Final epoxying of the hull, and something I didn't expect

Happy Ides of March.

I put the final coat of epoxy on the hull.

Before doing that i cleaned the night's dust off the hull using a damp rag to get a nice clean boat.  I was surprised when the boat has been dried off to see that the graphite-tinted epoxy had been scuffed by the rag, but unevenly.  So.... when i re-coated the hull OR THE LAST TIME YAY!!!!!!!!! i ran the epoxy over the graphite-coated part of the hull to even out the colour.  Not entirely successful, as the unevenness still showed in a few places.  Just another reminder of my skill level :(.

Tonight is the final coat on the deck and blending into the hull.  After a few days to cure fully, Sunday should be varnish time.

Getting dirty

March 14.  Happy Pie (or Pi) Day!

Last night i finished the second of what had better be two coats of epoxy mixed with graphite powder.  I say "had better be" because there was just enough graphite for 4 3-pump batches of epoxy, and it took one batch to do one coat on half of the boat.  Yay math.  Any light spots will have to get covered up with pigmented epoxy.  Yay makeup.

One thing I'll say about black shiny epoxy is that it shows every single mistake, regardless of how i tried to fix or hide'em; that's mostly spots where i sanded the hull a bit too aggressively or had to fair away a bit more wood than i would have liked.  But it looks really cool.  And if the manufacturer's claims are right, it makes the bottom of the hull much more resistant to the kind of deep gouges I dread.  They claim you can drag one of these babies through a parking lot and while the graphite may scuff, that's as far as it goes.

So, tonight will be:

Putting coat #5 on the lower coamings

• Sanding as much of the interior as i can reach
• Maybejustmaybe doing a final epoxy coat on the deck OR the hull.  
• Glassing my second pair of top coamings.  Somehow i assembled and glassed the original set without realizing that one of the coamings had a part number stamped on both sides, such that once the glass was on there was no way to conceal that stamp other than to paint the coaming or use pigmented epoxy, both of which ideas seemed stupid to me.  Oh well - just add it to the extras.

Fun with seats

February 20.  Happy National Cherry Pie Day.

The big sand is almost around the corner.

A couple of days ago after reading the manual three times before what i had to do sunk in i installed the cleats which hold the wooden hip braces to the underside of the deck.  That turned out to be easier than i expected.  I even managed to keep from gluing the hip braces to the cleats!  Yay.  Not insignificant, since i had to put a couple of blind fillets on the back of each cleat to fasten each to the deck, and i was concerned that the epoxy might drip down and touch the braces, fastening them forever.  Which would be bad.

As it happened, there was just one small drip holding one brace to its cleat, which i was able to get through with a chisel and a teeny bit of oompf.

Last night i finished off filleting and glassing the cleats and glassed the back of the hip braces onto the bottom of the seat with two layers of cloth.  Messy, only because i lacked a suitable perch to place the seat on so as to prevent the cloth from touching the bench and being pulled away from the top of the braces.  Solution: clamp that sucka.

Next steps:  Feather off the edges of the glass tape i used to hold the braces in place prior to glassing the whole enchilada, then 2 layers of glass cloth over the inside  of the braces into the top of the seat. Then installing all of the seat hardware and bolting the seat into place.  A couple more sessions to bury all of the cloth on the hull, and the big sand is nigh.  Yum.

The end is coming into view

Since the last post:

The deck has gotten three coats of epoxy and is almost done.  And very, very pretty.

I trimmed the bottom coamings and feathered the knee braces down to about a quarter of an inch.  With the taper cutting through three or four laminations of the plywood it's really distinctive. That part of the coating has gotten a couple of coats of epoxy as well.

The hatches have been glassed and thoroughly covered in epoxy and are basically done.

I had been worried about smoothing out some of the glass at the stern especially since I was beginning to cut into glass rather than removing resin(BAD).
  I changed my approach last night by tying the boat so that the stern was horizontal or nearly so and brushed a coat of epoxy over the area I was worried about to fill the low spots rather than remove the highs. Seems to be working even if it takes another couple of coats to kill it.

There is a bunch of sanding in my future to get the boat as smooth as possible before the last coat of resin and the varnish.  Maybe more than a bunch. I'll have to check.

A bunch of little stuff.

A frustrating but illuminating lesson last night, Feb 3rd.

I got in and looked at the test batch of epoxy I mixed last to me and it had cured perfect. I also looked at the containers for all the epoxy I used the other night and it had cured too, hard as a rock. So all my rework was going to be a waste of time. But it also taught me that this stuff is way more fault tolerant  than the kit instructions would have had me believe.

Anyway this turned out to be the night to tape the fillets on the underside of each hatch, fill the seams on the tops, glass the front and part of the back of the seat back,install the seat mounting tabs with fillets and glass, and the forward rib. Got it to work after three tries by using a wood block about 6 inches long to soften the curve that the rib had to make.  Now all those ribs need is glass and they're done.

Tomorrow the hatches get glassed and a bit of sanding on the deck and then it's finally time for the deck to get glassed. Looking forward.

A gooey evening

January 30. Happy Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day indeed.

This evening was supposed to be a bunch of things OTHER THAN glassing the deck: fiber-glassing the seat back and the bars which reinforce the hatches, epoxying the mounting tabs for the seat, and installing the rib under the deck immediately forward of the rear hatch.  Not a big night, but it had to be done.  And it was.  Then it wasn't.

I noticed that the hardener pump was moving in a slightly jerky motion, but it seemed to be pumping what looked like the right amount of epoxy, so i DID NOT STOP.  We'll call that a mistake.  Soooo..... to fast forward a bit, just about the time i was thinking of calling it a night, i looked at everything i'd done and noticed that nothing had cured.  Not a bit.

Merde.

So i spent some time pulling all of the wetted out glass and scrubbing the surfaces with acetone to remove as much of the crappy epoxy as i could.  I replaced the hardener pump and tried a new test batch of epoxy.  If it has cured by Wednesday night i'm in OK shape; if not I'll buy a new set of pumps for both resin and hardener and try again.  If neither of those things work I'll be calling everyone i can think of to figure out what to do.

In a way, this was good luck.  I was originally thinking about doing the deck, and the impact if i had done that would have been bad and irreparable since the deck would show the effects of the crap epoxy forever - no amount of solvents or sanding would have gotten rid of it.

Hatches are, well, hatching

January 29.  Happy National Corn Chip  Day!

With the hatches joined at the seam by a bit of sorta-cured epoxy (sorta because this is a cool shop for about half of the day and I'm already using a slow hardener that takes 16 hours for a cure at normal room temperature, which this ain't), i installed ribs that run down the inside of the seam between the two halves of each hatch and when fully built fit into slots in the front and back of each hatch opening.

First a fillet of thick epoxy and glass tape over the full length of the inside seam of each hatch, and after a couple of hours to let the epoxy on the glass tape kick, i taped the ribs into place.  I tried to use a clamp to get more of a robust contact between the rib and the glass tape, but that didn't work at all and ultimately it shouldn't matter because (a) the ribs will be filleted to the underside of the hatches and have another pair of glass tapes reinforcing the filleted joints, and (b) the hatch won't change its shape no matter how much pressure I apply with something stronger than a bit of masking tape.  The tape was just to keep the slightest contact and to hold the ribs vertical for the three or four hours they would need until things were starting to cure for realsies.

I also got started on the installation of the seat.  It attaches to the hull at four points: at two mounting tabs epoxied into the hull at the front of the seat, and at two tabs epoxied into the underside of the hull.  At this point, i can't do a complete installation, since i need to first get the deck glassed, then decide on the positioning of the lower coaming, then cut the deck to fit the opening required by the coaming once it's where it needs to be.  That will be a while, like maybe this weekend or early next week, since i don't work on it every night.

What i COULD do was to get the lower tabs into their final shape and ready for epoxy and glass tomorrow.  So i did.  On Monday, I'll have the deck glass and depending on how much energy i have i may do the deck and the seat and most of what's left on the hatches.  We'll see. 

Another oops, but not mine this time

January 28, aka National Blueberry Pancake Day.

Today was supposed to be the day to put fiberglass on the deck, and I was really looking forward to it as the beginning of the end of this project.  Did a bit of final sanding around the area where the glass will wrap onto the hull.  Cleaned up a couple of wire holes that I'd missed before. Ran electrical tape an inch below the shear to define where the deck glass will get cut off later, after the second coat of epoxy.   No problems!

Then it was time to smooth the fiberglass over the deck, so I got out the roll of glass shipped by the kit manufacturer and began to unroll what was left from the heavier glass that did the hull.  There wasn't supposed to be much left over. I kept unrolling though, and the lighter cloth never appeared because it hadn't been shipped with the kit.  Grrrrrrrr......

Hopefully WD will ship me the 4 oz cloth on Monday. Otherwise it's off to a boat supplies store on Tuesday.  In the meantime, so as not to waste the day i built the front and rear hatch covers and epoxied the seat back to a curved brace that runs behind the seat.  Not as productive as I would have hoped but that's reality.

Tomorrow I'll finish off the hatches by installing the support bars that position the hatches on the deck and glossing the font and back, and maybe doing some of the glass on the seat back using the (way) excess 6 oz cloth that I have no other use for Then I have some waiting. Hopefully not too much.

Oops.

January 24.

Loads of sanding today, to clean up and round off all of the newly-filled seams in the deck and where the deck joins the hull.  First 120, then 180, and finally 220 grit and the deck is ready for glass.

Putting in the larger of the two ribs that reinforce the deck, forward of the rear hatch opening, didn't go so well.  I tried to get the rib to follow the contour of the underside of the deck, which required the rib to make a pretty tight curve at the center of the deck.  I painted thickened epoxy on the underside of the rib, but in trying to make sure that there wasn't a void under the middle of the deck, i clamped the rib too tightly and it broke.

Merde.  But much, much better than cracking the deck, which is what i thought I'd done at first.

Fortunately i was able to get another made from marine plywood in the shop, saturate it, and get it drying in preparation for a redo on Friday.  I learned my lesson with the first rib, so when i tried to install the second (rear) rib, i put a large blob of thick epoxy right at the midpoint of the deck, then i didn't need much in the way of force to have the full length of the rib in contact with the underside of the deck with no voids.

Friday hopefully i will get the deck glass on.  That's the beginning of the end, with only the following left to do:

• Glass over the two ribs once they've cured.
• Figure out how big to make the (enlarged) cockpit.  The lower coamings for the enlarged cockpit are huge and could result in removing material all the way to the outside deck panel if not trimmed a bit, which is what I intend to do.  I'm concerned about not having enough room on what's left of the deck after trimming to install the hip braces.  I'll call Waters Dancing for advice.
• Shape the lower coamings and add maybe half a dozen coats of epoxy to the inside and outside edges. 
• Trim  excess fiberglass from the front and rear hatch supports, then build and install the hatches.
• Build hip braces, install to complete the seat assembly and install the seat and associated hardware.
• Build and install the upper coamings.
• A final sanding and a final coat of epoxy on the whole boat, including any interior sharp bits i can reach and any edges or surfaces that have been sanded.
• Coating the underside of the boat with graphite for wear.
• Three coats of spar varnish on the outside of the boat, other than the places where I've used graphite, and the cockpit.
• An end pour in the bow, and maybe the stern if i have enough epoxy left at the end.  Thankfully I have the boat in a shop with about 20 feet of ceiling height so i can just stand the boat up against a wall to do this.
• Install the foot braces, front and rear handles, and deck hardware including perimeter lines, regardless of whether they come with the kit.  I've done self rescues in the past in pretty choppy (i.e., real world) conditions, and no boat i own will EVER be without perimeter lines.  I may also install a clip for holding the bilge pump if i can find one without having to order from the US.

Nothing to it :)

Did you ever wonder how Daniel Larusso felt in The Karate Kid? Read me before "Progress is mine!"

Last night was a ton of sanding and the assembly of the hull panels.

I know how Daniel-san must have felt  at the hands of Mr. Myagi ("wax on, wax off") after several hours getting the hull panels smoothed out and ready for joining.  If I could have an early Christmas wish, it would be for an extra 100 square feet of work-space, for reasons that will be clear in a sec.

My work is all taking place on a temporary workbench approximately 3' by 16' (if I'd been able to do so, I'd have set up a pair of benches about 4 by 16 with an aisle down the middle and worked with material on both sides.  Sob!).  When I got through sanding and it was time to join the two panel halves there was nowhere enough room to do all of the panels, so i concentrated on what i would be using first - the 22 pieces that make up the hull.  Even with that and trying to interleave the ends to get stuff kinda overlapping, there wasn't a lot of room so i wound up stacking panels two or four layers deep, interleaved with plastic sheeting and weighted down with barbell plates and kettle-bells. It's curing now, so tonight's first task is to see whether my crash course in wetting out fiberglass was well learned.  If not, I think this will be a re-work day.  Hoping not.

Here are just the hull panels to give you an idea of how crowded things are at the moment.  The deck panels are hiding on another bench.  You can just see them in the background on the right.  All the smaller bits are safely tucked away elsewhere.

Tomorrow, I hope to to move on to epoxying the bulkheads and to start stitching the hull and seat.  I'm breaking from the manual's recommended approach, and I'll be doing a saturation coat on the inside of the hull, just not sure yet whether that'll be on the panels or the half-completed hull.  Time will tell.

Speaking of time, the manual puts the time needed to get to where I'm at in the process at 3 hours, compared to the 11 or so that i've put in so far.  That's to pull everything out of the box, match the panels to the inventory sheet provided by WD, edge and surface sand every panel and component except the deck panels, and join just the hull panels.  I know that the size of my work-space counts toward the big difference in my results (my utter lack of experience with epoxy does too), and i think/hope that that will start to matter less as i start turning the panels into something resembling a boat.  Like maybe by the end of the weekend :)

I know that there are people who do these kits in their living rooms and I wonder how such people can stay married/attached.  The amount of sanding you need to do even to do a light sanding raises an enormous amount of dust, and it's very fine.  I can't imagine living in the same space, no matter how well i had the area curtained off, unless you had an industrial dust-management system.  Not to mention the smell of epoxy - not conducive to a happy household.