In case you wonder

If you have ever wondered why most blogs go well while the person is cutting things out then they kind of fade after that I'll tell you why. Epoxy. Yep expoxy and camera's just don't mix. Once the epoxy comes out people want to put the camera away. Me included.
I cut some of the strips for the gunwales and inwales and have glued them into long continuous pieces by use of scarf joints. I cut some pieces for the inwales and quickly discovered that they would never bend. They are mahogany by the way. So I have decided to cut them in half or in other words the same size as the inwales and then put them on in 2 pieces. This will make the flexing easier and should not weaken the inwale since everthing will be coated in epoxy anyway.

Last night my wife and I were going to move the boat and I did something weird that caused me to drop the boat. All my fault she was not even close to the scene of the crime. It landed in the grass in my yard and I was pleased to see that it held up just fine. Really I am glad to have that happen now just in case it was going to fall apart I could just quit construction now.

It has started getting warm so I really hope to finish this thing off in the next few weeks. I have almost all of the sanding done so once the gunwales and inwales are in I think I will finish rather quickly.
All that will leave is the 2 seats, the compartments on the 2 ends and the cross brace pieces. I will probably put in a temporary "Carry it on you shoulder" piece and then make a nice one later. I will also probably hold off on the backrests for the seats for now too.

Next thing I really have to find out is what kind of paint to use on the bottom.
And how much paint it takes to paint the outside of a canoe. I would hope just a quart.

More work going on

Sorry no photos today but a progress report at least.

 

The second role of fiberglass came in. Same stuff way cheaper. Wish I had ordered the first role.  I looked up epoxy and it looks like it is not much cheaper to order so you never know.

 

I finished off the taping inside the boat. The last strips that went up to the nose of the boat along the curve on the center seem came out terrible. I am glad nobody will ever see them.

Next I carried the boat outside and turned it over to do some sanding and prepare for the center strip.  Since I had the epoxy out I started filling all of the gaps on the bottom.

I think I did 3 batches of epoxy before I had something else I had to go do.  Now that I have lived the pain of sanding off excess epoxy I am much neater with it. Some things you just have to learn the hard way.

 

Tonight I hope to fill some more of the gaps on the bottom and do some sanding

 

I have to find out what wood I am going to use for the Inwhales or is it Inwales?  The plans say to use Spruce which is what construction grade 2x4’s are made of.  I just can’t imagine that is a good wood for building a boat

Not much to write about

I ran out of Fiberglass tape and rather than go buy it at the store for $3 per yard I ordered it online for $14 for 50yds.

What a rip off these stores are and then they wonder why everybody shops on the internet.

 

So I have no material to work with for about a week but I still have some money in my pocket.

 

 

Taping is going well

It is funny in life some things you think will be really hard and they
end up being easy. Other things you think will be really easy and they
are quite difficult. Canoe building seems to go in that same logic.
All of the things I would have thought were difficult have been easy
so far. The taping is one of them I really thought this would be tough
but it is going nicely. I have now installed 6 of the 10 strips of
fiberglass tape(one goes on the outside) and it has gone very
smoothly. Thankfully a person on one of the forums suggested taping
the fiberglass in place and then putting the epoxy on it and that has
worked quite well. I was able to tape 3 in place and then epoxy all 3
in a row. I am sure that was a better plan than doing a full strip
and then tying to cut the next one with wet epoxy in the boat while my
epoxy hardened etc.

I found that using the top of a rubbermaid bin was a good epoxy pan to
get epoxy on the roller and then when it hardens it comes off of the
lid in 1 clean piece for cleanup. You can also see the 2 inch foam
roller that I have been putting the epoxy on with. I have not needed a
brush at all.

I have been sick lately so progress has stalled but I still am happy
with the progress. Once I get these last 3 strips installed I will
start cutting and scarfing some gunwales and inwales.

Finally ready to tape

It turns out that I did a poor job with the epoxy so I had a lot of sanding to do to get ready for adding the tape to the canoe.  I thought I was mixing the epoxy thick enough but that was not the case. It was more like Jelly than Peanut butter so it ran and made a mess.  Remember when you use epoxy the sooner the better on clean up.  Once it hardens it is a bitch to remove. So I worked a couple of nights sanding and have finally smoothed everything out enough to do the taping of the inside seams.  I would think if you were good with the epoxy this could be a 1 hour sanding rather than 4-6.

 

 My big problem is that my thickener really darkened my epoxy and I think that when I put on the tape and cover everything in a layer of plain epoxy it is going to look really bad.  If that is the case I will paint both the inside and out but if it looks ok I will just paint the outside.  I don’t see how some miracle could take place when I put epoxy everywhere and it will suddenly be beautiful so I am really planning on painting at this point.

 

After doing all of the sanding I am quite unimpressed with how well the joints have come out.  I don’t know if drilling my holes closer to the edges of the plywood would have helped top hold the pieces in place better or not. I was concerned that the zip ties would rip through the plywood if the holes were too close to the edge but I think in retrospect they would had held better if they were closer.  Unless I build another boat I will never know.

 

I added some pictures of some sanding disks I tried out for the sanding.  They are metal and I thought that they would last longer.  They were no good for this job at all.  In the end I used the 60 grid disk on a Dewalt Oscillating sander and it worked well.

 

I’ll send more pictures from the taping process