Fair is fair

Been working on the outside of the hull for a couple days (actually a couple hours spread over a couple days). Mixing fairing compound and applying it. It's kind of fun sanding on a boat this small, as you see progress relatively quickly. Thomas was sanding with me a lot, we had to get him his own long board and dust mask. He told me we needed dust masks when he smelled the epoxy-based fairing compound, so a trip to Home Depot was necessary.

While at Home Depot, I cornered Pierre (the one guy who actually knows what he is doing) in the store and asked about spraying latex house paint. I'm pretty much convinced that we are going to paint Thomas' boat with exterior latex house paint because I just can't justify using two part poly boat paint on a low cost project. Pierre said he's gotten tremendous results with spraying latex on similar projects, but the trick is figuring out how much water to add to reduce the latex to sprayable thickness. He recommended an el-cheapo $30 spray gun that would happily work on my small compressor. He said the cool thing about spraying latex is the super quick drying times and being able to re-coat in 30 minutes. Lots of thin coats is the best way.

The fill and fairing is going really well - I'm quite happy with the outside surface of the boat. Once I get it where I want it, one more coat of epoxy and then we'll paint it.

What a difference a day makes

By now, you may be aware of the major problem I created for myself damaging the sheer clamp of Thomas' Microskiff. 24 hours later, the crisis is past and the rail now will look almost exactly the same as it did before my self-induced trauma.

I'm actually a little proud of the repair work - no one will notice except readers of this blog since they know where to look. The last part of the repair is in clamps right now, re-attaching the side panel of the boat to the sheer clamp. With a little sanding and shaping the nightmare will disappear.

It should not have happened in the first place and would not have if I had more experience and wasn't rushing to fit a quick fifteen minutes boat work into a normal work day. Power tools require one hell of a lot of caution.

After the last repair stage was clamped, I turned the boat upside down and mixed up a little fairing compound. Started to fill in the panel joins, dings, scratches and screw holes on the bottom of the hull. Once the fairing compound sets, I'll do a first sanding pass on the hull, re-fill the obvious areas and do a allover thin coat of fairing compound on the hull.

Its actually kind of cool being able to pick up and flip over the boat by yourself! The whole boat shell right now weighs maybe 50 pounds!

Time for some humble pie

I just deleted a post I wrote when I thought I was past the point of major screwups. So I thought telling people my lofty thoughts would be a contribution. Wrong.

I always wondered why Eric didn't use power tools for a lot of jobs - opting for long boards, hand saws and eyeballing things instead of cranking up the router, belt sander or whatever instead.

I took a break from real work today for a few minutes, went up to the garage and decided I needed to put the desired perfect radius on the outside of the rail of Thomas' boat. I have a monster four horsepower Bosch router that has more guts than my Toyota Tercel. I put in a half inch radius round over bit and set the depth. Didn't bother doing a trial cut on some scrap - I'm a woodworking genius!

This is a very cool tool - it winds up like a turbine till it reaches the set RPMs. It would take me five or ten minutes and all the rails would be perfect. Started at the bow port side and worked backward towards the stern. It felt a little funny. I hate stopping because it can make a rough spot in your work, but I didn't like the feel, so I stopped to look.

The router depth setting had slipped, and the router had happily slowly plunged and kept on going without me noticing the serious damage going on. The router was so powerful it sent the round over bit deep into the sheer clamp and let me move it about four feet while way below the expected depth. The rail was ruined. All that gluing and clamping. Days of work gone.

I carefully put down the router and the revelation hit me that if I had been using a long board with 60 grit on it to do the round over I would not be in the very dark place I was now.

In my panic I thought, maybe I can layer some thin pieces of oak on the damaged area and glue it, clamp it and hide my stupidity. My brain abandoned me and I was like a 16 year old slapping Bondo on a freshly dented car.

It looked like crap. I had that ugly empty hollow feeling like I'd been caught dead to rights doing something really bad. I went back inside to do some paying work, wondering how I was going to explain the section of rail that looked like a rabid beaver had attacked to Thomas.

After a couple hours of work, I calmed down and my brain started to function again. Took a break from real work and went up to see if my horrible nightmare was actually true. It was.

Asked myself, what was the RIGHT way to proceed to recover from my temporary insanity. First, I mentally thought of Eric and how he gently deals with boat repair work clients to get rid of the negative blame and self flagellation. Next, I thought of how a professional would deal with the problem. Decided on a course of action that would involve carefully removing the damaged section of the rail, meaning two whole laminations would have to be completely removed for a four foot section, and then I would replace the damaged area with completely new laminations. It took me a while to section out the damaged area (using hand tools - a sharp chisel and back saw), but it eventually came out clean. The first new layer is clamped back in place drying as we speak. I'm sure it will be undetectable when it is done, and you can bet I'll be using a long board to round over the "new" rail.

Humble pie. Could use a glass of milk - it tastes a little dry and sawdusty.

We're back ....

First off, we haven't stopped building the boat. Thomas went to Grandma and Grampa's for two weeks, and then his Mom and I took off two weeks together. Thomas and I made a little progress on things while we were on holidays, but our backyard pool was lonely and needed attention. Pools actually stay much cleaner when they are used!

This will be a long post with lots of pictures to show where we are.

Here's a picture of the completed outside shell. When we left off blogging, the basic framing had been done and the outside panels attached. I made a few minor changes from Eric's build plan - moving the daggerboard trunk to the centerline, and using West System epoxy in some places instead of the construction adhesive. I did end up using the PL Premium for some jobs, as it was really nice, fast and appropriate for the design.

In this picture you can see the centerline daggerboard trunk. The panels are 1/8 inch Luan, and they are re-inforced with the pine stringers and cleats everywhere. You can see the stringers adding strength and squareness to the floppy ply panels - with the stringers attached it all gets rigid and becomes a boat.

These photos were taken after a major job was done - laminating the sheer clamp together. When you are actually building the boat, there is no sheer clamp at the rail of the boat. I opted to cut 1/4 thick by 1/2 deep strips of Oak for Thomas's sheer clamp - about $35 worth at Home Depot. Two boards - 10' 1"x8" (3/4 finished) and a 10' 1"x3" were used. I cut the strips using my table saw and help from first my sister (Elizabeth) and then a neighbor (Ron). Handling the 10' planks is not a one man job if you want to be accurate.

The strips were laminated using Titebond III (waterproof glue) from Lee Valley Tools here in Ottawa. It would have been painful to do this with epoxy (cure time blues and mixing). As it was it took several days of one or two strips a day. Bend, glue clamp. You can see my sloppy glue drips on the inside of the boat from laminating. I tried to clean up as I went, but just didn't make the time to be as neat as I could have been.

I had to obtain a bunch more clamps - it takes about 15 - 20 clamps per side to get each strip exactly how I want it. Thomas is now expert with both hand clamps and C-Clamps. C-Clamps are used about every 10-12 inches to force location and hand clamps everywhere else to keep the glue under pressure.

After the outside of the hull is together, you have to cut and fit the Styrofoam as it is a structural part of the boat. This is a picture of the foam in the sides of the boat. You use the side panels as a pattern and cut it to fit around the bulkheads and frames. It cuts very easy with a hand saw. I used a Japanese Dozuki (back saw) from Lee Valley Tools for just about every job on the boat. Thomas uses it too - he had some minor Band-aid action going on his finger from learning to be careful with sharp tools. One quick lesson taught him more than days of me yelling to be careful with tools. He now respects saws. No real damage done, but he did break the skin and saw a couple drops of blood.

Next, the Styrofoam for the cockpit floor was cut and fitted. You do not need to "fill" every space available with this, as it provides vertical support to the floor panel above it. Oh, yeah - it also provides flotation in the event the hull was breached.

All the "inside" panels you see in these photos are "dry-fitted" and not yet glued in place. Basically, I wanted to be able to create a photo series in one day, showing all steps.

This picture show the floor panel dropped in place (it is not trimmed or fitted yet). This panel is one of my "off road" excursions from Eric's build plan. The boat as designed uses 1/8 inch (3mm) Luan for this and I substituted the 1/4 inch shown. To make it a little more eye-candy, I routed a small V-notch every 2 inches to simulate Mahogany or Teak planking on more expensive boats. The panel is Luan ply, but stained with a reddish Mahogany color and then sealed with epoxy. Each V-groove was darkened with a black Sharpie after staining and before the epoxy. Some people may find it cheesy, but to be honest, it attracts more attention than it deserves from the neighbors and spectators. People seem to think the boat is far more attractive because of the simulated planking. Go figure. The dust and bugs in my garage formed the basis of the non-slip surface.

This is some detail of the bow of the boat - showing how I've just kept the Oak laminations simple and at 90 degrees to the panels. There is a one inch lamination on the outside of the boat, extending one half inch above the panel. All the subsequent laminations are 1/2 inch across the 2 inches for the Styrofoam (plus the 1/8 for the inside panel), and then there is another 1 inch strip to cap the side of the boat. The "cap" is not installed in this picture.

This picture shows the amount of curve in the sheer clamp. I can't imagine how Robert and Eric bent the 3/4 by 1/2 Pine for Eliane's boat - I had enough trouble with 1/4 inch strips! The Oak is heavier (a lot heavier) than the Pine which is why I made it smaller and will be rounding off the edges with a router still. I think Thomas' boat will be about the same weight as Eliane's (maybe slightly heavier) due to choosing the 1/4 panels for hull bottom and floor), but his much higher weight (over 100 pounds) and general roughness on things make this a good idea even at a slight weight penalty.

Transom view. The floor panel is not fitted here and will be a bit lower when done. This photo shows the Maple transom bar and open drainage.

More to come as Thomas and I actually fit and glue things together. I hope this shows we've been making progress building, although we've been not so good about blogging!

Cheers, Bill & Thomas!

Uphill climbing

Boat building gets to be like mountain climbing at times. Every time you look up, there is another false summit ahead. You think you are making progress and suddenly you realize there is lots further to go.

I've built and attached the transom. Had to do a little fiddling, as the transom CNC cut panel was a little narrower than the boat. Widened the transom a 1/4 inch and things are fine now. Nobody but me will ever notice the difference (except people reading this that is). I'm sure the CNC transom panel is right, and somehow during my tracing of the hull bottom and cutting it, an 1/8 inch a side crept in. No big deal. Used a piece of maple I had lying around to make the transom re-inforcement that backs up the CNC panel. Man is that stuff hard! But it will never break.

Cut foam Sunday morning - it looked like it snowed in the sidewalk between my house and the neighbors. Not my favorite neighbors, as they keep their house like it's abandoned. They'll never notice the foam bits. They are young and stupid - washing their cars more often than they cut the lawn - putting effort into a money loser like a car to impress people, while the real estate investment that could have made $100,000 since they moved in now looks like it is a grow op.

Things are moving again .... finally

The project hasn't stalled - I've just been too busy to blog things. I'll take and post some pictures tomorrow. Thomas' project is starting to look like a boat.

So far, I've completed the first assembly stage - the centerline frame is epoxied to the hull bottom, the bulkheads attached and all the supporting stringers and cleats are in place. I've got to finish the transom bulkhead supports. The outside side panels are now attached as well.

Surprisingly, everything has fit just about perfectly. There was a little twist in the hull bottom as the centerline frame was attached, but as more of the parts were assembled and fixed, the hull pulled itself into alignment perfectly.

Now for a little frank discussion .... I changed the hull bottom and the cockpit deck to 1/4 inch plywood from the specified 1/8 inch. Although the 1/8 inch is lighter, and the design strength in the foam sandwich is adequate, I feel that Thomas at 100 pounds and growing fast would probably damage the 1/8 inch plywood. Since I decided to build for quality over minimal cost, it wasn't a hard decision. Increase in cost? About $16 total.

I'm trying to make this build turn out as nice as possible - and to do this I've put some effort into cosmetic things, as well as strength. A while ago, a Italian boat builder (Marco Croci) showed a spectacularly beautiful 12' boat called the Truc 12' from Crusyacht. I immediately fell in love with the money-no-object classic yacht vibe and the presentation that looked both light and modern as well as refined. In tribute to Marco's drop dead gorgeous Truc 12', I've attempted to emulate some of the same look and feel, using lumberyard parts instead of the teak, carbon and mahogany. When the hull is finished, people can let me know if it looks good or cheesy.

My wife and I were out trying to take our 14 month old Husky/Shepherd mix to the Lac Phillipe section of the Gatineau Park this past weekend, and discovered things had changed a lot since we had last been there. Dogs (even leashed) are persona non grata there now, except for one trail you can't get to without a 3 kilometer walk through the busy campgrounds and beaches. We passed on the Park and drove out to Robert's nearby (15-20 minutes away) house instead. Roz (our puppy) played with Bibitte and we had a great time visiting with Robert's family.

Thomas got back from his grandparent's (my parents) today after two weeks. I've missed him and so has the project. Two weeks is too long. The one benefit is that most of the epoxy work is done, and I can switch to the construction adhesive for attaching the foam. We'll cut the foam tomorrow - I made a pattern from the centerline frame for the foam parts earlier.

Got an email today from Tom J. (teabag on Sailing Anarchy) a local 505 (and Contender) sailor, saying that he had some leftover Tyvek from a renovation project ... did I want it? Answered yes, and went to pick it up at lunch. Thanks, Tom!

Tomorrow I'm planning on figuring out how to handle the transom, build it and mark out and cut the foam supports.