Building the Two-Paw 9
(Pictures of these stages haven't yet been developed.)
Day 13
Sand outside. Glue outside gunwales.
I try to distribute the tedious sanding, hitting it first before doing something fun. As you may have gathered, I also go to great lengths to avoid sanding in the first place.
The plans specified a 3/4" laminated gunwale. However, I couldn't set up my table saw, so I couldn't rip stock to laminate a gunwale. I did find 1/4" x 1" oak moldings at the home supply store, but two edges were chamfered. If I laminated one layer on top of the other, I would have had to fill the chamfered crack. I also would have had a lot of filling to do because I had cut the gunwale-edge of the side panels too much too early. So I measured carefully and decided to laminate one strip inside the side panel, and one outside. More of an inwale plus outwale than a gunwale. The whole adds up to almost 3/4" thick anyway, and looks good.
Day 14
Cut and install inwales. Install forward seat cleats. Glue mast collar parts together.
Installing the inwales was a bit more complex than the gunwales, since the ends at the nesting bulkhead had to be trimmed to compensate for the many layers of glass tape at the bulkhead edge. I also built my own plywood for the mast collar, or brace, by laminating many layers of thinner plywood. I think it has about 14 plies.
Day 15
Coat interior with epoxy.
Day 16
Scrub interior with Ajax-- still sticky. Lots of amine blush with this epoxy. Attach mast collar to bow seat bulkhead and bow transom. Reinforce collar with cleats underneath. Cut out forward seat. Cut out daggerboard trunk and glue spacers to one side.
I ended up scraping the inside with a paint scraper, which was a much more effective means of removing amine blush than scrubbing, and had the side effect of removing some of the epoxy drips.
Day 17
Fit forward seat, fill compartment with styrofoam, and screw seat on. Flip boat. Cut slot in keel for skeg. Glue on keel, then reglue after it pops off. Glass skeg. Glass inside of daggerboard trunk. Coat dry spots on bottom. Glue daggerboard trunk halves together.
The boat should float, even if swamped, because it's made of wood after all, but you can't have to much floatation. The bow seat compartment isn't watertight, because it has a small drain hole near the keel, but it's filled with styrofoam so it will retain a lot of bouyancy, even if the boat is submerged for a long time.
Once again, I was a bit stuck regarding the keel and skeg because I didn't have access to my table saw. I don't even have a circular saw anymore so I couldn't try clamping boards to the work to saw a straight line. Plus I was building light, and didn't like the idea of a 1"-thick hunk of wood on the bottom of my boat.
I found a 1" oak cove molding in the home supply store. A cove molding looks like a piece that's been ripped (cut lengthwise) at a 45 degree angle, except the largest surface is routed to be concave. Flip it over and it's the perfect keel strip: hollowed out on the "boat side" to mate with the keel seam, and tapered on the bottom.
For a skeg, I decided to use a small piece of plywood, covered with glass, in a slot in the keel. I cut the slot and glued the keel strip on. Since the strip was a few inches longer than the boat, I had a place to apply straps. I didn't want heavy, corrosion-prone screws going through the bottom of my boat. Unfortunately, my first attempt didn't use quite enough glue, since the keel popped off when I started to saw the end off. If I had waited until I had filleted the edges of the strip, it probably wouldn't have happened, but I used plenty of glue the second time, and whacked it with a hammer to test it after it cured.
Day 18
Sand bottom. Trim, fit, and install daggerboard trunk. Fillet daggerboard trunk seams. Glass tape trunk to hull. Fill inwale/outwale cracks. Scrape and sand aft interior. Drill and install bolt in mast.
The designers give a well-thought out mast plan, with two pieces of aluminum for the bottom and a "closet rod" for the top. Rather than build glass tape collars around each piece, I installed a bolt through the mast for the next piece to sit on. I'll just have to be careful about stainless/aluminum corrosion, and eventually I'll probably make the collars.
Day 19
Coat daggerboard trunk and fwd seat. Glue trunk braces. Flip and glue skeg. Fillet keel and keel ends. Fair 1/2 bottom with microballoons.
For fairing, I switch to a superlight mixture of epoxy and microballoons. I usually add a bit of silica because the microballons are non-thixotropic, which means that no matter how much microballon you mix with the epoxy, it will still run and sag on a vertical surface. Silica allows the mix to hang onto surfaces that aren't flat while it cures.
Day 20
Sand gunwales, grout groove. Coat daggerboard trunk. Saw boat in half. Sand nesting bulkhead inside. Fair nesting bulkhead.
Once again I'm suffering from a past mistake. I should have left the side panels too long until this point, when I could have trimmed them to exactly match the gunwales. Instead I have to fill the groove between the inwale and the outwale with epoxy/silica/micro grout.
Finally, the moment of truth: I saw the boat in half. I wish I had a pull-saw, because the box saw I try using won't go in past the blade depth. I end up using a drywall saw, and it's messy. But it works. The insides of the nesting bulkhead require a bit of fairing before glassing, but I now have two half-boats.
Day 21
Complete bottom fairing. Glass nesting bulkhead. (Move shop).
I finish coating the bottom, bow and stern transoms with fairing mix.
Incidental to my boat work, today is the day I move my entire shop from the small room to my "permanent" room upstairs, while the fairing mix on the bottom cures.
Day 22
Bolt together. Fair sides. Trim excess glass from nesting bulkhead & sand. Sand gunwales. Sand daggerboard trunk. Drill mast hole and glue on plug. Sand nesting bulkhead edge and fill. Complete mast parts. Screw down seat top. Paint interior and parts. Cut rowing thwart, glue daggerboard insert and toggle.
I'm trying to accelerate the construction, because I want to be able to bring the boat on the family vacation next week. Normally I don't like to put in 8 hours on a boat, because at some point it becomes a job just like the one you're doing this to escape from. But at least today I have lots of interesting little tasks.
I drill a 2 1/8" hole in the mast brace for the 2" diameter mast. As in the last boat, I'll use a plastic wedge (I think they're intended for leveling appliances) to adjust mast rake. I want to use the resulting plug as the mast step, but it's too big and my 2" hole saw is far too dull to trim it, so I settle for a chunk of 1" oak dowel, set in a big gob of epoxy, to drop the mast on. The designers specify a complex tapered plug, half of which is to be glued in the mast base, to prevent the mast from turning. My solution is simpler: just use jaws on the boom instead of a gooseneck so it doesn't matter if the mast turns.
I've also decided on an alternative seating arrangement. Instead of a thwart across the beam, I want the rower to be able to shift forward and aft to adjust trim. If there are only two people in the boat, the rower should be much farther forward than if there is a third person on the bow seat. So I build a thwart that runs from the center (nesting) bulkhead forward to the mast brace. It has a small plug that fits into the daggerboard trunk, and hangs from a toggle through the mast brace hole on the forward end. Since I haven't rowed the boat yet, I don't know how this arrangement is going to work.
Day 23
Sand bottom and sides. Sand keel. Paint outside. Touch up parts paint. Cut gudgeon backing block.
I touch up the paint on the "parts": mast, daggerboard, rudder, tiller. The top gudgeon attaches to the transom at the level of the stiffener, but the bottom gudgeon needs a backing plate.
Day 24
Varnish trim. Install hardware: oarlocks, painter, traveler ends, gudgeons.
I'm varnishing the gunwales, transom stiffeners, outside of stern transom, and bow seat bulkhead. Just one coat for now because there's still some sanding to be done.
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