Third time's the charm

After gluing the gunwales I did a little trimming and shaping.

I'm not really happy with the look at the bow.  I am considering gluing a piece on and shaping it so it blends with the gunwale and extend them to a rounded point about 1/2" in front of the bow.

 I also finally got the deck carlins on.  Those are the pieces of timber running along the sheer of the boat inside of the hull.  They will support the inner part of the deck.  They took about 3 times as long as I suspected for several reasons:
1.  One piece had some pretty severe grain runout, so it snapped when I tried to bend it into place.  I had to cut another scarf and re-glue.
2.  I mismeasured the location of a block, requiring me to chisel it off after gluing, and once again, re-scarph and re-glue the carlin.
3. Clamping the carlins properly was very difficult as with all the curves it wasn't easy to get the clamps to hold correctly. 

With all of the adjusting and trimming and awkward clamping it was a slow process, by they are on.

gunwales

 Over the last several days I have been cutting and gluing the gunwales and deck carlins (edge supports that run the length of the boat.  They're long and a little floppy at only 1/2" thick.  The first thing I had to do was put in the side deck knees.  A couple of pairs are part of bulkheads, as you can see in the photo below by looking forward, but there were two sets that were stand alone as well.

After ripping down a board into the right widths using a table saw, I had to trim them from 5/8" thick to 1/2".  To keep the boards tight against the fence and top, I used a couple of fingerboards.  They keep pressure on the board but allow it to smoothly feed through.

Since the boards were only 10' long, and the gunwales are about 16' long I had to scarf  pieces together.  This is the pieces set up for cutting a 9 to 1 scarf with the block plane.  It took about 15 minutes, but I neglected to get a pic of the completed scarfs.  I then did the same thing for the deck carlins.

Weights come in handy for gluing.  Trying to keep 20' of wood aligned while using clamps across a 4.5" glue line is not easy.  However, laying them on a flat surface allows the use of a 48" metal ruler for alignment and allows for sliding the lower scarf into place.  Since epoxy doesn't need much clamping pressure. I got good results with this method.

After gluing I checked the fit of the gunwales and made sure I had enough clamps.  Then I did some final shaping with the block plane to round over the bottom edge and taper it toward the bow and stern.  Gluing took quite a while.  First I had to wet everything out with un-thickened epoxy, (64' worth).  Then I had to spread thickened epoxy (32') and then get everything clamped up.  After that I had to clean up and fillet the squeeze-out.  That took a couple of hours.  As you can see below, you can always find a use for lots of clamps.  I used every single one I had, and it seemed to be just enough.  I'm sure If I had another 5 I would have found a use for them as well.

King plank

After sanding the bow compartments I beveled the two bulkheads in the bow so they are aligned for eventually installing the deck.

I also cleaned up the epoxy fillet in the bow.

Then cut the kingplank, which at this point was just a 1 3/4" piece of wood.
I notched  the bulkheads to accept the king plank.

 Then it took a bit of time to get it to fit in the bow.  I marked and rough cut it with a pull saw.  Then it was a lot of checking the fit and rasping wood away.  It's not a light-tight fit, but it fits well for epoxying as you don't want a perfect fit.

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You can see that there are some pretty large unsupported areas considering the deck material is only 6mm.  However, the curve of the deck will do much to stiffen it.  The thwarts (seats), which are flat, need closer spacing of support beams.

Rear thwart supports

A few hours of work this morning took care of the support beams for the rear thwart.  They got notched into place the same way as the rear deck supports.  The plans only call for 3, but when I checked the spacing with some some plywood that will be used for the thwart, I felt like there was going to be some noticeable weight deflection, so I added a 4th beam.  The weight penalty is only a few hundered grams.  All told, I figure this extra work added about 3 extra hours but it saved me having to drill holes I didn't want and it will be less likely to fail from people sitting and stepping in these places.  Considering that fixing a failure would require removal of the rear deck, I think it was worth the extra time and effort.

Rear deck supports and the motor well.

 I've spent the last couple of afternoons working on the rear deck supports and motor well.  The plans have the deck supports supported by screws through the transom and bulkhead.  I didn't like the idea of using screws, but I don't trust the epoxy to hold on its own if someone steps on the rear deck.  So I decided to notch the crossbeams and the deck supports. 

 

Here you can see how I notched both pieces.  I chiseled out the crossbeam notch and cut and shaped the deck beam with a pull saw and a saw rasp.  This way there should be plenty of support to handle any vertical loading caused by someone stepping on the deck.

 

Dropped into place, it's fairly flush.  I left it a bit proud and will shape it flush after gluing. There were two deck beams to do.  The second one of course went quicker, and fit better.

For the motor well,I found I first had to notch out the transom doubler as it's width intruded into where and additional bracing piece for the motor mount needed to go.

After that I had to cut the additional brace.  Due to having fiberglass taped the seams, I had to rasp away some of the rear so it would lay flush to the transom rather than riding up on the tape at the edge.  With the saw rasp this took all of about 1 minute.

Then it was a bunch of cutting of small pieces.  There were the sides, base, which I had to cut twice due to forgetting to take into account the 1/2 width of the plywood when measuring the width.  Then each corner gets a cleat to screw everything together.  Even after getting everything cut and shaped for a good fit, pre-drilling holes and dry fitting took a couple of hours as there is a lot of back and forth since the drill can't be used inside the space due to a lack of it.  That meant it was clamp it in, mark it, take it out, drill the holes , screw it together, move to the next part, unscrew it all, again and again.

I knew gluing was going to be a pain.  There were so many edges that needed to be wet-out before applying thickened epoxy, and others that needed to be sealed.  To keep from having to handle a bunch of pieces with epoxy on them, I did it in a few small batches.  This meant I had both un-thickened epoxy and thickened epoxy mixed and ready to go at the same time.  I worked in small batches using a scale to measure out small amounts.  It took a couple of hours to get everything put together and screwed in place, but it's looking pretty good.

Just forward of this is where the rear thwart (seat) goes, so I need to put in the support beams for it , which will be a similar process to the rear deck support beams.  Then it's on to the gunwales.

Making the plank seams watertight and strong

I've finished putting in all of the epoxy fillets. It took a lot of epoxy and was fairly messy work.

These are some of the fillets.

Then I took a break and went to the gym to let the epoxy set up a little bit.

Upon my return I laid the glass on it.  Most of the pieces I had previously cut.

Then it got wet out with epoxy, which took a long time and a lot of epoxy.  I've used up what I have, so I need to order more before I can finish glassing in the bow sections.