Half a new dinghy

[cracked_ribs]

It's honestly barely perceptible, except when I did the bottom of the hull. I think I had maybe 12-15 oz cooking off at the same time and I laid it down and we went out for dinner. I have practically no sense of smell but even my wife says it's not very noticeable.

We've ALMOST completely avoided the boiled cabbage smell on these floors...there is an informal pact amongst owners that nobody sells to anyone who seems likely to make unusually pungent food. The whole top two floors of the building are...how to put it...maybe a bit old-fashioned compared to today's Vancouverites? Naturally it's unenforceable but there are no rentals in the building and the penthouse units are all filled by people who like the ability to talk to each other in the halls and retain the friendly, familiar feel. Eventually that'll probably break down but there is really low turnover in the upper units. And with no rentals, it reduces the appeal to the "buy for investment" crowd. It's still an apartment but as apartments go it's pretty unusual.

 

[cracked_ribs]

Incremental gains...plywood gussets for the centre frame cut out. Centre seat mocked up. Almost done glueing parts together. Started fairing the interior just a little, taking down the high spots from runs here and there. Stern seat has a pretty good curve to it so I'm weighing it down to flatten it a bit.

Need to tape the bulkheads in place but probably won't get to that right away. Need to assemble the centre frame; will probably glue it up in place with saran wrap etc between the frame and the hull so I can keep it free until the fairing is done. Need to think about the bow seat a little; it has to incorporate a mast collar so that'll take some effort. I guess there's no point in just listing everything left to do...I'm only half done at this point and have been at every stage so far and expect to be half done at every subsequent stage as well. Don't even want to imply a planned launch date yet.

 

[Corey_lax]

Freedom bucket in every picture lol

 

[cracked_ribs]

Freedom bucket in every picture lol

Well...they're heavy and they have handles and I probably never have less than half a dozen lying around.

But I admit it's pretty lolworthy.

 

[cracked_ribs]

Really should not have spent any time on it today but got a couple of hours in anyway. Just cutting some stuff to size and mocking up stuff for later.

The bump in the bow seat is a really roughly sized mast collar. It's not shaped or anything, I just hacked it out so I could get the seat sized correctly.

 

[cracked_ribs]

Well, back to work on the plywood piranha. I work two jobs, one of which is cyclical in nature, so for two weeks I didn't touch the thing because I was barely sleeping, let alone boat building. But as of Sunday I am clear again for a few weeks, and the boat is again getting attention.

There's not much to show, I guess, because all of the changes are pretty tiny. I added another coat of epoxy inside, and it's about as waterproof as I think it's going to get now. I've been slathering glue on all the various trim bits; they're getting pretty close. I got sick of looking at that one rubrail that cracked which I then repaired, so Sunday afternoon I ripped it off and replaced it. What else...I got the permanent centre frame parts cut out, although I think I'm going to trim the plywood gussets down some. I roughed in the "deck" bits from plywood scrap; you can get a sense of where that'll go. I think the only other thing is that I got the daggerboard trunk partly figured out. Other than that it's just been coats of glue.

 

[cracked_ribs]

There's not too much to show these days (or at least it feels that way to me) because the progress is incremental and sometimes I'm just gluing down stuff I had previously mocked up anyway.

But I'm plugging away. I wanted to start fairing the hull so I made a fairing board; it's a scrap of 6mm ply with a backer of foam track pad. Track pads are used in skytrain and other light rail construction: I have a few of them left from back when I used to work on that kind of stuff (although I threw a lot out, which now makes me a little sad. Great backing for sandpaper). I cut it to 4.5"x22", so I can cut a sheet of sandpaper in half and stick it on lengthwise, works great.

I just stick paper on with elmer's spray glue and peel it off when it's used up. The bottom is pretty fair now, so when I get back from Easter I'll put on a few coats of 25% graphite/epoxy mix which should make the bottom really resistant to gouges etc.

Right now the centre seat/daggerboard trunk is gluing in, and the bow and stern seats as well. I'm really starting to struggle with the idea of painting over all this rich wood colour...very nice to look at. But the UV will destroy it, sitting in my bay for half the year or more. I'll never keep up with the necessary varnish schedule.

At any rate here's the current state:

Try to ignore the state of the place, I know it's a total disaster. I went out for coffee this morning and ended up insuring my bike and my wife's, and then instead of doing anything practical I came home, fired up her bike and took it for a burn, in the process discovering that the starter solenoid has failed, necessitating a screwdriver to bridge the contacts in order to start it, and also one of the carbs has a stuck float so power delivery is totally unpredictable and I accidentally drifted the thing through across three lanes while cornering on a major road in Burnaby before getting it under control. It's an old Honda 400 and I don't think it's had that much action since about 1982.

But then rather than come home and do something domestic and safe, I went ahead and took my own bike out for a while and as such didn't touch the boat until late this afternoon. I guess the point of all this was that I can't be expected to go hooliganing on bikes, and build boats, and then waste a bunch of time putting laundry away. So if the place is a mess it's because I came home and chucked my leathers on the couch and mixed epoxy.

Again, I recognize that I do not belong in a civilized society.

 

[Stosh]

How are the rabbits doing? A few sunny days and I too get the itch to put my bike on the road. Mine is even older - 1981 Goldwing - gotta wait until May. Considering where you are doing the build, the boat looks great!
Stosh

 

[Sir Reel]

Hey CR. As mentioned before you may want to try WR-LPU clear coating. You can keep the awesome wood colour and protect the epoxy from UV, fuel, and solvents. . Is harder than epoxy too.

https://www.systemthree.com/products/wr-lpu-polyurethane-topcoat

 

[cracked_ribs]

How are the rabbits doing? A few sunny days and I too get the itch to put my bike on the road. Mine is even older - 1981 Goldwing - gotta wait until May. Considering where you are doing the build, the boat looks great!
Stosh

The rabbits are doing well; they're flopped out under the boat having gorged themselves on a large Brussels sprout.

My wife's bike is also an '81 but the original owner scared himself with it shortly after buying it new and it sat in a garage until about 5 years ago. 13,000 km on the clock. Fun little toy. When we brought it home i just picked it up with a friend and we lifted it into his pickup. Weighs nothing. Not fast but you can flog the hell out of it without breaking a lot of laws. Not so much on my bikes.


Building the boat in the apartment is definitely an interesting challenge. I only get about an hour at a time to work on it, and I don't like throwing a ton of dust so I limit my sanding as much as possible. Plus I'm trying to use up all the oddball scraps I have lying around, and I'd like to use the thing soon so perfection is not really on the menu. But then at the same time...it has to be built well enough that I like it. So there's a balance to be struck. Not sure if I'm getting it right, but it's fun.

Hey CR. As mentioned before you may want to try WR-LPU clear coating. You can keep the awesome wood colour and protect the epoxy from UV, fuel, and solvents. . Is harder than epoxy too.

https://www.systemthree.com/products/wr-lpu-polyurethane-topcoat

Will definitely check into that, thanks for the reminder.

 

[cracked_ribs]

I apologize for the lack of updates; it's a mix of being really busy, and the fact that most of what's left to do is a bunch of subtle incremental changes so the pictures never look any different than the week before.

Construction is basically complete; I'm really just prepping surfaces for finishing now. Here's the current state:

I didn't plan on leaving much more than trim in bright but the further along I get the more I am tempted to leave a lot of visible wood. This is slowing things down because I need the epoxied surfaces to be fair, I can't just throw putty on it to fix things. But some larger surfaces may look good enough to leave a bit of wood out. I have ordered the WR-LPU as a couple of people have suggested; it's impossible that they know less than I do about brightwork so by definition they know more and I'll give that a try on everything that stays bright. It will be more than I originally intended but we'll see how that goes. I'm not committing to very much yet!

I have at least gotten it to the point that it feels like a boat awaiting paint, rather than half a boat. I'm really, really looking forward to splashing her before too long.

 

[chromatose007]

I see you are addicted to details...
Hey, need any supplies? Got some you can have.
N Burnaby

 

[cracked_ribs]

I see you are addicted to details...
Hey, need any supplies? Got some you can have.
N Burnaby

Sorry, I didn't notice this right away - I view this forum on about five different devices and like everyone I think I'm perpetually getting logged out so notifications are spotty.

As far as supplies go, well, it is BC Sportfishing...and what would fishing be without mooching? I would love to mooch off your generosity and I'm pretty local to you, being in Edmonds-ish Burnaby. I'll shoot you a PM.

 

[cracked_ribs]

Work continues on the little tender; I have the keel in place and have begun the finishing stages. Here you can see the graphite bottom treatment; that's epoxy with graphite powder mixed in. It's a bit tricky to lay but it went down pretty good in the end. Should be extremely hard and slippery when cured, although once I have the thing in the water I'll need to put bottom paint on a part of it just to keep marine growth off it...it'll be sitting in the bay for months at a time so the actual part that stays wet will get an ablative paint or something. I have a bit lying around somewhere.

I'd really like to try this graphite bottom on my Double Eagle. The current running surface is about 40 coats of ablative paint, applied with a spatula or maybe a cat. It's hard to tell. But it'd be a headache to apply. Still, for a trailered boat, a really slippery, wear-resistant surface might be nice to have.

Wife still tolerating the project fairly well.

The rabbits have been acting out all week though...my wife was away for a week and they were quite annoyed about it and nibbled everything and stopped using their litter box in protest. Strange animals. They seem to have calmed down now, though: their tiny, fuzzy rage has melted away now that my wife is back.

 

[tubber]

so good.

 

[ChilliSpoons]

Anymore updates on the build? Or the lowering of the finished project from the balcony?

 

[cracked_ribs]

I apologize for not updating this - I probably mentioned somewhere in the thread that I work two totally unrelated jobs, one of which is cyclical in nature and when I get busy I get so busy that I'm totally wrecked for weeks at a time. Actually, typing that out makes me think I need to make some serious lifestyle changes. Anyway...

I went all stupid at some point at just couldn't bring myself to fully cover the wood. So there's a lot of brightwork, which naturally just dragged everything out.

 

[cracked_ribs]

So as you can see, instead of doing things the smart way and filling and sanding as necessary with various easy-to-shape fillers, I ended up fairing it with straight epoxy. The fumes have had some impact on my ability to remember things, but on the other hand, the fumes have had some impact on my ability to remember things, so I think it evens out.

My wife was in a motorcycle crash this week which is pretty much the only thing that will cause me to shut down other obligations and stay home so I can check on her; I had an out of town gig fri-sun that I completely blew off because they spent Friday reassembling her shoulder and I won't go more than about 50 feet from her until she's OK. But the deck is just 20' from the couch so between caring for her, I've got a few coats of black WRLPU on, and the centreboard cut done, and once I do the clearcoat it's pretty much crane time.

And by crane I mean me with a rope so we'll see how ugly that gets.

 

[cracked_ribs]

Oh also: oars

Just about done the new tender so I needed a pair of oars. Much like when I started the tender, I was partway through the weekend and suddenly realized I needed to get something accomplished, so I headed down to the lumber yard, picked up a couple of spruce 1x6s, took them out onto the deck, and got to work.

Naturally, after marking up the wood, I realized my good saws are up at my other place, so it's just the gear in my roller chest to get this done, so we're basically looking at a couple of small saws, a #5 plane, a bit of sanding gear, and a few chisels. Everything else I have in the city is for working on machines. But then I like working by hand. At least at first.

Oars are 7 1/2 feet long, square looms for a bit of counterbalance and so they don't want to roll. At the loom they're about 1 3/4" and right at the neck they're around 1 1/4" with a very slight squarish shape.. Locks and collars are a local manufacturer, Scotty. The grips are about an inch and a quarter in diameter.

Blades taper from 3" to 4 1/2" over about 26 inches of length. They've got a bit of spine left down the centreline but feather out to about 1/4" thick at the edges. Somewhere I have plans but these I just eyeballed. I need to do some finishing on oar #2 so I'll try to get that done tomorrow evening, and then they get varnished and I'm back to screwing around with the damn boat, which just needs a bit of finish sanding but which I am sick of doing.

The spruce is sure light...finished, they are so deceptive my wife burst out laughing when she picked it up; it seems like a magic trick.

Anyway should do for tender work and local fishing and crabbing around my island.

 

[ChilliSpoons]

The boat looks great. Which plans did you follow for the build?