More Progress

In the past week, I have been able to mark and cut out the ama frames. They came out very nicely and with great information for mounting them on the ladder frame. One small glitch that the designer, John Marples was quick to correct when I emailed him for help. Next was to cut long strips of fir to make the lateral chines for the plywood sides to attach to. The attached picture shows the bulkheads attached to the building frame and the first two chines epoxied in place. When the boat is upright, those chines will be the edges joining the sides with the deck. The plans have full-sized drawings of the shaped strips of plywood making up the tapering stern. When studying the plans, I was unable to figure out how they all went together, but once the pieces were in my hands, they were easy to figure out.
Putting those pieces together and adding the next chines will be today's fun.

First Assembly

Always seems to take me awhile to get into a new project. I delayed and worried about my first use of the epoxy and fiberglass cloth. One of the reasons was the failure of a couple of very small batches of epoxy. I think now that the proportions were wrong. I dreaded finding out that the epoxy stayed runny on a whole section of fiberglass! How would I fix that?
The store which sold me the fiberglass supplies advised buying a rotary cutter for the cloth, saying the edges would not fray near as bad as using scissors. Expensive, but I bought the cutter and mat.
A discussion on Duckworks led me to worry about the fiberglass cloth adhering to the sharp corners of the hulls. I know the cloth will appear at first to lie nice and flat, but before the epoxy can set up, the stiffness of the cloth lifts it away from the wood on either side of the joint, causing bubbles to form underneath. I guessed that I would need some kind of gentle pressure to hold the cloth in place until the epoxy cured. I decided to cover the affected areas with 6mil poly then place miniature sandbags on top.
In the attatched picture, I have joined, end to end, two sheets of quarter-inch plywwod. The ends are joined with epoxy-embedded 6oz fiberglass cloth. The joint was covered in poly and little sandbags just to see how they would work. I am relieved to see the epoxy set up rock-hard and where the poly covered the epoxy, the joint is glassy smooth.

Monday, July 5, 2009

Yesterday I was able to spend a couple of hours in the boat shop. I have been caring for my friend, Diana, whom you may have met in the other blogs. I have been redoing the bathroom too. Yesterday I took the afternoon off!
I built the strong back for the new project. I used two pieces of 2x6, 16' long and have them about 30" from the floor.
Next thing was to make a platform upon which to glue together two sheets of marine plywood. The platform is nice and flat, but the sheets have some warping. Nothing to worry about when building the boat, but a nuisance when gluing the panels together. Last thing I had time for was to grind a space for the fiberglass cloth to live. Next thing is to bond a 6" piece of fiberglass bridging those two sheets of plywood.