Keeping Organized, Better Butt Joints

As you side your tiny house, you will end up with a pile of off cuts. These scrap pieces can actually be reused later by butt joining them into the length required. The most important thing to do when butt joining siding is to use "primed edges". This means that the siding was cut at the factory and is perfectly straight and perpendicular to the board. A good edge will result is a tight gap between the planks and a better looking result when it is all finished. When the factory cuts them, they then paint the whole board in primer and the factory cut edge will have primer painted over it to identify it as such.

A cut edge will not have primer on it, as you cut it with a saw after the board was coated in primer. As hard as you might try, the edge will not be perfectly straight nor perpendicular to the board. Irregular edges will result in an open butt joint and an unsightly gap in the siding which will allow rain to ingress more easily.

This is where organization comes into play. Butt joints require you to have a primed edge on the left side of one plank and the right side of another plank. If you measure and cut your planks from the same side, you will end up with an irregular number of planks with primed edges on one side versus the other. In other words, if you always measure from the left, all your off cuts will have primed edges on the right. If all your boards are "right side" "primed edge", you won't be able to make a butt joint that looks good.

By keeping track of how many right or left side primed edge boards you have left over, you can balance the stack to ensure you are able to use up your leftover boards for butt joints on long spans.

I separated the boards based on their primed and cut sides. Primed edges towards the outside, and boards with both cut sides in the middle. These boards are only usable in small sections where no butt joints are needed. 

Ordering them from smallest to largest also helps make it easier to find the right piece when you are searching through your scraps.

I originally had a bunch of "right side" primed boards because I was measuring them all from the left. Seeing how I was disproportionately collecting right side primed boards, I began measuring from the right side to produce more "left side" primed boards. With the collection of both boards, I was able to use up my scrap pile with butt joints and reduce the number of boards I needed to purchase.

I used 42 boards to side the entire tiny house. I had 6 inches of display from each 8.25 inch board. The boards cost $8.45 per board, so the cost for siding was only  $371.49! Tiny houses are great for tiny budgets!

Fastening the Stern Post

While the stem was rather complicated to attach, the stern post was the exact opposite! The stern post was glued and screwed to the stern knee a while ago and allowed to cure, now it is time to attach it to the keel.

The stern knee is fastened with a single silicon bronze lag bolt driven into the keel. Wood glue was attached to the faying surface of the stern knee and the excess squeezed out as the lag bolt was driven home. 

With the stem and stern post attached, we are able to finally know the length of the dinghy we are building. 7'8" is the length of our dinghy and there can be no wavering from this length as the end pieces have been attached and secured! Up to this point, the length has been fluctuating from as low as 6 feet all the way up to around 8 feet. Now that the post is attached and can not be moved, we have our final and fixed length for the dinghy.

Getting From the Boat to the Car in Winter

One of the questions we are often asked when people find out we live on a sailboat is: "How do you get to your car, especially in the winter?"

The truth is, just like everyone else does: walking.

When living aboard in a marina, the morning commute is not that complicated nor mysterious. You simply leave your boat, walk down the pier, and head to your car. I know this is kind of anticlimactic, there is no little dinghy ferrying us to shore or any need to swim; we don't even need to fight off sea monsters!

Living aboard grants you many freedoms and doesn't cause as much inconvenience as most people would have themselves believe. 

Beveling the Bilge Pump Mounts

The bilge pump supports need to be angled to allow the pump to sit flush under the lid while not having the handle bang into the woven door right next to it. To adjust the position of the lever during the throw of the lever, the bilge pump needs to be installed on an angle. Setting it on an angle means that everything else must be angled to compensate and accommodate. 

As you can see, the limiting factor to any bevel is the vertical components of this locker. They limit how much each support can be rotated in relation to the dimensions needed for the bilge pump.

To accommodate the bevel, the small brass screws were removed and re-drilled into the new position. The inboard support needed to be sawed a bit to allow the board to rotate in the box. The supports were rotated until they were set on an equal incline, allowing the bilge pump to sit flat on the boards with an inboard tilt. Since the pump is large, heavy, and bulky, I chose to use a small scrap of 2x4 that is much lighter and would allow me to evaluate the incline without much fuss. 

Once the boards were aligned with each other, pilot holes were made to mark the locations of the through bolts. With the pump removed, the holes were drilled out all the way to allow the insertion of 1/4" through bolts.

The reason the frames need to be beveled is because the bolts need as much material to grab onto. If I through bolted at an angle on vertical frames, the bolt would exit the side of the frame and be severely weakened. By rotating the frames, the through bolts exit the bottom squarely and securely. 

Above the frame, the head of the bolt is supported by a finish washers to be a bit more lenient with angulation of the bolt against the bronze flange of the pump body.

The tiny brass screws that are supporting the frames at the moment are by no means strong enough to support the forces that the bilge pump will exert on them while operating. These tiny screws are simply being used to help position the frames during the construction process.

Finishing the Siding

With three of the four walls sided, it is time to wrap up this project and transform the tiny house from a pile of peeling tar paper into a pretty to look at tiny house from all sides.

Once again, the starter strips are placed at the bottom with gaps in between them to allow water to drain out, should any rain get between the siding and the tar paper.

With the starter strips screwed to the wall, the lower portion of the battens was removed to make room for the siding to go on. Long straight planks made planking the side very fast and easy. The boards were all cut to measure and then assembly proceeded. I was able to plank the side of the tiny house very quickly using the hooks and a cordless drill.

The siding went on quickly, and then I ran out! I had a little more to go and I would be finished. I calculated that I needed two more boards from Lowes to finish the job! 

With the two extra boards, I was able to finish the siding around the window! The siding between the large window and back of the trailer was able to be sided using offcuts that were laying around in the scrap pile.