Second and third coat

Got up at 0530 today to paint the second coat before going to work. Tonight I did the third.

For those who do not read the comments I thought perhaps I should tell a bit more about the paint. It is called Sigmadur 550 (http://www.sigmacoatings.com/marine/uk/products/sigmadur//sigmadur_550).

It is a two part polyurethane paint (very smelly) and is primarily intended for topsides of comercial vessels, so I assume it is as good as the yachty stuff but very much cheaper (I paid about 10 Euros per liter).

I was intending to apply it by "roll and tip", but I forgot the tip part for the first coats. Strangely the roller does not make any bubbles in the paint, I am sure it is not the quality of the rollers nor my rolling technique so I have to conclude that the paint is good. I have noticed some "orange peel" structure on the surface so I will need to do a light sanding before the final coats (here I will try to remember the tip).

Time today: 2h

The Golden Hind

Just outside our office in London

Painting the hull

Sanded the areas I filled yesterday, there are still several places that could use some more and many areas that should have been sanded better. But I am not going for yacht finish so this should be good enough.

Vacuumed and washed the hull to make sure there is no dust left on the surface. Then it was on to painting.

First layer

The picture does not show the color properly also the light ply is shining through, I will need another two or three coats before it is done. Below you can see a picture of the color (RAL 4074). I have not painted the whole sheer plank as I will need to glue the rub rail there.

RAL4074

Now I am of on another trip, back in a few days.

Time today: 3h

Preparing to paint

Today I made myself and the boat ready for painting. First I cleaned out the garage.

Then I planed the keel pieces to align with each other.

Stem to keel joint, after planing but before sanding

After that I cleaned the amine blush of the whole boat and sanded it again...... I was hoping to start painting today but I found a few areas around the stem and one scarf joint that needed some more fairing. So the painting will have to wait for tomorrow.

I lit my barbecue with some Sapele shavings, it smelled really nice but gave of a lot of smoke so do not think I will be doing that again.

Time today: 3h

"Keel" assembly

Joined the skeg and the outer stem with a small keel strip. Perhaps I should point out that neither the stem or the keel strip is on the drawings so this is just me messing with a proven design.....

Testing the fit

Joint detail

Glueing

Finally I put a filet around the whole skeg, keel, stem assembly. Will need to do some planing and sanding tomorrow

I also bought paint for the hull today, a two part polyurethane.

Time today: 2h

Shaping the stem

Before starting to shape the stem I needed some inspiration.

Bottom "Building small boats" by Greg Rössel and on top Iain Oughtreds "Clinker Plywood Boatbuilding Manual" both excellent books.

Then I marked and started planing the shape of the stem.

One side done

Marking

Checking the shape

Planing the profile towards the bottom

Done

Glued in place

One more

I also glued on the skeg

Time today: 3.5h

Wood update

My friend Piotr (who helped me to get the veneers) have informed me that it is Sapele (http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/sapele/). Which confirms the smell.

Boatbuilding will resume tomorrow.

Spokeshave love....

I will get back to the spokeshave but firstly I planed the outer stem, to make it square and the right dimensions. There will be more shaping to come.

I do not have a good way of clamping it so I use screws to fix it to the strongbox.

Close up of the screw clamping

I am not sure what kind of wood it is exactly but it has a very distinctive smell when you cut or plane it, sort of burt and peppery with hints of flowers....? (Sound like a wine but it is very definitively wood!)

I also needed to shape the skeg a little more for this a spokeshave is the perfect tool, but as you know I have not had the best of luck with my "el cheapo" spokeshave, see here and here. Anyhow I decided to give it a good sharpening and get on with it.

To my utter surprise I found that it is a lovely tool, cuts both fine and thick depending on what you need. An absolutely excellent tool (when sharp enough), I could have used this for a lot of tasks if I had known how much I would like it!!!!!!

Skeg after "spokeshaving" (?)

Finally I started to look into how to arrange the stem/skeg and potentially other rubbing pieces on the bottom.

Maybe this is a good arrangement?

Time today: 2h

Rudder stock

Lovely weather today, +25C and mostly blue skies. Spent the morning cutting the grass and mending the broken mower.

Then I continued the sanding and coating, got two layers of epoxy on the boat today.

The stem was a god fit but as the veneers is 40 mm wide and the stem should be around 25 mm I had to cut it down somewhat. I tried with the table saw, not a complete success but luckily I practiced with the messed up stems first. At least I could get it trimmed a little the rest will have to be done with the plane.

I also started working on the rudder stock today.

1:1 scale of the drawing

From that I made the cheek and centre block templates

Pieces marked out on the plywood

All the pieces cut out and ready for glueing

Time today: 4h

Stem n stuff

Removed the outer stem from the boat, since it was only four veneers there was some springback (22 mm) that I need to compensate for before glueing on the other layers.

I placed the stem on the table and fixated the upper end with two "L" brackets, then I bent the lower end 22 mm tighter than the natural curve and fixed it with another "L" bracket. This should give me the correct shape (third time I have said that....). Finally I glued on the other eleven veneers.

I also faired over the glass edge along the first lap, but as the glass was not wide enough to cover the bottom and garboard I had to fair a slightly larger area around midship.

Glass edge faired, close to the centre board slot you can see where I had to increase the fairing since the glass did not reach the lap

Close up

One (or maybe two) more coats of epoxy to fill the weave properly.

Time today: 1.5h

Curls

Stop whining and back to work!

Started with cutting out the skeg, it was a nice fit, unfortunately my new sabre saw does not make a square cut. The blade is square to the base when not running but something happens when I run it(!?!). Not a big deal I will just have to plane the skeg a little.

Skeg before planing

Then I decided to redo the outer stem (third time....) as it seems my template making abilities are not perfect so this time I will do it on the boat. Glued together five veneers and nailed them to the stem, when the glue is dried I will remove them and add the other 15 layers in the same shape.

If this does not work I will have to build furniture out of all my stems....

Finally I got onto planing spars again, it feels really nice to be making curls again and not just dust!

Curls!!!!

Well I had to do a little sanding to get it round enough.

Two round(ish) and one square

Time today: 2.5h

5000 and counting!

Crossed 5000 page views on the blog yesterday!!!! Maybe not a lot for some but for me it is. I can only see two reasons for this, either my Mom has checked out the blog five thousand times or someone is actually reading this........ for those of you that do, THANK YOU!

The build is not progressing according to plan however, mainly due to the fact that I am not home enough to get anything done. The coming months do not look any brighter, I am changing job which means I will have to deal with two jobs in two different countries for a couple of months. So there will be no launching in June, probably not in July either but I have great hopes for August.

Skeg shape

Just came back from an overnight trip to England so I am a bit knackered.

My skeg template did not fit as intended so I decided to draw up the skeg from the actual boat. First I drew the bottom shape of the skeg onto a plank.

Then I placed the "skeg" plank on the boat and propped the ends up with 35 mm supports.

I drilled a pen-sized hole 35 mm from the end of a piece of wood.

And drew the upper skeg shape parallell with the hull.

After this I washed of the amine blush, sanded and cleaned the hull for the final (?) coat of epoxy. I however noted a few spots where the epoxy was still a little "soggy", maybe it was too cold in the garage while I was away. I have now cranked up the heat and hopefully I can coat tomorrow.

Time today: 2h

Epoxy coating

Continued with the hull coating. Late last night (or actually early this morning) I trimmed the edges of the glass.

Edges trimmed

Washed of the amine bush and gave the bottom and garboard a light sanding, before the next epoxy coat.

Unfortunately I found some bubbles where the glass goes over the center board case edge. I cut them out, sanded and laid down a strip of glass along all the case edges.

One of the bubbles, before the repair

Then it was time for the second coat (first for the side planks), and when this had set the third coat.

After the second coat, through the garage door

Tim today: 4h