Taking stock

So I thought I might show off just where 50 board feet of mahogany, two sheets of 1/4", one sheet of 3/4" marine plywood and a metric ton of epoxy has gotten me. So feast your eyed on the best looking boat parts you've ever seen. Layed out. In a garage. In chronological order of their completion. for a boat that someone you know is building. (I bet I'm the only person you know building one of these...) A summary of learning experiences accompanies each piece.

Stem. This is the first part that I glued together and it shows. If you remember the infamous bubbling epoxy post you know I did this one in a hurry. I don't know how much epoxy is actually in there between the two layers. It only squeezed out in a few places. I hope it holds.

Transom. This is the very back end of the boat. This layout took me 4 hours. Then I realized I could use a miter saw to cut perfect angles instead of planing bad ones. The rest of the layout for the remaining frames takes about 45 minutes. I still have to cut an 18 degree bevel around the sides and bottom of the transom. Seriously, 18 degrees? My (awesome) Skil saw only has marks every 5 degrees. How am I going to find 18? This might take a while.

Centerboard trunk. Still not technically done due to the misalignment of frame 3 uprights. You know what, I don't want to talk about this anymore. Too painful. All I can say is measure, mark and measure again. Then repeat. And repeat again. Then erase all the stray marks so you use the right ones.

Frames. From right to left in the picture are frame 1 through frame 5. Frame 2 is the only one that has a full width bottom piece. The rest need to be joined in the middle with a piece of 3/4" plywood. The plywood is cut but I haven't got the courage to set the angles in epoxy yet. If you never try, you can't fail. You also can't build a boat.

Epoxy. Ah, the "good stuff." Epoxy fills all "mistakes" and will pretty much bond any two porous surfaces. The tensile strength is 9500 psi which means the wood will break apart before a good epoxy joint will. And it's waterproof. I don't think a better product has been invented.

I also have a box full of scraps and two curved pieces for the deck in the fwd end of the boat. Plus two boards waiting to be ripped down to size for various longitudinals on the boat.

So there's the rundown. I actually don't have anything really done-done. Just in a semi-presentable state that looks good in pictures. I'm glad I did this so I could get a list together of what I need to do. I sure hope it starts looking more like a boat when it all goes on the building form.

Rip

Even when you pay a lot for good wood it still has a curve in it. Since I can't feed it through a table saw or a jointer to square it up I had to do it the old fashioned way. Actually I have no idea what the old fashioned way is but I bet it involved a lot of time with a dull hand tool and some cursing. I used a 100" saw guide and an 18 tooth rip blade on my circular saw. I have to mention that this Skil saw has been the best $5 my Mom ever spent on me (garage sale deal.) 18 teeth don't make a very neat cut, but if the blade had any more it would have taken hours to finish.

Anyway, once you know the offset between the blade and the edge of the saw's base all you do is line it up. I used a chalk line to figure out how much I would have to take off. On the 16' board I lost 1 1/4"! I should take that part back and get a refund. You can see the two triangle pieces that were cut off of each end in the picture below. In the middle the saw took off less than a blade's width (called a kerf) or about 1/16". Just enough to cut the rough off. The guide is only 100", which is not enough to cover the length of a 16' board. I have to stop and move the guide half way through the cut. I thought this would give me a lot of headaches but it turned out to be easier than I thought.

A rip cut also generates a colossal amount of sawdust. The pile I swept up must have been about $10 worth of wood. Now that these pieces are straight on one side I can use a table saw to rip the rest of the widths that I need. This piece will eventually be the chines and sheers that run the length of the boat. I also squared a 13' piece that will be the battens along the bottom of the hull.

Finished frames (well, not all of them)

I finished frames 1 and 3. You can see below that 2 and 4 are half way there. This run of epoxy I worked faster, but mixed less than I should have. I still have to flip frame 4 and gusset the other side, and frame 2 needs more gussets also. I ran out of epoxy before I could get to the other end of frame 2. I was worried about not having enough glue on each of the mating surfaces, but epoxy oozed out all around the pieces when they were nails together. No split wood that I can see yet (knock on, ... wood.)

My 8 year old thinks that boat building is the most fun thing to happen this summer. She asked if we could go sailing the first day the boat was done. Of course I said yes. Then she asked "What if you finish it at midnight?" I was stumped. Since I usually work on the boat at night I probably will finish it at midnight.

These last frames are ready to be joined at the centerline. More work tomorrow hopefully. If I get all the frames completed by Thursday when I have to start teaching I will be in good shape. Boat work always takes me much longer than I think it should. Every time I think I'll just run down to the garage and glue up some pieces it takes me three hours start to finish. I guess thats the definition of a hobby.

Frames finally!

I got half of the frames done today. I made up each side and glued and nailed one gusset to frames 1 through 3. With so many pieces to spread the epoxy on I was worried I hadn't mixed up enough. I should have been worried about how much working time I had. It was another 80F+ day here in South Carolina and epoxys hardens quick in the heat. After mixing it up and spreading it out I looked at the clock and realized it had been 15 minutes since I mixed the epoxy. The stuff is only supposed to have a 20-25 minute working time. I put two nails in each piece to keep them aligned to start out with. Then I came back and finished out each side with two more nails (four per side.)

The wax paper is supposed to keep the epoxy from going everywhere, but it didn't work that well. Maybe if I cover the whole garage next time it would work.

By the time I got finished and went back to scrape the extra epoxy off it didn't want to come off! Tonight I will flip them over and gusset the other side and make up frames 4 and 5. Joining the two halves will probably wait until tomorrow. After my last measuring mis-adventure I am feeling a little sheepish about missing any of the other dimensions.

Centerboad trunk done, with errors

Sooo, it is done, but see if you can spot the error. I coated the fiberglass cloth with another layer of epoxy and glued and nailed the two halves together. My "measure thrice" obviously didn't work. The frustrating part is that I did measure 6 or more times, and there was a line for me to align the pieces to, and I drilled pilot holes for the screws. Unfortunately, they were all wrong!

I looked back over the plans, and I don't think that frame 3 being misaligned by 5/8th of an inch will make the boat sink. Frame 3 is the widest part of the boat, so I am not sure how a small difference will effect the hydrodynamics. I am hoping that the only long term effect will be the eyesore from having to look at the staggered uprights.

First fiberglass pieces

I fiberglassed the inside of the centerboard trunk this early afternoon. The fiberglass is left a little large so it covers all the way to the edges. I mixed 12oz of epoxy which ended up being more than I needed. I am getting better at estimating how much epoxy I will use, but too much is better than not enough. The first coat is to wet out the fiberglass. The fiberglass cloth is placed down on the wood and the epoxy poured in the middle. Then I squeegee the epoxy outward to get rid of all the air bubbles. You can see a definite color difference when the fiberglass is completely wet out.

The extra fiberglass cloth gets trimmed off with a utility knife after the epoxy starts to set. I also cut the extra off of the mating area so the trunk sides would be in full contact with the spreader pieces. Anytime dad is working in the garage it brings a crowd. I don't think my two year old realizes how close she is to being permanently bonded to the garage floor.

This is the final product. The cloth needs at least one more coat to fill out the weave, then the two sides get bonded together.

More Centerboard trunk work

After sending the kids to bed it was time for some more work on the trunk. I am adding the uprights (pieces of wood) that attach to frame 3 to the middle of the centerboard trunk. I also have to attach the pieces that hold the two sides of the centerboard trunk apart. This allows room for the centerboard to swing up and down inside the trunk. The centerboard is up for trailering, shallow water and when using the motor and down when sailing. The centerboard keeps the boat from being pushed in the direction of the wind. Sometimes called a foil, the centerboard pushes on the water, which resists the push, and allows the vector components of the wind direction to push a sailboat forward. In simple terms. the centerboard allows the skipper to sail into or across the wind, instead of just following the wind's direction. Anyway, enough physics, back to building. I finished all the prep work while the kids were reveling in their after dinner joy, so all I had to do was glue and screw (and nail.)

Putting the pieces together was easy until I split one if the inside spreader pieces. There are 24 nails in that piece alone, so I should have known the wood would split. Luckily I found the split before the epoxy was totally hardened. I filled the gap with as much epoxy as I could jam in there. Here is the frame three upright. Frame three attaches to the back of this piece.

If you look closely as the lower right side of the picture you can see the hole for the centerboard pivot. Still to be completed is fiberglassing of the inside of the trunk.

Then I will nail the other side to the spreaders and the trunk will be complete!

Frame two is the second from last (aft) frame and attaches to the back (aft) end of the trunk. Frame three is in the middle of the trunk, I hope I lined it up right. Frame four attaches to the front (forward) end of the trunk. In all, the centerboard trunk spans 51 1/2 inches of the boat's 180 inch (15 feet) length. I have a feeling that finishing the trunk and attaching those frames will NOT make me 1/3 of the way done.

Looks like progress

When you don't update your blog for a week it looks like you are getting nowhere! I actually wasn't moving very fast this week, but that's better than moving backward. This week I got a bunch of little things ready so I could put it all together in a glorious finale on the weekend. It's 3:30 on Saturday an I did get some work done this morning. Whenever I think I am ready to glue something together I am reminded that 99% of the work it preparation. The assembly part just holds it all together. I am putting the centerboard trunk together today. I started by drawing out where all the pieces would go, then gluing the centerboard trunk cleat (piece of wood) along the top edge and centerboard trunk bedlog (another piece of wood) along the bottom edge.

To make sure it doesn't move I nailed the pieces together with ring shank nails. I have finally succumbed to the "measure twice (or thrice), cut once" adage. I sliced the top piece a little thin and now I'll have to back and grind off the nails, oops.

There are plenty of nails to hold it all together.

Next I have to add the vertical frame three pieces and fiberglass the inside. The centerboard will live in this apparatus so it needs to be abrasion resistant and waterproof, sounds like a job for fiberglass. I have some other chores this weekend so I hope I will get at least the centerboard trunk done. If there is more time I will move on to the frames too.