Back to boatbuilding

A long while since I upddated the boatbuilding part of the blog, but I have not been idle. 

After the last reported step of glueing the planks together, carefully skipping over the copper wires to avoid cementing them in place, I pulled the wires from along the keel and fiberglassed the middle two planks. Near the stern I widenened the fiberglass to cover two additional planks on each side. That proved difficult because the cloth did not want to stick to the corners where overlapping planks meet, and left bubbles I could not get rid of. That worried me, but in the end it just meant that a few spots had to be ground out and refilled.

Once the fiberglass cured, I was able to pull out all the rest of the wires. The next step was to go back and refill the seams with epoxy. But before I could do that I spent several hours sanding, grinding and shaping the first coat of glue so that the seams would come out looking neat and uniform. In particular, I worked on the "gains" at the bow where the overlapping seams taper to a smooth surface.

Yesterday, December 10, I filled all the wire holes and then put the second bead of glue along each of the ten seams, followed by a coat of epoxy over the whole exterior of the hull. The pictures show the before and after of that last step.

Today is too cold for epoxy or boatbuilders to work, but yesterday's epoxy had cured so I looked over the whole bottom and marked spots which need filling or extra sanding. It still needs a lot of work, but already looks pretty good.

The jigsaw-puzzle joints in the planks are smooth but conspicuous, so finishing the exterior bright (varnished) is not an option. She'll be painted. But I will try to work neatly enough that most of the interior can be varnished. 

If I put her in the water now, she'd float and not leak, so I guess she's actually a boat.

Next step will be to turn her over and work on the inside.