The even bigger gluing day

It's been a long time since we were able to work on the boat and it was time for a big push. The last big push only accomplished about a quarter of what we set out to do. But the days have gotten much longer and today we weren't going to stop until all the fillets were in both hulls and all the keel joints were fiber glassed.

The first hull was already half filleted, so the remaining fillets went pretty quickly. Part of the speed increase was because we moved our epoxy mixing station outside near where we were working to cut down on trips to the basement.

Before we knew it the first hull was fully filleted and ready for fiberglass.

Most of the keel joints were fresh so we were able to press in the fiberglass tape while the epoxy was the consistency of a firm gel. This made smoothing out any bumps or edges easy and let the fiberglass sit nice and smooth against the fillet without any sanding.

Then we brushed on epoxy with a 2" chip brush and worked the tape with a gloved finger like a squeegee. All in all this was much easier than we thought it would be. The only trouble was a bit of unraveling at the ends when we were a bit rough with the tape.

By lunch time the first hull was filleted and taped and curing in the sun.

So we could take a small break, looked out over our work and get psyched up for the next round. The second hull had no epoxy at all, and we had about 6 hours of daylight to finish it.

After lunch the first hull was cured enough to move off the saw horse and finish curing in the sun.

The second hull went just like the first with two exceptions. First, at the filleting stage we filled the stems in three to four passes to prevent excess heat buildup. Second, we worked one 'bay' at a time doing keel, then bulkheads and then glassed the keel. That way as we moved down the boat we left the previous segment complete. Here we have just completed the middle segment and are about to put another layer in the stems.

By the time we brushed epoxy on the last piece of fiberglass the sun was hanging low in the sky but we had reached our goal. We cleaned up our mess and called it a day.

The big glue day - Part 2

Earlier in the day we put down two layers of epoxy around the keel and stems, the first layer raw and the next mixed to a runny consistency with milled fiberglass. These layers were to seal down in all the nooks and crannies before adding the fillets to make sure there are no voids. Now that these layers are cured and our lunch break is over it's time to get epoxying again. Doesn't look like we are going to get through both hulls like we thought and turns out we didn't even get the one hull fully filleted.

We had trouble with bugs and leaves falling out of the tree the areas we weren't currently working on were covered with plastic.

I miss read the plans when drilling out plywood fillet smoothing tools and mistook a radius for a diameter and so the first attempts at hull fillets were half the proper size. Compare the ones on the right which is what we started doing, with those on the left which are correct. Glad we caught our mistake early!

The stems take up a huge amount of epoxy to fill but end up very strong and solid. We made the mistake of applying all this fillet in one go which caused the epoxy to get very hot. In the future we will build up to thicknesses like this in multiple passes.

By the time the sun was going down we had only made it through half of one hull. Not the kind of progress we were hoping for if this boat is going to take us sailing this season.

The big glue day - Part 1

The big day of gluing is finally here. The temperature is up and no rain in the forecast means it's time to get busy on our gluing ordeal. With any luck we can get all the rounds of gluing in one after the other in one drawn out process and then be done with it.

First the hulls need to come back out of the basement one more time and get set up at working height.

The aft stems were never stitched and so I attempted to do that while also pulling the panels into alignment. There is so much tension in the hull panels from the twisting that I couldn't get the stitches to hold so I went with screws instead which worked out much easier and pulled the hull panels in tight with the stem. This photo is after the gluing surfaces got a coat of raw epoxy to soak down into the nooks and crannies so that is where the small drips are coming from.

Now is also the time to check that everything is straight and level. With hardly any adjusting the hulls were perfectly lined up.

The gaps along the keel and stem are epoxied with a milled fiberglass and silica mix. These batches were mixed pretty loose so that they can settle into the gaps and make sure there are no voids.

More of the first glue round along the keel ...

Now we wait until this layer sets up and then the big fillets along the keel and bulkheads will follow. After the fillets dry if there is any daylight left we will epoxy in the fiberglass tape over the keel fillet.

To be continued ...

All stitched up

Our catamaran is all stitched up. It's not as convenient to work on as a double-decker. Thant's ok though because there is no other way to fit the two hulls in the basement at the moment.

The top hull is held up temporarily with some scrap wood and clamps.

Here are some more details that are pretty obvious when your are stitching, but aren't in the plans. The plans give a measurement for how to cut the angle on the end of the sheer stringer, but it's much easier to clamp in place and cut parallel to the stem.

The other complication is the supports on the bulkheads are on the narrower side. So they need to be beveled to match the angle of the hull to sit flush.

Right now the sides are not sitting exactly right on the aft stem on both hulls. At least they are both the same. I think we can pull it into alignment using a rope tied to the front stem handle. It probably doesn't make much difference but I want to make sure that the deck will line up with the bottom of the handle,

That's all for now. I predict that there is a lot more gluing in our future

At long last a boat

Yesterday was the most gratifying build day yet, we can finally see the shape of one of the hulls! We have put so many hours into the pieces and prep work and it is finally starting to come together. We wanted to stitch the bulkheads into both hulls but ran out of both time and copper wire so this is all for now.

The shape is surprisingly sophisticated for a v-bottomed canoe. The flat edge of the hull panel transforms into a nice sheer line with a sharp entry and curved aft sections.

The last bulkhead was the most difficult to fit. There is a lot of curve in the plywood hulls and a lot of tension getting the bulkhead into place. The stitching holes in the bulkheads are offset ~1/2" above the hull stitching holes which pulls the bulkhead down into the hull as the stitches are tightened.

Here is a view from the stern. The clamp is distorting the shape of the sheer a bit but we'll fix that when the stern stem stitches are in.

Now it finally looks like a boat!

Stitching took longer than we though (like everything else so far on this boat!) so the second hull will have to wait for another day.

With no real work left to do we held up one of the unfinished beams so we could stand in the right spots and imagined laying out on the deck, sails set cruising the Boston harbor islands, the Cape and beyond.

Deck supports

The past few weeks have been busy and distracting, but here is a small update. The last hold up for stitching the hulls were making the curved deck supports on bulkheads #3 and #5 which are the ends of the fore and aft decks.

These only took about 30 minutes to mark the curve with a batten and then clamp in the vise and plane down to the line. Score one more point for my $6 garage sale hand plane.

The tentative plan is to stitch up the hulls this week and start gluing this weekend. Let's hope life starts cooperating with our boat building schedule.

Improved deck supports

The deck curve at bulkhead #2 is a full 1" which means that our 1" wide deck supports would be too thin on the ends to offer any support. You see the outline of the 1" support against the curve at the top of the bulkhead here.

I could have just added a strip at the bottom to make the whole piece taller, but I thought i would do something a little stronger and lighter. I actually gave the solution away in the first photo, it's the triangular pieces on the far right. They will fit below the full length strip making the whole piece about 1" thick and orienting the grain properly at the edges. Not as fancy as laminating up a curved support but more than enough for a stitch-and-glue beach cat.

I started by marking out the shape on a scrap strip of the 1" x 1/2" fir.

I wasn't sure how to cut this at first, but finally decided to just do it by hand with my new Japanese pull saw. The more I use that saw the more I think power tools are over rated.

And here it is all glued up and again held with staples. Staples aren't the prettiest, but it worked and it's all going to be painted later anyway.

Finally, here it is with the glue dried and two coats of epoxy.

One more afternoon of glueing and all the bulkheads will be assembled and coated. I'll trim the top edges on the router table and they'll be ready for stitching into the hulls.

Deck and floor supports

It's a beautiful day and I'm long overdue for an afternoon of sailing, but first time to keep moving forward on the Wharram. It seems like a good day to glue the support pieces on some of the bulkheads so lets get to it.

The deck and bulkhead supports are made of the 1" x 1/2" fir we ripped earlier. Each one was measured against the bulkhead and then cut to length. Here they all are labeled and ready to go.

I only have the saw horse space (and motivation) to do bulkheads 1, 3 and 6. The bulkheads and fir strips are laid out and the gluing surfaces coated with raw epoxy.

The strips are coated with thickened epoxy and pressed into place.

Wharram suggests temporarily clamping with nails, but I'm afraid the fir would split and I don't have any drywall screws short enough so I used staples instead.

Once the glue is firmed up I'll scrape out the excess and probably give the unfinished sides their two coats of epoxy.

My little dinghy is getting jealous of all the attention spend on this new bigger boat, so now I'm off to the beach to take her for a quick sail.

Halfway done coating bulkheads

The hull panels have been drying in the eves of the basement and are just itching to be sanded and glued together.

Over the week I made some steady progress coated a couple of bulkheads a night after work. Now all the bulkheads are covered on one side. By next weekend they should all be coated and maybe have the floor and deck supports glued on as well.

New England is bracing for hurricane Irene. The rain is going to start in a few hours so we can't do much this weekend. One day I'll have a proper workshop and a measly tropical storm won't have to slow me down.

Epoxy coating hulls

So after a very busy day of cutting and routing the plywood pieces, here is where the project stood on Sunday morning. Six pairs of bulkheads with their corresponding templates, four bow panels, one pair of hull panels trimmed to final shape and three pair of hull panels roughly cut.

I wish we stopped to take photos of the next part because it was kind of clever, but i'll describe it instead. In order to hold the good hull sides to the rough cut pieces during the routing we used a staple gun around the edges instead of two sided tape like we had been using on the bulkheads. This turned out to be very quick and stable and the bottom edges are going to be heavily epoxied and fiberglassed anyway because of the stitching later on.

After the SNAFU with cutting out extra bulkheads we took the time to lay out all the panels on the lawn and identify which sides to determine the inside and outside for each piece.

That meant it was time to break out the 5 gallon jug of West epoxy and start coating. Every internal surface gets two coats of epoxy hot on hot so that they will bond chemically.

The okoume turns a very pretty reddish brown when coated in epoxy. It's almost a shame we're going to paint it.

After the first coat the panels were moved to the shade to cure until tacky to the touch. The timing worked out perfectly so that after we gave each of the eight panels one coat, the first was ready for the second coat.

After round two of epoxy the panels were brought down to the basement to dry over night. We didn't have time to do the bulkheads so those will have to wait for another day.

Two steps forward, one step back

The day started with a run to the lumber store at 7:30 and ended 12 hours later with all the hull panels and bulkheads cut and lumber sawn to dimension. But in our haste to get as much done as possible we also cut twice as many bulkheads as needed. The extra bulkheads can be salvaged for a lot of small parts, but we'll need at least one more sheet of 4mm ply, maybe two.

Everything began by laying out two sheets of the 4mm okoume plywood end to end and marking out all the measurements for the front and rear hull panels.

It took some double checking to get the outline and bulkhead locations to all agree, but pretty soon we had a batten through all the marks and could see hulls taking shape.

Then it was time to cut out the hull side panels and clean them up to serve as a template for the marking the rest.

We set up a temporary frame on the deck using the douglas fir boards that would eventually become the keels and stringers to slide the panels by the sander. Once the shape was close we finished by hand with a sanding block right to the pencil lines.

Next we used the first set of hull panels to mark and rough cut the other three pairs. We didn't want to waste any plywood (the irony!) by mixing up which sheet had been used for fore or aft panels so we laid out the bulkhead templates based on the layout guide in the plans and cut them out as well. Unfortunately we marked them out on all eight sheets instead of the four sheets required.

Lesson learned - if it's hot and you're tired and in a hurry to make progress, you're likely to make mistakes. We slowed down substantially after we realized what we had done and made sure to re-consult the plans at every step.

Next we took a break from the plywood and started to re-saw the douglas fir into the 3/4" x 1/2" keels and 1" x 1/2" stringers. Here you can see the grain spacing on a 1" wide strip.

By the time we were done re-sawing it was time to call it a day and to clean up the small mountain of sawdust under the table saw.

Tomorrow all the hull panels will get cleaned up on the router table and then coated in epoxy.