Progress is mine!

It's been awhile.

Since my last post, I've done a bunch of stuff related to construction, including:

• Stitching the hull panels together, gluing, and then removing the wires (!!!)  Where fillets were put in over top of the wires near the bow and stern, it was really tough to get the wires out.  On 2 occasions, the wires snapped as i was trying to remove them so they're there forever.  Using a small butane torch helped remove some of the stubborn wires, but heating the wire enough to break the bond with the epoxy holding it fast resulted in delaminating the plywood a couple of times and blackening the wood, even with a heat shield to protect the hull.
• Stitching the deck panels.  Of all the steps to date where i would have liked a partner, this would have been it.  The curves of the four panels make for a beautiful undulating shape when they're joined, but they sure took some persuading to get together, and hands three and four would have made that a ton easier.
• Fitting the deck to the unglassed hull,  That was how i discovered a small misalignment that impacts the fit at the bow and stern which took a bit of fitting to remedy.  I hope!
• Doing the same for the deck, plus putting in the fillets and glass tape that give the deck a bit of strength prior to glassing the exterior.

Tonight (12/14) is the beginning of the Big Sand on the hull, leading up to a big day some time next week i hope of fiberglassing the hull.

Scratch that, and fast forward to Happy Trumpian Inauguration Day plus a couple, or NFL Conference Championship Day if that works better for you.  It took a fair bit of time to get to the "glass the hull" moment, most of which was taken up with refilling the joints between the hull panels (a couple of times in some cases) and fairing the hull while trying to get rid of epoxy smears and a few scars from wires that really didn't want to come out.  But it got done, more or less the way the manual suggested it would.  Just took longer.

Two coats of epoxy, plus the keel strip.  The reinforcements for the bow and stern went on another day.  You can see a couple of scars that I couldn't get out without removing way too much wood - which would be BAD.  Scars beat hull weakness hands down.

Three coats, with the reinforcing tapes applied.  Looking nice.  But man is the scrap edge of the glass  (hanging beneath the hull) lethal.  It didn't get trimmed until I was ready to rewire the deck.

I was lucky to have someone with way more knowledge of fiberglass than I will ever possess glass the exterior of the hull.  I did the interior and I can say unequivocally that I'm really glad most of my work is hidden from view.  I didn't realize exactly how much glass cloth I had left after doing the hull exterior since i never unrolled the whole bolt, so I used a bunch of smaller scrap pieces, some of which were not cut on the bias and therefore shed fiber like it was going out of style.  It got done, but pretty?  Nope.

The deck wired (mostly) to the hull.  I hadn't figured out that a ratchet strap could rock my world at that point, as described below.

Once I tried to rewire the deck to the hull in preparation for gluing the two bits together, it became apparent that the glass had caused the hull to change shape significantly, to the point where I had to remove a bunch of wires and shave over half an inch off the bottom of the forward permanent bulkhead, which defines the front of the cockpit and the curvature of the front of the deck, to have any chance of being able to get the deck to meet the shear.  Even then, I used a ratchet strap (OH SO GENTLY!!) to bring the deck into position so i could glue it.  Again, I would have loved to have a helper in persuading the deck to come into the right position as I wired it into place, since the hull wasn't the same shape as before.

The triangular bit at the back is the foam insert through which the bow handle rope will be threaded.  The fillets and tapes which form the lion's share of the bond between the deck and hull are sorta visible too.

Gluing the deck onto the hull was no big deal.  Filleting and glassing the hull-deck seams on the inside of the boat was actually easier than I expected.  I split the job into two days, turning the boat first onto one side and then the other.  This allowed me to keep the tapes horizontal and avoid having to fight gravity, and other than having fun smearing epoxy (PB style) in my hair it went well.

The blotchy bits are thickened epoxy (smears) where I filled the holes.  Tonight will be final sanding of the deck, installation of the bottom strips for the rear hatch, and installation of two plywood strips that are laminated to the underside of the deck fore and aft of the rear hatch and serve to provide the support that was provided during earlier phases of construction by two temporary bulkheads.  I also had to use a good-sized blob of very thick epoxy to fill in a couple of air pockets on the bow and stern where the hull and deck come together, and that will get some attention tonight to make a  smooth joint that's nice and strong, since this boat needs to be able to hit a wall or rock at speed with no ill effects.  I'm contemplating doing an end pour in the bow - standing the boat on the bow and pouring a couple of large-ish mixes of epoxy through the forward hatch opening to provide more strength and impact resistance to the bow.  That will depend on how much epoxy i have left after construction is complete, since I'm running very low, and what i can come up with to control the heat that a large batch of epoxy puts out when it cures.

As is always the case, I wish I'd had twice as many of these little and very useful pipe clamps.  I could have done both hatches in one night.  [Pouty face].

Beginning to look really nice.  Some of these messy bits aren't being sanded because they're going to be cut away to accommodate a larger cockpit.  Not all, though.

As of 1/22, the bulkheads have been glassed into the hull/deck, some extra wood that helped strengthen the deck during construction has been cut away, all the deck seams and all the drill holes have been filled in, and the deck is waiting on 220 grit paper (and a little bit of rougher paper in areas that are pretty obvious above) to complete fairing before the deck gets glassed to the hull and this is almost over.  

Wrestling (successfully) with seat pieces. Yay!

Last night involved gluing the deck panels, doing a final bit of rework on one keel panel with a couple of air pockets under the glass and joining one bulkhead but a lot more time on stitching the seat panels together.

The seat looks really cool - it's almost like a tractor seat, and that means the panels curve up as they move to the outside of the seat.  This was my first crack at stitching panels together and there was clearly some learning involved, but time, a few broken wires, a few more that had to be taken out and redone, and a bunch of additional wires to pull that outside panel into something resembling a flush fit with its neighbors did the trick.  There were still a few gaps that I simply couldn't make go away, but when it's time to glue I'll tape the gaps on the topside of the seat to minimize bleed through and fill everything with thickened epoxy, and once it's been glassed top and bottom it won't matter at all.

The panels in their flat, non seat-like state:

The manual called for a saturation coat on the back side and i did the top and back.  The only problem that i can see with that approach was to make it impossible to use a heat gun to try to gently shape that outside panel (that'd be the upside down u-shaped one above) when things got unpleasant.

The seat, post stitch:

I hear that some people leave the seat glassed and don't add foam.  I assume such folks hail from Sparta.  The seat is leaned back a touch and if you lean forward in paddling that would place all of the paddler's weight on the sit bones.  On what amounts to a smooth rock.  I ride a bike with a leather saddle and I think that's ridiculous :).

Assuming my epoxying skills improved last night with the deck panels, and i'm hopeful, tonight will be the first stitches into the hull, and in a day or two i'll have something that actually starts to look like a boat.  Looking forward.

Well, it's a start

I got started last night, thanks to Gull Lake Boat Works, where I've been able to get space in a workshop.

I will just say something I fully expected, that the time estimates provided by the manufacturer are shaping up to be wildly optimistic.  I work in the mining industry, so I know what it's like to be hard-wired for optimism, but this is significant.

First things first, though.  I set up a temporary 16' workbench, which will be needed until the panels start getting stitched, took inventory of the wooden bits, and started doing surface and edge sanding.  I assume things would have gone quicker if I had a bit more space but after 4 hours of sanding I'd managed to sand both surfaces and the edges of all of the bulkheads, hatch components, seat components, and three of the four panels that make up the keel, leaving 16 pieces that make up the remainder of the hull and another 12 that make up the deck.  Clearly, I've got to either speed up or temper my expectations.  I think I know which :(.

A couple of pictures of a LOT of plywood.

One thing I've already learned, at this early stage, is just how easily the plywood splinters.  I've had a couple of bits where my sanding pad caught on an edge and tore.  Luckily I think it won't impact the final appearance.

One thing that is terrific is those puzzle joints which you can see on the midpoints of the panels and the other components. Just thinking of the additional setup and misery that would be involved in assembling a kit with butt or scarf joints to get the two pieces of each panel to be correctly aligned AND the right overall length gives me hives.  That's especially important if you're not imbued with either a lot of woodworking experience or a lot of space, which is me in a nutshell.

Hopefully tonight I can start getting the panels together.  In my available space this will entail some juggling of those 16' panels.  Oh yes.  I may be begging for more room before the night's out!

Howdy

Hi there.

I may be biting off more than I can chew, but here goes.

Last week I bought a Waters Dancing Solace 16XL kit.  I hope to get started on the build some time in November and be done hopefully by the middle of January.  It's going to take a whole buncha day since I actually have a job.

I picked the WD kit because it's Canadian and, at least until last Friday, they had a sale on their kits that would have made it about 25% cheaper than buying something similar from Pygmy, before adding on local shipping and the hardware WD supplies that neither Pygmy nor CLC do - bulkheads, hatches with associated hardware, and deck hardware, plus WD's specific shtick of supplying graphite powder to mix with epoxy to seriously improve the wearability of the hull.  I also liked the ability to get the boat with an enlarged cockpit.

I decided to try my hand at a blog because I found it frustrating that there was so little information online, other than what the kit manufacturers themselves prepare, of what it's actually like to build one of these.  Doesn't matter what kit manufacturer you look at - Pygmy, CLC, or Waters Dancing - they all say their boats can be built by anyone regardless of their level of woodworking and boatbuilding experience, and since I have none that's good enough to brag about, I think they mean ME.

Here's what I hope to wind up with at the end:

   

WE'LL JUST SEE ABOUT THAT.

Look back in about 6 weeks.  I really want to get started.

If your surfing brings you to this blog and there's something you want to know as I go along, let me know.