Clamp on Clamp off - it's the Clamper

A couple of weekends worth of work to show in this post.  The boat is really starting to look complete.  It is possible we will be cutting it in half in next weekend.

So the first weekend was spent - you guessed it - sanding and sanding and sanding:

 

  

So why all the sanding now?  The "furniture" will be in the way later - which we started to put in place.

Forward Bulkhead:

 

Center Seat:

 

Aft bulkhead:

  

We let them setup overnight, and then flipped the boat over, for some more sanding (lucky for you not shown here).  Time for the beach runners, and the skeg:

 

These are epoxied and screwed into place.  So total fasteners used (not counting the bolts for the take apart) are 14 wood screws, all used now, everything else is epoxy.

 

The next Saturday started with a frantic search for just the right penny. 

 

Carefully notched, and installed permanently under the mast step:

 

Time to install the rub rails, here come the clamps, one milk crate full of spring clamps plus all available c-clamps.  This is layer number one:

 

Hard to tell the difference, but here it is with the second layer applied, after the first had setup:

 

Careful observers will note that the forward seat is also installed.  This was done in between the the rub-rail layers.  Here is another modification.  Most PMDs that we have seen with the take-apart option have an access port on the top of seat (can't be installed in the bulkhead for obvious reasons), offset to the starboard side near the bulkhead.  Although no conclusive reason for this was given - it seems that it is a strength issue, and having it braced between the side of the boat, the bulkhead, and the mast support logically gives it more strength.  Nobody could say if that strength was required, but so be it.  The problem as I see it is that it would be near impossible to reach anything that fell to the other side of the boats, especially if it lodged on the wrong side of the mast support.  Also it does not meet our sense of symmetry. So we decided to install a strengthening spar across the seat forward of the access port, and put the port as close to the mast support as possible.  Here how that looked:

 

While we were at it we installed a similar spar across the transom seat, to support the troublesome knee that so many have had trouble with:

 

One final modification was completed.  As mentioned before on this page, there are some issues with mast strength, and possible bending that occur in higher winds, I have some ideas on this that I will get to later.  However one of the side effects of the mast bend problem is that the base of the mast tears out of the mast step, causing damage to the mast step, the seat, etc.  We want none of that!  So I doubled up the mast step where the mast plugs in with solid mahogany, routed out a hole 1/4" larger (radius) than the mast and filled it with thickened epoxy.  After curing routed out a hole just slightly larger than the mast.  Now the mast will be seated in a very strong solid epoxy socket - hopefully there will be no problems with this in the future.  Here is a pic after a coat of epoxy over the whole thing:

 

That's it for now (already Friday).  Heading back down for more fun tonight - look for updates next week.

The Big Push

Well it has once again been a few weeks since the last update.  Last weekend was spent in Marblehead - so no boat production, but this weekend was one of much activity.  With the holiday - three fairly full days of boat building!

First up - The hull is completely glassed, epoxied, and looking great.  It is ready to be sanded and have the furniture installed (towards the bow):

(Towards the stern)

Next on the agenda - inspection/access port on the aft bulkhead.  This plastic screw in plate allows for access to the stern flotation compartment, it will allow us to dry it out should any water get, and can also be used to store small items (like lunch and beer) in a contained dry spot.  Several interesting notes on this one.

1. We used drill - fill - drill technique, by drilling larger holes than need for the installation bolts, then filling with epoxy, and then drilling the correct size holes through the epoxy, we end up with strong, completely water impregnable holes.
2. Notice the shine?  Yup that's varnish - the first coats.  The book recommends that you not install the port until you have finished varnishing.  Down side to that is that you can't do a really neat job of bedding and bolting the port once everything is installed (you would basically have to hold the tools inside the compartment with one hand, the other outside the compartment, all with sealer that you can't visually inspect, dripping everywhere).
3. Soooo - we said why not varnish before installing the bulkhead in the boat - at least a couple of coats?  Then installed the port - then install it in the boat - so that is what we did.

And since we were varnishing anyway - let's work on the center seat that is going to be a complete pain in the ass to reach under and around once it is in the boat - here is a pic of that - shown upside down:

We are super pleased with the way the fill-its came out:

Now for the first serious modifications to the original design.  The version of the boat we are building is a take-apart.  What that means is that after all the fun of building the boat - we are going to cut it in half.  Why?  So that it can be stored in a smaller place - like the deck of sailboat.  How does it work?  Instead of just one forward bulkhead - there are two installed next to each other.  The cut occurs between the bulkheads, and the boat is later held together using four bolts.  What are we changing?  The book has a note that in 2007 they started providing reinforcing plate to the be installed on the upper ears of the bulkheads.  This (at least to me) looks like a very mickey mouse solution.  Shown here next to the bulkhead that it would be installed on (it is the light colored piece of wood - next to the dark epoxy covered bulkhead):

Instead we are installing two pieces of solid mahogany to span both bolts on each side of the bulkhead, they have been epoxied in place and are just waiting to be trimmed with a flush cut router bit:

And this is what it looks like after that operation:

Now for some more tweaks.  The forward of the two bulkheads comes designed with reinforcing blocks - only on the bottom holes - and only the forward bulkhead.  Beats me at to what the engineering is there...  anyway, since the blocks also act as vertical strengtheners, and serve to support the seat, I felt it was important to use them.  They needed to be notched out to overlap our new - much larger - reinforcing pads:

Everything assembled, glued and clamped:

After it cured - and a coat of epoxy - we have this:

We will use the same drill - fill - drill technique here - you can just make out one of the filled holes:

And for the final task of the weekend - a little rudder shaping - here are a couple of pics:

What's on tap next?  Well - although the progress looks pretty slow at the moment - we are actually getting pretty close to completion.  We will sand the entire hull - inside and out - in preparation for finish paint and varnish.  Install the bulkheads, seat, and skeg.  Glue on the rub rails - and that is pretty much it for assembly.  Early spring launch still well within sight.

It's been a long time....

Well the holidays are over, and real boat building has commenced once again.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas any work that was performed consisted of sanding, and then there was some sanding, and some sanding, and even a little bit of sanding.

Not very diligent with the use of the camera - but here is one shot of the hull after sanding:

Did manage to get the dagger board truck assembled:

Finally after announcing our plans in November - we finally bit the bullet and prepared to put the fiberglass on.  I did quite a bit of research on this prior to the actual event and we were torn on how to proceed.  CLC Boats recommends laying the fiber glass on bare (no epoxy layers) wood, while several other techniques recommend laying the fiber glass over fairly fresh epoxy. The idea is that you want to have the glass completely wetted out - which makes the glass completely transparent.  By having  bare wood the theory goes that the wood might absorb some epoxy during the curing process - leaving dry areas.  The other problem that may occur is that wood will "off gas" put air bubbles into the layup.

Since CLC recommended this technique - and the vast majority of other blogs we have looked at all proceeded with this method - we did that same thing - glass onto bare wood.  We did deviate from the instructions in that we applied the glass to both the bottom panel as well as the first strake (limited success on this with more to follow in the next update.

So here are the pics:

Taped up and ready to go:

Temperature on the boat, with heat lamps and furnace blasting was perfect (the higher the temperature the better.  To eliminate the "off gas" problem, by having the hull nice and warm, as it cools down it will actually "in gas" if that that is a term):

We smoothed out the glass:

We used a technique of both squeegeing and rolling the epoxy.  Here it all wetted out:

After a couple of hours we trimmed off the excess glass:

After curing - another coat of epoxy over the entire hull to fill the weave of the glass.  Looked awesome when done.

Forgot to bring the camera with us this week - but we did get a lot done.  It of course started with sanding - pics and more to follow in the next update.

A few weeks of hectic activity!

Visible changes to the boat are not very evident - even after nearly a month since the last posting...

Korea on business for 2 weeks plus the 24 hours of travel on each end, certainly reduced the amount of time available - here are some highlights (from a tourist standpoint - no pictures of how to refine Indium which was the purpose of the visit):

See a temple:

Eat strange and unusual foods such as tiny raw octopuses:

Pass on even stranger foods such as sauteed silk worms (sold on the street next to roasted chestnuts - will we ever see this on the streets of New York? Also to the left of the worms are boiled fish pancakes on a stick - which I did try).

That brought us right up to the holiday week and getting the house ready for party of 37 - but we did manage some fairly major steps.

Glued and filleted the transoms on.  Filleting - pronounced fill-it, not as in in mignon - is a process of gluing and filling joints with epoxy that has been thickened with wood flour (essentially sawdust).  This was a fearful step - it seems that there is much written about the topic, and certainly the photos we have seen have been very varied.  It seems that the trick is to get a nice strong smooth fillet - without it looking too heavy or wide.  Bad fillets result in a lot of hard hand sanding to smooth out properly.  We ended up pretty happy with the results:

It was then time to temporarily install the bulkheads.  Jim 'North' visiting from Halifax was very helpful in getting these positioned, held and stapled into place:

This ensures that the boat is in the proper shape - time to flip it over and start gluing the strakes - after the strakes are glued into place, staples come out, looking a little more fair here:

Don't worry; although the above picture looks like we had a catastrophic table failure - this is actually showing the transformation of the tables from workbench height - to the appropriate height to work on the assembled boat - here we are trimming the other legs:

Time to fillet the the strake seams - taped and ready to go:

Finished product:

Flipped back over - with the furniture test fitted:

Nest week - another scary step - fiber glassing!!!

It's a boat!

Kudos to Rob who's e-bay prowess landed him this dandy of a sander which he was gracious enough to lend us:

Vacuum attachment allows for nearly dust free sanding:

Hungry for the paper:

Ready for another meal:

Shiny to dull in a flash!

Time to address the bad puzzle joint on the bottom panel.  After a few days contemplation & releasing it from time-out under the table it was not quite as bad as remembered.  Attacked it with the Fein on the inside until not quite through the veneer:

Through the veneer on the bottom fingers (looks like those fingers have fingernails!):

Flooded the top joint with barely thickened epoxy seems to have done the trick.

Drilling of the holes every 4" for the staples:

The making of the staples - add Opera music in background-:

Gluing transoms:

It's time to make a boat!:

The puzzle joints are starting to grow on us.:

A bulkhead with a mind of it's own took a great deal of strength & patience to wedge it in place.  Bad bulkhead.

IT'S A BOAT!!:

Check back at Thanksgiving as Justin is off to Korea & Brianne has a full weekend schedule of sailing parties!