How to Make Rub Rails for a Sailboat

There's an easy way and a hard way to make and install rub rails on a sail boat.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. The easy way: Buy a garden hose. Slit it lengthwise. Staple, nail, or screw it to the hull/deck joint. Looks terrible, but its cheap and it works.

2. The hard way begins with choosing the material out of which you are going to make the rail. White Oak is durable, works well, and significantly less expensive than teak. You could use long leaf yellow pine if you can find it. Cypress will work. Mahoghany is too soft.

3. Assuming white oak as you can get it at any Home Depot multiply the length of the perimeter of your boat at the hull deck joint by 4. For example: a 40 foot perimeter = 160. Determine how wide the rail wants to be. Let's assume 2 inches. Determine how thick the rail wants to be. Let's assume 1 inch. So you will need enough wood 1 inch thick to cover 320 square inches.

4. You are unlikely to find oak an inch thick so assuming you can get half inch you will need to buy, rounding off to the next foot 8 feet x 6 inches x 14 boards. These dimensions because they're easy to find.

5. Choose the wood carefully. Avoid knots and boards with a marked difference in grain across their width.

6. The perimeter of your boat will curve in two dimensions. The obvious in the difference in width at bow, mid-ships and stern, it it will also curve in height above the water line. This means that to fit the wood will have to bend in two dimensions. Unfortunately wood doesn't like to do this. There are 3 ways to make it happen.

7. The first, the classic, is to steam the wood long enough to render the lignin that holds it together bendable. This a difficult process to master, requires a container of some sort to hold the wood and contain the steam, a source of steam, handling very hot wood, and rushing to get it screwed to the boat without error. Don't even think about.

8. The second is to soak it in water, a capped length of PVC pipe works well as a tank. Then while still wet clamp the wood to a form that duplicates 6 foot lengths of the boat's curves and let it dry on the form.

9. The third way is to saw the curves into the wood, but this is immensely wasteful of material. For example: To get an 8 inch rise x 2 inches will require an entire board for that section.

10. We'll go with method #2. First you have to make the forms. MDF is the material of choice. You must lay out the curve of the boat on to the MDF. You do this by making a tick stick. This is made by taking a 6 foot length of wood and drilling holes 2 inches apart for its entire length. Insert dowels that are a snug fit in each hole, long enough to match the curve you're going to copy.

11. String a line from bow to stern that is at right angles to the centerline of your boat that just touches the hull deck joint at its widest point.
    
    Begin a mid ships. Square the tick stick to the reference line and push each dowel until it touches the boat. The dowels will not replicate the curve of the boat.
    
    Take the tick stick and align it with the edge of the MDF and with a pencil mark the MDF at the end of each dowel. Trace the line from pencil dot to pencil dot and you have created a line to cut along that matches the curve of your boat.

12. Repeat until you have the the entire boat shape drawn.
    
    Using a jig saw cut along the curves you've drawn. Small inaccuracies won't matter, but do take a sander to fair the lines by eye.
    
    Then drill holes every six inches or so two inches in from the curves. Closer together when the curve is acute, farther apart where it is more gentle. Make the holes big enough to accept the fixed end of the C clamps you'll be using. You will need, at least enough clamps to clamp an entire section.

13. On a table saw rip your boards into 2.5 inch wide stock. Then turning the 2.5 inch stock on edge, with your saw fence set at 3/16ths of an inch from the fence side of the blade, resaw the stock into strips. The outside strip will be a little thicker and so will require another pass to make it the same thickness as the first cut.

14. Glue a bottom cap on a length of PVC pipe long enough and thick enough to hold your stock. Fill it with water, insert the stock and slip another cap over the open end to keep the stock submerged.
    
    Let it sit for a couple of days.

15. With C lamps at the ready, remove 5 strips from the pipe and beginning at the middle and work alternately to the ends clamp to the form. When you place them on the forms alternate the overlap of each strip by 6 inches. The inner most layer extends past the form on one end and the next layer past the form on the other end so on.
    
    Let dry on the form.

16. Choose an adhesive: 3 choices, the best is a 2 part epoxy, next is Gorilla Glue, the next Titebond 3. Expoxy is stronger and there will never a dange from rot. Gorilla Glue is waterproof and requires moisture to cure to full strength so you can begin your glue up while your wood is still damp. Titebond maintains it is waterproof, but I've no first hand knowledge of that.

17. Using the same forms apply your glue, clamp again, and give it twice the recommended time to cure.
    
    After you've done all this twice for each side of the boat you have a rub rail ready to be assembled.

18. Beginning amid ships tack the rail in position using finishing nails. Working alternately to bow and stern interleave the over laps to create a scarf joint and position the next section of rail. It will be lower on one end than the other and that's fine, just follow the hull deck joint and tack them in position.

19. Once you've tacked up one whole side use a pencil to draw a line the length of the rail top and bottom, following the hull deck joint curve. This is most easily done with a compass with the metal leg riding on the joint and the pencil tracing the curve as you move along.
    
    Then trace the waste ends of the over lap so they match and pull the nails and take the rail to the bench.

20. Then plane or saw to the line. Fair it with a sander.

21. You will want to bed the rail in a quality silcon sealant intended for marine use. Use plenty and don't worry about squeeze out as it cleans up easily.
    
    Only one choice for fasteners: Monel seated in Monel cupped washers.

22. Again, beginning amid ships, position the rail and begin driving screws. When you come to the overlaps use the same glue and be sure to place screws through the joints. Again work alternately to bow and stern.

23. Buy a stainless stem head fitting to cover the bow joint and 2 stainless corners to cover the joints at the stern.
    
    You might want to cover the screw heads with a stainless rail.

24. Finish the wood with a penetrating sealer and apply 3 coats of a good marine spar varnish and now you have a boat that in the trade we call "yar".

[revisitingnixon]

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-Rich