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Thread: Building a skiff

  1. #101
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Today I just spent my time stitching panels together and tuning the fit of the panels against each other. I had her pretty close then decided to back off the bow a bit and adjust a few things…



    It’s very close now, though, very close.



    This is nice, you can get a bit of a sense of the sheer line.



    And here you can see the bow, it’s not actually under that much pressure to get it this snug. There’s a little bit of a gap at the chine which I suspect I’ll need to work out by pulling the chines closer to the center line in the forward 18-24 inches, but it’s not severe. Epoxy would fill it without much difficulty.



    If you look REALLY closely in a couple of pics you might see some wood fibres poking out right at the zip ties. Those are little bits of those 1/16” or 1/8“ cutoff strips from yesterday, I think. Was it the day before? At any rate I’m using them as spacers to keep the panels a bit separate for gluing. My tendency is probably to build tighter than I should; a bigger gap might be better. That’s the kind of thing I tend to struggle with in stitch and glue.

    On a positive note, since the hull is stitched, and the process is called stitch and glue, all that’s left must be the gluing. I’m half done! I guess I’ll be finished in three weeks!

    Or, you know, maybe not.
    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  2. #102
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Very little time yesterday or today; I missed doing an update yesterday but there's not much to show, really. I continue to make tiny adjustments in the stitching. I'm very close to how I want it now.

    Here's a pic that I don't know if anyone will be interested in or not: I took it just to give some sense of the shape of the forefoot. You can see here how far forward I've pulled the foot to get the stem fairly vertical and to lengthen the waterline.




    And here you can see how I'm messing around with different straps to pull the chine inwards a bit close to the bow. It's working pretty well. As soon as I'm convinced I can't get the shape any better, I'll start gluing it up.



    And then here you can see how I've been going along and making sure there's a bit of a gap between the panels all the way along. I have had to do a bit of trimming in a couple of spots to make sure there's a gap, although I don't think it will matter that much: the real strength will of course be in the glass, not the joints. As long as I have epoxy in the joint and not wood on wood, I think I'm happy with that.



    One thing you can't see is that I went along and put packing tape behind every seam, just to reduce the amount of epoxy wastage as it gets pushed through the seams. Sometimes I see boats that get flipped and every seam looks like it was dripping twice as much epoxy as it was retaining, so I started taping the back sides of seams when I glue them up. One thing I didn't do on this one, although I thought about it and if I had more time when it was at that stage I might have given it a shot, was put 1/2" pvc pipe for the length of the chines and keel. If I'd stuck entire 10' lengths against the seams, A) I probably would have spent less time monkeying around with the strap tension, and B) had pre-formed fillets. I had been meaning to do that on this build but at the correct moment I didn't really have a convenient chance to go get the pipe, so I just kept on building. In general I don't like to over complicate things; just keep moving forward and you get the boat built, that's my experience.

    But I've never seen anyone else build with joints temporarily backed by pipe to give it shape, an epoxy stop, and an automatic radius, so I really should have done it just to show it as a concept. Next time.
    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  3. #103
    Site Supporter OlongJohnson's Avatar
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    Just had a thought that this might be kinda like writing, where once you have a very solid draft, if you set it aside for three or four days and come back to it, you can very easily clean it up and make it significantly better in a way that just continuing to hammer on it won't accomplish. May be something to ponder when you think you're ready to start mixing glue.
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    Not another dime.

  4. #104
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Very applicable...in fact that is why I started reefing in the bottom panels even though I wasn't done cutting them: the plywood takes a shape and then relaxes in that state after a day or two. After a week you can get way more bend out of it than you can after a day. This whole week I pretty much expect to tweak the alignment of the panels, although at this point they are getting so close that glue is imminent, I guess.

    But you're 100% right, spending a week letting it take the shape makes everything much easier to fit.
    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  5. #105
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    A simple update today: I finished adjusting the panels, and glued between stitches over about 90% of the boat. There's a couple of spots I discovered while working that I think will be easier to fine tune once the surrounding stuff is glued up, so I just worked around them.

    I built a big fire in the stove for this to get everything good and warm, and boy, it sure worked. Although it was so much hotter than every other fire I've had, the stovepipe really cooked in, and smoked the hell out of the garage for about half an hour.

    Anyway I think it will remain warm enough that the epoxy will harden right up overnight. I'll check it after dinner and maybe build a small fire again if I think it's necessary but it was kicking pretty well by the time I shut down around twenty minutes ago.







    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  6. #106
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Super busy the last few days and haven't written much but I do continue to make progress on the boat.

    I have been dialing in a few spots as I go so glued everything up over the course of a couple of days, letting the epoxy set up on the initial gluing and then bending the panels as necessary in the few remaining areas to get the alignment the way I wanted it. Some of the tweaks were really minor, like this first picture I wanted to move the bottom panel out a miximum of about 1/8" relative to the top panel in this one area.



    Other areas required creative clamping to move the sides inward at the join.



    Once the second round of glue had set up I pulled the straps - the epoxy doesn't really adhere to them well so a good yank and even the ones that got in a bit of contact with the glue pop right out - and started smoothing and rounding the edges and corners.



    The hull has taken the shape nicely; that transition towards the bow looks pretty good. A slight compound curve in that area; I achieved it the same way I have achieved everything else in life: p̶e̶r̶s̶i̶s̶t̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ brute force.



    Bike's getting dusty but all the seams are smooth and round. Up next:



    About time to get glassing.
    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  7. #107
    Site Supporter SeriousStudent's Avatar
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    This is very cool, I can't wait to see how it handles in the water.

  8. #108
    Member olstyn's Avatar
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    If you do the next one in your basement, I will be forced to start a petition to get one of the mods to change your username to Agent Gibbs.

    In all seriousness, though, this thread is really cool.

  9. #109
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Thanks guys - long way to go yet but I am happy with how it's coming along. There is something very satisfying about taking to the water on a boat of your own construction.

    The Agent Gibbs reference is over my head, but then, I inhale a lot of epoxy fumes.
    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  10. #110
    Member olstyn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Maple Syrup Actual View Post
    The Agent Gibbs reference is over my head, but then, I inhale a lot of epoxy fumes.
    There was at least one season of the long-running TV show NCIS where the lead character, Agent Gibbs, was building a boat in his basement. Any time some other character would visit his house, they'd inevitably come in to find him down there sanding on it or some such.

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