Building a Wharram Hitia 17 Catamaran

this blog is moving to a new home

2013-07-15T15:50:00.000-04:00

I have decided to merge this blog and all my other projects into one master blog. This way I won't need to maintain separate blogs for each project and if you are interested in one of my builds, you will probably like some of my other projects too.

www.kevthebuilder.blogspot.com

Make sure you update your bookmarks!

Back to Work!

2013-02-02T14:55:00.001-05:00

Alrighty Folks,

Finally sucked it up and got back to work on the Hitia. Its a little bit tight in the garage space, but with the help of my latest recruit, Tyler, we were able to keep working on the front beam and paint the inside of the second hull.

Here's a picture of the beam as it sits right now:

And here is one of the inside of the second painted hull:

We left some unpainted space for the floors and for the eventual installation of the hatches. I was hoping to be able to start working on glassing the outside rather than painting, but it was too cold to work with that much epoxy and I didn't want to do a sloppy job with the fiberglass cloth. So I opted to paint the hull instead, and set up the flood lights and the radiator next to the beam to help it cure up. Then I got out of there because the paint fumes were giving me a headache.

After lunch I came back and was especially glad I didn't glass the hull. I had over done it with the heaters and lamps and blew out the power. I couldn't get in to the room housing the fuse box, so I had to leave the beam as she was. Hopefully that quick hardener works in those low temperatures as advertised!

If anyone has any experience working with epoxy in low temperatures (about 40 degrees F) I'd appreciate any tips.

Anyway, its a bit ghetto, but I'm glad to be back at work on the Hitia. Hopefully the groundhog was right and we're headed for an early spring and some warmer days!

The move to Jersey

2012-12-12T09:10:00.002-05:00

Finally, I have the boat moved. I've ordered some clamps and a few other things and now I'm just waiting on some electric wiring to be completed in the garage and I'll be underway.

Back in CT the boat was looking particularly derelict. Here is a photo of the sorry state I found her in.

Here's another of the Hitia loaded on to the back of a dump truck. $30 toll fee going over the GW bridge!

Once the wiring is complete and I can see, I've got a bit of sweeping and a lot of organizing to do then I'll be back at work on the boat once again. Thanks to Jim Osowicki for his help with loading and the use of his truck!

A Quick Update...

2012-12-03T15:20:00.004-05:00

So I have secured some garage space over in Hackensack, NJ close to where I work. The space is about 19' x 12' so it should accommodate the boat, tools and whatever else I'll need. It might get a little tight once I'm all set up, but if I can work in Kevin's basement, then this should be a breeze!

Kevin and I got together over Thanksgiving weekend to talk about the future of the boat. He has agreed to take on the remainder of the mast work, tiller arms, and maybe some of the cleats and other small stuff. I'm hoping to have the boat moved in by this weekend, but if I can't borrow a truck, at the very least I'll have the beams and epoxy and whatever else I can stuff into the back of my Jetta.

Photos and more to come!

Floor Installation

2012-11-26T18:00:00.000-05:00

Following the move, Kevin and I both realized the incredible determent of having the boat stored halfway between Boston and New York City. With that in mind, and having the overwhelming itch to keep going and finish that which we have started, I began looking into storing the boat locally, in New Jersey, where I'll be able to get to it during the week and make more progress.

Without the use of Kevin's tools and space, and awesome clamps, I'll be moving forward with a limited set of tools and equipment (and experience). I'll be making most of the posts from here on out. Just gonna take small nibbles out of the project and watch it evolve, one step at a time.

Here is a picture of the partially completed floor installation:

The jugs and varnish are there to add weight and help seal down the floor. I used a compass to trace the holes and cut out the circles using a jig saw. This will be finished up with a layer of fiberglass for added strength.

The other hull still needs its final side of glass, below deck painting and floor installation. After that I'll be finishing the up the beams and sealing the hulls.

Wish me luck!

Fiber glassing the hulls

2012-08-08T14:29:00.000-04:00

Now that the hulls are assembled they won't fit back into the basement any more. It's been ok to keep them outside so far but the sunshine won't last forever so we are moving up the fiber glassing job to protect them while they are out in the weather.

The paint job looks a bit messy up on the saw horses but all those areas won't show.

All the stitches are out and the keel has been rounded over so we can put a piece of glass tape along the keel joint. This area is going to get the most abuse pulling the boat up on beaches so it gets a triple layering of fiberglass. The first layer is this tape and then the two side pieces will overlap over keel as well. We also put a bead of epoxy down to build up the radius and add more protection to the wooden keel strip.

Next we unrolled the 4oz fiberglass over the size of the hull and tacked it in place some epoxy where we couldn't hold it with tape.

Then we finally got down to spreading on the epoxy. We had been dreading the fiber glassing job and what would happen if we messed it up but it really wasn't that bad.

The fiberglass cloth does want to wrinkle as it laps over the curved edge of the keel but we kept at it and got all the wrinkles spread out.

The fiberglass also wraps up onto the skeg and smooths out the transition. This area is probably going to require some filler and sanding later but is looking pretty good.

We also had to notch the cloth around the lash pad supports. We ended up just glassing down to the edge and trimming with a razor blade which made a pretty clean edge.

Then we just had to keep moving back between the two hull as each fiberglass job cured.

Painting and keel fairing

2012-07-09T21:05:00.000-04:00

Building a boat involves a lot of firsts, and today was the first time we applied paint to the boat. We're using bright white Easypoxy for just about everything that isn't varnished until we sort out a final color scheme - likely white and grey. The outsides will be rolled and tipped, but for the insides we're just brushing.

The sections under the fore and aft decks is fair game for paint at this point as is the area under the seats. These are going to be too hard to get to once the decks and floors are glued on so we're painting them in advance.

We could have just left it with an epoxy coating but it seems prudent to protect the wood as well as possible in case any water works its way into the bilge. The paint is such a bright white it's hard to look at in the sunlight and kind of hard to photograph too. It should be fine for the topsides but it's giving us second thoughts about using it for the deck.

Once the paint dried a bit we flipped the hull over and started fairing around the keel to prep for fiberglassing. All the gaps around the keel are filled with thickened epoxy as well as fairing around the skeg.

The stem is also faired but we stopped short of where the rigging will attach using a heavy duty u-bolt. We put a smaller fillet at the u-bolt location to make room for the backing plates and will blend it into the rest of the stem fairing later.

The last bit of fairing was to tie the stem into the ends of the sheer stringers. Once the epoxy dries we can sand the corner down to make a nice curve.

We also used the extra bits of epoxy to fill the screw, staple and stitching holes. With a bit of sanding the hull should have a nice smooth surface for the fiberglass to lay over. We left some air bubbles in the keel fiberglassing that needed filling so it would be nice to prevent that on the hulls if we can.

Adirondack chairs - Part 2

2012-06-28T21:58:00.000-04:00

Wife: "You know the fourth of July is next Wednesday right?"

Not much time left to get these chairs done! I picked up more wood from the lumber yard and got down to business.

Each seat back is slightly different so the bottom slats are cut based on the seat back width for that chair. From now on I'll have to keep these together, but since one is 1/16" of an inch wider than the other I should be able to tell from the fit. Using the seat slat stock as a guide, I clamped the bottom of the chair together and drilled for the cross braces. The front brace calls for #14 x 3" stainless steel screws which seem awfully big even to me.

Next the back two cross pieces are clamped, glued, and screwed together. These two cross pieces do not meet at 90 degrees and so the edges of the boards need to be adjusted to fit the angle.

Sounds like a great job to break in my new low angle block plane which handled the job beautifully.

All the holes were plugged just like before and then all the assembled pieces were sanded up to 220 grit. I'm using Deks Olje for the finish. It's a Scandinavian marine oil finish that fills the pores of the wood and leaves a semi-gloss finish once the surface of the wood is saturated. Another overkill step, but I want these chairs to last a long time and if it's good enough for wooden boat hulls it should be good enough for a lawn chair!

I hung up the chair bottoms from the dog run cable and brushed on the first coat. The cedar almost changes colors as you look from different angles. All the plugs have the grain oriented perpendicular to the surrounding grain so they really stand out.

Here they are after the second coat working by shop lights. From this angle the main boards appear lighter and the plugs darker.

It will probably take 6 coats or more to fill up the grain and get a nice even finish so I better keep at it.

Adirondack chairs - Part 1

2012-06-25T11:24:00.000-04:00

I would have called this post "Adirondack chairs - the beginning" but this project started almost three years ago when I got plans and hardware for a pair of folding Adirondack chairs. Sure I could have just bought some chairs but wouldn't it be more fun to make them? And wouldn't they look so much nicer than store bought?

Well this project is off the back burner and will be done by the 4th of July so we can sit in them and watch fireworks. A while back I picked up some clear western red cedar boards and glued the plans onto plywood and cut out the shapes to use as templates.

I cut the WRC boards down roughly to shape back when I bought it but never finished shaping them. So the first step was to sit down with the jig saw for most of the day carefully tracing the patterns and cutting the parts.

Here is the hardware: #10 x 1 1/4", #10 x 2", and #14 stainless steel screws plus the stainless bolts that come with the hardware kit.

The bottom of the seat is made of boards glued up from two parts. The inner part holds the slats and the outer part is larger to cover the end grain of the seat slats

Here you can see how the seat slats will span between the two inner boars with the ends protected by the outer boards.

Next I started on the seat backs. The boards are clamped so that the screw holes can be drilled with a countersink bit. Then the joints are glued up and screwed together with #10 x 2" stainless steel screws.

The counter sink leaves a nice hole for a plug which will clean up the look of these chairs. This is way overkill but that's the fun of making instead of buying.

Plugs come from scraps which I was careful to keep since this cedar isn't cheap and I didn't want to waste any.

The plugs get a bit of glue and then pressed into place. It's the little details like this that I hope will set these apart when they are done and help them last a very long time.

I have run out of things to work on until I buy a couple more western red cedar boards so more to come soon.

Cutting the decks and floors

2012-06-19T19:06:00.005-04:00

Another free day so we're keeping the momentum going. The hulls were already set up at their proper distance to get a sense of scale so we couldn't help but throw the main beam on to see how it looks. But enough daydreaming, today we are making the floors, fore decks, aft decks and side decks.

The first order of business was bringing out the scraps of plywood and seeing what we could get out of each piece to best use the material we had left. We knew after cutting all the bulkheads twice that we wouldn't have enough to finish, but we would like to buy as little extra as possible.

The first pieces cut were the floors. These two floors should be almost the same length according to the plans, but bulkhead 5 which forms the aft face of the aft most floor is about 5" too far forward. Not sure how this happened but we're going with it and will change some of the details on the hatches to make it all look right. The mast will be in the right place and that's what counts so hopefully we don't miss the extra seating space too much. In the end I don't think anyone will notice.

Here is our process for making the main decks. We start with a piece about the right size and put a straight edge up against the bulkhead. Clamps hold it tight against the bulkhead and centered across the hull.

The stem location is marked on the underside holding the edge of the pencil point flush with the plywood.

Then cut out the slot and fit it over the stem handle. Next it's pretty straight forward to mark the edges of the hull and trim it down with the jig saw.

Speaking of the jig saw, this is my new Bosch saw which got quite a workout today. I can't believe we made it this far without one and this one is very heavy duty which helps with making nice smooth cuts.

So after all that jig sawing this is what we have to show for it: noth aft decks, both aft floors, three side decks, one front floor and one front deck.

Next up: more epoxy coating, gluing on more fir stringers and back to the lumber store for another sheet of Okoume plywood. Pretty soon we'll be painting the interior and under sides of the decks to get them ready for glue and fiber glassing over the floors.

The even bigger gluing day

2012-06-14T23:03:00.002-04:00

It's been a long time since we were able to work on the boat and it was time for a big push. The last big push only accomplished about a quarter of what we set out to do. But the days have gotten much longer and today we weren't going to stop until all the fillets were in both hulls and all the keel joints were fiber glassed.

The first hull was already half filleted, so the remaining fillets went pretty quickly. Part of the speed increase was because we moved our epoxy mixing station outside near where we were working to cut down on trips to the basement.

Before we knew it the first hull was fully filleted and ready for fiberglass.

Most of the keel joints were fresh so we were able to press in the fiberglass tape while the epoxy was the consistency of a firm gel. This made smoothing out any bumps or edges easy and let the fiberglass sit nice and smooth against the fillet without any sanding.

Then we brushed on epoxy with a 2" chip brush and worked the tape with a gloved finger like a squeegee. All in all this was much easier than we thought it would be. The only trouble was a bit of unraveling at the ends when we were a bit rough with the tape.

By lunch time the first hull was filleted and taped and curing in the sun.

So we could take a small break, looked out over our work and get psyched up for the next round. The second hull had no epoxy at all, and we had about 6 hours of daylight to finish it.

After lunch the first hull was cured enough to move off the saw horse and finish curing in the sun.

The second hull went just like the first with two exceptions. First, at the filleting stage we filled the stems in three to four passes to prevent excess heat buildup. Second, we worked one 'bay' at a time doing keel, then bulkheads and then glassed the keel. That way as we moved down the boat we left the previous segment complete. Here we have just completed the middle segment and are about to put another layer in the stems.

By the time we brushed epoxy on the last piece of fiberglass the sun was hanging low in the sky but we had reached our goal. We cleaned up our mess and called it a day.

The big glue day - Part 2

2012-05-12T22:42:00.000-04:00

Earlier in the day we put down two layers of epoxy around the keel and stems, the first layer raw and the next mixed to a runny consistency with milled fiberglass. These layers were to seal down in all the nooks and crannies before adding the fillets to make sure there are no voids. Now that these layers are cured and our lunch break is over it's time to get epoxying again. Doesn't look like we are going to get through both hulls like we thought and turns out we didn't even get the one hull fully filleted.

We had trouble with bugs and leaves falling out of the tree the areas we weren't currently working on were covered with plastic.

I miss read the plans when drilling out plywood fillet smoothing tools and mistook a radius for a diameter and so the first attempts at hull fillets were half the proper size. Compare the ones on the right which is what we started doing, with those on the left which are correct. Glad we caught our mistake early!

The stems take up a huge amount of epoxy to fill but end up very strong and solid. We made the mistake of applying all this fillet in one go which caused the epoxy to get very hot. In the future we will build up to thicknesses like this in multiple passes.

By the time the sun was going down we had only made it through half of one hull. Not the kind of progress we were hoping for if this boat is going to take us sailing this season.

The big glue day - Part 1

2012-05-12T13:52:00.003-04:00

The big day of gluing is finally here. The temperature is up and no rain in the forecast means it's time to get busy on our gluing ordeal. With any luck we can get all the rounds of gluing in one after the other in one drawn out process and then be done with it.

First the hulls need to come back out of the basement one more time and get set up at working height.

The aft stems were never stitched and so I attempted to do that while also pulling the panels into alignment. There is so much tension in the hull panels from the twisting that I couldn't get the stitches to hold so I went with screws instead which worked out much easier and pulled the hull panels in tight with the stem. This photo is after the gluing surfaces got a coat of raw epoxy to soak down into the nooks and crannies so that is where the small drips are coming from.

Now is also the time to check that everything is straight and level. With hardly any adjusting the hulls were perfectly lined up.

The gaps along the keel and stem are epoxied with a milled fiberglass and silica mix. These batches were mixed pretty loose so that they can settle into the gaps and make sure there are no voids.

More of the first glue round along the keel ...

Now we wait until this layer sets up and then the big fillets along the keel and bulkheads will follow. After the fillets dry if there is any daylight left we will epoxy in the fiberglass tape over the keel fillet.

To be continued ...

Attaching the mast step

2012-05-11T13:24:00.002-04:00

Wharram seems to like interesting mast steps, and the Hitia 17 is no different. The mast as feet that lock it to the beam fore and aft and "locating chocks" that locate the base of the mast laterally. The front block also prevents the mast from rotating and the middle portion gives a curved initial contact point for the foot of the mast to hook onto as the mast is rotated up into place.

So here is the plan for the front block, I have made it a bit wider than the sketch which I think looks better and will give more epoxy surface area to prevent shearing along the glue joint.

Now the mast step doubling block and the block are epoxied on. The sequence here was fillets, doubling block then mast foot block.

The block liked to slide around particularly with the clamps on the angled faces. It took some adjusting but eventually it sat centered and flush with the top surface.

Now that the epoxy has cured it's time to make sure the proportions and shapes look right.

Overall I'd say the mast step is looking pretty good and I seem to be getting the hang of the fillets. The second round worked out much neater than the first though you can see that i need to go back and clean up some of the excess.

We're still struggling to find a free day with good weather to do the hulls, but they are poised and waiting should the opportunity arise.

Continuing on the main beam

2012-05-10T13:30:00.001-04:00

A quick update on the main beam. The bottom was glued on and cured over night.

The compression blocks pretty much assure that it the top and bottom are parallel, though in some cases there was some room for adjustment based on small changes in the clamping location particularly on the ends.

And here is the main beam all glued up and man is this thing sturdy. I'm feeling better about these beams being the only thing keeping us out of the water.

Now we just have to keep up the sequence: glue, wait, fillet, wait, glue, wait, fillet, wait ...

Carving the mast step block

2012-05-09T21:11:00.002-04:00

Another rainy day working in the basement instead of outside, but I made some progress on the mast step for the main beam. The top of the main beam is doubled up under the mast step with a block that tapers on each end "to a pleasing shape" according to the plans. I marked a shape that looked good on a cutoff and got to shaping. At first I thought I would bring the edges to a point, but then decided to leave the edge flat at about an inch wide.

I've recently found how much I like working with an old draw knife I picked up a long time ago and this was another good use for it. It's 14" along the blade and 24" between the handles so a bit big but very handy.

In no time at all the blank was worked down to shape and then planed to the lines.

The next step was to taper and bevel the edges to lighten up the appearance of the mast step block. The top edge of the bevel was drawn on freehand to miss the blocks that form the step so that they have a flat mounting surface. The rest was trimmed down by eye with the draw knife.

Here it is getting pretty close to the final shape, but not quite even. This was all with the draw knife so far.

A bit more work with a sanding block and it was done and ready for a test fit. The short piece didn't want to take the bend but eventually settled in nicely. I'm happy with how the tapered ends turned out and how they flow with the curve of the beam.

That's it for now on the mast step until the bottom of the beam is glued on. This beam is getting pretty close to done, two more to go.

Starting the main beam

2012-05-08T21:48:00.001-04:00

Today we found ourselves with a free day to spend working on the boat and then it rained non-stop. The weather is always gorgeous when one or the other of us is busy, but we can't let that stop us getting out on the water. Since we are confined to the basement we decided to work on the beams and save the hulls for another day.

The compression support blocks were trimmed pretty close when we glued them, but needed some adjustments so that the top and bottom boards of the I-beams would sit level. We are trying to keep all of the saw dust generating activities out of the basement but it was raining so this was our compromise. The saw-rasp evened things up pretty quickly

We took advantage of a brief break in the rain to sand the epoxy coated faces of the center beam pieces. There was some concern with the metric conversions that we may have made the beams too narrow so we double checked while measuring for the top board of the main beam. It is actually an inch long which means we'll get that much more room when sailing.

In the dry test fit it looked like we could get away with four clamps and use the stiffness of the board to close all the gaps in a fair curve.

In reality it took 7 clamps, good thing we only epoxied up one at a time! This was about the time Cam said, "If we just had more space and more clamps, think about how much we could get done!"

Sighting down the beam makes sure that the it is straight and centered. Right after this photo we adjusted the closest part a bit to the right as you can see that it is a little off.

After a few hours it was time for more fillets. Here is the glue joint smoothed out with our finger.

The middle two sections get a 1.25" radius fillet.

The outside sections step down to a 5/8" fillet which you can just see in the corner of this picture. Probably could have done the fillets once both boards are on but it seemed easier to do now while there was better access. For the next ones I'll wait till the clamps are out of the way, it's hard to keep the epoxy off of them.

One half of one beam down, can't wait for the weather to clear so we can move outdoors. That will solve the space issue, I'm not sure I'll ever have enough clamps though.

All stitched up

2012-04-29T15:05:00.000-04:00

Our catamaran is all stitched up. It's not as convenient to work on as a double-decker. Thant's ok though because there is no other way to fit the two hulls in the basement at the moment.

The top hull is held up temporarily with some scrap wood and clamps.

Here are some more details that are pretty obvious when your are stitching, but aren't in the plans. The plans give a measurement for how to cut the angle on the end of the sheer stringer, but it's much easier to clamp in place and cut parallel to the stem.

The other complication is the supports on the bulkheads are on the narrower side. So they need to be beveled to match the angle of the hull to sit flush.

Right now the sides are not sitting exactly right on the aft stem on both hulls. At least they are both the same. I think we can pull it into alignment using a rope tied to the front stem handle. It probably doesn't make much difference but I want to make sure that the deck will line up with the bottom of the handle,

That's all for now. I predict that there is a lot more gluing in our future

Diagonal hull stiffeners

2012-04-28T09:41:00.000-04:00

The next step after stitching in the bulkheads is to add diagonal stiffeners to brace the thin hull panels. The diagonals go on the two fore sections and the one aft section of hull. The middle sections get their bracing from the floor structure. Here is a diagram showing the diagonal bracing in bright green and how it ties the keel and stem structure up to the sheer.

I cut each piece to fit and then made sure I had scraps the right length to use as bracing. Everything went smoothly in the test fit so I moved on to gluing. Funny how everything seems to stop going according to plan once you slather on the epoxy.

The epoxy got rid of the stiffener to hull friction so the clamping pressure kept trying to slide the pieces up and out of the hull. Adding staples or clamps near the sheer fixed the problem. The plans call for stitching these in but we have already drilled enough holes in our hulls and the stitches wouldn't have provided enough clamping pressure anyway.

Installation started in the bow section ...

.. then the next section aft ...

... and finally the aft section.

This hull is ready for fillets! One down, one to go.

At long last a boat

2012-04-22T14:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the most gratifying build day yet, we can finally see the shape of one of the hulls! We have put so many hours into the pieces and prep work and it is finally starting to come together. We wanted to stitch the bulkheads into both hulls but ran out of both time and copper wire so this is all for now.

The shape is surprisingly sophisticated for a v-bottomed canoe. The flat edge of the hull panel transforms into a nice sheer line with a sharp entry and curved aft sections.

The last bulkhead was the most difficult to fit. There is a lot of curve in the plywood hulls and a lot of tension getting the bulkhead into place. The stitching holes in the bulkheads are offset ~1/2" above the hull stitching holes which pulls the bulkhead down into the hull as the stitches are tightened.

Here is a view from the stern. The clamp is distorting the shape of the sheer a bit but we'll fix that when the stern stem stitches are in.

Now it finally looks like a boat!

Stitching took longer than we though (like everything else so far on this boat!) so the second hull will have to wait for another day.

With no real work left to do we held up one of the unfinished beams so we could stand in the right spots and imagined laying out on the deck, sails set cruising the Boston harbor islands, the Cape and beyond.

Deck supports

2012-04-15T17:00:00.000-04:00

The past few weeks have been busy and distracting, but here is a small update. The last hold up for stitching the hulls were making the curved deck supports on bulkheads #3 and #5 which are the ends of the fore and aft decks.

These only took about 30 minutes to mark the curve with a batten and then clamp in the vise and plane down to the line. Score one more point for my $6 garage sale hand plane.

The tentative plan is to stitch up the hulls this week and start gluing this weekend. Let's hope life starts cooperating with our boat building schedule.

Stitching the hulls

2012-03-29T16:12:00.000-04:00

We have been working on the boat since last June and today we are finally done with Sheet 1 of the plans! The hulls are now stitched together and ready for the bulkheads just in time for the warmer weather. We are pretty far along with other bits and pieces but we still haven't seen anything that looks like a boat, until today.

But before starting to stitch, we found mistake #3 with the bow panels. We made the top side too long which means the stem wouldn't fit. Something about the measurements on the plans didn't add up because the measurement from the edge of the ply was right, but the measurement from the bulkhead was wrong. You can see that we have to take off a small triangle from the front which was pretty easy with the pull saw, then used a chisel to bevel the edge of the butt block.

We also drilled the rudder lashing holes on the drill press before attaching the aft stems. These were a bit messy for our taste and so the next ones were done with a piece of wood clamped to the drill press table as a fence to keep the holes more neatly aligned.

And then it was time to start putting in stitches of copper wire! Here are the stitches along the bow. You can see how narrow the filler piece is now that we cut it down. The stitches in that area go through the main hull panel so we don't rip open that seam when the hulls are opened out.

We then stitched the aft stem and keel.

We couldn't help but open it up with one bulkhead and see what it will look like.

Check it out, it's a boat!

The bulkheads are just fit loose for now to see how they fit and if the stitches are the right tension. We will probably need to loosen the stitches along the keel to make sure it isn't twisted. Each additional bulkhead makes the shape prettier and prettier.

Unfortunately we will probably put the stitched hulls aside and go back to the beams and other small pieces while we wait for the fiberglass tape to be delivered and for a warm weekend day. Our plan is to do all the epoxy, fillets and fiberglass tape in one continuous process. It won't be this weekend and it won't be next weekend so perhaps the weekend after we'll have some glued up hulls.

Sheer stringers and more clamps

2012-03-12T19:16:00.003-04:00

One thing we have learned is that gluing one floppy thing to another floppy thing means you're going to need a ton of clamps. Not wanting to spend the money on 30 or 40 spring clamps we went with the PVC clamp method.

It started with spending way too much time cutting 1" sections of 2" PVC pipe with a pull saw, then taking a short cut and using the circular saw, then realizing you have created a 10' radius of PVC chips in the yard and then finally shop-vac'ing your lawn to get it all cleaned up. But in the end we had plenty of clamps to get the hull sides ready for stitching.

Boston has finally warmed up enough that we can work outside again which was a treat after all that gluing in the basement. The stringers are held with the clamps and a few staples from the underside to keep them from sliding around. We also glued on the doubling blocks which go at the lashing points for the beams and mast stays.

We also glued the small extension on our replacement bow panels that we couldn't glue before while we had the chance. When these are dry we don't want anything to keep us from stitching up the hulls.

Here is hull side #2 sunning and hull side #3 glued and clamped up. By this point we have given each panel a final home as to which side of which hull they will become. Only the outside face of each hull gets the supports for the mast rigging so we put the two panels with the roughest seams on the inside where they will only be seen by the fishes.

The forecast says rain tomorrow morning but sun again in the afternoon so that should be enough of a window to glue the last hull side.

Mast gluing and details

2012-03-11T19:12:00.000-04:00

There are a couple of small details that need to be taken care of so we can get to gluing. The mast foot is already shaped so that end is done but the top end of the mast needs some attention.

Here are the two masthead sheaves nearing completion. The grooves were shaped with a rat tail file and a little patience. all told these took about 20 minutes.

A test fit with 1/4" line which is size of the future main and jib halyards (halyard = rope that pulls up a sail).

The plans call for a space between the sheaves but didn't specify what so here is our answer: a 1/8" thick piece of douglas fir ripped on the table saw from some beam scraps. The two sides of are coated in epoxy since they will be hard to reach.

The whole unit is then glued together and ready to drop into corresponding cutouts in the mast halves.

We don't need these quite yet, but right to left shows the process or making the thumb cleats which will hold the stays at the top of the mast. The grain is oriented parallel to the outside edge for maximum strength even though the stays will be pulling toward the mast and downward. Who knows one day someone, probably me,f may try raising the mast by pulling on one and I'd like them to not break.

Which all lead up to the big event of gluing and clamping the mast halves together. I have quadrupled my army of bar clamps but still don't have as many as I would have liked for this job.

All told it came out nicely though and it's good to have the spars roughed out and ready for finishing when the rest of the boat is farther along. We're still waiting for the day when we have something that looks like a boat, hopefully that day will be here soon.

8-Siding the Mast and adding fillets

2012-03-10T07:55:00.000-05:00

The mast halves have cured and were run through the table saw with the blade at 45 degrees to get down to eight sides. The mast foot fits into recesses cut into two halves and here is the rough fit.

The next step is to support the inside corners of what is essentially a rounded box section with epoxy fillets mixed with 50/50 colloidal silica and micro balloons. There will be a lot of fillets when we get to the hulls (soon!) so this is good practice.

Filler blocks are used to make the mast solid at the ends where the foot and sheaves are supported. The plans call for 1/2" ply but we had 1 1/2" x 1/2" fir scraps so we're using those instead which should be stronger and lighter. To reduce stress points from the sudden change in stiffness at the filler pieces we used the excess epoxy mix to taper the transition.

When we're happy with all the fillets we leave the mast halves to cure.

The recesses for the foot are done, the recess for the masthead sheaves will be next and then we can glue the mast halves together and put it aside until later for the final finishing.