Steve's Attempt at Boatbuilding

Maiden Voyage!

2008-05-21T21:31:00.003-06:00

Over a week after finishing her, I finally took Geall out for her maiden voyage and christening. Weather and schedules finally aligned well enough to take her out this afternoon.

Ready to roll

We went to Boyd Lake, a local reservoir here in northern Colorado. We also took our two tandem kayaks we just bought last year (since all five of our family can't fit in an Eastport Pram at one time).

I put her in the water and to everyone's amazement, she floated! And to no one's amazement, I flailed at using oars for the first time in over ten years. As far as I could tell, she rowed fine (up until a bronze oarlock pin sheared off).

Appeasing Neptune

One of the gifts I received at last Sunday's cookout was a small bottle of champagne, perfect for the christening. So I officially christened her "geall" -- Gaelic for "promise" while sacrificing all but a small amount of the bottle to Neptune.

Under sail

I was very pleased with her performance under sail. The winds were variable (this is Colorado, after all), but she always kept moving. It was a during a calm period that I tried rowing with the sail up and that was when the oarlock broke. Sailboats always have to remind me that they are meant to be sailed.

Another mini-crisis occurred when I came into shore for the first time. The kick-up rudder kicked up just fine when it became shallow. When I went to take her out again with my kids aboard I discovered that the knob for tightening the rudder blade had fallen off into the water. Fortunately, my oldest son jumped into the water and found it within 5 minutes. I'm going to have to find a way to keep it attached (and buy a spare).

My wife then took my oldest son out and had a blast sailing her. I have been hoping that all of my kids will learn to love sailing her.

All in all, it was a great first sail.

Geall is launched

A Celebration

2008-05-18T21:44:00.002-06:00

Today we had a cookout in honor of the completion of Geall. About 35 people showed up. It was the first time I raised her sails. As a entertaining twist, I displayed her in the library in our house. The cathedral ceiling in that room allowed me to step her 10 foot mast. She rested comfortably on a slew of cushions and a blue bed-sheet.

Indirect lighting makes the varnish look much better

Everyone complemented me on how nice she looked. At this point, I still can only see all of the mistakes I made. Fortunately, most of the mistakes are in the last 10 mils of her skin.

It took me well over a year to build those bookshelves, too

If the weather holds (it was 85 degrees F today), I should be able to christen her this week.

One of the mates inspects my work

Hardware and Rigging

2008-05-17T21:59:00.002-06:00

This last Monday, after the last coat of varnish had dried, I assembled the kick-up rudder and attached it to the transom. Drilling the horizontal hole for the bolt that connects the tiller to the top of the rudder cheeks was more challenging than I first realized. This was due to how wide the tiller was at the point the hole was to be drilled. I didn't want to drill it out in one shot because I was worried that it wouldn't be centered where the drill came out. So I drilled from both sides. I didn't get it perfectly aligned (next boat, next boat, next boat...), so I had to elongate one of the holes. Fortunately it is hidden by the bolt and rudder cheeks.

The newly assembled and attached rudder

Next I attached the oarlocks to the outwales. Earlier this spring I had bought a second set (the first set comes with the kit) when I realized I didn't which rowing position I would use. Having the second position allows me to row it with the mast in, or by myself, from the after position and row it with others on board from the forward position.

The boat was done at this point, but I still had some rigging to do. I drilled holes in the yard for the halyard line and in the boom for the downhaul and the sheet. The manual said to put the downhaul hole in the "gooseneck", but the photos showed it drilled in the boom itself. I decided the latter would be the strongest position. The manual made no mention of how or where to attach the sheet to the boom. I drilled a hole for it about a third of the way from the end. Next, I attached two plastic cleats to the mast, about 10" up from the bottom. I also measured out and cut 15' and 30' lengths (sheet and halyard, respectively) from the 3/8" line I bought last summer.

The completed hull

The following night I laced the sail to the boom and yard using 5mm line I had bought in February. Following the directions, I used the holes I had drilled in the spars prior to varnishing them. The directions were unclear as to how to attach the tack and clew to the boom and the head and peak to the yard. I decided to just tie them to the pre-drilled holes in the spars using a bunt-line hitch, my new favorite knot (from Chapman's Knots). After attaching the downhaul to the boom, I was done!

All that remains now, is to christen it. Alas, the weather and personal circumstances have not allowed me to do it yet. Tomorrow is the cook out, so I'll have to show off a unchristened boat.

Varnishing the Interior

2008-05-14T21:37:00.006-06:00

It was now time for the most visible effort I was going to make - varnishing the interior. As I've mentioned, I hope I've learned some lessons from this to make the next boat go even better. I'm not sure I could have learned these lessons any other way, however.

I had also put some time pressure on myself: It was now the end of April and I wanted to have to pram ready by the time warm weather in Colorado arrived. Also, I set a date to have a cook-out at our house where the guest of honor would be the Pram! The date of the cook-out would be May 18. I started varnishing the interior on May 9. Since I started on the week-end, and since the varnish I was using (Schooner by Interlux) could be reapplied in 12 hours, I was hoping I could varnish and sand on the same day. This proved to be true, although varnishing took over two hours and wet-sanding took over an hour.

The first coat went on pretty well. I realized that planning the varnishing was going to take some work. I was using the varnishing technique described on the CLC website, namely using a foam brush, applying in one direction and then going back over it in the perpendicular direction, always going from "dry" to "wet". This works great in a small patch, or where an adjoining section will be completed soon enough where you can blend the two sections together before the first begins to get tacky. And that was true of the exterior transoms. But what about the interior bottom? It was too big to do as a single section. I wound up doing a quarter of the bottom at a time, going around counter-clockwise. Unfortunately, by the time I did the fourth section, the first section had begun to set and it was impossible to join the two without leaving brushmarks or a double-thickness of varnish. This is a problem I never did figure out a complete solution to. I suspect I needed to thin the varnish even more than the 10% I was doing. Of course, that has drawbacks too: runs on the vertical surfaces would be even harder to control. I don't know what the right answer is other that using a sprayer and spray booth (I have the former, but not the latter).

I also managed to nearly drive us out of the house after the second coat. Up to the second varnish coat, I had always varnished right before bedtime. By the morning, the odor in the house wasn't too bad (have I mentioned I was building and finishing in my basement?). I had also installed a ventilation fan in my shop that vented directly outside. The second coat, however, went on in the early afternoon. It had also gotten cold outside, meaning closed windows and a running furnace. My wife was really regretting getting me this boat at this point. Luckily I had only one more coat to go and I put it on a night.

The second coat had developed a problem, however, that I hadn't seen before: It had many tiny hairs or threads embedded in it. If I didn't figure out what caused it I was in danger or ruining my third and final coat. What was strange, was the mast, which I had varnished immediately prior to interior, showed no signs of this problem. Before I started the last coat, I switched back to a shop cloth that had worked earlier. I was fastidious in wiping down the boat after the final wet-sanding.

After two coats of varnish

So, with much trepidation, I began the last coat. The first section went well, no sign of the evil threads. Then, on the second, adjoining section, they reappeared! At this point I realized the problem. Immediately prior to the thread appearing, I had just varnished underneath the mast step, a place that was very difficult to reach. I must have missed wiping the sanding debris out of there. I quickly tossed the brush and grabbed a new one. Problem solved. Every time after that when I started seeing anything suspicious in in the varnish, I replaced the brush.

In the end there were only a couple of mistakes in the final coat: a spot on the middle seat that I didn't apply enough varnish that didn't blend well when I went back over it and a sag on an upper (near vertical) panel. I consoled myself by saying I could always sand and recoat at any time.

After three coats of varnish

Almost done! I just had to assemble and attach the rudder, attach the oarlocks, and rig the sail.

Painting the Hull

2008-05-08T22:22:00.003-06:00

I spent seven days painting the hull:

Day 1: Mask the varnished transoms, paint on the primer. Wait 24 hours.
Day 2: Sand the primer
Day 3: First coat of polyurethane. Wait 24 hours.
Day 4: Wet sand the first coat.
Day 5: Second coat of polyurethane. Wait 24 hours.
Day 6: Wet sand the second coat.
Day 7: Third coat of polyurethane.

With each subsequent coat of primer/pain, as I sanded them, I realized how hard it is to try to fix existing flaws in the finish by putting new layers on top of them. First, it's really hard to sand the last layer smooth enough and evenly enough to hide the flaws. Secondly, each new layer adds new flaws. As I mentioned, I think the right answer is to start with as smooth a surface as possible. It would have meant adding additional layers of epoxy before varnishing or painting. As I discovered with surfaces of the seats, sanding the 2nd layer of epoxy almost back down to the wood and then adding a 3rd layer (which is then sanded smooth) leads to a very smooth and consistent surface. Oh well, next boat.

I've now officially given up on having a mirror-smooth finish and have now settled for one that isn't too embarrassing to have other people look at.

After two coats of paint

Varnishing

2008-05-08T22:20:00.015-06:00

Next, I flipped the boat over again and started varnishing the outside of the transoms. At the same time I began varnishing the rudder, daggerboard and spars. I started out by varnishing one face at a time of the rudder parts, boom and mast. I varnished them face-up. This quickly became a mess because of drips running down to the bottom face. I decided to hang them vertically and do all sides at once. The spars I hung horizontally. This made varnishing more difficult, but resulted in less clean-up work. The first time I sanded between coats, I used dry-sand paper but it seemed to leave pretty big scratches and remove most of the varnish. I then bought a bunch of wet-sand sandpaper, 330 and 400 grit. After sanding each coat, I wiped down with alcohol.

I used the rudder blade and cheeks as practice. I think I wound up with 4 coats of varnish on those before I found the finish acceptable. The daggerboard had 3 or 4 coats (I lost track with the whole varnish, sand, varnish, sand... process). I gave the tiller handle 6 coats and the boom and yard 5 coats (none of which where epoxy-coated).

After enough practice I proceeded to varnish the transoms. I gave them 3 coats and, except for one sag, I think they turned out OK. At this point I still hadn't realized the error of my ways with regard to sanding.

Bow transom after three coats of varnish

The daggerboard after 3 coats of varnish

Mast after four coats of varnish

Epoxy Sanding

2008-05-08T22:19:00.007-06:00

Once the epoxy had hardened, it was time to sand in preparation for varnishing and painted. My plan all along was to varnish all of the interior and the exterior of the transoms. The rest of the exterior would be painted in a dark green color to match the hull color of our Potter 19, "Promise".

Of all the steps in building the pram, this is the one I underestimated the importance of getting right. I had assumed that any flaws with the epoxy coating that sanding didn't remove would be taken care of by either the paint primer or by multiple coats of varnish. While this was true for the smaller imperfections, it wasn't true for the larger blemishes, such as drips and runs in the epoxy or where fiberglassing had gotten "wavy". In hindsight, I see that I should have spent more time sanding to a uniform level. This would have resulted in sanding through the epoxy in spots (which happened anyway), but I should have been not afraid to add more epoxy coats and re-sanded those. In short, I should not have considered epoxy coating and sanding as separate steps, rather as a single effort to produce an absolutely smooth and even, fully sealed surface ready for paint or varnish.

But I didn't realize this until I started painting and varnishing. Oh well. Next boat.

I started with the interior (since it was what I just finished epoxy coating). For the first time, I used my random-orbit sander (connected to my shop vac). As I feared, it resulted in my sanding through the epoxy to wood or fiberglass in spots. I could only use the sander on the bottom of the inside and on the seats. I did wind up recoating the seats and the bottom with more epoxy. Those were the surfaces that turned out the best - I just wish I had recoated more places. Also, I didn't re-sand with the sander, opting to hand sand the recoated surfaces. I think this was a mistake. The sander did a much better job. I was just too afraid of sanding too much. Instead, I sanded too little.

Eventually, I got it tolerable enough and flipped the boat over to sand the exterior.

The exterior was a similar story, except I did use the sander for the first pass (150 grit). I sanded through the epoxy in spots at the edges of the laps. I recoated, but here I made another big mistake. I only recoated the edges where I had sanded through. I should have recoated the entire exterior again and resanded with the power sander. But I didn't and wound up having an uneven surface on the outside of the panels. At this point I was still assuming that the primer and paint would cover this up.

The interior, after sanding epoxy coats

Epoxy Coats

2008-04-16T22:56:00.006-06:00

Sigh. Still way behind on the blog. I'm writing about things that happened weeks ago. It would be better to write about what I did each day on the day I did it. Unfortunately, lately I've working on the boat after work and after my wife and I get the kids to bed. When I'm done, I'm so tired it's all I can do to crawl into bed.

Anyway....

After all the sanding, next up was to add two coats of unthickened epoxy.

I started on the bottom, with the hull upside-down. I used a small foam roller and a small disposable paint tray. I wound up reusing the tray (but not the rollers). As usual when starting a new phase, I was a little nervous about glopping epoxy over my boat but as I got going it went smoothly. After I rolled on the epoxy, I went back over it with a 2" foam brush to remove any bubbles. I was paranoid about drips - especially on the skeg and the near-vertical panels near the sheer line. So after each coat I hovered with the foam brush. As I mentioned before, I decided not to do anything special with the first coat on bare wood. I just put on a thin coat and it looked no worse than using the scraper technique - and it wasted less epoxy. After the first coat hardened, it took me a few days to get back to working on the boat so I had to lightly sand it first. After the second coat, it appeared I had completely filled the weave of the fiberglass on the bottom.

The bottom after one coat of epoxy

Next, I flipped the boat over and worked on the inside. It was pretty much the same drill. One coat followed by a light sanding (and wiping) and a second coat. This time, I got both coats on in sequential days, so the sanding wasn't as crucial as before. Of course, working on the inside was more difficult and time-consuming due to all of the seats and bulkheads. It was especially tricky getting all of the dust out of the longitudinal joints where the panels met. Like the bottom, it looked like I filled the weave of the fiberglass with the second coat of epoxy (actually the third coat for fiberglassed sections).

The interior after two coats of epoxy

Also, during this time, I added epoxy coats to the daggerboard.

The daggerboard after epoxy coating

Now it was time to sand off most of the epoxy I just added.

Preliminary Sanding

2008-04-16T22:19:00.002-06:00

(It's been a while since I've updated the blog. Fortunately, this time, it wasn't because I wasn't working on the boat - I just wasn't working on the blog).

Once I got done with filling holes, it was time to start sanding in preparation for the epoxy coats. The bare wood needed sanding to remove scratches and the odd drips of stray epoxy. The fillets needed sanding to smooth them out. And finally, the fiberglassed sections needed sanding to allow epoxy to adhere to them.

I started on the bottom, with the boat upside-down. It was tedious, but certainly not difficult. I hand sanded it because it was easy enough and to avoid sanding through the top plies. I started with (bulk purchased) 80 grit, moved my way into 150 grit and ended with 240 grid sandpaper.

The outside, after sanding.

I then flipped the boat over and started working on the inside. This was more tedious (and not because I was hand sanding) - there were a lot of fiddly bits to worry about: bulkheads, under the seats, etc. It was also time to deal with the large divot I put into one of the panels on the inside when the boat slipped off one of its sawhorses. I used a trick I read about in "How to Build Glued -Lapstrake Wooden Boats" by John Brooks and Ruth Ann Hill. He recommended placing a wet paper towel over the gouge and then placing a very hot iron over it. The iron causes the water to turn into steam which re-expands the crushed wood fibers. I worked extremely well, athough there will alway be a mark in that spot. But no putty or extra epoxy filler would be required.

The inside, after sanding.

At the end of the second day of sanding, the boat was ready for epoxy.

During this time, I began epoxy coating the kick-up rudder. I used the same technique for the first coat that I used for the seat bottoms: 30 minutes after putting the epoxy on, I scraped off all of the excess. After the first coat had hardened, I lightly sanded and added the 2nd coat. I have to admit that I was underwhelmed by the resulting finish. I guess I was expecting too much, something approaching a smooth varnished look. The epoxy surface was not perfectly smooth. There were bubbles (or dust) in it. Its thickness wasn't uniform. After doing this I questioned the value of scraping back the first coat.

The rudder pieces, after the 2nd coat of epoxy.

The Last of Thickened Epoxy?

2008-02-10T21:21:00.001-07:00

Well, today, I think I'm done dealing with thickened epoxy. I faired (puttied) some gaps between the panels at the transoms. I used epoxy thickened with microlight to peanut-butter consistency. It was "creamy" peanut butter, and I should have made it "chunky" since it sagged a little, but it worked.

Above, is my usual gung-ho masking job. Below is the freshly applied fairing. Note how light the mixture is using just microlight.

After that, I worked on the mast. I drilled a 1" diameter hole centered 1.5" from the top of the 10 foot spar. I rounded the edges of the hole using the 1/4" round-over bit in my router.

Next I put a 1/2" round-over bit in the router and did the four corners of the mast, stopping 10" from the bottom (so the mast step can keep it from twisting).

It went OK, except that the wood started to splinter pretty badly when I ran the router in the "correct" direction. That is, against the direction the bit was trying to pull the router. This is normally the preferred direction, but for some reason it was really tearing up the wood. By the time I realized how bad it was, I had a 3" long, 1/4" deep gouge in one corner of the mast. I probably should have done the round-over operation in two passes, using the 1/4" bit to start.

Score another one for impatience.

Finishing up pre-sanding work on interior

2008-02-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last two sessions finishing up the interior before the sanding begins.

Yesterday, I filletted the mast step sides to the bottom panel. It's not really called for in the instructions, but I thought it would add some strength. While I had fillet mixture made up, I also filled in the crevices around both of the transom doublers, just to make them a litter neater. I also filled in any remaining suture holes in the hull and bulkheads. Prior to all this I did my usual retentive masking tape job.

All taped and ready to fillet the step and putty the doublers.

After filleting and filling.

Also yesterday, I widened the hole in the rudder blade to 3/8" and filled it with silica-thickened epoxy. I also glued and screwed the gooseneck "fitting" to one of the spars CLC included in the kit, thus transforming it into the boom and the other spar into the yard. Before adding the glue, I predrilled the holes from boom into the gooseneck.

Here is the post-glued view.

Today was a router day. The less-than-straight daggerboard slot I had cut in the middle seat/thwart had been bothering me, so I decided to clean it up. I put a flush-trim bit into my router and ran it around the slot. It looks much better now.

Then I put a 1/4" round-over bit into the router. I rounded the daggerboard handle, both interior and exterior. Next, I rounded the carry handles in the transoms. And finally, I rounded the outwales, both top and bottom. Before I started, I was worried that a 1/4" bit was going to take too much off. I didn't need to worry, it looks fine. The parts of the various handles that are narrow will require some hand sanding with a sandpaper-wrapped dowel.

The mast will also need to be rounded, but not today. The mast will require a 1/2" round-over bit.

The bow transom handle, after being rounded over.

Oh, one last thing. I managed to drop my boat off of one of my sawhorses. As it fell, the corner of the sawhorse dented the inside of the hull. So I have a little repair work to do there before sealing with epoxy. One interesting thing is that the sawhorse also hit the fiberglassed bottom and first panel. These had some scratches, but no dents. I guess fiberglassing works!

Mast Step and Transom Doublers

2008-01-21T23:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I glued in the mast step and transom doublers. Before doing so, I had to sand the edges of the doublers to conform to the fillets between the hull and transoms and seats. I also had to adjust the forward edge of the mast step to conform to the fillet at the base of the bow bulkhead and to the angle between the bulkhead and the bottom panel.

Once I got the mast step to fit, I carefully marked where it needed to go (using a combo square) on the bottom panel. I drilled four holes from inside to outside. I then taped the step back into position and used a piece of wood to hold it securely. This allowed me to tip the boat on its side so I could pre-drill back into the step from the outside.

Now I was ready to glue. I mixed up a 2-pump batch of bonding mixture. First I glued the step into position, added the wood "clamp", tilted the boat, and screwed the step down. It even stayed in the proper position!

Next I glued the doublers into position using a lot of clamps. I used another long piece of wood wedged between the centerboard trunk and the bottom of the stern doubler to hold it into position (since I didn't have any clamps that had long enough jaws to reach that far).

Next I'll add fillets to the mast step and fill in the gaps around the doublers. I'll also fill in any remaining suture holes on the inside of the hull.

Seat Fillets (Part 2)

2008-01-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

I finished filletting the seats today. What a pain.

I flipped the boat over and put it on sawhorses. This way I could sorta stick my head inside and add the remaining fillets without too much trouble. It still was cramped and I should have added some extra light to see what I was doing. At least it will be hard to see what kind of a job I did.

It took 3 batches of epoxy to get it all, plus a fourth batch after I realized that I had made the third too "dry" by adding too much wood flour. That last batch, which had less flour than any other I've made recently, went on very smoothly.

I had some of the mixture left over, so I filled the remaining suture holes on the outside of the hull (using the "drilled roll of tape" method).

Next up: adding the transom doublers and the mast step. That will be the last of components to add to the pram. After that: sanding, epoxying, more sanding, varnishing and painting (oh, and probably more sanding).

Seat Fillets (Part 1)

2008-01-19T23:30:00.003-07:00

I started out the day not having decided whether to do the fillets in one pass or two. I decided to see how it went. So I added masking tape everywhere needed (I had to pull some of it off yesterday so it didn't get "bonded" to the boats along with the seats) and made up a batch of my fillet mixture. I realized that one batch wasn't going to go too far - only the forward seat and half of the middle seat, and this was only the top. I made up another batch and finished the fillets on the middle and aft seat tops.

At this point I realized that I wanted to tip the boat on its side to make adding the fillets under the seats less of a pain. Since I didn't trust that the initial bonding on the seats would hold, I figured I needed to wait for the initial set of fillets to set.

Good thing too, since I realized that I was almost out of wood flour. There wouldn't be enough to complete all off the fillets. Fortunately, we have a Woodcraft store near us that carried System 3 epoxy, and even better, the same System 3 wood flour I had been using.

Here's a look at the freshly installed top fillets. It looks a little sloppier that it is because the alcohol I used to smooth out the fillet hasn't dried up yet.

Gluing the Seats

2008-01-19T23:23:00.000-07:00

I bonded the seats in yesterday.

Here are the seats after sealing with epoxy and partial sanding. Note that I've added masking tape in preparation for filletting.

After seeing how hard it was to keep the seats in the right position, I decided to to bond the seats as a separate step before adding the fillets. I made my usual bonding mixture, coated the edges and put the seats in. I had to add some weights and clamps to get the seats to stay put in the right position. I carefully checked for drips, but there weren't any.

Here it is immediately after gluing.

Here's a close up of the forward seat after the epoxy set.

Prepping the seats

2008-01-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight, after sanding them, I coated the underside of the seats and the sealed areas they will create with a thin layer of epoxy. I tried a technique suggested in the Moores and Rossel book: after letting the epoxy sit on the plywood for about 30-45 minutes, squeegee off the excess epoxy. The idea is to create a thin layer of epoxy without any bubbles. Since no-one is going to look at the underside of the seats, I thought I'd experiment with this technique there.

Next up: gluing the seats in. I haven't decided whether to glue the seats in and fillet in one pass, or to bond first, then fillet. I'm leaning towards the latter mainly because the forward and aft seats (thwarts?) don't want to stay in their proper position. I'm worried that adding the fillets will cause them to shift, especially when working upside down inside the boat. I may even choose to fillet in a couple of passes too. One pass to do the top fillets and another to do the underside ones (perhaps even turning the boat on its side or upside down).

Stay tuned.

Fitting the seats

2008-01-13T23:08:00.001-07:00

I've caught up with my blogging!

Today, I fitted the seats.

The middle seat was the easiest - it just fit. I carefully cut a slot for the daggerboard.

The other two required some work. I found the position for the forward seat by clamping the mast doubler into place. The plans showed that the front part of the double had to touch the bulkhead. So I sanded the seat and tilted it to the right position so it did.

The aft seat required the most sanding, but finally I got it into position.

I ended the day by bonding the mast doubler to the forward seat and starting to tape in preparation for gluing and filleting the seats.

Adding the daggerboard trunk

2008-01-13T23:04:00.000-07:00

Only one day behind now!

Next, I glued the daggerboard trunk to the hull, in front of the middle bulkhead. It required a bit of sanding to get it to fit properly. The curve on it matched the bottom perfectly, but it was an 1/8 inch too tall.

Once I got it to fit, I put it into position and screwed it to the bulkhead. It wasn't parallel to the centerline of the boat, so I used a clamp to hold it in the right position.

Here it is in the correct position. Note the metal piece I used to find the center of the boat.

Now the scariest part of building the boat so far: cutting a slot for the daggerboard in the bottom panel. I marked the position of the trunk and removed it. I measured carefully and marked where to cut. I drilled a couple of holes to start sawing. I wound up using a drywall knife to cut the slot. It worked pretty good, although I'm terrible at cutting a straight line.

Here's the slot I cut.

Masked and ready for gluing. The plans called for just gluing the trunk down with the fillet mixture. I decided that I was more comfortable with using a bonding mixture first, then adding the fillet (I did this on the skeg and skids as well).

The final result.

After I bonded the trunk down, I had epoxy left over, so I finished up the rudder cheeks.

Skeg and skids

2008-01-13T23:03:00.001-07:00

Hey, only 4 days behind on my posts!

Next up was gluing on the skeg and skids. The skeg needed a bit of sanding to fit flush to the bottom of the hull. Next I marked it's position and (gulp!) drilled holes into the bottom to allow the skeg to be screwed on. The plans say to start gluing at this point. Since it's obvious by now that I'm taking my time on this boat, I decided to pre-drill the skeg so there would be less of a struggle to position it when it was covered with wet epoxy. So I clamped it into position and drilled pilot holes into the skeg from inside the boat. I did the same for the skids (after sanding them to the right shape). When they were still screwed, but not glued, to the boat, I masked the area for the fillets.

Here they are, ready for gluing. I made a slight mistake here prepping for the skeg fillets. I used the filletting tool to mark the proper position for the tape. Unfortunately, I used the fillet tool I made for the bottom panel and not the 1/2 inch radius tool I meant to use. This wasted a lot of epoxy by time I realized my mistake.

However, it turned out OK.

Random gluing

2008-01-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

The only thing I haven't glued directly to the hull so far was the skeg. As I started gluing the outwales on, I had a bit of glue left over. So I glued the mast pieces together, laminated the centerboard handles, glued up the mast step, glued up the centerboard trunk and started gluing up the top portion of the rudder.

Note my clever use of plastic to avoid gluing my mast to my workbench!

The top part of the kick-up rudder is composed of three pieces that are laminated together. The inside of the cheeks are coated with epoxy. There will be a carriage bolt that runs through the cheeks and captures the actual rudder blade in between. To avoid water intrusion into the cheeks an oversize hole is drilled into the cheeks, then filled in with thickened epoxy and finally re-drilled to the proper size.

In addition, at some point during my long absence from this blog, I sanded the proper leading and trailing edge curves into the daggerboard and rudder blade (sorry, no pictures yet).

Adding the outwales

2008-01-13T22:34:00.001-07:00

Adding the outwales is the part that for some reason took me six months to complete. Oh yeah, summer happened. I emailed John, asking him whether I should try to laminate both of the outwales pieces on each side simultaneously, or do them one at a time. He said that if I had time, I should do them one at a time. Well, I'm not exactly a speed demon about building this boat, am I? One at a time it is.

First port (April 2007).

Then starboard (May 2007).

Then the second piece to the port (May 2007).

And the final piece to the starboard (December 2007!).

Bulkhead fun

2007-02-26T23:26:00.000-07:00

Next on the agenda was to glue in the bulkheads. The middle one fit pretty much exactly where it should. The aft bulkhead was pretty close. The fore bulkhead was off by at least two inches.

I wasn't quite sure what to do. If I put the bulkhead where the plans indicated it should go, there was going to be a 1/2 inch gap between it and the hull sides. If I moved it to where it would fit, it meant that the mast would be in a different position than on the plans. What to do?

After exchanging email with John at CLC, he told me that the bulkheads quite often needed to be place differently than on the plans. He said I should just move it to where it would fit.

So I did.

Similar to the transoms, I wired the bulkheads into position, tabbed them, then added full-size fillets. Above is before the tabs.

Here's the middle bulkhead after final filletting.

Above is the fore bulkhead after all the filletting.

And here's the aft bulkhead after all the work was done.

The last of the fiberglass

2007-02-26T23:24:00.000-07:00

OK, It's been almost 11 months since I last updated this blog. I'd like to say that I was so busy finishing the boat I didn't have time to write about it. But that would be lying. I did make some progress immediately after my last post that I never got around to writing about, but by March or so too many other outside activities kept me away from my Pram.

So here it's January. I've got to catch up on the little progress I've made (and I've got to actually start working on the boat).

This post and the next few will be retrospective, in that I'll be discussing what I did a while ago.

The day after I fiberglassed the inside, I flipped the boat over and fiberglassed the outside bottom.

I followed pretty much the same procedure as inside, taping first.

Then spreading the fiberglass out on the bottom. This was more difficult than on the inside, since between doing the inside and the outside, the fiberglass picked up some dust and dirt, which it really didn't want to let go of.

But, I managed to get most of the dirt out and added the epoxy.

Again, I was pleased with the results (except for not catching all of the drips in time).

Fiberglassing

2007-02-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

I took the next scary step in building my pram: adding fiberglass to the inside bottom of the hull. The fiberglass actually goes on the first side panels in addition to the bottom panel. That's why I had to add a fillet between the bottom and the side panels. I've never worked with fiberglass before and was pretty nervous about it.

Step one was to sand the area to be fiberglassed. I was pretty pleased with how well the wire holes cleaned up.

Step two was to add masking tape to the 2nd side panels and the transoms to control where the fiberglass was bonded. I used a lot of masking tape.

Step three was to lay the fiberglass in position and roughly trim it to fit. The fiberglass fabric was shipped from CLC folded up in a big ziploc bag. It was somewhat difficult to maneuver into position because 1) it had a pretty good case of static cling and 2) it had a tendency to snag on the unfinished plywood edges of the hull. After I got it into position and trimmed I taped it in place.

The weave was a little loose where the fabric had been folded. I hoped this would be unnoticable after all of the layers of epoxy were on.

Step four: add the epoxy. I mixed up about 5 1-cup batches of unthicken epoxy, using each batch completely before mixing the next. I proceed to wet out the fiberglass by pouring a puddle of epoxy on the fabric and spreading it around using a 4" plastic spreader. I worked from side to side and front to back. The desired end result is for the fiberglass to be just wetted out with no dry spots and no shiny spots. I didn't worry about adding too much epoxy at first. My initial goal was to just get it completely wetted out. Once I had done that (after the 5th epoxy batch), I started at the front and used the spreader to squeeze out the excess epoxy. I had to balance between squeezing hard enough to remove the shiny spots but not enough to shift the position of the fiberglass. The only really tricky part was the inside curve between the bottom and side planks. It was hard to remove all of the excess epoxy there. Oh well, just more sanding later.

The looseness of the weave was still apparent, but all-in-all, I was happy with the result.

The final step was to trim the fiberglass with a utility knife and pull the masking tape. I was debating with myself as to the best time to do this: before or after the epoxy hardened. I opted for before, when the epoxy was still tacky, and was glad I did because epoxy had run underneath the masking tape and would have glued it down had I not pulled it before the epoxy set. One problem with pulling it before was that little tufts of fiberglass were set free when I trimmed the fabric and some of them decided that landing on the still tacky epoxy was a good idea. Another sin to be hopefully covered with future epoxy coats.

Final transom and bottom fillets

2007-01-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

After almost two weeks, it was time to get back to the boat.

Yesterday:

After the transom tabs dried, I pulled the wires holding the transom on. Amazingly, the tabs actually worked and the transoms didn't fall off!

Since I wanted to fill the wire holes on the inside before I fiberglassed the bottom (especially the wire holes on the bottom), I began prepping for that in addition to getting ready for the final transom fillets. I stole a trick from "Kayaks You Can Build: An Illustrated Guide to Plywood Construction" by Ted Moores and Greg Rossel, and drilled a bunch of 1/8" holes in a roll of masking tape. I then tore off pieces of the tape and placed the piece over a wire hole to be filled, centering the 1/8" hole in the tape over the 1/16" wire hole. This was in hope of reducing the amount of sanding needed. I wish I had done that with the outside holes.

Next step was to lightly sand the tabs and wipe the area down with alcohol. Then it was time to add the final fillets to the transoms. I mixed up a batch of epoxy thickened to "peanut butter" consistancy - 3 pumps of goo, 8 spoonfuls of wood flour, 2 spoonfuls of silica and 1 spoonful of microlight. I loaded it into a freezer ziploc back (outside out this time!) and clipped off a corner. I squeezed out a line of the epoxy putty along the transom joints. I took a plastic putty knife that I cut down to a width of 1" (with a 1/2" radius curve) and spread the putty along the joint. This was much easier than adding the tabs because the wires were gone. Once I was happy with the fillets, I turned my attention to the wire holes. I squirted a dab of putty using the the ziploc back onto each of the masked wire holes. I took a gelato spoon and forced the putty into the holes and scraped away the excess epoxy putty. By this time, the epoxy was starting to set and I was racing against time to get all of the holes finished before it was too late. I managed to do it.

The second to final act for the night was to pull all of the tape. The tape along the fillets didn't take very long, although I had some trouble with it since I had taped it before adding the tabs and the epoxy from the tabbing had glued the tape down.

Pulling the tape off of the wire holes took nearly forever. This was because I was doing it with gloves on and I had trouble getting the tape up and when I did I had trouble getting the tape off my gloves and into the trash can. Plus there were about a million holes. Or so it seemed.

On the other hand, the trick worked great:

The final task for the night was to run my gloved finger, wetted with alcohol, along the tabs to smooth them out. I also pressed down on each of the wire holes for good measure.

Today:

Time for the bottom fillets. I prepared a 2" wide plastic putty knife by cutting a 1" radius curve on the end of it. I placed this curve on the bottom-to-first-side-panel joint and marked where the knife touched the first side-panel along both of the joints. I then masked both sides of where the fillet would go. I also masked the gap between the 3rd and 4th panels at the stern. And for the fun of it, I masked the wire holes in the transom and the last few panel holes that had been masked when doing the transom fillets. I cleaned the intended location of the bottom fillets with alcohol and then wet it down with unthickened epoxy.

I mixed up another batch of "peanut butter" epoxy. I thought that the exising fillets were a little too dark compared to plain epoxy on the okume so I modified the recipe a little: 3 pumps of epoxy, 8 spoonfuls of wood flour, 2 spoonfuls of silica and 2 spoonfuls of microlight. I should have known better not to experiment with such a visible fillet, but since when have I thought before I've acted? This putty was much smoother than the previous batch. It was definitely lighter.

Same drill: load it into a ziploc bag, clip the corner, extrude the putty along the fillet joints, and smooth out with the rounded putty knife. I filled the wire holes and the gaps between the side panels at the stern. Lastly, I pulled the tape, which went much faster than the night before.

I have to say it looks pretty good. Except for the color. Hmmm. Definitely lighter than the okume. Rats. Now that I look closely at it, the transom fillets aren't really darker than the okume, just a different shade of brown. The extra spoon of microlight in my latest batch of epoxy made it too tan. Oh well, it still looks good.