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Thread: Building a skiff

  1. #111
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Oh that's funny; I just assumed it was some spy character from a book who secretly built a boat to escape captors or something.

    I bet one of the writers on that show is building a boat for fun. The people who do it are usually a bit weird about it and work it into everything.

    Even gun forums.
    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. #112
    Quote Originally Posted by Maple Syrup Actual View Post
    Oh that's funny; I just assumed it was some spy character from a book who secretly built a boat to escape captors or something.

    I bet one of the writers on that show is building a boat for fun. The people who do it are usually a bit weird about it and work it into everything.

    Even gun forums.
    Unlike Agent Gibbs, it appears you likely have a plan for getting the boat out of your garage. His was in a basement and there was no apparent way the boat will be able to make it into the wild.

  3. #113
    Site Supporter OlongJohnson's Avatar
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    I once knew a somewhat eccentric doctor who was into model railroading. He had put an exterior wall of his house on hinges to allow actual full size rail stock to be loaded into his basement. Had a fully restored F7 locomotive cab and a complete, fully restored Pullman sleeper car down there.

    Sheldon Cooper would have worshipped him.

    Don't know if either was ever removed, or more added. Last time I talked with him about it was >35 years ago.

    I should figure out if he still has that perfect 240Z in his garage...
    .
    -----------------------------------------
    Not another dime.

  4. #114
    Member olstyn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AKDoug View Post
    Unlike Agent Gibbs, it appears you likely have a plan for getting the boat out of your garage. His was in a basement and there was no apparent way the boat will be able to make it into the wild.
    Yeah, that was always funny. It's been forever since I watched that show, but IIRC they never explained how he got it out of the basement when he was done building it.

  5. #115
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    I didn't get as much done today as I hoped; it was a lot of fiddly little things and preparatory work for the next stage. But the next week or so should generate some real action.

    I finished gluing up all the seams; every little spot left over from my various tweaks and twists has now been glurped up nicely. All the stitch holes have been filled as well. These two tasks seemed to take forever.

    I also wanted to transfer some fabric from my 50lb roll of 12oz biax to a smaller, more manageable one, so I laid out the cloth on the boat to get that figured out a bit. A couple of 8 yard chunks should do the hull, and then to finish right up to the gunwales I'll use a bit of the 7725 Rutan 2x2 twill I have.

    Pretty cool to start laying out the glass fabric; I've never actually used 12oz biax fabric before. It's heavy stuff when you have enough of it.



    And this is the final glued-up hull panel situation...



    Then I wanted to saturate the seams where the biaxial tape will go, so I marked those out to help keep the tape straight and the overlaps in the right spots and then rolled around 12 oz of epoxy on to soak into the wood before the tape goes down. I had fantasies of getting the tape down today but I spent too much time tuning and gluing and laying stuff out to do that. That's okay; these early stages are worth investing a bit of time in.



    At the end of the afternoon, I had a little bit of epoxy left so I slapped on a single short piece of tape at the transom. I hadn't been heating the garage all day because it's partly to my advantage to have the epoxy curing slowly at this point but then of course if I want to wet out fiberglass I have to hit it with a heat gun and it was too much of a pain to bother with late on a Sunday afternoon so I put on the one piece just to get things rolling, and called it a day.




    The vertical threads you're seeing in this pic are just the cotton binding threads; they stick up from the surface a bit so the light tends to catch them and makes stuff look like it isn't wetted out properly. In reality though it's pretty thoroughly wetted on both sides.




    One thing I like about boat building...I get so focused I forget other stuff. I opened a Winter Dunkel from Whistler Brewing around 2pm and didn't take a sip until after 5. The amount I save on beer will probably pay for the boat at this rate.
    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. #116
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    It was sunny today so I got cocky and didn't light a fire. Definitely a mistake. I started at about 4pm and the sun was down maybe 20 minutes later and it got cold.

    I glassed on the transom, 2x 12oz staggered on all sides, and one chine seam. But holy cow, what a lot of work. I was mixing 6oz at a time, pouring it on and then heating it with a heat gun for paint stripping to get it thin enough to saturate the glass well. I'd pour it, spread it out over about half the tape, then hit it with the heat gun and use a gloved hand to work it into the glass. Slow and awkward and not much stopping once you start with a given piece of glass, either.

    I have about half the seams finished now, but it took 3 hours or more and wasn't fun work: burning fingers and freezing toes.

    Tomorrow I'll light a fire and get things comfortably warm first, and the other chine, keel x2 and stem x2 should go on a lot easier.



    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. #117
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Continued to glass seams today; I lit a fire in the stove and it was a huge improvement for sure. I hit the areas I was going to glass with a sander, just in case, but they had a tiny bit of tack left to them so I think it's reasonable to conclude that I'll still get a primary bond anyway.

    I actually kept on with the heat gun technique, though. It's faster when the ambient temperatures are comfortable. But what I really like is that it's extremely controllable. I can get a layup that is 50% epoxy by weight and not a gram more; maybe less in some circumstances. The heat just thins the epoxy so well, and yet the ambient temperature is low enough that it cools off pretty quickly after you remove the heat. I think I'll stick with the method for the time being. The only downside I can think of is that potentially you can get a pretty good lungful of epoxy fumes if you're not watching what you're doing.

    Anyway, I glassed the keel and didn't have time for much more today. But the glass laid so smoothly on the keel, I was really happy with it.

    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

  8. #118
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Not much to say today beyond: all the seams are now taped. It looks much smoother in person; somehow the lighting in pictures always makes fiberglass look kind of messed up. But in reality it's fairly decent. The stem-chine-keel intersection could double as tank armour: two layers on the keel, two on the stem, and one on each chine, but they all wrap around the stem a bit, so I think there's 6 layers total in that spot, just on the outside. That'll set up like granite. But the time the inside gets glassed it'll probably get bought up by GenDyn for use in naval gun testing.



    Will try to get the fabric on the hull this weekend, although if the weather is nice we might take the complete boat out for fun instead.
    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

  9. #119
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    I took yesterday off of boat work to get the Christmas lights up and let the epoxy set up, knowing I'd be grinding it down before the next step.

    Only one task today: prep for fabric. I went over everything looking for air bubbles under the tape but it's very good. There are a couple of tiny spots at the transom, like 1/4 the size of a dime, that might have air behind them. It't hard to tell. But I don't think it's particularly worth grinding them out to see, they're so small. There was one air pocket between two layers that was about the size of my little finger, that I cut out and I'll just pop a little scrap in its place. Other than that it was just a matter of sanding everything with a bit of shine, until it was thoroughly matte.



    Probably start getting fabric on tomorrow, depending on the weather and how much I feel like taking the big boat out instead. Winter springs are starting to turn up at Porlier Pass.
    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. #120
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Another simple update: one side is now sheathed in fabric. It took around six hours; I probably could have done it in three during the summer, but in the winter it requires a fair bit of effort to heat everything.



    I'm not sure if you can see the marks on the glass; there's a black tick with a sharpie every 26 inches. Why every 26 inches?

    I figure it like this. My 12oz biax is 50" wide. 36x36/50 is 25.92, so every 26 inches of fabric should eat about 12oz of epoxy, if I'm doing exactly 1:1, which would be pretty good for a hand layup particularly in cold conditions.



    But I'm ashamed to admit I couldn't sustain an exactly 50% glass layup. I nearly made it, but at the end, I had to mix 3 extra ounces. I'm not going to do the math just this minute but I believe that makes for a 49% glass layup. Good enough.



    One thing I am very happy with is the extreme uniformity of the layup. It's the heat gun, I have to go over every inch and it gives me a huge amount of control over the end result. There were almost no air bubbles in the entire taping process, for example. Every area that looks even slightly over- or under-epoxied, I just hand-squeegee, using the heat gun to control the viscosity. It's slow but it works very, very well.



    I might try doing the second side tomorrow, I haven't quite decided yet.
    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

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