Joining The Two Halves Together.

With seat rail completed and given two coats of epoxy I fitted it into the boat. The whole of the inside was sanded lightly (120 grit) to prepare for the varnish. With the edges masked off with 40mm tape the inside  of hull and deck were given 2 coats of clear varnish and then a coat of satin varnish. After the varnish had dried the edges were roughly sanded (60 grit) in preparation for the seam tape.

Then came the part I wasn't looking forward to - putting the deck and hull together for a trial fit. Here's what it looked like at the beginning.

The gap in the middle looks bad but more troubling was the fact that the deck had spread widthways more than the hull.  The aim at this point is to apply fibreglass reinforced packaging tape (called filament tape) to pull the two halves together and hold them while the join  is covered with fibreglass tape on the inside. This was easier said than done!

Only having two hands I used a couple of ratchet straps to pull the halves together and then started applying tape. The front  half of the boat (left hand side) didn't have a big gap between the edges and it looked as though the tape approach would hold it. The back half  had a bigger gap and it was obvious the the tape wouldn't do the job. The idea is that the edges are pulled together tightly enough for the friction between them to hold them in position.

The reason that the gap was bigger at the aft end was that I stripped the aft deck with wider strips which were flat sawn (horizontal grain) to use the spectacular grain pattern in the original board (look at the post of May 27th below). That was a BIG mistake. Before I glassed the outside the aft deck was convex. After a few days with the glass on the changing water content made it go slightly concave by about 6mm at the widest point. I wasn’t too concerned about this as it was still quite flexible and the sides sprang in easily. Once the glass was on the inside springing them in was much more difficult. Using both hands I could just about do it but I needed two more hands to put the tape on. 

I work alone so had to resort to clamps. I tried various F and pipe clamps but they won’t stay in place. U shaped plywood clamps and wedges held the sides in and some tape could be applied
. 

I had asked Nick Schade (Guillemot Kayaks) about my difficulties and with his encouragement decided to proceed with this approach and abandon my idea of putting a few saw cuts through the glass cloth on the inside to weaken it and then, after the join was made, to put fibreglass tape over the saw cuts. The cuts would have caused a visible kink on the outside which I din't want.

So, I separated the halves again and masked off the insides apart from the edges where to tape would be applied.  Then set about joining them together. It took 5 hours of hard work to get them to line up. I used ratchet straps in pairs to pull a section about 600mm long together and then taped between the straps. Then moved one strap past the other and did the next 600mm. Starting just in front of the cockpit this approach got the forward half sorted out.

The rear part was more difficult. I made more of the plywood clamps and added straps between them. This got the edges more or less together and I put some tape on.

By this time I was pretty tired and quit for the day thinking that I would apply the tape the next day. This was fortunate because when I looked the next morning most of the tape on the forward half had let go. Had I put the tape on the epoxy would have set while the tape was letting the halves move apart. Off I went to the hardware store to buy more straps and, with them and a lot more tape was fairly confident that I could apply the tape.

This was the next step that I wasn't looking forward to. Applying 4 metres (13 feet) of tape to a seam inside a boat and then soaking it in epoxy didn't appear to be a simple job. Nick Schade explains how to do it very well in his videos which was great help. Basically you measure the length of tape required and mark the centrepoint. Lay the tape out on a plastic sheet and saturate it with epoxy. Use a brush on a stick to apply epoxy to the inside of the joing (this is why you masked the entire inside surface of the boat). Then roll the tape up from the ends to the mark at the middle and lay it in the middle of the boat. Roll the two sausages towards the ends of the boat, with your hands as far as you can reach and then with the brush on a stick. There is a lot of scope for things to go wrong but I managed to do the first join without any problems.

Here's a couple of photos from the outside looking in.

In this photo you can see the green tape which guides where the tape has to go. Also visible is the plastic film protecting the varnished surface from epoxy drips. It is harder to see but there is another line of the clear filament tape over the edge of the green tape. The filament tape is to stop the epoxy gluing the green tape to the hull. While the epoxy is still tacky the filament tape is pulled out leaving the green tape to hold the plastic film in place which the other side join is done.

Here's another view from outside. The box inside the boat is holding up a torch to provide light at the ends of the boat.

Once the first side's epoxy had hardened up enough to not run away from the tape the boat was turned and the other side seam done.

The next day I took the boat out into the sunshine and propped it up against the end of the workshop. Two reasons for this, the warmth of the sun would cure the fresh epoxy more quickly and I hoped that the warmth would help the whole boat relax and get used to the idea of the new shape I had forced it into.

I stood it on end so that I could pour some epoxy into the end to fill any voids where the inner stems meet. Not a lot of epoxy because I didn't want to add unnecessary weight and I expected that some of it would leak out; it did but I know the inner stems have a better glue joint.

I

The Coaming and Other Stuff.

With the outside glassed the next job was to build the coaming. After giving the edge of the opening in the deck a final clean up I started putting the vertical riser strips in place. These are pieces of spare deck strips about 50mm long glued in place one at a time. Starting at the centre front the first strip was glued in place with hot melt glue and then the next strip was glued to it with PVA glue and held in place with hot melt glue. This strip by strip process continued until the half way point was reached. Then the second half was done working from the centre back. The final strip on either side needed to be shaped to fill the gap on either side. Here are the first few strips in place.

It took a couple of hours but here's what it all looked like. The top edge was trimmed and the outside sanded smooth.

Masking tape in place ready for fibre-glass (bias cut strips of 4 ounce cloth) to be added.

With fibre-glass done.

The excess cloth which overlapped the masking tape was cut with a sharp utility knife and removed with the masking tape. Next morning the excess cloth was trimmed at the top of the risers. The coaming rim was made from 9 x 2mm thick laminations which were put in place over a layer of plastic wrapping film. Once they were in place and correctly aligned the clamps were removed in sections and the top surface of the laminations painted with epoxy heating the strips before and after the epoxy is applied. The clamps were replaced with extras and the next section done. A gap was left at the front of the opening.

All done, lots of clamps!

Next morning the lip was removed, laid on the bench and the underside sanded smooth before applying a layer of cloth.

 

Next day the excess cloth was trimmed off , the edges of the lip cleaned up and then the lip was put back in place. With the height checked and the lip eyeballed for fairness the lip was spot glued with CA glue every 25mm or so. Again lots of clamps while doing this.

The ends at the front were cut off and tidied up with a plane. Nine short strips were clamped in place and flooded with low viscosity CA glue. The advantage of CA glue is that a squirt with accelerator make it set instantly so work can continue.

Here's a photo of the completed coaming.

The inside of the hull and deck can now be fibre-glassed. I did the hull first to get some practice laying cloth on the concave surfaces.  It looks a bit blotchy but I think it will be OK.

Before the inside of the deck can be covered the coaming was covered in bias cut strips. This was tricky! The inside and top of the coaming were painted with resin and the cloth strips put in place against the risers. once in place the cloth was saturated, first on the vertical surface of the risers, then across the top of the lip and finally over the edge and under the lip. That was the tricky bit but eventually it was done. The deck was turned over and the lower edge of the strips of cloth wet down on the inside surface of the hull. After that glassing the inside of the hull was relatively easy. The next photo was taken the following day. It looks OK but there are blobs of epoxy where it ran down the inside of the riser, easy to clean off when it is hard.

While working on the above there was quite a lot of waiting time so I worked on shaping the seat. The bulk of the work was done with the angle grinder using an abrasive disk called a "Holey Galahad". The disk is shaped like half a doughnut and can be seen in this photo of the seat.

Shaping the inside of the seat was relatively easy, the surface could be checked for smoothness with the hand and shape with the backside. Shaping the outside is more difficult, the hand can feel lumps but the the thickness is more difficult. Closed the edges finger and thumb can gauge the thickness but towards the centre it is harder. I'm still working on it.

I will mount the seat and foot braces on sliders on a rail fixed to the bottom of the boat. The rail will be T shaped with holes for adjustment every 50mm. Here's the current state of the rail. The holes were drilled 16mm without breaking through, then countersunk and filled with epoxy thickened with a mixture of graphite and micro-fibres. When the resin is hard the top surface will be cleaned up and the holes redrilled 12mm right through.

Last job today was the end pours in the deck. These are blocks of epoxy inside the ends of the deck to provide reinforcing where holes for rope handles will be. I shaped a dam from an old ice cream container  and taped it in place. The space behind it was filled with thickened epoxy. Needless to say, one of the dams leaked causing a sticky mess! I scooped up the epoxy and clean the surface, put the dam back wit more tape and poured the epoxy back in. This time it's holding, I hope!

The stern.

The bow, this is the one that leaked: obviously, it's harder to get at!

Fibreglassing.

It's been a frustrating few weeks since the last post finishing the sanding process and getting ready to fibreglass the outside of the hull and deck. In the last post I had sanded the whole hull twith 60 grit paper to level the surface out. The next step would be 80 grit on the randome orbital sander and longboard. I wanted a soft pad for the random orbital sander and it took a while to find a source. I bought the last two in stock, 15mm thick, 150mm diameter with no holes. My sander is 125mm so I had to cut some off and punch some holes in the pad. Here's a photo of the result, looks quite good.

After les than 2 hours sanding with the 60 grit paper and being careful when chnging to a new sheet of paper the pad delaminated! Some discussion with the supplier about this and they agreed to replace the pad - but I had bought the last two in stock so I'm waiting! I glued it back together with spray on contact cemeent and it is holding together.

I wanted to collect some of the sanding dust and so bought a small cyclone and mounted it on a plastic bucket. I looked quite good and worked well but the vacuum was too much for the bucket which collapsed!

I tried various plastic buckets but the all failed. Eventually I bought a heavy duty steel bucket and mad a wooden lid. This withstands the vacuum and collects the dust but needs more work to tidy it up.

While waiting for things to arrived by post I started working on the seat. It is laminated from shaped pieces glued together to make a blank. Here it is before any finishing is done on it.

With the outside sanded to 120 grit several cracks between strips needed to be filled. there were a number of fine cracks which will fill with epoxy and not be noticeable. Here's a wider one.

Filling the narrow crack with wood would be difficult. Filling it with bog would show up as clearly as the crack/ The solution (thanks Nick Schade) is to make the crack into a wider V shaped groove and glue astrip of matching timber into the groove.

Cutting a strip of western red cedar 3mm square was a bit of a challenge but I did it and here it is glued into place with the excess planed off. After sanding it looked even better.

The tools for doing this are: veining gouge on the left, Japanese rasp centre and coarse square file on the right. The filler strip was glued in with CA glue and accelerator.

Sanded to 120 grit the surface looked OK but when sprayed with water to raise the grain some PVA glue squeeze out could be seen. The PVA dries clear and is hard to see and, because it has been sanded flat, your fingers don't feel it. Here some PVA on the edge of a strip which is slightly lower than its neighbour.  A freshly sharpened block plane  cleaned these up

Once satisfied with the surface I removed the two halves of the hull from the building frame, very carefully because they feel like eggshells and wouold be easily damaged.

I took the building frame apart and divided the frames between two strongbacks, half the frames on each. This photo shows one strongback with half the frames in place.

The next photo shows the two strongbacks withe the top and bottom halves in place. The shells are tacked to the frames with hot melt glue.

With the halves ready for fibreglass the weather took a downward turn as Brisbane headed into winter. we are having maximum temperatures around 25C and the isn't reached until mid afternoon. Not really warm enough for fibreglassing. My workshop is a metal shed and attempts to warm it up with electric heaters failed completely. One 2kW electric fan heater had no effect; two of them tripped the breaker! In the end I bought a small industrial gas heater which puts out 15kW. It was cheap and has no temperature control - just on of off! In half an hour it raises the temperature in my shed up to the high 20s and the resin is happy! I just have to be careful what it is pointed at.

Two days later and the fibreglassing is done. My intention was to do it all in one day but the shopping expedition to buy the yellow heater above delayed me enough for common sense to prevail. over the rest of the first day I put the cloth on both halves and wet out the bottom half (hull). When this had dried to the just tacky stage I squeegeed another thin coat on. I gauge the just tacky stage with a cotton bud; if fibres are pulled away from the ball the surface is ready, if no fibres are pulled away the surface is still too wet. here's what it looks like.

On the second day I turned on the gas heater early and switched on the light bulb in the esky to warm up the epoxy then went and had breakfast.  An hour later both shed and epoxy were warmed up so I wet out the cloth with a squeegee plus a brush for the small vertical areas at stem and stern. With it all wet out (no white areas and even colour) the excess epoxy was scraped off with the squeegee into a grunge cup. Like the hull a thin fill coat was squeegeed on when the surface was ready. The deck gets a third heavier coat brushed on to build up towards the final finish. After the deck and hull are joined together the hull gets another layer of cloth which overlaps the join  sealing it on the outside. To prevent an excessive thickness of resin along the edge of the hull a strip about 32mm needs to be masked off. Nick Schade uses "flash" tape for this, regular making tape would get stuck to the surface. I didn't know where to get any of this flash tape so I cut some strips of peel ply and laid them along the edge while the first fill coat was still wet. The heavy coat was brushed on and then warmed up with a hot air gun to help level it out and to pop any bubbles. An hour or so later the peel ply was removed.

Time for a beer!

The Aft Deck and Coaming Recess.

The aft deck took less time than the fore deck because it was mostly wider strips.  To begin I marked and cut the edges where I wanted to add accent strips. While I was cutting these accent strips I also 

took out the 105x8mm offcuts from the wide board of Surinan Cedar - see post of March 28th below. These were run through the thicknesser to bring them down to 4.8mm. With that done I laid them out on the bench and selected the pattern I wanted for the aft deck and cut long enough pieces from each of them. These wide pieces were ripped into strips 32mm wide to use on the deck.

The edges of the deck were cleaned up with a plane and the accent strips glued to each edge. When this glue was dry I added another two narrow strips to each edge to proved a marging. Then onto the wider strips. The first two were laid along the centreline of the deck. Followed by more strips one either side until the deck was complete.













At this point it looks as if the boat is being built out of green tape!
















But it isn't. The grain pattern I was after is clearly visible.


















With the hull completely stripped it was time for the first scraping and sanding session. First scraping off the hot melt glue stitches and squeezed out PVA. Then the sanding. Starting with 60 grit on the random orbital sander and then going over the entire surface with a home made long board. With the deck done I turned the boat over and repeated the process on the bottom. This isn't very photogenic but here are a photo of the tools and the finished surface.

While I was doing the sanding I laid out and glued some strips to make the coaming recess. I drew the rough outline on a piece of scrap ply , covered it in clear plastic and the glued up the strips over it. When the glue dried I turned the whole piece over, scraped and sanded the surface and then covered it with 120 GSM fiberglass cloth. This was left for about 48 hours and then sanded using 80, 60 and 120 grit paper. Here,s the recess resting on top of the boat. The green tape was peeled off and the outside surface scraped and sanded.

I was nervous about the next stages which would involve fitting the coaming recess into the boat complicated by my wanting to put an accent strip between the hull and the recess panel.

After sleeping on the issues involved in doing this I woke early and went for a paddle on the river.

Here's the panel taped in place so I can reach inside and mark the edge of the hole - before adding the accent strip so there is a margin for error.

I added the accent strip in two laminations each about 2.5mm thick; any thicker and I couldn't get them round the sharper corners at the aft end (top of the photo) without steaming them. The strips are hoop pine and it doesn't steam nicely anyway. I wasn't game to try adding them both in the same glue up so did them in two sessions. The ends are overlapped in a scarph joint.

Then there was the long fiddly job of fitting the the recess into the hole. I don't think there is an easy way to do this and so crept up on the final fit with plane and sandpaper on a board.  Then glued in in place with the last of the green tape for a while. 

An hour with the scraper, block plane and 60 grit sand paper on a board the the jobs done. it isn't perfect but there is only one gap that needs a bit of filler - "bog" in Australia or "dookie-smutch" in the USA.

I think it turned out OK and I guess that it will become easier after another boat or two!

Next is more sanding over the whole hull getting ready for the outside fibre-glassing.

The Fore Deck

With the bottom completed it was time to turn the boat over. I'm not strong enough to lift the boat and building frame and due to the Corona Virus couldn't round up a helper or two so I had to resort to block and tackle and pulleys. I've done this before with much heavier boats (~300 kg)  so had all the necessary bits and pieces to hand.  Here it is, hanging in the slings . The strips spanning the formers were to stop the slings crushing the edge of the strips inwards.

I had made three cradles to support the boat while the deck strips were added.

A number of jobs had to be done before stripping started. The spacers between the frames were loosened on the strongback and knocked sideways with a hammer to break the hot melt glue joints. I was surprised how tenacious the hot melt glue was but it all came free eventually. The wedges were put back in to reposition the frames and I checked that he frames were aligned along the part line and keel. Most were but a couple had to be knocked back into place. The inner stem and stern were cut along the part line. I lifted the bow end of the strongback to make sure that the bottom half of the boat was free and would eventually come off. Replaced the masking tape on the frames with less shiny tape hoping that t he hot melt glue would stick better. Hot melt glued to edge strip back to the frames.

I started stripping up on both sides; full length strips to begin with until the top of the stern was reached. Then continued with shorter strips - reaching back to the coaming opening - until the top of the stem was reached.

It was about this point that my 6 week old hot melt glue gun burned out iits heating element. I hope to get it replaced under warranty but have ordered a new gun and some sticks specifically for gluing wood, maybe this glue will work better than the unspecified glue I had been using. Here's the dead gun, there doesn't appear to be any temperature control at all and I suspect it just overheated when I left it turned on for a couple of hours.

I was a bit despondent over the dead glue gun but an early morning paddle on the Brisbane River near home raised my spirits again. The river is steaming because the air temperature was about 12C and the water about 20C. Very pleasant paddle in my CLC 16.

Stripping continued on the starboard deck until the centreline was reached.

When the PVA glue had dried overnight I marked the centreline and sawed off the excess and planed the edge back to the pencil line then eyeballed and trimmed it until it was straight.Then I had to plane it further back by half the width of the accent strip. Then glued the accent in place.

Strips were added on the port side fitting them carefully against the accent strip. This took longer that the starboard half where there was no fitting but it still went fairly quickly. Here's what the front half of the boat looks like now.

.Next is the aft deck, accent strips first the fill in with strips. There are a few different ways of stripping the aft deck so I will have to think about that.