A Few Things Weve Learned so Far

As I mentioned in my last post, we took some video of our last work session. The majority of this video footage covers tasks weve completed to date, a quick summary of some of our day-to-day tasks, and a couple of things weve learned along the way. This post is primarily to post links to the videos we made. I apologize in advance for the poor audio quality (we left the TV on in the background, and it is a little distracting), but I am posting this in the hope that youll pick up a couple of tips and tricks that we learned along the way. It will also let you actually see who we are, and what our workshop is like.

Video of the epoxy tray we made
Mixing the epoxy
Applying the epoxy sealer coat
Mixing the thickened epoxy (Peanut Butter)
Be careful after you lay the epoxy

After laying the sealer coat of unthickened epoxy to each surface to be glued, lay the thickened epoxy on one of the sealed surfaces with a trowel. After the thickened epoxy is applied, set the pieces together, weigh them down to ensure a good solid bond between the surfaces, and apply a couple of screws to hold the surfaces together. We specifically recommend the weighting and screwing process, as if you dont weight them down, you may not get a nice tight fit. If you dont screw the pieces together, the epoxy can act as a lubricant between the fitted pieces between when the surfaces are laid together, and when the epoxy sets. The result is that you can end up with the pieces sliding a little, and the fit of the boards is not as precise. You can remove the screws after the epoxy has dried.

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Dave Surveys the days work

Dave Surveys the days work
Originally uploaded by OzzyC.

This should be the last "what weve done so far" post. From here on, you should see everything we do shortly after we do it.

In this picture, you see several sheets of plywood joined together to form the length of the hull. I am standing directly behind the starboard bottom piece. The starboard side piece is the other section thats laid out. Heres what we did...

We test-fit the sections end-to-end. Once we were satisfied that the pieces fit, we put the sealer coat of epoxy on each side of each butt joint. Next, we joined the pieces together.

In order to join the pieces together, we started with a huge sheet of plastic on the floor (epoxy wont stick to the plastic), then we set a thin strip of plywood on top of the plastic (youll see the method to our madness in a minute), then we laid down another strip of plastic (again, because the epoxy wont stick to the plastic).

Next came the lower strip of fiberglass tape, measured just longer than the butt joints, and placed so the tape fit roughly equally on each piece of plywood to be joined together. We next carefully set the plywood in place.

Next came the top piece of fiberglass tape, again set so that the tape sits equally on either side of the butt joint. Next came another plastic sheet (for non-stick purposes), and finally, another thin strip of plywood.

After all of this was set in place, we double-checked everything and ran a screw through the whole shit-n-shebang, ensuring a non-slipping, tight, solid butt joint. We repeated this whole process for each butt joint. There was a lot of prep work involved, but it saves a lot of work in the long run. We used any leftover epoxy to seal the plywood; well finish the sealing process before we lay the fiberglass over the whole hull.

In summary... we sealed the plywood underneath the fiberglass tape with epoxy. We laid down the big sheet of plastic, so the plywood wouldnt stick to the floor. We laid down a piece of scrap plywood, so the screws would have something to sink into. We laid down a strip of plastic slightly bigger than the scrap plywood. We laid down the bottom epoxy strip. We set the plywood in place over the lower piece of tape. We laid down the top strip of fiberglass tape. We laid down another piece of plastic. We set a top piece of scrap plywood on top, and ran a screw through all of it. Once the butt joints were set, we removed the screws.

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