I continue to slowly progress on the boat. I am really stymied by the fact that it's been all of 0 deg. F (-18 C) here at the house for quite a bit now. The garage has been holding temperature at just under freezing. I'm not interested in doing major epoxy sealing work in these condititions because: a) it's cold, b) the epoxy thickens and is difficult to spread.
However, I can do small spot gluing jobs. For instance, I installed the mast step and partner yesterday:
My Step was placed in first (obviously) as a whole piece, as in the 6mm ply backing was already glued in position. The fit was relatively tight, but not perfect because my BH's are not exactly perfectly parallel along the bottom. I'm talking a few mm's here, but still. Anyway, when you drop something into a tight spot to be glued, pay attention as to how you're going to place it in and glue those places accordingly. To clarify: Don't put the glue on the location that is going to get scraped by the incoming piece, put it where it will be squeezed in so the glue remains.
The partner went in nice and simple, except I dropped it on my heater fan. My partner deviates from the plans as in it is two pieces, with the bottom piece extending underneath the seat cleat on BH2. This is for stability issues, I could twist the top of the BH with my hand. This partner makes it very burly.
Notice my heater and my brick compression system. It's a $12 heater I bought at Lowes. With a plastic sheet, temps went up quick.
Next up I screwed the gunwales into place. I didn't want to necessarily do it, but it's almost essential.
The next picture illustrates a non-screwed gunwale. Basically, the flare from the sides of the boat in the stern and amidships is translated to the gunwale to the bow, where there is minimal flare, the sides are relatively straight. Only muscling the gunwale with my hands could I make contact. Not conducive to gluing, as you can imagine.
Storer (el designero) promised that screwing the gunwale would pull it in. I had doubts and didn't want to deal with it, but I tried. Working from the stern forward, I placed one screw in the stern, two amidships, and two right in the bow area where the twist was most apparent. I used the 1 1/4 screws with the ply pads from the bottom screwing event.SOB, it worked:
Nice and tight, all pulled together. This makes me happy. All ready for gluing. Screws were hidden underneath the areas where I am going to place my inwale spacers. Speaking of spacers, all of them are cut, and I have marked where I will be adding them. I started at the seam between the two pieces of ply for the sides, one will join them at the top, then one will be place next to each BH sidearm, with BH3 sidearms getting two small ones on either side due to the fact that it does not meet the side near the top. Re-enforcements, if you will. I need 52 spacers for this scheme.
Next up, I glued my daggerboard together.
I precoated the sides to be glued, then made a thin epoxy mix with the filler, not too much since the wood had been run through the joiner. The typical GIS clamp scheme as seen below:
And we're off to the races! Looking good. Looking good.She arrives, one step at a time boys, one step at a time.
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