Strips are finished

I completed the final joint reinforcement on the last four strips on the weekend. Now all I need to do before moving to the next construction stage is cut and file the overhanging fibreglass tape as I mentioned on the previous post. While this will take a while, I can get into them without having to wait for epoxy to dry as I have had to in the past, so a few afternoons after work this week should see me getting this done. The final eight joins being glued are below, weighed down with bricks to ensure a good join.

One thing I have noticed is that with the higher overnight temperatures (approx 8-9 degrees C) are helping the epoxy to cure a lot quicker. Most of my work is being done at night and then left for the next day to completely set. I ordered the slow setting epoxy due to the coming summer, and when I first began was having trouble getting it to cure properly. Now that we're not having cold nights and the daytime temps are hovering at around 26-28 degrees Celsius all the work has been fully cured by the next night.

The next step once I cut off the remaining glass tape is to drill the holes in the strips for the wire stitches to go through. I'm not sure how long this will take, but on the upside it'll mean I can get some good use from the sweet Makita cordless drill my father in law gave me as a wedding present. I also find that I've been using my dust/fume mask a lot with the sanding back and filing of the epoxy as the dust is very fine and probably isn't very good for me. It makes me look like some kind of biological soldier and it freaks the dog out. At least when I'm wearing it he doesn't drop his grotty slobbery tennis ball on my feet while I'm trying to work.

I'm looking forward to the next stage. I want to see a hull start to take shape dammit!

Slow going...

A combination of more stuff on the go with Christmas parties etc coming into season, combined with a stage of construction that doesn't really lend much to progress photos has meant I haven't posted anything in a while. I feel as though tonight I can finalise the rest of the joins on the other sides of the strips, so in the next couple of weeks we should start to see some sort of a hull beginning to take shape!

To give you a low-down on what I have been doing, each join I have previously made has a strip of now hardened fibreglass soaked into it which needs to be trimmed, and then the excess epoxy filed back with a wood file so that the resulting joined strip is no wider than the rest of the strip. You can see what I'm talking about below. (Tip # 4: Make sure when using a razor blade to cut off the hardened fibreglass you have something to stop the blade slipping right through the glass and slicing your hand open. I almost did this a few times before putting a block of wood under the strip and holding my hand behind it which stops you making prosciutto of your fingers).

 Each join has to be filed back before I can do the other side, so with about 40 to do it can be time consuming, but still not particularly tedious. Definitely helps if you have one of these:

It's a car stereo I wired up to a car battery and set into a pretty roughly knocked up hardwood box. The solar panel on top will charge it by trickle feed when the sun comes out, and it pumps out some pretty sweet tunes. Summer here I come! Definitely makes the hours spent in the shed much more fun. Nothing says 'I'm a man and this is my shed' like some Johnny Cash pumping to the sound of power tools!

A little bit of positive reinforcement

I had a little success last night in finally being able to compare two sets of identical hull panels and found that they are in fact mirror images of each other. This means that my joins are done the right way and I haven't managed to cock anything major up just yet. The joins in the pictures below are the two uppermost hull panels, so just above the waterline. The hull panels are the most imprtant to get right in terms of alignment as they obviously affect the tracking of the boat, so it's good to see I'm trucking in the right direction.

Progress is still being made slowly, but having to go and do social things like a wedding for one of Alex's mates this Saturday in Wagga Wagga, plus inconveniences like having to eat dinner every night are really slowing me down. With any luck I'll get a good few hours of work done on Sunday but I suspect I'll be a little hungover so it remains to be seen how much work will actually be done, and how much time I'll just spend on the couch watching TV.

Completion of the panel joining - Part A

In the week after the Hawkesbury I didn't get much done, catching up on sleep was a little higher on the list of priorities, but got back into building the Coho again this weekend.

So I've finished joining all the panel parts on the inside of the hull and now have the hull strips in the required number of pieces. Now all I need to do to finish up this stage of the construction is to epoxy in another strip of fibreglass tape to the other side of the join to strengthen it further. Apparently with this second piece of fibreglass in place, the joins will actually be stronger than the surrounding wood.

With less fiddling around now that the joins are now held firm, reinforcing the other side is much quicker as you don't have to be so careful not to bump them during the setting of the epoxy, plus, I can glass the whole length of a panel rather than one join, wait for it to cure, then the other join (there are 2 joins per panel) so this part should be easier, plus I've got a bit of a system going and I'm a little more confident in using the fibreglass.

I also successfully sanded out the mill stamp that I'd epoxied over previously. I used some coarse grit sandpaper to get through the epoxy, and once it was gone the stamp came out of the wood quite quickly. After this, the epoxy back onto the wood just looked normal, no trace the stamp was ever there or that I'd taken some extra wood off!

I'm also having better success with the curing time of the epoxy now that the temperatures outside are now a little warmer. Joins made at night are now ready to be sanded and moved around the next night after a day to cure.