Lift off! The hull takes shape

So after a few years it's all action now. I've started stitching together the hull panels and it's taking shape surprisingly quickly.

Essentially, the process involves aligning the bow seam on the panels, and joining a few stitches to make sure the panels are in the right spot. After that, the holes are drilled and the panel loosely wired together in all the holes, every 6 inches.

After the first two left and right panels are wired together, it's essentially a rinse and repeat process, aligning the panels, wiring them loosely, and then tightening the wires on both sides at the time to firm up the rigidity of the hull lines. I'm halfway through the third panel at the moment, and it'd be fair to say the second wind of the construction process has arrived.

The panels within the hull are temporary support braces to make sure the profile of the hull is uniform and the chines don't bulge out or fall in. They're only wired at the keel at the moment, and are fairly annoying as they flop about and get in the way until they're wired to the rest of the hull. The wiring together doesn't happen until all 4 hull panels are in place, so until then they're just in the way.


I was going to make a comment about the bending over killing my back, but looks like I already covered that in an earlier post about Tip #5. Get a decent height workbench. In fact, as you can see from my pictures, 'workbench' is a bit of a stretch, and I'm still working on two fold out trellis tables.

Finally finished the joins on the hull.

Tonight I finally finished the trimming and filing back of the epoxy and glass at the joins of the strips. Here's a hot tip (Number 5 if I remember correctly) for you - if you're 6'3 and building one of these, get a work bench higher than your average trestle table. Bending over for even half an hour to do this work makes you feel a little worse for wear in the spine. The dog definitely appreciates the attention while I'm re-sorting my vertebrae though.

I've still got the other sides of the joins to epoxy for the deck, but I'll go through the instructions to see if I can get this stage done around the other stages of construction or if it's better off biting the bullet and doing it all now. I've got a that niggling feeling in the back of my mind that I should follow the instructions word for word because the fellow who wrote them obviously knows what he's doing, but another little voice that says 'go on, get things going!' I really want to start seeing a hull take shape. Insert saying or quip about patience being a virtue or something.

The only reason not to that I can think of now is that there may not be room to finish the deck joins once the hull is sitting on the workbench and taking up all the room. That's it.

No more rain in the last few days to speak of, but the month before that was crazy, I don't think I've seen so much water fall out of the sky before. Ever. Heading away for 2 weeks for a Christmas/New Year Break on Friday, I might get a little more done before Friday but probably won't get around to writing about it.