Building the Deck

OK.  Completed the construction of the hull, and learned a lot about wire stitching epoxy and fiberglass.  Also learned a lot about properly laying it out so that rework is at a minimum.  So with that done, I can start to construct the deck.  With all the lessons learned from the hull, I expect that this will be a little easier to understand and hopefully not as messy.

First step was to lay the 2 center bow deck panels (#6 panels L&R) (the center panels) onto the hull and loosely wire stitch them together.  Then set the sheer panels (#5 panels L&R) on the hull and drill and wire stitch them to the #6 panels.  Then lay the stern deck panels onto the hull and drill and wire stitch them.  Lots of drilling and stitching.  Also installed another panel called the recess plate.  And now it's really looking like the boat I expected it to look like.

 

 

Next steps are to glue the outer deck seams.  I'll get started on that tomorrow.  Once this process begins, it will be several days of further gluing (thickened epoxy) the outside and inside deck seams.  Still lots of work to do! 

 

I wanted to be complete by now to enjoy some of the summer on the Sound.  Looks like another month of work to me at the rate I'm moving.  But then again, the weather has been so good this summer, and is expected to last a couple more months, so maybe I'll get out there before the rains begin this fall.

Fiberglassing the Hull

I've finally gotten to the fiberglassing step for the hull.  Taken me a while to get here.  After the saturation coat had hardened, I laid out the fiberglass cloth over the hull, then cut it so about 2 inches extended over the left and right sheer.  I also had to make a few "special" cuts at the stern end of the boat so that I could layer it over and make it smooth.  The stern end is very steep so this was a necessary step.  Wasn't sure how that was going to work out, but in the end, it went fine. 

I then began coating the fiberglass cloth wit epoxy.  Here's a picture of how it looked after a couple hours of epoxying (half way done).

And here are a couple more pictures which show the fiberglass fully epoxied with the first coat (a couple more hours).

 

 

Once the epoxy hardened, I cut the excess fiberglass off that was hanging off the sides.

 

 

The next step of the process is to apply a fill coat of epoxy to the hull to further coat the fiberglass.  And then, after that, lay a strip of 2 inch wide fiberglass over the keel beam.  That's done immediately after the fill coat is applied so that it will adhere to the hull.  After that's done, go over this strip with more epoxy to fully saturate the fiberglass strip to the keel.  That's what you see below.

 

 

Have to say.  After the fiberglass was initially epoxied, and after the fill coat was applied, the hull was looking pretty good.  But after laying the strip of fiberglass over the keel and saturating it with epoxy, not so good.  Just looks sloppy now.  I can see a lot of sanding in the future.  Oh well.  I'll apply another fill coat to the hull tomorrow, and we'll see how it comes out in a few days.

And Another Week Goes By

Yes, another week has gone by.  And it seems like I've done a lot of work.  Here's what has been accomplished in the last week.

First, I had to remove all of the wire stitching.  According to the manual, just untwist and pull.  But since I'm slow in every step of this construction, and a little sloppy, all of the wires were well epoxied and the epoxy was well cured.  So that meant that I had to use a soldering iron to melt the epoxy at each fastener to be able to cut the wire and pull it out.  Very tedious work since we're talking approximately500 wires twisted and epoxied to the hull.  And then, sanding the hull smooth to remove all of that excess epoxy.  This work took me 4 days during the last week to complete.  Here's what it looked like after completed.

 

 

I did all of the sanding outside.  I started with a sanding block and sponge, but I eventually realized it was way too difficult to get it done that way.  So I used my orbital sander to knock down the excess epoxy at the seams.  Worked well.  Had to be careful not to let it get away from me and mess up the wood veneer.  There are a couple areas where I wasn't too successful with that.  Oh well. 

 

Once I completed that task, I then added thickened epoxy to the stem seams.  Another day.  Then I had to file that down and make the stem seams smooth and round.  And then, I was ready to begin the fiberglass process.  First step for fiberglassing the hull is to apply a saturation coat of epoxy to the entire hull.  Just finished that step.

 

 

 

Starting to look better.  I'll come back tomorrow and begin laying out the fiberglass.

 



Temporary Frames and Gluing, Gluing, Gluing

Phew!  Got quite a bit done in the last week.  But it sure seems like I'm going at this a bit slower than anticipated..

Last post, I had completed wiring in all of the hull panels and wired in the temporary center frame.  So I've since installed the remaining temporary frames (2 bow and 2 stern).  And I've glued the inside keel seam.

 

 

The above picture shows the center temp frame, bow mid and end temp frames and glued inside keel seam.  Next step was to install spacers onto the bow and stern frames.  Then turn the hull over and get ready to glue the outside seams.  That's what you see below.

 

 

And then,,,,  glue all of the outside seams.  Simple, eh?  Well, this took some time.  First the keel seam, plus the center section of the boat between 1 & 2 panels and 2 & 3 panels.  That's all that could be done for the first pass at gluing.  That's because beyond these sections the boat is too vertical.  I had to do this first, let it dry overnight, and then glue the vertical sections that remained the next couple days.  First one side and then the other.  So all together, I think this took me 3 or 4 days to complete.  That's what you see below.

 

 

What a mess!  From what it looks like now, I think I'll be several days sanding the excess off and cleaning up the panels.  But first I have to remove the twisted wire fasteners.  That should be fun since they are also epoxied along the seams.  But I'm assured by Pygmy Boats that the wire will come out of the epoxy rather easy.  We'll see.  And I also have to put some epoxy on the inside of the boat at the stems.  And finally, I have to add some more, very thickened epoxy to the outside of the bow and stern stems.  Then I can begin to sand the outside of the hull smooth.  Sounds like another week of work to me.