My big day

Today was quite the day. Im over my cold, as in, I dont feel like super-crap anymore, but my head and chest are still congested to hell and back. However, since Im slowly on the up and up, off to the basement for a little R+R.

Last night I realized that I had beveled the bottom of BH1 in the wrong direction. Today I fixed this by re-beveling it flat, and just leaving it as such until later. If I have to bevel it in the correct direction, so be it. Its only 2mm so its not too tricky.

Second, I found this:

Delamination in the ply on my Starboard bow, inboard. Approximately 4"x6" or so. Nothing on the "mated" side, the Port stern, so Im assuming it is only this piece that has the problem. I sounded it out with a pencil, and Ive got a good idea of its shape. I poured straight epoxy into the hole, then squashed it with bricks.

Third, I discovered this:


Thats my finger pointing at where the bow SHOULD be. OOPS. Im slowly coming along with the dreaded stem, and I went to match the stem to the bow and it came up a couple of cm short. Either my stem was wrong or my bow was wrong. I busted out the lofting map for the sides and for some damn reason, I measured 55mm from the end of the ply to the point of the bow rather than 55mm from the last 300mm mark. Damn, bro, good catch! So I re-marked the bow and cut them anew on both sides. The stem fits perfectly now, with room to spare for the bow knee.

Then, I got gutsy and ripped two of my cedar planks and and scarfed them for the chinelogs:

This is my scarf. Some of you are really going to hate this, but I eyeballed it on the table saw, and then planed them to match. Not perfect, but close enough for this amateur! I used a 1:6 ratio, so that would be 1 1/2" : 9".

THEN, I cut out the buttstraps and glued my scarfed chinelogs and my side together!


Here we are now in the garage. The buttstrap gluing kinda blew, I was by myself and I rushed it. I was sure I put on enough glue, but very little actually oozed out from underneath the straps. Im actually a little concerned I may not have put enough, but maybe I put just the right amount, I tend to go overboard with the glue. So well have to see about this.

Finally, I glued on a little piece of ply for backing on the transom for el rudder. Thats Spanish. That in itself was a mini-adventure, because the ply I chose for it initially starting sliding around after I glued it up on the old epoxy from the frame and the seat cleat. WOOPS. So I pulled it off quick, tore apart the garbage for an old jigsaw blade, and holding the jigsaw an inch above the ply ripped a small piece of one end so it could sit better between the frame and the cleat. Of course I got wood dust all over the backing, and I scraped it off, threw on some thickened epoxy, and called it good. I thought this would have been a simple operation, so I didnt wear gloves and holey moley my hands got sticky.

On a blog-related note, I am deleting the timing scoreboard from the blog. Its beginning to get inaccurate and more difficult to keep up with. Today I did a million things and Im not keen on attempting to figure out what was what. So maybe from now on just a tally total.

Filling stem gap w a fillet

Yesterday I glued the boat together and was stymied at the end with a gap that had appeared between the sides of the ply and the stem. See picture in previous post. My wife came in and suggested using an icing pipe thing-a-ma-jig, much like many people use ziploc bags. Ive used ziploc bags in the past and found them somewhat cumbersome to use, but most importantly, I really wanted to get epoxy deep into the crevasse to maximize bonding.

So she jigged up a icing pipe and lined it with packing tape so we could re-use it, and then, using the patient steady hand of a culinary expert, she filled in the voids around the stem and made a nice fillet. Damn! What a woman!


In other news, I crawled underneath the stem to cut away some epoxy and saw this:


When I was dry-fitting the boat last week for the first time I heard some ***crack***ing noises, and since I didnt see anything, I figured it was some epoxy somewhere settling or what-have-you. NOPE it was the chine logs right where they abut the stem. Youll notice the taper I put in to give them some room to fit together, and youll also notice where the wood actually separated from itself. The glued face stayed firm to the plywood, which makes me feel like my gluing jobs are satisfactory. Im bummed the wood split, but again, this whole area will be filled with epoxy and all will be good with the world again.

SUCCESS!

One of my big problems from the dry-no-screw-fit the other day was that I could not suck in the chine logs around BH1 and BH2 enough to easily screw the drywall screws through the ply to hold everything in place. I wrastled and wrastled with it and then the screws pulled out and I almost threw my drill through a window.

Today I put the boat back together for another dry-no-screw-fit again and hemmed and hawed over it with my sister-in-laws husband for an hour or so. We came up with many ideas, like driving eye screws into the chine log and getting a turnbuckle to pull the chines together. Another idea was to join two clamps together underneath the boat and use a block to keep them from sliding forward along the hull... but how to defeat gravity from dragging the clamps down? BEHOLD MY GENIUS:







The above sequence is from starboard to port.

There is definitely a beautiful curve to the bow now that I got it sucked in, the boat looks sublime!


Take note that the boat is resting on three different sized objects so not everything lines up great right now. ALSO my notches in my BHs are too big, except for BH1. Thank goodness for the filling power of epoxy! Its not going to be the neatest boat in the world, but it will work, by Jove!

SO now Im going to mark where things go, and then precoat the panels with epoxy, and varnish the BHs so I can just drop everything in place and not have to sand upside down, etc.