boats have no metal fastenings anywhere, aside from chainplates. Epoxy held everything, and for this we needed Cclamps. Clamps are expensive but quickly return the investment in convenience. Will Bransom loaned us a box, and some of my Wilmington friends, veterans of a half dozen building projects, loaned their supplies. However, we found that to keep up with the schedule, it was best to glue both side panels to the stringers at once. This required more than eighty clamps, and my father ended up donating $100 to buy another forty. Drywall screws, if used with plywood pads, also make good temporary clamps, and we used hundreds at a time to fasten on the bottom panels. It developed that I was the only one who mastered the art of driving the flimsy screws without stripping the heads. After awhile I had callouses from the drill motor and new muscle from leaning into the screws for extra driving power.

There was absolutely no flexibility on our completion date; we both had to be back to work by the third week in June whether the boats were done or not. This imposing schedule engendered an almost panic driven work atmosphere. We were rolling in the morning by 7:30, and rarely turned the lights out before 11:30 at night. In the last days we rushed until after midnight. Such hours gave rise to continual stress, and arguments were inevitable. We quibbled over everything from aesthetics to the music we played in the shop. Fortunately our disputes were short lived, and Mark and I still speak!

One calming presence was my wonderful friend, Gretchen Frick, a veteran participant in a variety of Harris boat building exploits. She made almost daily visits, and became indispensable as a sounding board and chief helper. She had a definite civilizing influence.

Gretchen was the number one shop hand, but the project attracted dozens of visitors to the garage boatyard. Few were unamazed by the scale and pace of the operation, and even fewer stood around long without being pressed into service at some chore. There simply wasn't time to spend visiting.

This was a power tool intensive operation, to the consternation of the neighbors. There were no fewer than nineteen longitudinals per boat, almost a thousand lineal feet of lumber total. On days when we cut them out of our stock 2x8's, the big table saw would run continuously for hours, sometimes past nightfall. The worst was cutting the web frames, four per boat. To save plywood we made every single one in at least two pieces, every piece requiring a dozen carefully cut notches for all those damned stringers. It took both of us with saber saws two continuous days to create a pile of matching frames. To understand the din of the saber saws over that period of time, spend the day at the end of a BWI runway.

In the last five days, Tom, Dick, and Harry were bare shells except for daggerboard trunks. With the hulls lined up in the garage, it was crowded. The glue-encrusted jig was discarded in the back yard.

To reach our goal of having the boats ready to paint, we had to add frames, tanks, decks, and rubrails. This was the final push, and in many ways it was easier going. Unlike setting up hulls, which were in places floating within 1/8" of tolerance, interior fitting required less rigorous measurement. Thus, we could cut-and-fit almost haphazardly. While building the hulls, Mark and I worked together very closely, which always made for faster and more accurate work than pursuing separate tasks simultaneously. In contrast, the interior fitting required less pooling of brain resources; I could splice and fit tank sides, while Mark cut deck beams and Gretchen chipped away at the insidious drips and runs of epoxy.

At this point we were making sure that every part of the boats, inside and out, was sealed with epoxy. This meant huge quantities of the toxic stuff dispensed with rollers. Breathing the fumes in close proximity gave you a sore throat and coldlike symptoms, so for days we had to wear industrial respirators and keep several large fans running. Communicating, Darth Vaderstyle, through the heavy masks kept conversation to a minimum.

By Saturday, June 13th, the three hulls were still lacking decks and rubrails, and the garage workshop was like a war zone as the final hours counted down. By now, my father was helping out full time. Gretchen's dad, Ed (who owned a Windmill in the sixties), brought over more tools and threw himself into the fray. On Saturday morning no deck plywood had even been cut, but by 1:00 PM every boat had decks. For speed, staples from a powerful gun were used to temporarily clamp the decks down. Throughout the day, three pairs of chainplates were bolted in, and my Dad devised an ingenious and rugged fitting to hold the forestay. Thwarts were cut, and somebody remembered to vacuum out the tanks before the decks sealed them forever.

On the final Sunday the boats were only lacking rails, and the whole crowd turned out at dawn. The rails were laminated from three pieces to give the desired width. That added up to eighteen strips of cedar that had to be smeared with glue and bent into place. It was a messy and laborious task, but by now we were used to setting up assembly lines for maximum efficiency. Gretchen mixed glue continuously for hours. Mark, my Dad, and Ed Frick bent the cedar strips, dripping with glue, around the sheer and held them while I clamped them in place with dozens of temporary drywall screws. We repeated the process six times, racing with the quick drying epoxy.

With the rails attached, we quit around noon on Sunday. We hadn't reached our goal, because the boats needed a good deal of sanding and fairing before they could be painted, but we had come very close in only three weeks. I suppose it took in the vicinity of 220 hours of actual construction to get the three boats to that stage, rails attached. Each would require another twenty-five hours or so before they would float.

Regrets? Plenty. I wish we could have taken five weeks, or even four. We did create some beautiful boats, but with another week or two we could have spent more time on careful woodworking. And in many ways I was burned out almost for the rest of the summer. On the other hand, if we had taken a less wholehearted approach, say, tried to get together every weekend for three months, I don't think the first boat would have gotten done. With that June 4th deadline always approaching, and all that money spent in advance, there was real motivation.

We flipped a coin on 'Harry', the last boat. Having shared patterns from the beginning, the trio were virtually indistinguishable; the only way we knew them apart was by their positions in the garage. Nevertheless, as the last boat off the jig 'Harry' had enjoyed the most refinement. Mark won the toss, and also took home 'Tom'. I got 'Dick'.

Of course, 'Tom' went on to place well at the Nationals only a month later. At this writing, 'Harry' is being slowly fitted out in the Swanson's garage. My boat, which won't be named 'Dick', by the way, hasn't at this writing been touched since June 14th. I've spent plenty of money on hardware and new sails, though, so there's no danger she'll sit long.

Would I build more Windmills? Certainly not on that schedule, though if anyone wants to try it I'm available for friendly advice. Meanwhile, I'm watching with great interest as the Class reconsiders standards of construction fit for the next Century.