Click on pictures for enlarged view.
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Tim, Zack, and Ron (w/ camara) came by to check on progress.
The boat is made up of 12 twenty ft planks: 8 for the hull and 4 for the deck. Each plank is made from butting together 3 sections. They're pretty flimsy at this point, in fact, at 20ft x skinny, require care to lift and move around. |
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Laying the Keel. The bulkhead pieces are temporary, i.e, removed before final deck to hull bonding. |
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second planks "stitched" onto keel planks. |
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third planks stitched on |
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fourth, and last of the hull planks almost done. |
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Filling chine seams with epoxy. Second and third passses of epoxy mixed with fine wood dust. |
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Trouble.
Found slight curve at the stern after removal of clamps. I decided to try to fix it by taking a hacksaw and splitting the seam from the rear stem to about 9" forward on the keel line. Straightened as best I could tell (this time with string along the centerline underneath). The bar clamp is a weight as much as a clamp to pull the keel line over (to left in the picture). Re-epoxy. |
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Sanding completed.
Epoxy seal coat (no glass) goes on with roller, followed by foam "brush" to remove small bubbles left by the roller. |
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Cut and lay out the glass. Small bit of overlap done at bow and stern stems. |
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Rolled another coat of epoxy, this time into the glass, and squeegy off excess. It's a challenge to get small batches of epoxy mixed, rolled, and then squeegied before the epoxy starts to gel (on the tray, roller, or recent area of glass)l. To my benefit, this has been a cool week, topping out about 90. I've done the epoxy coats after dinner when things start to cool down a little, but trying to complete before the overhead lighting attracts a bunch of bugs to die and fall on the sticky boat. |
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Fill coat #1 (as in filling in the fiberglass cloth weave with epoxy). A 1" wide fiberglass strip is also laid along the keel line. |
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Aug 19, 2007
A second fill coat. So now the hull is basically done on the outside. (The whole boat will get fine sanded in a couple months after full epoxy hardening, and then sprayed with a UV protective clear varnish.) |
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Hull turned right side up. Now wiring together deck and sheer panels. |
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Epoxy squeezed into deck seams while deck is taped firmly to the hull so that it cures in desired shape.
After curing, the deck is removed, flipped over, and thickened epoxy squeezed into any remaining gaps along the seams. Then, bumps sanded out, and fiberglass epoxied along all of the seams. Additionally, the areas fore and aft of each cockpit get 2 added layers of glass reinforcment. Geez, that's a lot -- deserving of it's own picture. |
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Friday 9/15/07 -- took the day off to play fiberglass guy.
Two
layers of glass laid out in the center of the hull, then epoxied. |
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Yesterday's 2 layers underneath, now another layup has just been done to the whole inside. Gah, a long day of pushing epoxy! It's difficult to squeegy out the excess epoxy to minimize weight, yet keep the glass from lifting away from the chine seems, especially with the whole inside surface being convex. Then the wraps at the bow and stern are their own fun little mess. Got it good tho!
The week ahead is forcast to be cooler than what I need for epoxying with slow hardener I bought for summer work. How odd to wish for warmer days in September. |
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Saturday 10/6/07
Deck epoxied to hull. Yeah!
For this I troweled a small seam of thickened epoxy along the top edge of the hull.
I left a stick near the bow and a second near the stern, laid the deck on those to finesse it into
position, then pulled out the sticks to let the deck settle onto the epoxy. Then taped it down. (Panels are only 3mm thick -- good to have them match up.). Finally, I strapped a piece of foam to a long stick and smushed it along the inside of the seam to fillet whatever thickened epoxy had squished out on the inside. Worked pretty well. |
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Sunday 10/7/07. A pretty warm day, and clear calendar, so perfect for all that needed to be done. Pulled off all the filament tape, filed the epoxy oozed out at the hull/deck seam, then sanding a radius on the outside of that seam so the fiberglass could lay flat over it, and a little more touch up sanding on the deck. Then applied masking tape just below the deck seam, laid out the glass cloth, trimmed roughly along the tape line. Started rolling and squeegying on epoxy at 4p. Then drank a beer and shared tall tales with Rick. Glass is tacky enf by 6:30p to cut off clean edge along the tape, then back at 10p for a 2 minute job of cutting the cloth out of the cockpit holes. Looks good. |
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Tomales Bay. When it's over 100F in Davis, this is the place to be.
I gotta say, taking the kayak anywhere gets tons of adulation. It's close to embarrassing, but then, I like the looks of it myself. All that work, it's cool that it turned out so nice, and btw, the thing paddles very very nice. It's fast and way more stable than our old canoe. |
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As hoped, the kayak is an excellent bird watching machine. (Tomales Bay) |
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Silver Lake |
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