Sampson Posts! (Rebuilding Tally Ho EP112)

[Music] hi my name's leo and i'm a boat builder and a sailor and i'm on a mission to rebuild and restore the 111 year old classic sailing yacht tally ho now before we start laying the deck i want to make the samsung posts or the bits now these are heavy duty posts very strong pieces of timber which they're in the bow of the boat the front of the boat and they come up from somewhere very low down usually they come up all the way through the deck and they come up some distance above the deck usually a couple of feet depending on the size of the boat and if there's two of them they're often called bits if there's one it's more often called a samson post and that can be spelt with or without a p is how i've seen it spelt anyway i'm going to call these the samson posts with a p because that's my middle name and that's how it's spelled now whether there's one poster or two posts they have a couple of purposes uh the first purpose is very often to hold the aft end of the bow sprit uh if the vessel does indeed have a bow sprit um so on tallyho there are gonna be two posts and the bowsprit is gonna be held in between them which is a quite traditional common arrangement of boats of this sort of style the other purpose because they come up quite a bit higher than the bow sprit the other purpose is to take mooring lines and so if you have heavy lines coming in that tying the boat to the dock they can be either tied to the post or they can be cleated off around the two posts or a loop can be put over the top of the post and in general they can be used for all sorts of things like that anytime you need someone really strong to tie a cable or a line something like that um you can tie it to the samsung post or the bits and you know that's a really strong secure place on the four deck so i got these two pretty large pieces of white oak left over from all the deck beams and i'm hoping to get the samson posts out of these they do have some defects and quite a bit of sapwood a couple of knots it looks like a little bit of rot in some areas so i'm not sure if they'll work out or not i'm going to cut them up plane them down and have a look see if they're any good underneath all that crap so wow [Music] well there's a lot of knots and sap wood and a little bit of kind of rotty looking punky white stuff in right in the middle of this bigger piece so unfortunately this piece is going to be no good for samsung post so that's a shame we'll certainly be able to get you know some good timber out of this piece but it's just not a long consistently good enough piece uh to make something as structurally important as the samsung post hopefully we might get uh maybe the the shorter samsung post out of the other piece here maybe even the long one uh i do see some defects in it but again i'm going to cut it up and and plane it a little bit and see how it looks [Music] hi there it's leo how's it going yeah pretty good man yeah hey i was just wondering if you guys have any 16 quarter white oak so just running up to eden saw and see if they have uh any 16 quarter white oak well i call them on the phone and they do apparently so see if it's the right length for us um hopefully something we can get a samsung post out of if only i could record smell on this camera uh this is the part of town where we go downwind of the paper mill and uh always smells like someone's farted in the car i sometimes wonder if it's caused any domestic arguments [Music] so here's a pretty sweet uh stack of 16 quarter wide oak i think i can get one piece out of this and one piece out of what i got at home at my shop and then i think we'll be good [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] so the samsung posts on this boat they don't actually go all the way down to the center line um partly because they're sort of offset uh they actually go down and tie into a sort of structural piece that spans between the build stringers and ties into one of the bulkheads of the chain locker so it turns out that this piece that i wasn't actually able to get the samson post out of i think i can get that block out of this so again i'm going to cut it up a bit more see if i can get all the knots and sappy nastiness out of it and hopefully i'll be able to use it [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this is where the samsung posts or the bits come down from the deck structure and one's going to go about here and one's going to come down about here and they're going to come down on the forward side of this chain locker bulkhead here now this outboard one obviously can't go all the way down for kill timber because it comes down and hits the side of the boat this inboard one could do potentially but what i'm gonna do instead of that is build a piece here which is gonna fast into the stringers and the bulkhead a nice solid piece which both of the samsung posts or bits can actually tenon mortise and tenon into now this piece i'm going to make has to notch around both stringers one on either end so that's quite a complex shape and so i'm going to use a pattern fly or door skin very thin plywood to make a pattern for each side of it and i think that's going to be the easiest way to try and get this piece fitting well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] so this piece fits pretty nicely here it's not bolted yet it's going to be bolted through the stringers right now it's just wedged between them but it's a nice tight fit there's no movement there so now all i have to do is cut the mortises in here for the posts to go through or to tenon into so i'm just gonna mark where they're gonna go using a plumb bob from the deck beams and then i've got some mortises got some tenons in the ends of the posts [Music] [Music] so i'm here just wandering around the yard getting footage as is my uh habit and um just struck me what a what an interesting and special yard this is really um i've lived and worked in a lot of boatyards in my life and they all have different things going for them um i think the really interesting and kind of unique thing about this yard and port townsend is the diversity of boats here it's not that common that you can find you know like behind me you have a super yacht right next to a working wooden fishing boat and um both really interesting boats in their own right and you see that all over this yard just a real variety of vessels and a real variety of trades people across people and a really good sense of community as well so i'm going to be hopefully finding time to look a little bit closer at some of the boats here um maybe do a few tours of the sort of variety of of different boats you know from fishing boats to super yachts um if if they'll let me on board um so we'll see but uh it's really really good place to be and i hope you guys can get a sense of that from these videos what an interesting and and supportive area this is [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] hey [Music] uh [Music] so i've just drilled the hole that's gonna hold this block down to the build stringers uh using a twist bit and a barefoot auger bit and uh but because it's at such a funny angle i want a flat at both ends to receive the the head and the nut of the bolt of course drawing a countable on the top is easy but it's uh very difficult or impossible to drill that on the outside the outboard face of the stringer and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to use this counter boring bit but i'm going to put a half inch rod through the hole first and then i'm going to uh put this counter-boring bit on the far end of it and then i'm going to run this in reverse with a drill and pull it back up so this is going to counter bore the outside face of the stringer [Music] [Music] [Music] so these pieces all went in really nicely in the end i'm really pleased they feel really really solid so that's great um i should point out though that uh they're just dry fitted and there's a bunch more stuff that needs to happen to them um so there's going to be a bunch more fastenings going into these uh sort of down underneath and so on there's a block that needs to go in between the tenon and the bulkhead and then bolts that need to go in to make sure that these really can't go anywhere um and then of course you know they'll they'll be sanded and have their rounded edges put on and stuff like that but all the joinery in this area is complete so really pleased with that [Music] [Music] all right well that's nearly it for this video the samsung posts or the bits are made and fitted they do have to go out and go in again a few times before the actual deck goes down we have to build some blocking to hold them securely in the deck structure but the majority of the work is done and it was a pretty fun part of the boat to work on it's been fun to have a visit from our feathered friend pancho this week she's going to be going back to her family very soon that's always good to have her here um there's also been a lot of other work going on in the workshop while i've been working on the samsung posts uh richard rowan and pete have all been really busy doing some really good work but i'm going to be covering all of that stuff in the next videos but for now thanks a lot for watching and a massive thank you to everyone who has donated or otherwise supported this project it does make a huge difference it means we're able to keep doing this work and it means i'm able to keep on making these videos so i really really appreciate it and i'll see you next time cheers [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Sampson Boat Co

Views: 342,707

Keywords:

Id: mjEMLt2SFXQ

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Rihzopus]

Ello my name's Leo...

[u/DeuceyBoots]

Can’t believe this guy is still going on this boat