Back to Work!

Alrighty Folks,

Finally sucked it up and got back to work on the Hitia. Its a little bit tight in the garage space, but with the help of my latest recruit, Tyler, we were able to keep working on the front beam and paint the inside of the second hull.

Here's a picture of the beam as it sits right now:

And here is one of the inside of the second painted hull:

We left some unpainted space for the floors and for the eventual installation of the hatches. I was hoping to be able to start working on glassing the outside rather than painting, but it was too cold to work with that much epoxy and I didn't want to do a sloppy job with the fiberglass cloth. So I opted to paint the hull instead, and set up the flood lights and the radiator next to the beam to help it cure up. Then I got out of there because the paint fumes were giving me a headache.

After lunch I came back and was especially glad I didn't glass the hull. I had over done it with the heaters and lamps and blew out the power. I couldn't get in to the room housing the fuse box, so I had to leave the beam as she was. Hopefully that quick hardener works in those low temperatures as advertised!

If anyone has any experience working with epoxy in low temperatures (about 40 degrees F) I'd appreciate any tips.

Anyway, its a bit ghetto, but I'm glad to be back at work on the Hitia. Hopefully the groundhog was right and we're headed for an early spring and some warmer days!

The move to Jersey

Finally, I have the boat moved. I've ordered some clamps and a few other things and now I'm just waiting on some electric wiring to be completed in the garage and I'll be underway.

Back in CT the boat was looking particularly derelict. Here is a photo of the sorry state I found her in.

Here's another of the Hitia loaded on to the back of a dump truck. $30 toll fee going over the GW bridge!

Once the wiring is complete and I can see, I've got a bit of sweeping and a lot of organizing to do then I'll be back at work on the boat once again. Thanks to Jim Osowicki for his help with loading and the use of his truck!

A Quick Update...

So I have secured some garage space over in Hackensack, NJ close to where I work. The space is about 19' x 12' so it should accommodate the boat, tools and whatever else I'll need. It might get a little tight once I'm all set up, but if I can work in Kevin's basement, then this should be a breeze!

Kevin and I got together over Thanksgiving weekend to talk about the future of the boat. He has agreed to take on the remainder of the mast work, tiller arms, and maybe some of the cleats and other small stuff. I'm hoping to have the boat moved in by this weekend, but if I can't borrow a truck, at the very least I'll have the beams and epoxy and whatever else I can stuff into the back of my Jetta.

Photos and more to come!

Floor Installation

Following the move, Kevin and I both realized the incredible determent of having the boat stored halfway between Boston and New York City. With that in mind, and having the overwhelming itch to keep going and finish that which we have started, I began looking into storing the boat locally, in New Jersey, where I'll be able to get to it during the week and make more progress.

Without the use of Kevin's tools and space, and awesome clamps, I'll be moving forward with a limited set of tools and equipment (and experience). I'll be making most of the posts from here on out. Just gonna take small nibbles out of the project and watch it evolve, one step at a time. 

Here is a picture of the partially completed floor installation:

The jugs and varnish are there to add weight and help seal down the floor. I used a compass to trace the holes and cut out the circles using a jig saw. This will be finished up with a layer of fiberglass for added strength. 

The other hull still needs its final side of glass, below deck painting and floor installation. After that I'll be finishing the up the beams and sealing the hulls. 

Wish me luck!

Fiber glassing the hulls

Now that the hulls are assembled they won't fit back into the basement any more. It's been ok to keep them outside so far but the sunshine won't last forever so we are moving up the fiber glassing job to protect them while they are out in the weather.

The paint job looks a bit messy up on the saw horses but all those areas won't show.

All the stitches are out and the keel has been rounded over so we can put a piece of glass tape along the keel joint. This area is going to get the most abuse pulling the boat up on beaches so it gets a triple layering of fiberglass. The first layer is this tape and then the two side pieces will overlap over keel as well. We also put a bead of epoxy down to build up the radius and add more protection to the wooden keel strip.

Next we unrolled the 4oz fiberglass over the size of the hull and tacked it in place some epoxy where we couldn't hold it with tape.

Then we finally got down to spreading on the epoxy. We had been dreading the fiber glassing job and what would happen if we messed it up but it really wasn't that bad.

The fiberglass cloth does want to wrinkle as it laps over the curved edge of the keel but we kept at it and got all the wrinkles spread out.

The fiberglass also wraps up onto the skeg  and smooths out the transition. This area is probably going to require some filler and sanding later but is looking pretty good.

We also had to notch the cloth around the lash pad supports. We ended up just glassing down to the edge and trimming with a razor blade which made a pretty clean edge.

Then we just had to keep moving back between the two hull as each fiberglass job cured.

Painting and keel fairing

Building a boat involves a lot of firsts, and today was the first time we applied paint to the boat. We're using bright white Easypoxy for just about everything that isn't varnished until we sort out a final color scheme - likely white and grey. The outsides will be rolled and tipped, but for the insides we're just brushing.

The sections under the fore and aft decks is fair game for paint at this point as is the area under the seats. These are going to be too hard to get to once the decks and floors are glued on so we're painting them in advance.

We could have just left it with an epoxy coating but it seems prudent to protect the wood as well as possible in case any water works its way into the bilge. The paint is such a bright white it's hard to look at in the sunlight and kind of hard to photograph too. It should be fine for the topsides but it's giving us second thoughts about using it for the deck.

Once the paint dried a bit we flipped the hull over and started fairing around the keel to prep for fiberglassing. All the gaps around the keel are filled with thickened epoxy as well as fairing around the skeg.

The stem is also faired but we stopped short of where the rigging will attach using a heavy duty u-bolt. We put a smaller fillet at the u-bolt location to make room for the backing plates and will blend it into the rest of the stem fairing later.

The last bit of fairing was to tie the stem into the ends of the sheer stringers. Once the epoxy dries we can sand the corner down to make a nice curve.

We also used the extra bits of epoxy to fill the screw, staple and stitching holes. With a bit of sanding the hull should have a nice smooth surface for the fiberglass to lay over. We left some air bubbles in the keel fiberglassing that needed filling so it would be nice to prevent that on the hulls if we can.

Cutting the decks and floors

Another free day so we're keeping the momentum going. The hulls were already set up at their proper distance to get a sense of scale so we couldn't help but throw the main beam on to see how it looks. But enough daydreaming, today we are making the floors, fore decks, aft decks and side decks.

The first order of business was bringing out the scraps of plywood and seeing what we could get out of each piece to best use the material we had left. We knew after cutting all the bulkheads twice that we wouldn't have enough to finish, but we would like to buy as little extra as possible.

The first pieces cut were the floors. These two floors should be almost the same length according to the plans, but bulkhead 5 which forms the aft face of the aft most floor is about 5" too far forward. Not sure how this happened but we're going with it and will change some of the details on the hatches to make it all look right. The mast will be in the right place and that's what counts so hopefully we don't miss the extra seating space too much. In the end I don't think anyone will notice.

Here is our process for making the main decks. We start with a piece about the right size and put a straight edge up against the bulkhead. Clamps hold it tight against the bulkhead and centered across the hull.

The stem location is marked on the underside holding the edge of the pencil point flush with the plywood.

Then cut out the slot and fit it over the stem handle. Next it's pretty straight forward to mark the edges of the hull and trim it down with the jig saw.

Speaking of the jig saw, this is my new Bosch saw which got quite a workout today. I can't believe we made it this far without one and this one is very heavy duty which helps with making nice smooth cuts.

So after all that jig sawing this is what we have to show for it: noth aft decks, both aft floors, three side decks, one front floor and one front deck.

Next up: more epoxy coating, gluing on more fir stringers and back to the lumber store for another sheet of Okoume plywood. Pretty soon we'll be painting the interior and under sides of the decks to get them ready for glue and fiber glassing over the floors.

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 ...

Attaching the mast step

Wharram seems to like interesting mast steps, and the Hitia 17 is no different. The mast as feet that lock it to the beam fore and aft and "locating chocks" that locate the base of the mast laterally. The front block also prevents the mast from rotating and the middle portion gives a curved initial contact point for the foot of the mast to hook onto as the mast is rotated up into place.

So here is the plan for the front block, I have made it a bit wider than the sketch which I think looks better and will give more epoxy surface area to prevent shearing along the glue joint.

Now the mast step doubling block and the block are epoxied on. The sequence here was fillets, doubling block then mast foot block.

The block liked to slide around particularly with the clamps on the angled faces. It took some adjusting but eventually it sat centered and flush with the top surface.

Now that the epoxy has cured it's time to make sure the proportions and shapes look right.

Overall I'd say the mast step is looking pretty good and I seem to be getting the hang of the fillets. The second round worked out much neater than the first though you can see that i need to go back and clean up some of the excess.

We're still struggling to find a free day with good weather to do the hulls, but they are poised and waiting should the opportunity arise.

Continuing on the main beam

A quick update on the main beam. The bottom was glued on and cured over night.

The compression blocks pretty much assure that it the top and bottom are parallel, though in some cases there was some room for adjustment based on small changes in the clamping location particularly on the ends.

And here is the main beam all glued up and man is this thing sturdy. I'm feeling better about these beams being the only thing keeping us out of the water.

Now we just have to keep up the sequence: glue, wait, fillet, wait, glue, wait, fillet, wait ...