Home made tools for home made boats

A while back, WoodenBoat magazine did a nice article on making your own tools. "Interesting..." I thought, "but I don't really have the time to mess with all that."

My perspective on that has changed a little. It's not so much about the time involved as it is the high costs and lack of availability for some of the specialized tools I'm beginning to need.

Here are a couple of relatively common, "specialized" tools, and the way I went about making them:

DIY Longboard Sanding Block

Longboards are used in the fairing process, to help keep multiple surfaces of wood on pieces that aren't necessarily attached all on the same plane. This is to provide the best possible support and attachment points for the plywood planking that will go on later.

Basically, it's a really long sanding block.

For my DIY Longboard Sander, I used an off-the-shelf 3M drywall sander, a piece of 2x4, and a couple of extra bolts.

1. The 3M sander has a rubber pad glued to the base. This rubber pad also serves the purpose of holding in the 2 small bolts that are part of the sandpaper clamps. So, I first cut holes in the rubber pad, where the bolts are located. I removed the wing nuts and the clamps, and pushed the bolts out.

2. Then, I centered the handle on my piece of 2x4, and marked and drilled holes to correspond with the bolt holes in the handle. I countersunk the holes at the bottom of the 2x4, so that the bolt heads would not interfere with the sandpaper. Then, along with washers, I bolted the handle to the piece of 2x4 using the original wing nuts.

3. Similarly, I drilled and countersunk holes at the ends of the 2x4, and attached the plastic clamps with new bolts, washers and wing nuts... just as they had been attached on the original drywall sander.

You can also see from the photo that I cut away part of the thickness of the 2x4 at the ends. This was to make it easier to attach the ends of the sandpaper.

4. The sandpaper itself is simply a standard-sized sanding belt, cut and then stretched between the two end clamps.

No, it's not pretty. It has no finesse. But, it works. And with 30 grit sandpaper, it works really darn well. It's strong, simple, cheap, and effective.

DIY Deep Throat C-Clamps

Deep-throat C-clamps are designed to fit around longer spans, where standard depth C-clamps are inadequate. Deep throat C-clamps are also referred to as "deep reach" C-clamps, for fairly obvious reasons.

These types of clamps are very useful when attaching backing blocks to sheets of plywood, in preparation for butt-joining plywood panels.

Good clamps with any more than about 5" depth tend to be fairly expensive, and not readily available locally. (Not for me, anyway.)

My variation of these home made clamps aren't real pretty. But, they're not supposed to be. The idea is for them to be quick, easy, and inexpensive to make, with minimum (if any) gluing needed.

Also, of course, they need to be strong enough to do the job. I haven't used these on anything critical yet, but so far they've worked fine under light & medium-duty applications. Yes, they'll flex a little bit. That's why you use a carriage bolt that is longer than the 2 structural bolts.

1. You'll need 2 strips of wood, approximately 1 x 1-1/2 inches x 12 to 14 inches long. As you can see in the photos, I laminated together 2 strips of 1/2" thick red oak, using Gorilla Glue, for each 14" piece. Does that make it stronger? I dunno. Maybe. I guess it depends on the wood.

2. Hardware:

• One 6" carriage bolt (I've used both 3/8 inch and 5/16. They both work fine. The 5/16 tend to be a little cheaper & are strong enough.)
• Two 5" or 5-1/2" hex head bolts (full thread)
• 14 threaded T-nuts
• 6 lock washers
• 6 hex nuts

3. Align the strips of wood, one on top of the other. Using a drill bit the same diameter as the neck of the T-nuts, drill downward through both strips of wood. Make sure to keep the holes aligned. Preferably, use a drill press. Locate two holes at one end of the wood strips, with the holes spaced approximately 2" apart.

Similarly, drill a third hole through the opposite end of the wood strips.

4. Use a hole saw to cut a "wheel" out of a scrap of wood. A diameter of approximately 2-3/4 to 3 inches should be fine. This will become the clamp's handle. Once it is cut, drill a hole through the center, using the same drill bit used in step #3.

5. Fit the T-nuts into each side of each hole. (6 T-nuts for each strip of wood, and 2 for the handle.)

6. Thread the carriage bolt upward through the T-nuts in the single hole at the end of one of the strips of wood.

7. Thread a hex nut partially down the length of the carriage bolt. Add a lock washer, then thread the handle onto the end of the carriage bolt. Allow enough of the carriage bolt to pass through the handle so that you can add another lock washer and bolt on top. Tighten the nuts so that the handle is held firmly in place.

8. Thread the hex bolts downward through the 2 holes at the opposite end. (See photo). Continue threading the bolts downward until the hex heads are approximately 1" above the wood.

9. Onto the end of each hex head bolt, add 1 lock washer, followed by 2 nuts, then another lock washer.

10. Align the second piece of wood with the threaded ends of the hex head bolts. (Be careful not to lose those last 2 lock washers!) 

Continue threading the hex head bolts through both pieces of wood, until you can turn them no further.

11. Now, tighten the hex nuts and lock washers against the T-nuts, and you have yourself a DIY deep throat C-clamp.