Moving along

A bunch of small items were taken care of today despite my continued head cold and heavy congestion. Sneezing and coughing and snotting all over my boat was a great experience, really.

Anway, All the BH's are beveled, I notched the top frame on BH3 where the middle 90mm was supposed to have never been applied (room for centerboard case), and I cut and traced out the timber for the stem. I also cut the holes into the BH 2 and 3:


They're still rough, I haven't sanded them smooth or even yet. You may notice I went for the trapezoidal shape on BH2, this was at first done because I was a little nervous doing circles with the jigsaw a la transom. After I did it, I thought, damn, that looks bad. But then I realized that without the curves I can stuff more equipment (picnic basket, wine, beer) in that forward space between BH1 and 2. So I liked that, but then I waffled back to cutting a bigger hole to get curves. At this point my wonderful wife wandered in as I sat perplexed, and she gushed at how imaginative I was for mixing and matching shapes for the holes and how great it looked.

The trapezoid stays, gentlemen.

Up next:

• Shape and finish the dreaded stem
  
• Cut timber and scarf chinelogs
• Apply re-enforcement on transom for rudder
• Cut notches on BH's for chinelogs
  
• Coat all BH's with epoxy (I may do this later because I'm getting impatient to see the boat)
  
• Glue up the sides
• Touch up with the plane
• Screw it all together for a dry fit in the garage
• Freak out as I try to find a warmer place than the garage to put it for the winter so I can work on it.
  

Transom takes a hit!

In the course of beveling the bottom edge of the transom, I took a couple of chunks out of the endgrain of the starboard side frame. Then, I head a ***CRACK*** on one pass of the plane. I ripped a sizeable piece of the side frame away from itself. I carefully chiselled off the exposed end, and on another pass from the plane... ***CRACK*** and I took another strip, this one very deep. I can epoxy this all together, but I'd just as rather not have the integrity of the wood comprised. I only had one remaining bevel left with an endgrain, and I beveled it with a rasp and then planed the rest to match. Dammit-- This is an amateur mistake! Other amateurs beware!



Take note that I did not break the epoxy bond between the side frame and the transom ply, the surface layer of the side arm remains firmly glued to the ply.

Beveling bulkheads

I also recently started beveling my BH's and transom since they are all glued up. Despite my initial fear of beveling, it is quite easy, even for a beginner. I mark the edges of the BH first and draw a line for the bevel, and then on the face that is to be beveled I draw a line connecting the two edge bevels. That way, I have a nice visual of what needs to be planed off. Here's an example:

Here's a side of BH1 all beveled up:


BH 1 and the Transom are easy to bevel because all the frame pieces are on the same side. I am running into problems on BH 2 and 4 because I need to make bevels but can't get my plane to the end of the BH because a frame on the opposing side blocks it. This is frustrating. I glued everything up as I was supposed to, minus the side frames that are added after the boat is glued together (this is me saying to the skeptic: I read the directions and followed them to the T). In retrospect, I feel like I needed to piecemeal construction of the BH and bevel a piece at a time. Here's an example of the problem on BH4:


Above is BH 4, looking along the bottom edge that is to be beveled. The bevel drops from left to right, so the high side is on the left. The side frame in the distance will block the plane from finishing the last section, unless I can get a bevel on the side frame. Then plane should pass over it no problemo. Here's another example but on a side frame now:


So this is looking down the side of this particular BH. I have marked the bevel I need on the side (2mm) with the continuation on that bottom frame. From this perspective imagine the plane is coming down the side of the BH towards you, the viewer. As you can see, it will be blocked by the side frame unless I can bevel that too. I don't know how to easily bevel this so I can bevel the rest.

UPDATE: Someone over at the Storer forum mentioned a few options, of one them being a rasp. I took care of this problem in 5 minutes... my brain's just not working today. There's a reason I'm not at work!

Transom glued up!

Ok. I've been off the radar for a few weeks for several reasons. Namely: Job related problems now solved, my marriage, my inadvertent cutting-off-the-tip-of-my-finger winterizing my garden which led to a giant bandage and stitches, and my work that takes me on the road. I'm suposed to be on the road today, but I'm not because I have a massive head cold and I think my eyeballs are going to pop out of my head. So no work for me.

About two weeks ago, I glued up the transom. Storer recommends not using screws in the transom, I think this is for aesthetic reasons. I did use screws as opposed to the nails I had been using for the BH's, primarily because I could get a slightly tighter fit. I did not use nails on the transom head-board because I wanted to maintain the visual integrity of that piece, and I was able to secure it in spot with clamps through the tiller-hole. Everything came together really nice and I am pleased with the result. I was careful to wipe away the excess, and I was sure I had gotten everything, but I didn't. I came back and found hardened drips that materialized sometime during the night and they dripped onto the stern-stern of the transom. Using a chisel to cut them off, I ended up mucho-biting into the top of the transom and took a chunk out of the ply. OH WELL. I saved the piece and will epoxy it back in.

Otherwise, I think the transom looks good!

Gluing BH 4 and some things I found out about gluing

Alright, I'm a little frustrated at myself right now, because things are coming along nice, but not coming along like I want them too. Everything will be OK in the end, but it won't be as nice and neat as I would like to see, and that's aggravating. A lot of the mess stems from excess epoxy squeezing out and making the seams look all lumpy and dumb. A faster clean-up job before anything even begins to think about setting up would have saved me from having stupid looking frames.

First, I've been having some problems at work that are pretty significant, and I wasn't as focused on gluing as I wanted to be or could have and that led to sloppy gluing work.

Second, I just don't have wood gluing experience. My epoxy/fiberglass experience is solely focused on my Laser, hull #194, from the early 70's. This boat has hit submerged objects, sandbars, docks, buoys, other boats, etc. at speed. Laser speed. Fast. Rig humming with 2/3 of the boat out of the water fast. Once, it fell off my car... while I was driving. Needless to say, I'd just slop some epoxy on and keep going. Now that I'm gluing together my wood boat, I can't be as messy, or at least, I'd rather I wasn't as messy.

BH1 is messy but will be hidden mostly from view. BH2 is somewhat in view and the frames are going to visible, and it's kind of messy. BH 3 could have come out perfect, but it looks messy too because I rushed and didn't STOP.THINKFIRST.NOTSOFAST. BH 4 came out really nice and clean, but the frame is mostly hidden within the rear airtight box, so no one will see my clean job! Dammit! Roar!

So here's a tip to you beginners out there: First, read all you can about epoxy. I have yet to find a nice primer/tutorial on wood gluing for boats, and that would have helped. The Storer forum, my thread in particular could help you out. Second, my biggest mistake in neatness is that I waited for the epoxy to firm up to a putty and then tried to hack off the excess. This is a mistake. This evening I glued BH4 together, let it sit for a few minutes to excess epoxy oozed out, and just cleaned it right up. Presto besto pesto yum done. A nice neat job. Why I didn't think about this 3 BH's ago, I know not.