Launch Day: Prelude

The day is upon us!  The boat is ready, more or less.  Cosmetically, it's unfinished - weather has prevented me from painting the stripe I want it to have, and the interior could use another coat of the base color.

But all of the major questions are answered.  I'm halfway through lashing her all together and rigging in the back yard to ensure there aren't any unforeseen problems before I transport it to the local state park where we'll launch.  I did have to re-drill a couple of the tuki holes in the ama, as they weren't lining up right.  And the fancy windsurfer mast turns out to be too stiff for the crabclaw :( But I had a backup.

Anyway, I'll post a wrap-up here later in the weekend.  There's work to be done!

A Declaration

After yesterday's deck and spar work, I was pretty motivated today.  For starters, I trimmed the decks to fit the hull, and sanded them smooth.  Then we set sawhorses under the hull and flipped it over, to begin work on the exterior. The goal is to "radius" the seams - that is, to turn them from angular meetings of two sheets of plywood, to gently curved transitions that can be smoothly covered with glass tape.

Using my trusty 4-in-hand file, some 60-grit sandpaper, and the block plane, I proceeded to radius the entire length of all three seams in about an hour and a half.  It went much faster than anticipated, but I suspect I'm going to be really, really sore tomorrow.

Soon - maybe even later today - I'll make a small batch of filleting epoxy and touch up the gaps in the seams.  Then it will be time to glass 'em, and do the final epoxy-coating of the exterior.

Translation:  I'm within sight of completing the hull.  Emboldened by this realization, I've decided to state publicly that I will launch this boat in June. 

There, I said it.  And now it remains to be seen whether I can put my money where my mouth is.  Stay tuned....

Decks On! And Sail Test-Fit to Spars

With a bit of time this morning, I glued and nailed the fore & aft decks onto the hull.  This is another milestone moment, at it indicates we're pretty much done with the right-side-up segment of the build. 

The decks were cut pretty accurately to the plan dimensions.  Installed, they overhang the sheer a little, which indicates that either they weren't cut as accurately as I thought, or the hull is slightly narrower than it should be.  Either way, we're talking about a relatively small discrepancy, so I won't worry about it.  I'll just cut/sand the overhang off, and nobody will ever know.

I mixed up way more epoxy/fiberglass powder glue than I needed, so after I was done nailing down the decks, I stirred some silica powder into the remaining epoxy and used it as a fairing compound to fill gaps and smooth lines around the handles and deck beams. 

Next up for the hull: we'll pull it out of the porch, invert it on saw horses, and radius the chines in preparation for the exterior glass tape.  When that step is done, it will be time for a final coat of epoxy, then paint!  

The other big news is that I scored a twelve-foot length of bamboo at the second-hand building materials shop yesterday.  Cost me all of $3.22, which is less than a tenth of what it would  elsewhere.  It's too thin to use as anything but a spar, and may not be stout enough for that, even.  But it's a thick-walled variety, and seems quite strong.  So I'm going to try it.  If it breaks in use, we'll just replace it with something else.

I fitted it to a crotch I'd cut earlier, and pinned and lashed them as per the plans.  I must say, I'm a bit nervous about that joint.  But Wharram says it will hold, so who am I to argue?

With two spars ready, and the sail more or less complete, I couldn't help arranging it in the back yard to see how it looks.  With Puff the cat supervising, I laced the sail onto the spars until I ran out of line about 3/5ths of the way around.  It looks handsome, but I must confess that my new bamboo spar may be about 6" too short. 

As disappointing as that is, I can still use it as part of my hiking platform.  It certainly won't be wasted.  But that means I need to figure out how to fit a Y-joint to the carbon fiber windsurfer mast.  I might end up using store-bought lumber to make that piece, as I can't imagine turning a chunk of found lumber into the perfectly round 1.75" dowel required to fit the inside of the mast.

It's a Boat! (Sort of....)

I stitched the sides panels on today.  The first was done before I left for work, and I added the second one after I got home.  There was a little trouble getting things to line up right - the sides want to ride up on the ends, leaving gaps at the chine and covering the handles.  But I was able to fix that by using a clamp between the gunwales and the keel, then tightening the wire stitches.

The hull takes a very slim shape until you force the seats into place.  This encourages the sides to curve properly, which helps the ends of the gunwales fit properly at stem & stern.  The seat shown is in only temporarily here -  I need to trim the aft seat to fit the taper of the hull before it will fit at all, and the forward seat needs to be notched to fit around the butt joints, too.  So the hull shape will change a bit yet, but it's not far off now.

With the seats in place, the hull has a beam of about 22" at the widest -- narrow! And it's long!  Assembled, it's not heavy, but it is awkward to move around.


There's still some stitching left to do.  After I get the last stitches in, tighten everything up and double-check the lines, it will be time to start packing the seams with epoxy fillets.

Cuts Complete, Building Begun

After all the work it took to loft the patterns onto my plywood, actually cutting the pieces out was almost anticlimactic.  It took two modest chunks of my weekend and required no help, whereas the lofting took a long evening and another entire morning with help from my kids.

I had thought about using the Japanese pull saw for much of this process, but that didn't work out.  I have trouble controlling the direction of my cuts as closely as I'd like with that saw, and it's not exactly gentle on the top veneer of the plywood, either.  My trusty circular saw is easier to hold straight, and chips the veneer less to boot.  By adjusting the saw for a pretty shallow depth, I was able to cut the gentle curves of the side and bottom panels with it.  I used my brother's jigsaw on the really curvy parts, like the stem and stern posts.

The only problem with the circular saw is that it has a very wide kerf.  "Kerf" is the portion of your wood that is turned into sawdust by the action of the saw.  My circular saw is fitted with a nice carbide-tipped blade that's at least 1/4" thick at the cutting tips, so it chews a good 3/8" path through the plywood.  The jigsaw was closer to 1/8" kerf, and the pull saw is even thinner than that.  So any time two pieces were really close together on the plywood, I'd set the circular saw aside and pick up the pull saw for that portion.

In the end, I am pretty happy with the accuracy of my cuts.  I think they're all within working tolerances, and I didn't make any expensive errors that require another sheet of plywood to fix.  I'm afraid I don't have pictures at this time, but I'll try to post some soon.

The end of the cutting process leaves one with six ~8' panels - two for the bottom and two for each side; a bow and stern deck; a number of delicate arcs to reinforce the midships end of the decks; scrap for butt plates and lashing pads; and two each stem post and stern post.  These last are duplicated because they're laminated to double thickness; Sunday night, with a little spare time on my hands, I decided to go ahead and laminate them.

I mixed a single-pump batch of System 3 epoxy, spread it liberally on both mating surfaces, and joined them.  After wrapping the whole affair in plastic bags to keep from accidentally bonding tools to the work, I clamped each set of posts with 4 clamps, 2 of which were on chunks of scrap wood to distribute the load.  A day later, they look pretty good - solidly joined and lined up correctly with each other. 

Next up, I need to build a way to stow the long panels when they're joined.  I plan to hoist them overhead into the rafters on the porch; I'll try to diagram or photograph that system for a future posting.