On your mark, get set, ready, go!

Yesterday I started the day making my wife a happy woman. I cleaned the garage. She was very happy to hear me vacuuming, throwing out stuff and generally organizing things. To prevent marital discord, I made a curtain of landscape plastic sheeting I had sitting from an old gardening project to form a barrier between the canoe, bikes, snowblower and things that don't like sawdust etc. from the "work" area.

Made up a plastic covered table top to be clamped when needed on top of a Workmate bench as an epoxy mixing station. One thing I learned from Eric on the last build was to keep a clean and clear epoxy prep area where mixing and all the epoxy-related stuff was segregated. Eric is super careful about contamination of his epoxy measuring pumps and materials.

I've found a big part of shop productivity is directly related to organization and preparation.

Once I had the garage relatively clear I started moving the Microskiff materials out there and I started boat building in earnest. A pile of 3/4"x1/2" stringers, one of 3/4"x3/4" stringers, one of the angled chine log stringers etc. After watching how well using a straight & level 8' long 2'x8' plank worked for Eric & Robert as a work surface, I put one in the jaws of a Workmate and that became the central work surface.

Those who have followed this blog so far know that my boat building activities have been limited to milling wood, cleaning & edge sanding the CNC cut panels and marking up the keel frame. Yesterday I marked and cut the new hull bottom from a 1/4" sheet of plywood. I know, the design plan uses the 1/8", but consistent with my "build it to last" philosophy, I feel the 1/4" bottom will withstand abuse better than the 1/8". I see less need for fiberglass as well with the 1/4". Yes, the weight of the panel is doubling, and that isn't trivial, but I'm getting rid of a bunch of the stringers and construction adhesive, so I don't think the net effect is that dramatic. I didn't use Okume plywood and stuck to the Luan outdoor grade lumberyard stock.

Today (Sunday with no sun) I kept things moving. Optimizing build simplicity for Eric was a goal from the start. One of the things he did to make things simple was to place the daggerboard trunk slightly off center, allowing a full length centerline frame to be used. Just because I can, I made a new daggerboard trunk today to be placed on the centerline. I used the existing CNC-cut side panel as a pattern, cut two new ones from 1/4" ply (offcut from the new hull bottom) and epoxied together the new trunk. It's in clamps right now, and I'll splice it into the frame next step.

Because I mixed epoxy today and also because it's a crappy day I started epoxy coating a bunch of the panels & parts. I got all the panels needed for the first stage of assembly done, and I may do some more later after the first batch cure. I don't want too many things on the go at once, so I'm not rushing. Every time I try to do too much at once, things start going wrong.