Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Inwale spacers
More progress on the inside. Last night I put the inwale spacers in place. I put 13 on each side at 1 foot spacing from aft to fore. I first made them from some old decking material I had in the wood pile. It looks like ipe, though it wasn't as resinous as I have seen ipe. I ended up using some mahogany I had left from earlier steps. I did a test glue up of the decking. What ever species it is, it's incredibly tight grained and hard. I'll use it somewhere I hope where I can add a few screws as well as the epoxy. I've been filling in small gaps between the hull plywood and the hog with left over epoxy as well.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Starting on the insides
22 Feb 2016
The latest task involves lots of sanding and cleaning up of excess epoxy. There wasn't as much squeeze out as I expected. I filled in all the holes left by the lay up of the 1/4 inch ply on the hull. I managed to miss quite a number and so had to go through a second round after I had sanded. I put a 1/2 inch round on the inside and outside of the rail as well as the top of the hog. I stared a lot at the hog and spent some time at the wood pile looking for appropriate material for a very modest floor. Found a nice piece of fir. I put a thin coat of epoxy on the insides. Took the afternoon and I still have to touch up the insides of the chine with a brush. I used a plastic spreader for the bulk of the hull. It makes for quick work, but it doesn't leave a uniform surface. I assume the epoxy primer will help a bit in this regard as well as some pre-primer sanding.
The latest task involves lots of sanding and cleaning up of excess epoxy. There wasn't as much squeeze out as I expected. I filled in all the holes left by the lay up of the 1/4 inch ply on the hull. I managed to miss quite a number and so had to go through a second round after I had sanded. I put a 1/2 inch round on the inside and outside of the rail as well as the top of the hog. I stared a lot at the hog and spent some time at the wood pile looking for appropriate material for a very modest floor. Found a nice piece of fir. I put a thin coat of epoxy on the insides. Took the afternoon and I still have to touch up the insides of the chine with a brush. I used a plastic spreader for the bulk of the hull. It makes for quick work, but it doesn't leave a uniform surface. I assume the epoxy primer will help a bit in this regard as well as some pre-primer sanding.
Monday, February 15, 2016
Post haste
15 February 2016
The Sloppy Copy Blog lives on!
Lots of work done without posting. Oh well. Better to put the time in the boat, rather than the blog, eh?
Yesterday day was a big milestone as Ian and I flipped the boat and popped it off of the molds.
I had intended to use a system of pulleys set into the ceiling, but I got nervous in the end and decided to just use a couple of small hydraulic jacks and slowly lift and then drop the two ends. Lift, drop, block, repeat. I had a very modest jack slip in the end which proved completely uneventful in part because I had the rope backups. After I took apart the frame I stepped in and took a few practice casts. The only thing biting was the air, as the day broke with temperatures at about -10 F. I spent the whole day bundled in my insulated suit looking like a 55 year old toddler ready for his first sled ride. Today we have prediction of snow and then tomorrow we should have rain and mid 50's. Welcome to New England. I kept the inside form and the length long rails in place for the roll. Ian and I were able to roll it over without drama. There was a loud 'crack' at one point and I thought at first it was the rail, but it was just the corner of one of the OSB pieces making up the frame. I had rounded the edges, but it still gave way. I did manage to split off about a 2 inch sliver of the top of the outer stem while moving the boat around upside down in prep for the roll. Glad I left a little on the top.
It is about 14 months since I unloaded the kit. My last post was in late Spring 2015 -- June I think. I did not do much of any work in the Summer on the boat. Other things take up the time, including a 23' Grady. I had the week off between Christmas and the new year, which enabled me the opportunity for a big push to get the boat ready to flip. It has been ready to flip for about a month, but this long President's day weekend is the first chance I've had with a sufficient block of time to tackle this task. Once I get the boat on a cradle of sorts I will be able to spend the odd hour after work or on the weekends getting the inside done.
One other big change in the shop was the installation of a heat pump last week -- one of those things I should have done when I moved in (and didn't have a spare penny). With the outside temp in the 20s on Saturday I was able to work inside with temps close to 60 after letting the system run for a few hours.
I have lots of pictures of all the stuff done in the past few months. I will work to insert them and put in what comments I had always hoped to add at the time.
The Sloppy Copy Blog lives on!
Lots of work done without posting. Oh well. Better to put the time in the boat, rather than the blog, eh?
Yesterday day was a big milestone as Ian and I flipped the boat and popped it off of the molds.
I had intended to use a system of pulleys set into the ceiling, but I got nervous in the end and decided to just use a couple of small hydraulic jacks and slowly lift and then drop the two ends. Lift, drop, block, repeat. I had a very modest jack slip in the end which proved completely uneventful in part because I had the rope backups. After I took apart the frame I stepped in and took a few practice casts. The only thing biting was the air, as the day broke with temperatures at about -10 F. I spent the whole day bundled in my insulated suit looking like a 55 year old toddler ready for his first sled ride. Today we have prediction of snow and then tomorrow we should have rain and mid 50's. Welcome to New England. I kept the inside form and the length long rails in place for the roll. Ian and I were able to roll it over without drama. There was a loud 'crack' at one point and I thought at first it was the rail, but it was just the corner of one of the OSB pieces making up the frame. I had rounded the edges, but it still gave way. I did manage to split off about a 2 inch sliver of the top of the outer stem while moving the boat around upside down in prep for the roll. Glad I left a little on the top.
It is about 14 months since I unloaded the kit. My last post was in late Spring 2015 -- June I think. I did not do much of any work in the Summer on the boat. Other things take up the time, including a 23' Grady. I had the week off between Christmas and the new year, which enabled me the opportunity for a big push to get the boat ready to flip. It has been ready to flip for about a month, but this long President's day weekend is the first chance I've had with a sufficient block of time to tackle this task. Once I get the boat on a cradle of sorts I will be able to spend the odd hour after work or on the weekends getting the inside done.
One other big change in the shop was the installation of a heat pump last week -- one of those things I should have done when I moved in (and didn't have a spare penny). With the outside temp in the 20s on Saturday I was able to work inside with temps close to 60 after letting the system run for a few hours.
I have lots of pictures of all the stuff done in the past few months. I will work to insert them and put in what comments I had always hoped to add at the time.
Sunday, February 14, 2016
6 month catch up
In starting this blog my intention was to give folks the encouragement to start their own project and perhaps avoid a mistake or three that I have made along the way. Not keeping up the blog means that a good deal of the latter intention is lost for the ages. I have quite a few pictures, but the reality is that a many learnings big and small I meant to capture and write about are no longer part of my detailed knowledge. None-the-less I will take a stab at capturing the high and low points of the past 6 months effort. A few things were painful enough to lodge in my long term memory.
This is a picture of Eel Pond in Woods Hole. My Grady is on the dock way to the right in the back ground in front of the Marine Resources Center. Woods Hole is a fantastical place to spend the Summer and we are lucky enough to not only have a boat, but a cottage as well. So though not much time was spent on the build during the Summer, the time was well spent on boats and being on the water.
I ordered Dynel cloth from Jamestown. I forgot how much, but it wasn't enough. I had to go back over the Christmas break and buy a few more yards. I chose Dynel because that is what Doug Hylan used. The stuff is tough. Sanding was a bear. One think I was not keen on though was the hydrophobicity of the cloth. It was very difficult to get all the bubble out from underneath the cloth after I layed it down on the hull. I read and watched several videos and articles. One completely submerged the cloth in a huge tray before applying. I don't have that kind of space and am way too cheap to make enough excess epoxy to first submerge the cloth and then apply. I also was always working alone and so the soaking method didn't really appeal. We shall see if I was shortsighted in saving on materials and applying the cloth and then wetting through. There are definitely teeny bubbles in spots, but I suspect this would be true no matter the method. I'm not worried. Laying the cloth took a lot more time than I expected. I worked with small batches of epoxy - about 200 mls I suspect. When it got cold, I put the metal cans on a hotplate I liberated from the lab many years ago. The added fluidity of the warmed up epoxy definitely made for easier and quicker pumping and I'm sure improved my epoxy to hardener ratio accuracy. And I only left the hot plate on by mistake one long afternoon. I wasn't overly careful about the corners, as you can see from the pic above and aimed to beef up the corners with a few overlays of cloth and epoxy.
Here I have the bottom of the hull covered. I decided to put the keel on *after* covering the bottom. I like the notion that the keel can be repaired and the hull integrity essentially maintained. If I ever need to do this I have really screwed up though, eh? I also laid out the cloth so that I would get an overlap of cloth at the chine. This was intentional as I think the chine is the place most likely to get dinged by a rock in the Hole. The amount of overlap increases dramatically in the forward most third of the hull. It's unsightly and I could have cut it back, but that would not be consistent with sloppy copy etiquette and a desire to trade a bit more weight for a stouter exterior. My Fein vacuum got a workout throughout all this work. I was faithful in wearing a mask and have not had any issues with dust in the lungs. I have taken several hours throughout the project to thoroughly vacuum the floor and any other surface where the dust accumulates.
Sadly I must include one of my Dynel goofs. Near the stem I ran out of time -- I think we had a swim meet or something came up -- while I was laying and wetting the cloth. I figured I would be able to pick up where I left off. Wrong. Way wrong. The edge was a wreck and when I did finally finish all the way to the stem I was left with a section that was not adhering to the boat. So I had to sand/grind it off and do some repair work. Not the worst task, but I wish I had pressed on and finished the job all the way to the stem. Oh well.
One tricky task that I did not document or write about was getting the bottom of the hog flat before attaching the keel. In several spots my plywood pieces and hog did not come together all that firmly. I definitely could have done a better job, but I have neither the patience or frankly the skill to have all the pieces intersect consistently well. There are a lot of intersecting angles. Oversanding the hog in a couple of spots didn't help. I filled in the low spots with some thickened epoxy and took off the high spots with my belt sander. I can't imagine doing this kind of work without the miracle properties of plastic.
At this point most of the hull has been covered in Dynel. There were a couple of spots that I had to go back and cover with some shorter, custom-cut pieces of cloth. Lots of sanding. And then more sanding. Did I mention I spent hours sanding? I used several scrap pieces of bamboo flooring to fashion a long, 3' sanding block and added 60 grit paper with contact cement to get the inner stem plane sufficiently flat. Worked well.
At this stage I needed to go find some wood for the keel. I discovered Downes and Reader in nearby Stoughton Mass and bought a few pieces of 8 quarter mahogany. What an amazing place. I can't believe I have been working with hardwoods for 20+ years and never made my way there. I can't wait to go back. I had to glue up two pieces to get to an appropriate length for the keel. I think they had longer pieces, but I wasn't comfortable transporting anything too long in the 8' bed of my pickup truck. I think I cut this piece on the bandsaw, but don't really remember. My table saw is inoperable during the build. I could have used white oak here. They had plenty of oak and all kinds of other species. Went with mahogany in the end because all the other exterior pieces are mahogany.
I decided to use my joiner hand plane rather than the 8" Delta because I need the exercise and it just seemed like the way to go. It didn't take too long and I liked the results. Don't need no noisy Delta.
I countersunk a series of holes every 18 inches (I think) in the keel and attached the whole thing with 2" #14 (?) silico-bronze screws right into the hog. I considered through bolting but decided that screws and epoxy were sufficient to keep the keel on. It's at this stage of the build that the plans Doug supplies start to get thin and the photographs ever farther apart in the accomplishment stages. I emailed Doug about attaching the keels and whether I needed through bolts and he suggested that screws and epoxy should be fine. There are almost no pictures of the prep and layout of the interior of the boat in the files that Doug provides. Thankfully there is at least one very thorough blog detailing high quality (at least much higher than mine) work on a Doug Hylan design. A big shout out and thanks to the group in Brooklyn for sharing their excellent work and maintaining a wonderful blog. I have learned a ton and approach the work on the insides of my build with much more confidence than I would otherwise.
I attached the stem with three through bolts. I used stainless as silica bronze was going to get ridiculously expensive and wasteful if I got them at Jamestown, as they have minimum numbers of pieces for these long bolts and I only needed one each of 3 lengths.
Doh!
OK...now that I've got that out, I can tell you that the little piece of mahogany on the top (destined to be the bottom) of the outer stem in the picture below is because I glued the outer stem on 1 inch too low. I had fashioned a small piece of oak I had lying around as a template for the base of the keel and it had a piece missing on the end. I forgot about that cut off end when I lined up the outer stem and so ended up an inch too low. So I decided to add the little piece on the end to make up the difference. There are 3 screws and some epoxy to hold it in place. Seems solid.
The lower picture shows how I had to apply a fillet to get the whole outer stem looking like it should. A little epoxy and a lot of embarrassment.
Then I put on two coats of epoxy primer. The primer showed where I had done a poor job filleting, but decided to live with the Sloppy Copy result.
Got this at Jamestown. Went on very easily with a roller. This amount got me two coats. Easily.
This is a picture of Eel Pond in Woods Hole. My Grady is on the dock way to the right in the back ground in front of the Marine Resources Center. Woods Hole is a fantastical place to spend the Summer and we are lucky enough to not only have a boat, but a cottage as well. So though not much time was spent on the build during the Summer, the time was well spent on boats and being on the water.
I ordered Dynel cloth from Jamestown. I forgot how much, but it wasn't enough. I had to go back over the Christmas break and buy a few more yards. I chose Dynel because that is what Doug Hylan used. The stuff is tough. Sanding was a bear. One think I was not keen on though was the hydrophobicity of the cloth. It was very difficult to get all the bubble out from underneath the cloth after I layed it down on the hull. I read and watched several videos and articles. One completely submerged the cloth in a huge tray before applying. I don't have that kind of space and am way too cheap to make enough excess epoxy to first submerge the cloth and then apply. I also was always working alone and so the soaking method didn't really appeal. We shall see if I was shortsighted in saving on materials and applying the cloth and then wetting through. There are definitely teeny bubbles in spots, but I suspect this would be true no matter the method. I'm not worried. Laying the cloth took a lot more time than I expected. I worked with small batches of epoxy - about 200 mls I suspect. When it got cold, I put the metal cans on a hotplate I liberated from the lab many years ago. The added fluidity of the warmed up epoxy definitely made for easier and quicker pumping and I'm sure improved my epoxy to hardener ratio accuracy. And I only left the hot plate on by mistake one long afternoon. I wasn't overly careful about the corners, as you can see from the pic above and aimed to beef up the corners with a few overlays of cloth and epoxy.
One tricky task that I did not document or write about was getting the bottom of the hog flat before attaching the keel. In several spots my plywood pieces and hog did not come together all that firmly. I definitely could have done a better job, but I have neither the patience or frankly the skill to have all the pieces intersect consistently well. There are a lot of intersecting angles. Oversanding the hog in a couple of spots didn't help. I filled in the low spots with some thickened epoxy and took off the high spots with my belt sander. I can't imagine doing this kind of work without the miracle properties of plastic.
At this point most of the hull has been covered in Dynel. There were a couple of spots that I had to go back and cover with some shorter, custom-cut pieces of cloth. Lots of sanding. And then more sanding. Did I mention I spent hours sanding? I used several scrap pieces of bamboo flooring to fashion a long, 3' sanding block and added 60 grit paper with contact cement to get the inner stem plane sufficiently flat. Worked well.
At this stage I needed to go find some wood for the keel. I discovered Downes and Reader in nearby Stoughton Mass and bought a few pieces of 8 quarter mahogany. What an amazing place. I can't believe I have been working with hardwoods for 20+ years and never made my way there. I can't wait to go back. I had to glue up two pieces to get to an appropriate length for the keel. I think they had longer pieces, but I wasn't comfortable transporting anything too long in the 8' bed of my pickup truck. I think I cut this piece on the bandsaw, but don't really remember. My table saw is inoperable during the build. I could have used white oak here. They had plenty of oak and all kinds of other species. Went with mahogany in the end because all the other exterior pieces are mahogany.
I countersunk a series of holes every 18 inches (I think) in the keel and attached the whole thing with 2" #14 (?) silico-bronze screws right into the hog. I considered through bolting but decided that screws and epoxy were sufficient to keep the keel on. It's at this stage of the build that the plans Doug supplies start to get thin and the photographs ever farther apart in the accomplishment stages. I emailed Doug about attaching the keels and whether I needed through bolts and he suggested that screws and epoxy should be fine. There are almost no pictures of the prep and layout of the interior of the boat in the files that Doug provides. Thankfully there is at least one very thorough blog detailing high quality (at least much higher than mine) work on a Doug Hylan design. A big shout out and thanks to the group in Brooklyn for sharing their excellent work and maintaining a wonderful blog. I have learned a ton and approach the work on the insides of my build with much more confidence than I would otherwise.
I attached the stem with three through bolts. I used stainless as silica bronze was going to get ridiculously expensive and wasteful if I got them at Jamestown, as they have minimum numbers of pieces for these long bolts and I only needed one each of 3 lengths.
Doh!
OK...now that I've got that out, I can tell you that the little piece of mahogany on the top (destined to be the bottom) of the outer stem in the picture below is because I glued the outer stem on 1 inch too low. I had fashioned a small piece of oak I had lying around as a template for the base of the keel and it had a piece missing on the end. I forgot about that cut off end when I lined up the outer stem and so ended up an inch too low. So I decided to add the little piece on the end to make up the difference. There are 3 screws and some epoxy to hold it in place. Seems solid.
The lower picture shows how I had to apply a fillet to get the whole outer stem looking like it should. A little epoxy and a lot of embarrassment.
I have the keel attached above and have just filled in all the holes with thick epoxy. The lower picture of the shop floor was taken inadvertently, but I think it captures well what the shop looks like in the heat of the action, so I include it here.
I added the outer rails one side at a time. Thankfully I have a lot of clamps.
I put a layer of dynel over the keel and feathered it out about 6 inches on either side. I put a second coat of epoxy over the whole exterior. Lots of sanding. Filleting. More sanding. More filleting. etc. I spend a good month doing this.
I added a spray rail that I fashioned out of some left over fir. I followed the chine back a few feet. The pictures that Doug provides have the boat without and with the spray rail. On the 23' version this piece follows the entire chine. The plans are sketchy, or at least that is my memory, on the spray rail for the PC18. I love that I can modify this if need be in the future
Got this at Jamestown. Went on very easily with a roller. This amount got me two coats. Easily.
The view from the yard looking into the shop.
Mid January -- ready to flip. Took until early February.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Sand,sand, sand
In starting this blog my intention was to give folks to the encouragement to start their own project and perhaps avoid a mistake or three that I have made along the way. Not keeping up the blog means that a good deal of the latter intention is lost for the ages. I have quite a few pictures, but the reality is that a lot of things I meant to capture and write about are no longer part of my detailed knowledge. None-the-less I will take a stab at capturing the high and low points of the past 6 months effort. A few things were painful enough to lodge in my long term memory.
This is a picture of Eel Pond in Woods Hole. My Grady is on the dock way to the right in the back ground in front of the Marine Resources Center. Woods Hole is a fantastical place to spend the Summer and we are lucky enough to not only have a boat, but a cottage as well. So though not much time was spent on the build during the Summer, the time was well spent on boats and being on the water.
I ordered Dynel cloth from Jamestown. I forgot how much, but it wasn't enough. I had to go back over the Christmas break and buy a few more yards. I chose Dynel because that is what Doug Hylan used. The stuff is tough. Sanding was a bear. One think I was not keen on though was the hydrophobicity of the cloth. It was very difficult to get all the bubble out from underneath the cloth after I layed it down on the hull. I read and watched several videos and articles. One completely submerged the cloth in a huge tray before applying. I don't have that kind of space and am way too cheap to make enough excess epoxy to first submerge the cloth and then apply. I also was always working alone and so the soaking method didn't really appeal. We shall see if I was shortsighted in saving on materials and applying the cloth and then wetting through. There are definitely teeny bubbles in spots, but I suspect this would be true no matter the method. I'm not worried. Laying the cloth took a lot more time than I expected. I worked with small batches of epoxy - about 200 mls I suspect. When it got cold, I put the metal cans on a hotplate I liberated from the lab many years ago. The added fluidity of the warmed up epoxy definitely made for easier and quicker pumping and I'm sure improved my epoxy to hardener ratio accuracy. And I only left the hot plate on by mistake one long afternoon. I wasn't overly careful about the corners, as you can see from the pic above and aimed to beef up the corners with a few overlays of cloth and epoxy.
Here I have the bottom of the hull covered. I decided to put the keel on *after* covering the bottom. I like the notion that the keel can be repaired and the integrity essentially maintained. If I ever need to do this I have really screwed up though, eh? I also laid out the cloth so that I would get an overlap of cloth at the chine. This intentional as I think this is the place most likely to get dinged by a rock in the Hole. The amount of overlap increases dramatically in the forward most third of the hull. It's unsightly and I could have cut it back, but that would not be consistent with sloppy copy etiquette and a desire to trade a bit more weight for a stouter exterior. My Fein vacuum got a workout throughout all this work. I was faithful in wearing a mask and have not had any issues with dust in the lungs.
Sadly I must include one of my Dynel goofs. Near the stem I ran out of time -- I think we had a swim meet or something came up -- while I was laying and wetting the cloth. I figured I would be able to pick up where I left off. Wrong. Way wrong. The edge was a wreck and when I did finally finish all the way to the stem I was left with a section that was not adhering to the boat. So I had to sand/grind it off and do some repair work. Not the worst task, but I wish I had pressed on and finished the job all the way to the stem. Oh well.
One tricky task that I did not document or write about was getting the bottom of the hog flat before attaching the keel. In several spots my plywood pieces and hog did not come together all that firmly. I definitely could have done a better job, but I have neither the patience or frankly the skill to have all the pieces intersect consistently well. There are a lot of intersecting angles. Oversanding the hog in a couple of spots didn't help. I filled in the low spots with some thickened epoxy and took off the high spots with my belt sander. I can't imagine doing this kind of work without the miracle properties of plastic.
At this point most of the hull has been covered in Dynel. There were a couple of spots that I had to go back and cover with some shorter, custom-cut pieces of cloth. Lot's of sanding. And then more sanding. Did I mention I spent hours sanding? I used several scrap pieces of bamboo flooring to fashion a long, 3' sanding block and added 60 grit paper with contact cement to get the inner stem plane sufficiently flat. Worked well.
At this stage I needed to go find some wood for the keel. I discovered Downes and Reader in nearby Stoughton Mass and bought a few pieces of 8 quarter mahogany. What an amazing place. I can't believe I have been working with hardwoods for 20+ years and never made my way there. I can't wait to go back. I had to glue up two pieces to get to an appropriate length. I think I cut this piece on the bandsaw, but don't really remember. My table saw is inoperable during the build. I could have used white oak here. They had plenty of oak and all kinds of other species. Went with mahogany in the end because all the other exterior pieces are mahogany.
I decided to use my joiner hand plane rather than the 8" Delta because I need the exercise and it just seemed like the way to go. It didn't take too long and I liked the results. Don't need no noisy Delta.
I countersunk a series of holes every 18 inches (I think) in the keel and attached the whole thing with 2" #14 (?) silico-bronze screws right into the hog. I considered through bolting but decided that screws and epoxy were sufficient to keep the keel on. It's at this stage of the build that the plans Doug supplies start to get thin and the photographs ever farther apart in their accomplishments. I emailed Doug about attaching the keels and whether I needed through bolts and he suggested that screws and epoxy should be fine. There are almost no pictures of the prep and layout of the interior of the boat in the files that Doug provides. Thankfully there is at least one very thorough blog detailing high quality (at least much higher than mine) work on a Hylan design.
I attached the stem with three through bolts. I used stainless as silica bronze was going to get ridiculously expensive and wasteful if I got it at Jamestown, as they have minimum numbers of pieces for these long bolts and I only needed one each of 3 lengths.
Doh!
OK...now that I've got that out, I can tell you that the little piece of mahogany on the top (destined to be the bottom) of the outer stem is because I glued the outer stem on 1 inch too low. I had fashioned a small piece of oak I had lying around as a template for the base of the keel and it had a piece missing on the end. I forgot about that cut off end when I lined up the outer stem and so ended up an inch too low. So I decided to add the little piece on the end to make up the difference. There are 3 screws and some epoxy to hold it in place. Seems solid.
The lower picture shows how I had to apply a fillet to get the whole outer stem looking like it should. A little epoxy and a lot of embarrassment.
Then I put on two coats of epoxy primer. The primer showed where I had done a poor job filleting, but decided to live with the Sloppy Copy result.
Got this at Jamestown. Went on very easily with a roller. This amount got me two coats. Easily.
This is a picture of Eel Pond in Woods Hole. My Grady is on the dock way to the right in the back ground in front of the Marine Resources Center. Woods Hole is a fantastical place to spend the Summer and we are lucky enough to not only have a boat, but a cottage as well. So though not much time was spent on the build during the Summer, the time was well spent on boats and being on the water.
I ordered Dynel cloth from Jamestown. I forgot how much, but it wasn't enough. I had to go back over the Christmas break and buy a few more yards. I chose Dynel because that is what Doug Hylan used. The stuff is tough. Sanding was a bear. One think I was not keen on though was the hydrophobicity of the cloth. It was very difficult to get all the bubble out from underneath the cloth after I layed it down on the hull. I read and watched several videos and articles. One completely submerged the cloth in a huge tray before applying. I don't have that kind of space and am way too cheap to make enough excess epoxy to first submerge the cloth and then apply. I also was always working alone and so the soaking method didn't really appeal. We shall see if I was shortsighted in saving on materials and applying the cloth and then wetting through. There are definitely teeny bubbles in spots, but I suspect this would be true no matter the method. I'm not worried. Laying the cloth took a lot more time than I expected. I worked with small batches of epoxy - about 200 mls I suspect. When it got cold, I put the metal cans on a hotplate I liberated from the lab many years ago. The added fluidity of the warmed up epoxy definitely made for easier and quicker pumping and I'm sure improved my epoxy to hardener ratio accuracy. And I only left the hot plate on by mistake one long afternoon. I wasn't overly careful about the corners, as you can see from the pic above and aimed to beef up the corners with a few overlays of cloth and epoxy.
One tricky task that I did not document or write about was getting the bottom of the hog flat before attaching the keel. In several spots my plywood pieces and hog did not come together all that firmly. I definitely could have done a better job, but I have neither the patience or frankly the skill to have all the pieces intersect consistently well. There are a lot of intersecting angles. Oversanding the hog in a couple of spots didn't help. I filled in the low spots with some thickened epoxy and took off the high spots with my belt sander. I can't imagine doing this kind of work without the miracle properties of plastic.
At this point most of the hull has been covered in Dynel. There were a couple of spots that I had to go back and cover with some shorter, custom-cut pieces of cloth. Lot's of sanding. And then more sanding. Did I mention I spent hours sanding? I used several scrap pieces of bamboo flooring to fashion a long, 3' sanding block and added 60 grit paper with contact cement to get the inner stem plane sufficiently flat. Worked well.
At this stage I needed to go find some wood for the keel. I discovered Downes and Reader in nearby Stoughton Mass and bought a few pieces of 8 quarter mahogany. What an amazing place. I can't believe I have been working with hardwoods for 20+ years and never made my way there. I can't wait to go back. I had to glue up two pieces to get to an appropriate length. I think I cut this piece on the bandsaw, but don't really remember. My table saw is inoperable during the build. I could have used white oak here. They had plenty of oak and all kinds of other species. Went with mahogany in the end because all the other exterior pieces are mahogany.
I countersunk a series of holes every 18 inches (I think) in the keel and attached the whole thing with 2" #14 (?) silico-bronze screws right into the hog. I considered through bolting but decided that screws and epoxy were sufficient to keep the keel on. It's at this stage of the build that the plans Doug supplies start to get thin and the photographs ever farther apart in their accomplishments. I emailed Doug about attaching the keels and whether I needed through bolts and he suggested that screws and epoxy should be fine. There are almost no pictures of the prep and layout of the interior of the boat in the files that Doug provides. Thankfully there is at least one very thorough blog detailing high quality (at least much higher than mine) work on a Hylan design.
I attached the stem with three through bolts. I used stainless as silica bronze was going to get ridiculously expensive and wasteful if I got it at Jamestown, as they have minimum numbers of pieces for these long bolts and I only needed one each of 3 lengths.
Doh!
OK...now that I've got that out, I can tell you that the little piece of mahogany on the top (destined to be the bottom) of the outer stem is because I glued the outer stem on 1 inch too low. I had fashioned a small piece of oak I had lying around as a template for the base of the keel and it had a piece missing on the end. I forgot about that cut off end when I lined up the outer stem and so ended up an inch too low. So I decided to add the little piece on the end to make up the difference. There are 3 screws and some epoxy to hold it in place. Seems solid.
The lower picture shows how I had to apply a fillet to get the whole outer stem looking like it should. A little epoxy and a lot of embarrassment.
I have the keel attached above and have just filled in all the holes with thick epoxy. The lower picture of the shop floor was taken inadvertently, but I think it captures well what the shop looks like in the heat of the action, so I include it here.
I added the outer rails one side at a time. Thankfully I have a lot of clamps.
I put a layer of dynel over the keel and feathered it out about 6 inches on either side. I put a second coat of epoxy over the whole exterior. Lots of sanding. Filleting. More sanding. More filleting. etc. I spend a good month doing this.
Then I put on two coats of epoxy primer. The primer showed where I had done a poor job filleting, but decided to live with the Sloppy Copy result.
Got this at Jamestown. Went on very easily with a roller. This amount got me two coats. Easily.
The view from the yard looking into the shop.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
One small step
I spent two hours last night plugging all these hundreds of holes with very thick epoxy. I've been using a mix of 403 fibers and 406 microspheres -- the logic being the former adds some dimensional strength and the latter more hardness. I pretty much just spoon in the two in roughly equal amounts until I get the consistency I want for minimal runs. Last nights batches were almost peanut butter consistency. So thick in fact that I struggled to get the mixture into the 10ml plastic pipettes I was using. I fitted a 200 ul Eppendorf tip on the end of the pipettes and then used some modest air pressure from my compressor to drive the mix into the holes. It was a lot like piping a cake (never having done any piping....).
One thing I will do differently on the next boat is use stainless steel screws for all these temporary screw clamps. The cheapo Home Depot screws I used often lost their heads when I tried to back them out. The *worst* mistake I made was getting epoxy in the head slots. Those I generally had to drill out, which was both very slow work and often made a mess. I tried getting the problematic screws out from the inside, but there just wasn't enough to grab onto and provide sufficient torque. Longer screws might help in this regards. In any case, my cheap #6, 3/4 inch screws were not up to the task, so I'll try something else next time.
The second layer done. Hurray! Definitely both a small and a big step. I started filling in some gaps between the layers of plywood and the hog with the left overs from the hole-epoxy injection process. It took me a good 2 hours between mixing, plugging and smoothing the excess.
Another view. Time to order the Dynal sheathing and get started smoothing and filleting (spelt right?)
Monday, April 27, 2015
Catching up
I have a lot of pics describing things that have not made it into the blog. So this post will be a set of random shots and comments.
This pic shows the 6 mm outer layer before many sanding or shaping of any sort.
Here you can see how ragged the edges got where the 6 mm layers meet the hog. Perhaps I should have fitted better? I relied on the planar and sander to bring all into one plane along the top of the hog. Could have done this better. I put my time and energy and attention to the parallel edges of the pieces running from chine to hog. You can see where I way over sanded the very front of the hog. I later glued in a piece of fir (and then largely chipped it out when planing the leading edge of the inner hog).
Gluing the hog to the inner stem. Lots of challenging angles here.
I am not sure I mentioned that I ran out of 6 mm plywood before I finished the sheathing. Big problem at the time as the closest place to get marine plywood is an hour away and only open during work hours. I had one piece missing (see below) and another of equal size near at the stem. The picture below is of all the scraps. I was not at all wasteful in cutting the overlapping pieces. I was able to get another sheet but wished I had purchased an extra sheet from Doug. I could have pieced together some little pieces, but it seemed not a good idea.
The missing piece.
A pic of the transition before I fit the first layer.
More pics of the rough, dry fit.
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