Take your time when you lay the tape

Reinforced Stringers 1
Originally uploaded by OzzyC.

Its best to take your time when you set the fiberglass tape on the joints. If you fail to adequately saturate the tape with epoxy, or if you fail to adequately set the tape onto the wood, the tape wont bond well to the wood, as shown in this picture.

Its really not a big deal to correct this problem; all we had to do was cut away the tape that didnt bond to the wood, feather the edges and lay down another piece of saturated tape... but it would have been nice to have gotten it right the first time.

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Notching the transoms

Rear Transom
Originally uploaded by OzzyC.


Front Transom
Originally uploaded by OzzyC.

Progress is slow but steady. Our goal is not to have marathon building sessions, but to do a little every time. This should help prevent us from getting burned out on the project.

Yesterday we put notches in the transoms. The notches are where the stringers will eventually be placed.

Putting the notches into the stringers is a relatively precise process. First, we ran chalk lines from corner to corner diagonally across the transom (in an "X" pattern) in order to find the center of the transom. Next, we measured top corner to top corner, marking the halfway point, and bottom corner to bottom corner, again marking the halfway point. By drawing a line through the three points we measured, we have a straight vertical line from which we can measure where well put the stringer cutting points.

In order to find the stringer cutting points, we measured out from that center line, using a square, so we were sure the measuring points would be straight and drew lines accordingly. Then we played with the router, notched the transoms and generated a lot of sawdust.

Click here to see the video summary of what we did.

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