Some Progress.

Last week we were tweaking things, trying to get everything to line up before applying the first gobs of epoxy.

We added a phony stem and string to try and line things up.


We fantasised about the bowsprit.....


We checked the hull for hollows and found the same as seemingly lots of others at frame 53.5, so we let the cable ties out and sistered on some contoured ply at the front. the gap is about half an inch wide at the middle.


We glued in the real stem, cut from Tasmanian Oak, on Friday and also tabbed frame 18 in place with 2"" glass tape.


This morning it had all set up nicely, so we filleted and taped the crash box between the stem and frame 18, tabbed the chines and transom and laminated up the keelbox sides. We have had real trouble finding Oregon for shear clamps, cleats etc. so I'm going to use 3/4'' quad Tasmanian oak for teh shear clamp and radiata pine for cleats.

We added a scrap of carbon just because we could and taped everything with 4" biaxial tape.


The plan tomorrow afternoon is to remove frame 110, leaving a beam clamped to the hull for reinforcement, then fillet and tape the centre cut and the chines.


Sails are going to be laminated string from Doyle Fraser, the mast will be a carbon Two spreader affair and we are going for Two rudders at an angle of 15 or 20 degrees and maximum bulb weight. Port Phillip is renowned for its short sharp chop and summer sea breezes around 17+ knots, so we are erring on the side of additional strength.

Blocks Of The Wooden Variety

Well, not to put to fine a point on it, last week was a mess from the boat building point of view, but this week is so much better.

We got the sides and bottom stitched together, made a temporary stem out of plywood and started trying to line things up, they didn't. Then we made frame 18 and 53.5 and tried inserting them. They didn't fit too well at all. The boat was too narrow in the bow area. After a little head scratching and examination of plans, we decided that the instruction "measure from the centreline" in cutting out the bottom either side of the slot was possibly in error, either the frame dimension was right or the bottom dimension was right, but not both.

We pulled everything apart and emailed Tim, but guessed it was the bottom so we glued some wood back on and left it over the weekend, then relofted it and sanded it back. You can also see my freehand cut awful looking slot. We cleaned that up a bit as well.

Monday afternoon we reassembled everything and tried again and it still looked awful, just a boat shaped object. We could not work out how to get the inside edges to line up at the chine. If you got the edge of the side too high near the bow, it would push in - no matter what you did with cable ties. Similarly, if you let the side get out over the edge of the bottom, it would fall down. Most depressing. We gave up. Nothing fitted.






Anyways, driving home from the clownfish cave last night I had this idea - blocks. We screwed little blocks of fibreboard to the bottom to keep the sides from pushing in, and similar blocks to the sides to keep them from falling off the bottom. Combined with cable ties, we found by trial and error that you can get your edges to line up within a Sixteenth of an inch or so in about half an hour. This is what it looks like now.



Just loosen the screw, pack under the block and your problems are over. Of course remember the outside of your boat is looking like a porcupine, but hey, suddenly everything fits. The boat is even square and the bow looks like a bow with 18 and 53.5 cable tied in.

Bottom And Sides Cut And Joined

Last Friday we glued up the Two side panels and also cut out the bottom. Yesterday we cut the centre seam out of the bottom panel and stitched it up. It seems a little odd, my cuts were a little rough and I think I may need to do a little remedial work with the Fein Multimaster. I had been thinking of buying one for years and this project is the perfect excuse!


We also cut out the Two side panels. I almost made the fatal mistake of cutting Two Port sides! Wobble realised in time and we put the uncut one face to face with the other and traced around it. We cleaned them up with a plane as best we can.

This morning we got out the cable ties - an electrician friend tells me black ones are stronger than clear. We gingerly started tying the Starboard side to the bottom.... What do you know? It just sort of sits there..


We stitched on the other to make a boat shaped object.



We have cut and laminated the transom, but just stuck one part in to see...


I'm going to follow Kmac's advice from the forum about build order. I've screwed the aft end of the bottom to our building frame and I'm thinking I'll do the same at the bow when I work out exactly where it goes and also screw down further back to try and keep the ply bent as it should be. Then I do the bow and stem.

Once we have everything lined up I become Wobbles helper while we tab the hull together as he is the fibreglass king.

Finished The Cradle..

We finished the cradle this morning, lining everything up with the laser and levels and we have (hopefully) got everything square, flat, parallel and vertical. The trouble is that even a one sixteenth "bump" sort of stands out.

We laminated our girst long panel today. We were going to do all three, but chickened out, worrying about epoxy setting times. The temperature is around 10 Centigrade and we were using Fast hardener...which was still a little "fast". We will look at our panel tomorrow, and if its AOK we will do the other Two.

Building The Cradle

We cut our supports out of 5/16 bracing ply. We added four inches to all the offsets to come up with a way of getting our hands underneath if we need to. We are working from the .pdf files using an engineers rule and trying to get everything accurate to the width of a pencil line.

As an engineer, I know tolerances/deviations from plans always build up, they rarely cancel each other out, so it is important in my opinion to get this foundation of the build as right as we can, so that we end up with a boat that is straight and doesn't have a "Good" tack and a "not so good" tack.

Hopefully, we can align everything today, join up some plywood sheets and maybe start cutting real boatbuillding wood on Monday.

Tools...We gots it.

Well, we finally started. We found some tools in the back of the shed that looked sort of useful...



.......and some wood that sort of looked nautical that nobody wanted.


So we got started. A good friend had some free space in the back of his high security warehouse, so we taped a tarp to the floor to catch the epoxy drips and set up shop.

Our first priority is a building cradle made out of 2 X 4 and bracing ply held together with Tec screws and liquid nails. The supports under each frame are being cut out of bracing ply to the measurements from the .pdf's and offsets Tim emailed us.

We are lucky to have a perfectly level concrete floor. The handy little Black and Decker laser gizmo helped us set up our centreline.


We will put up a post for Frame 00 to attach to and line up each cradle support with the laser.



We will finish the cradle and join up the sheets for bottoms and sides, then start cutting the frames while we wait for the plans....