The sail has arrived!

105 square feet of dacron goodness!

Gluing BH 4 and some things I found out about gluing

Alright, Im a little frustrated at myself right now, because things are coming along nice, but not coming along like I want them too. Everything will be OK in the end, but it wont be as nice and neat as I would like to see, and thats aggravating. A lot of the mess stems from excess epoxy squeezing out and making the seams look all lumpy and dumb. A faster clean-up job before anything even begins to think about setting up would have saved me from having stupid looking frames.

First, Ive been having some problems at work that are pretty significant, and I wasnt as focused on gluing as I wanted to be or could have and that led to sloppy gluing work.

Second, I just dont have wood gluing experience. My epoxy/fiberglass experience is solely focused on my Laser, hull #194, from the early 70s. This boat has hit submerged objects, sandbars, docks, buoys, other boats, etc. at speed. Laser speed. Fast. Rig humming with 2/3 of the boat out of the water fast. Once, it fell off my car... while I was driving. Needless to say, Id just slop some epoxy on and keep going. Now that Im gluing together my wood boat, I cant be as messy, or at least, Id rather I wasnt as messy.

BH1 is messy but will be hidden mostly from view. BH2 is somewhat in view and the frames are going to visible, and its kind of messy. BH 3 could have come out perfect, but it looks messy too because I rushed and didnt STOP.THINKFIRST.NOTSOFAST. BH 4 came out really nice and clean, but the frame is mostly hidden within the rear airtight box, so no one will see my clean job! Dammit! Roar!

So heres a tip to you beginners out there: First, read all you can about epoxy. I have yet to find a nice primer/tutorial on wood gluing for boats, and that would have helped. The Storer forum, my thread in particular could help you out. Second, my biggest mistake in neatness is that I waited for the epoxy to firm up to a putty and then tried to hack off the excess. This is a mistake. This evening I glued BH4 together, let it sit for a few minutes to excess epoxy oozed out, and just cleaned it right up. Presto besto pesto yum done. A nice neat job. Why I didnt think about this 3 BHs ago, I know not.

Transom takes a hit!

In the course of beveling the bottom edge of the transom, I took a couple of chunks out of the endgrain of the starboard side frame. Then, I head a ***CRACK*** on one pass of the plane. I ripped a sizeable piece of the side frame away from itself. I carefully chiselled off the exposed end, and on another pass from the plane... ***CRACK*** and I took another strip, this one very deep. I can epoxy this all together, but Id just as rather not have the integrity of the wood comprised. I only had one remaining bevel left with an endgrain, and I beveled it with a rasp and then planed the rest to match. Dammit-- This is an amateur mistake! Other amateurs beware!



Take note that I did not break the epoxy bond between the side frame and the transom ply, the surface layer of the side arm remains firmly glued to the ply.