Fitting the inwales

This past weekend I epoxy coated the inwales and dry fit them to the boat with wood screws. As none of my C-clamps were large enough to span the width of the outwale, inwale and spacer blocks I purchased two 12" ratcheting bar clamps from Harbor Freight. I also glued the cleats for the breast hook and transom knees to the boat. On Monday evening I began to cut and sand the mahogany planks for the thwarts (shown on the small table). Also on the table with the thwarts are the breast hook and transom knees. These items will not be installed until I have faired the frames, inner bow and lower transom as they will make access to these areas of the interior more difficult. These items along with the inwales are the last pieces of wood that will be permanently attached to the boat. As some of the pictures show, lately I've taken to using the boat as a storage area for tools, clamps, glueing weights etc. I began removing some of these items tonight and will remove the rest of them before beginning the fairing process. I also removed the inwales and trimmed the ends to fit under the breasthook and transom knees.

Sweating the small stuff

This past Wednesday My brother and I glued up the starboard rub rail. Thursday and Friday were spent sanding the rub rail and the top strake of the hull even (there were a few high spots). On Saturday I starting on the spacers between the out-wale and in-wale. I cut these shortly after I picked up the cypress lumber, but they have been stored in a bucket for a few months. I made a template from some scrap plywood and drilled two 1/4" holes in each block in which short dowels were glued when the blocks were epoxy coated. The template was then used to drill the top strake at each block location on the hull. I was able to get ten of the blocks glued to the boat yesterday and finished the remaining blocks this morning, along with a short piece of wood in the bow that will serve as a backing plate for the bow eye. Yesterday I also glued up the mahogany for the wooden blocks into which the oarlock sockets will mount. There are four of these blocks. Each one is made up of three pieces of wood 6"x1"x1 1/4". Today, after I completed the blocks I started cleaning up the excess glue that I wasn't able to scrape off yesterday and cut the corners off the top edge of the blocks . When I sanded the excess glue off the blocks I also removed most of the first coat of epoxy, so they were re-coated this afternoon. The oarlock blocks will be glued to the tomorrow so I can begin work on the in-wales.

Since my last update I spent a week in the Florida Panhandle tarpon fishing. When I returned I began working on the boat again. On Monday I removed the rubrails and clear coated them with epoxy. On Tueday I completed the fillets on the frames. Wednesday and Thursday were spent sanding the roughspots on the fillets and Thursday night I fiberglassed the frames to the hull with two layers of fiberglass tape. O n Friday and Saturday I cut the wood for cleats to glue the seat tops to and also cut and fit the floors to the hull bottom. These floors will be supports for the floorboards. The cleats and and floors were epoxy coated on Saturday night. This morning I sanded the tops of the frames, the bottom of the hull where the floors were installed and vacuumed the dust out of the boat. Shortly after I finished vacuuming my brother arrived to assist. We were albe to get most of the floors, all of the cleats and the port rubrail glued. We had time to do the second rubrail and the rest of the floors but I ran out of C-clamps and weights. Tomorrow I will remove all of the clamps and glue the remaining floors. On Wednesday evening my brother will help me with the other rubrail.

Slow Down

Progress on the boat has slowed the past two weeks due to unusually hot weather. Since the last blog entry I have glued the frames in place but I have not completed the fillets or glass because the epoxy was kicking off too quickly in the heat, even when working at night.Yesterday and today I dry fit the rubrails and clamped them in place. I will leave them clamped in place for a week before glueing them to allow them to assume the shape of the sheer. While they are doing this I will be in Florida fishing for tarpon. Tomorrow will be spent picking up a few last minute items and prepping the boat for the 6 hour haul. If there is time I may try to complete a few more fillets on the frames, The tubs of EZ fillet were placed in the fridge today to extend the potlife of the mixture.

Frames laminated

This morning I glued the two layers of each frame and the four layers on the transom knee together with thickened epoxy. The layers are weighed down with water jugs and lead weights. Small wooden blocks are screwed to the table to keep the pieces in alignment. the blocks are covered with packing tape to prevent them from bonding to the plywood. After the glue sets up the squeeze out will be trimmed and the frames will be covered with a layer of fiberglass cloth.

Interior work continues

This week I continued working on the interior hull. Monday and Wednesday evenings were spent sanding down some highspots on the fillets I made last week. On Thursday night I fiberglassed the transom and the tip of the bow. On Friday I began glassing the main part of the hull. The glass was cut to length and the top edge was held in place with binder clips. The glass was then trimmed off at the bow and stern and a relief cut was made at the midpoint of the hull. Working alone this was a large job. I began wetting out the cloth at noon and finished at 4:00 pm. The temperature in the tent was 96 F at 2:00 pm. I was spent after that 4 hour ordeal. This morning I trimmed the excess glass from the top edge and sanded out a few bubbles I was unable to work out of the cloth yesterday. My brother came over as I finished sanding and we measured and trimmed the glass for the other side of the hull. With two of us working wetting out the glass was much easier. We finished the port side in just over an hour. The rest of today was spent cutting out the frames that will support the seat tops. I also cut out the pieces that will make up the stern knee. The frames will be made of two layers of 6 mm plywood glued together and the stern knee will be four layers. The frame layers were clamped together with binder clips and the edges were trimmed up with a block plane and sanding block. After sunset the plywood pieces were coated with epoxy in preparation for glueing tomorrow.

Right Side Up

Last weekend I applied fillets to the the keels and glassed them with 6 oz. biaxial tape. On Tuesday my brother and I flipped the hull over from its inverted position so that work on the interior could begin. Wednesday and Thursday evenings were spent saniding the hull, especially the places where the exterior fillets squeezed all the way through. Friday morning the sanding dust was vacuumed out and the interior hull was given a thin coat of epoxy (second photo). On Friday afternoon  after the epoxy had begun to harden I began to fillet the interior plank seams, finishing the port side but ran out of gloves so I was not able to start the starboard side. Yesterday I went fishing with my brother and our dad so no work was done on the boat. This morning yesterday's catch was cleaned and a trip was made to Harbor Freight to purchase more disposable gloves and the fillets on the starboard side were completed. The bow (third photo) was especially difficult to get smooth as space is tight and the angle between the bow planks is constantly changing as you go from top to bottom. It will require some sanging before the hull is fiberglassed. There are also some small blobs and ridges of fillet material that need to be sanded smooth before glassing