All stitched together.

The funny part was when I was finishing putting the transom on.  I stepped back to drill a hole, caught my heel on a table leg and fell over.  My shirt got caught on the corner of the boat, pulling it down on top of me.  That's right, my boat fell on top of me.  Thankfully it's lightweight, so it just banged my shin.  The boat was fine, and after a failed attempt to get it back on the supports by myself I went and got Collyn.

Going 3D

I spent the last couple of days cutting the deck supports that attach to the frames, and then gluing them.  One of them slid while I was clamping it and I didn't notice it until I removed the clamps after the poxy had set.  That means I had to cut if off.  In doing so I managed to mess up the face of the bulkhead pretty badly.  Luckily it will be out of sight on the inside face of a compartment.  I filled it in with thickened epoxy most of the way.  I will fill it in the rest of the way next time I glue some stuff, and then sand it flat.  So it cost me some time and a little extra epoxy, which isn't too bad.

I cleaned up the panels this morning, scarping the epoxy squeeze out.  After lunch, I built a small support structure out of scrap particle board as the table was going to be a bit too tall.  It consists of a couple of notched pieces that slot together to form an x.  Then I put a couple of 2x4 across it.  You can see it in the pics below.

The support structure was so I had something to put the hulls panels on as I stitched them together.  After a couple of hours and just under 100 zip ties later...

Now it at least looks boat-like.  Tomorrow I'll stitch in the bulkheads and get everything adjusted and by the end of the week I will hopefully have the hull all glued together.

A diversion for propulsion

While waiting for wood to come in I ran out of things to do on the boat hull, so found another task to complete.

First some 2x4s got ripped and glued.

 

Then some additional pieces were glued.

 

 Then a little bit of sawing and a lot of work with the hand plane turned 1/2 of it into this:

and the rest of it into this:

the looms:

 The paddle end:

The "artsy" display area for now:

Amazingly, they finished off at nearly the same weight, 3.14 and 3.09 pounds.  They still need to be varnished and leathered, but I'm waiting on that until I have all the other bits in need of varnishing completed.

Hull Panels

Over the last couple of days I've marked and cut the hull panels. 

I'm sort of at an impasse at this point as the wood I ordered that I was told would likely be in by Wednesday still has not come in, so it will be at least Monday until I can get my hands on it.  I can't do much more with the boat until it comes in, unless I want to jump ahead and work on the centerboard case, which I do not, as I prefer to work linearly. 

I'm going to spend the weekend making oars.  First thing I have to do is find some wood, and that has proven to be a huge time sink.

Sourcing timber and the first bit of gluing

I spent many hours this week going to lumber yard trying to find one thing:  Clear vertical grain western red cedar boards.  Since its native to the pacific northwest, it's tough to find out here.  Plenty of lumber yards carry it, and we even found some at a Lowe's, but it isn't clear.  I ended up ordering some through a lumber yard that has a Cleveland distributor with 6" boards.  It's not vertical grain, but they claim that it's clear.  I can work around a lot of the vertical grain issues by planning my cuts.  There are enough narrow lengths (<1") that I should be able to cut them from the center of the board.

Notice that ripping the board along the black lines and then rotating it 90 degrees results in vertical grain.

Since I can't do any more with the bulkheads until this comes in later this week I decided to have a go at gluing the plywood scarfs. 

Epoxy station

"clamped" with a 160 pounds of weights.  The plastic is so squeeze-out doesn't glue the 2x4s to the plywood.

I bought a slow hardener to give myself plenty of time to work in the warm weather.  The leftover was setting after a few hours, but I'm going to give this at least 24 before I check on it.  Fingers are crossed.  It it all goes well I get the other two sheets glued together and make some room in the basement to start laying out panels.

Cutting frames

Over the last couple of days I've marked and cut the frames and bulkheads.  I've got a little more work to do on them, as I need to cut out the holes for the hatches on a few, but need to wait for my hatches to arrive.  I kept forgetting to order them.  I also need to add the wood support stringers to stiffen them up, which means I need to hit the lumber yard.

Thus far things have gone well, but slow.  I'm being extra careful, because I'm terrified of making a big mistake that is expensive/difficult/kludgy to fix.  So I do things like score the plywood before cutting it with the jigsaw, despite the fact the nearly all of the cuts will all be covered over with epoxy, because a few of them won't be, and I'll likely forget one an then have to do a bunch of filling and sanding which will take more time than if I had scored it in the first place.  Sure, I could just carefully look through the plans to determine which cuts should be scored, but better safe than sorry.

I'm roughly 10 hours in at this point.  You can see some tape on a one of the bulkheads.  That's because I am afraid I'll snap those little deck supports off, so I taped on some scrap as a brace.