Building a Fisher Prospector Canoe

Andy Roberts Canoe Trip on the Ochlocknee

2009-03-24T09:32:00.003-04:00

Check this out for a seriously twisty river

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7841579

Nice day for canoeing, trying out some pictures with the new waterproof camera.

Did a 14 mile trip in about 4 hours. More zigs and zags than you could ever imagine

Some Pictures of the cool stuff you see Canoeing in Florida

2009-03-02T22:24:00.004-05:00

I have wanted to post these pictures for a long time. This is from a trip Canoeing here on the Wakulla River. I don't think I have ever been on the Wakulla and not seen Manatees. Quite a treat

The Maiden Voyage

2008-06-19T22:26:00.006-04:00

Now before you start getting all crazy on me saying where are the life jackets for those people I will tell you that the lake we are in there is only 1 to 3 feet deep everywhere we went.

It Floats, No leaks

2008-06-09T10:04:00.000-04:00

I happen to have the good fortune of having a pool in my yard so it was pretty simple to go set the canoe in the pool on Saturday to see if it floats.

And it does.

I still needed to put on the varnish but no harm in seeing it float before that is done.

I had no problem finding volunteers to get in the boat. Some even bothered to put on pants first!

There were no leaks which was nice and in general it did what you expect a big bucket to do when you put it in water. Float.

I was quite surprised how much the front end lifted up when I sat in the back seat. Not at all like a rental canoe.

When I moved to the other end and sat in the “Front” seat everything leveled out just fine. As I was told it would.

If I canoe with one of the boys I guess I will have to carry a lot of beer to get the boat to ride level. The sacrifices I make.

All that is left is to put on some varnish and to buy two more bolts for the seats and put a bottom on the “Cup” holder and I will be finished.

I would rate the boat about a 4 to a 6 on quality because the finish just looks awful. As you can see in the pictures it is very spotty which I was not worried about during construction since I had planned to paint the outside. That was until I found out how much paint cost. But the big problem you can not see in the pictures. The finish is just not smooth. You want it to look like glass and mine just looks runny and rippled. I don’t know what I did wrong but it just is not something I will brag about. I suppose I could spend 6 months and about $400 dollars getting it perfect but I am so sick of boat making that this will do.

What happened to the progress

2008-06-02T13:39:00.000-04:00

Ok here are my excuses

A week ago Friday I used the last of my epoxy and then we went out of town for the 3 day weekend.

When I got back I was just plain tired and did not want to work on the boat.

Wednesday I was out biking, no work

Thursday I was out running, no work

Friday I was just Out!

Saturday I volunteered at a track meet all day so no work

Sunday it was about 100 degrees all day and too hot for me to go out to the shed.

Now it is Monday. I bought another quart of epoxy and the kids are gone for the week.

I hope to finish the boat this week.

If all goes well I will get the breast hooks done tonight

Epoxy the rest of the bottom tomorrow.

Epoxy the breast hooks Thursday along with putting on some varnish

Maybe some more varnish on Friday.

Saturday I could be done.

New expenses have been

Webbing

Stainless steel bolts

More Epoxy.

Building a boat is not cheap

A new Epoxy technique

2008-05-20T07:25:00.000-04:00

I got on the message boards this weekend. Song of the Paddle being the one I frequent most and asked what the heck I was doing wrong with applying my epoxy and darned if the answer was not easy to find.

It was not really rocket science. After you roll on the epoxy take a brush and smooth it out. That will pop all of the bubbles.

So I tried that with a small area Sunday and it worked perfectly. Then yesterday I went ahead and did the rest of the inside of the boat.

I had a little extra epoxy mixed up so I covered most of the gunwales. Mahogany with a fresh finish on it. Was there any question whether this was going to look good or not? Yes it looks fantastic.

So what is left.

1) Put some mounting blocks on the Breast hooks so that I can mount them to the boat

2) Sand the 2 Mahogany pieces that are at the end of the breast hooks

3) Round the gunwales at one end of the boat that some how I never did while I was sanding

4) Install the breast Hooks and end pieces

5) Make a cup holder add on to the rear thwart, and shape the whole thing

6) Sand the outside of the Hull one last time

7) Epoxy the Outside of the hull and the breast hooks

8) Varnish everything 2 or 3 times

9) Install the Thwarts and seats

10) Find some Brass Strips to make hooks for the ends of the boat.

Nothing major to do here but it all takes time and many of these steps require drying time for glue or finish prior to moving to the next step.

So it will still take time but nothing hard left to do

A weekend with some progress.

2008-05-19T08:03:00.001-04:00

I said some progress not tons of progress.

I coated the inside of the boat with epoxy on Friday? and it was a real let down. I got tons of air bubbles in the finish. I had to go back Sunday and wet sand the whole inside of the boat to get rid of the bubbles.

That was not too bad but more work than I wanted to do. So instead of doing the outside Sunday, I sanded and I have not moved forward. I think what I have to do is role on the finish and then brush it immediately after to pop the bubbles.

I did take some time while I watched MotoGp on Sunday to cover the seats with webbing. This was pretty easy and the roll of webbing I bought is so huge that I can probably recover the seats 4 or 5 times without running out.

I hope to move forward on the finish and get to the outside of the boat quickly. But everything is such a slow process. I had hopes of using the boat this coming weekend but I am pretty doubtful now. It is possible but doubtful.

Where am I

2008-05-16T06:05:00.000-04:00

The webbing for my seats came in and of course my wife says I am boring for getting black webbing. Every canoe I have seen used black so I thought it would be the best choice.

I started putting varnish on the seats so that I could then put on the webbing and the seats look great. That Cherry that the seats and thwarts are made of is really going to make the boat look good.

I am planning to start covering the boat with epoxy this weekend but I don’t know how fast or slow of a process that will be. Some epoxy and a few coats of varnish and I will be in the water.

Hanging the seats

2008-05-11T14:57:00.003-04:00

Very important. Measure the boat width at the spot where the seat will hang not up at the gunwale. My boat buldges out as it drops down from the top and I nearly ruined one of my seats.

This was really fairly easy. My wife and I leveled up the boat and then I used a level to figure out how long each hanger block needed to be. I had some pieces left over from trimming the seats that worked perfectly. I ran a hole through them at the drill press and viola.

In order to get everything to line up I drilled the front holes and then put every thing together with some zip ties (I don't have the hardware yet). Then I used a straight edge to line up where the second set of holes would need to be drilled. For some stupid reason I drilled the holes in my seats first which really made this more difficult. On the second seat I will drill the holes in the gunwales first and the seats last.

How to make your Breast hooks fit, the easy way

2008-05-11T14:33:00.005-04:00

First off if you want to do your breast hooks the easy way all you have to do is nail a piece of plywood on top of the front of your boat and then run a router with a guide bearing around the edge of the boat. Everything will work perfectly in about 2 minutes.

If you want to inset you breasthooks it is a little more difficult and takes some thinking.

So here we go.

First off measure down each side of the boat as far as you want the breast hook to go and make a mark.

Second Clamp a straight edge across where the breast hook will end.

Third take your handy angle bevel tool and set it to the angle that is created by the straight edge and the side of the boat.

Fourth Go set your miter gauge to the angle you found on you angle tool.

Fifth Cut all of your miters with that one setting on the miter gauge.

Sixth attach some stop blocks that set the plywood at the same height as the gunwales.

When you are finished with that you can attach the breasthook with glue, nails or whatever you like.

This all seems simple but it took me several days to figure out how to do it and then an afternoon to actually do the work. I still have not attached the pieces because I don't have any stainless steel screws but that should not bee too hard

Breasts and Canoes!

2008-05-06T07:36:00.001-04:00

Ok now that I have your attention I can talk about canoe building.

You can see from the pictures here that I am getting really close to finishing.

I sanded the final gunwale last night and it came out really good. The mahogany with the white stripe down the middle looks fantastic. I started to work on the breast hooks after I finished sanding and it ends up that this is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

My technique was to clamp a piece of 1/4” plywood to the top of the boat and then reach inside to scribe a line for where to cut. This all worked well but trying to cut that line perfectly on the bandsaw was not too successful. I had the piece close to perfect but this will be a primary focal point of the boat and I want it perfect. I may try to cut one with the table saw tonight and see if that gives a better result.

On an odd note I tried to buy the webbing for the seats yesterday and the place that advertises the webbing had gone out of business. Now it is back to the drawing board for the webbing. Not too big of a rush I should not need it for at least a week

Getting very close

2008-05-05T08:50:00.001-04:00

This week was one of those weeks where you do the things that are not necessarily so hard to do but they make the boat look a lot more complete. I made the 2 seats which was quite easy using the tennoning jig here. I am very lucky that I have a mortiser in my shop that a guy let me borrow so doing the mortise and tennons for the seat is quite simple and accurate.

As you saw before I did the yoke and thwart. My wife pointed out that I need to put cup holders on the thwart so I have a little more work to do there.

You can also see that I have now glued on the Outwale on one side. And look how many clamps it took. Every clamp I own is on that boat. If you don’t have 20-30 clamps I would say don’t start building a boat. It takes a lot. It would have been great to have 20 C-Clamps instead of the spring clamps but I made it all work.

I was out of town Saturday so I did not get any work done on the boat but I did get to do much this weekend. I did sand the gunwale on the side that is complete. Make the tiny filler triangles to go in the gap at the nose of the boat (If you look at the picture and visualize where the other outwale will be there is a small triangle of vacant realestate that had to be filled) and then glue on the other outwale.

At this point I need to do the front and back compartments(with cup holders)

Make cupholders for the twart

Cut the seats to length and create a mounting system.

Put the webbing on the seats.

Sand a ton

Epoxy the whole thing

Varnish the whole thing

Maybe 2 weeks.

The Yoke

2008-04-27T07:38:00.003-04:00

I am still in the process of glueing on all of the pieces I made for the Gunwales. It is a long process because it takes so many clamps on each little piece. So I can only do 1 or 2 pieces at a time. While I was waiting around last night for the glue to dry - not much fun I cut out the Yoke and the thwart and some pieces to make the seats out of. I used Cherry because..... that is what I had. And because the sun will really make the cherry look good. I was going to use some white wood but I just did not have any.
Today I hope to glue on the last couple of gunwale pieces and route the edges of the thwart and yoke.
I need to find out what dimensions to use for the seats and I can put them together and finish them
Besides that I need to construct the front and back compartments.

This thing may actually hit the water one day

Inwales or Inwhales?

2008-04-22T14:52:00.000-04:00

Not sure what they are really called.

I think I may be one of the least knowledgeable canoe builders there is. I know how to do woodworking but I can’t get the Canoe/Boat lingo down.

I have taken pictures on several occasions and they have come out blurry so this is the first time in a while I have had pictures.

I am in the process of gluing in the inwales with epoxy. It requires so many clamps that I can’t do more than one piece at a time.

I decided to get creative at the ends of the boat and use relief cuts rather than steaming the wood to bend it. I am not worried about strength with the relief cuts because I will have a triangle of wood in the point of the boat where that relief cuts are to give added support. Besides that the relief cuts get filled with epoxy and essentially create a solid piece. I also opted to cut 2 strips of wood for the inwales and glue them in separately. Once they are in you should not be able to tell that it is 2 strips of wood and there will be less stress on the wood than if it one large strip was being bent. In case what I am saying is not clear. Instead of using one piece of 15 x 35mm wood for the inwale I used 2 15x17mm strips. I am gluing in the top piece first and then the bottom piece will be butted right up against the top piece. After sanding it will look 1 piece. This also makes it easier to fit the cross pieces in. I have no idea what they are called.

I ended up using Mahogany for the gunwales. I had some pieces that somebody had given me that use to be trim in their house so it worked out well.

I will start on the seats soon and probably use cherry. I really should get on the stick and get the seats done so I can get this thing in the water soon. It is the perfect time to be using the canoe right now.

If you have any tips for painting the outside of the boat please let me know what kind of paint you used or any tricks for applying it

In case you wonder

2008-03-28T14:23:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-17T14:47:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-12T10:48:00.000-04:00

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

2008-03-08T12:12:00.001-05:00

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

2008-03-03T07:43:00.001-05:00

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

Will it hold?

2008-02-21T10:08:00.001-05:00

I was noticing on another blog that when the person added filler to his epoxy it stayed about the same color as the wood. I wish I would have found that color filler when I was at the store. Mine causes the epoxy to turn dark brown and be very noticeable. With this guys boat you can even tell he put in epoxy. That would explain why I keep thinking that every other boat I see is built much better than mine. You just can’t see their epoxy.

Last night I cut out about 80-90% of the zip ties holding this rig together and nothing fell apart. There were a few places that I was not comfortable with how well the epoxy was hold so I left the zip ties in and added some more epoxy.

In one spot there was quite a large gap that I was shocked and pissed to see. It was not there before and I don’t know what I did to cause the gap now. I would have never left a gap this large and it will be quite visible.

Later I grabbed a file and started smoothing out some of the fillets which is tedious but not as bad as I thought it would be. I would say maybe one or 2 evenings of cleaning things up and I will be ready to apply the Fiberglass tape

Observations after Filleting

2008-02-20T08:25:00.000-05:00

I did not actually work on the canoe last night but I went to see how things held together.

The boat is very solid now. I took the forms out and it only had about 1” of spring back when I released the clamps. I thought that seemed pretty good. What I did see is that there is a lot of clean up to do and that I need to be way more careful with clean up when I do the epoxy. Basically I am lazy and this is not a lazy mans game. I like to do the fun part of things and when clean up comes I usually put it off. Well I am going to have a lot of sanding to do as a result of that. I think something more pliable and wider will be the way to go maybe I will try to use a piece of Formica. It will bend with the shape of the boat and should pick up more excess epoxy. Judging by how things look so far this may end up being a painted canoe inside and out. Nice thing is that decision can wait until very late. I have a hunch that when I try to sand everything smooth I will go through the top layer of the plywood in several places and it won’t be attractive. I will try to be very careful and avoid that. If it looks nice no paint, if it looks like crap I paint it and nobody will know.

If you decide to build one of these boats. I suggest you buy the instructional video because I can say for sure that the farther I go on the more I realize that I don’t know what the hell I am doing. But now I am on a mission. I’ll figure this thing out eventually it just may weigh 800 lbs when I am done. It will float though.

I will be out of town this weekend so no progress will be made over the weekend. I may get to it today or Thursday but that will be all.

More learning and some progress

2008-02-19T07:36:00.001-05:00

Well the first thing to tell you is I think I found out what a chine is.

You see if a boat has a smooth curve to its hull from side to side not front to back it does not have chines. If it is put together with panels it will have angles at the joints. These I believe are the chines.

Sounds good to me. What do I really care. I just want to have a long pointy bucket that floats.

Sunday I went all around the boat with epoxy dabbing some here and there at the joints trying to tack the boat together so it could have the zip ties removed.

Monday I went and checked my results. Not so hot. Some of the places were bonded by many were not. So I moved to the next level and mixed up some epoxy with thickener. 3 squirts at a time. So I would not waste too much. And started trying to make some nice neat fillets (corner smoothing globs of goo) along the joints. This is not the easiest thing to do because you need it to be neat and you know everywhere that it dries that you don’t want it you are going to have to sand it away. That would be easy if the epoxy was not harder than the wood but it is so when you sand it you have to be careful not to sand through the plywood. I made a couple of spatula looking things to smooth it into the chines and they were pretty effective. They took about 10 seconds to shape on the sander. I used them to apply the epoxy and to smooth it out.

I thought previously that you did not put the fillet epoxy on until it was all tacked together and then you laid the fiberglass tape right on top of the fillet material. I think some people do it this way and others don’t. From what I can tell no 2 people have ever built a boat with the same technique. I think in the end success is based on how much epoxy you had to use to get your long pointy wooden bucket to float without leaking. Personally at this point I would be amazed if I finish this thing with just one gallon which sucks since as you can see over to the right they are not exactly giving this stuff away.

In the photos you see some after shots from adding some of the fillet material, the clippers that I have found very handy for clipping away zip ties. My spatula tools for applying epoxy. Some little V’s that I cut out to stick on the bottom of the front of the boat to squeeze those panels into place for gluing. The zip ties were just not cutting it. Finally there is a picture of the Respirator I have been using. It was $20 and I am real happy with it.

Hopefully tonight it will be held together better. If so I guess I will have some sanding to do to smooth the fillets. Then I will need to make some braces to replace the forms so that I can tape the inside seams of the boat. I need to find a better way to put on epoxy faster I think I may try some 2” foam brushes. So far I have just been using some ½” glue brushes but when I need to go 15’ 8” before the epoxy hardens that will not do

A quick lesson in how to get rid of gaps in your canoe

2008-02-17T22:30:00.001-05:00

This is really just helpful if the gap is near one of the ends of the boat.

So if you find a big gap which was not too hard on my canoe. You can get rid of it

Step 1 Find a big gap between your plywood strips. This may be a chine. I have no idea what a chine is but I should probably learn what all of the boating terms mean and what they are.

Step 2. Take a picture of it. Just kidding

Step 3. Cut the zipties from the gap to the end of the boat. You will have to do this on both sides but if there is a gap it should be on both sides.

Step 4. Pull the plywood strip to the outside and let it hang free from the lower strip. At this poin the gap should go away and there will be overlap at the end of the boat.

Step 5. Trace a line down the edge of the overlapping plywood. Do this on both sides

Step 6. Push the overlapping plywood to the inside of the boat and plane the strip down to the line. Do both sides

Step 7. Put the thing back together

Yeah you can tell I am amateur I did not take an after shot. Just imagine it looks perfect.

One thing I did today was modify my saw horses so the boat could hang in a sling of rope and then I move the boat to the saw horses. It seems to help the boat stay in the proper shape better

This was the last gap I fixed and I started to spot epoxy the inside of the boat this afternoon. Of course the second you start epoxying you see gaps everywhere that you missed. Too bad they will get filled with thickened epoxy at this point. At least on my boat. I eventually got plenty of spots tacked together so I can hopefully cut out the zip ties tomorrow.

I have no idea what I am supposed to do with the forms after I cut out the zip ties. You can possibly fiberglass with them in place but If I remove them I am sure the boat will loose shape. I really don't know if this boat will end up the shape the forms hold it in when it is all said and done but as long as it does not leak I dont know if I really care. All I really need is a point bucket that floats.

Solved one problem

2008-02-15T14:45:00.000-05:00

I finally figured out that I could screw a block of wood onto the forms right at the top corner of each side and then clamp the block of wood to the side of the boat. Simple solution that is very helpful. Now I can move on with getting the panels to fit together a little better and then get to glueing/epoxying.

From what I read the hardest part is going to be putting in the Gunwales. Or to be specific getting the gunwales to bend while I try to install them. I hope this is not too much of a bear but I think it will be. I have not even decided on what wood I am going to use yet. I like the idea of a white wood inside and a dark wood ousidee with the triangle in the front and back being dark to give a nice effect. This is really all anyone will see so it needs to look good.

I don’t have any 16’ wood so I am not sure if I should go hunt some down or scarf some together. Thank god for google

Fitting everything together

2008-02-14T08:29:00.001-05:00

Last night I worked for about and hour shaving planks here and there so things fit together better.

It ends up it is not so hard to do. I just clipped a few zip ties. Filed for a moment in the spot that looked like it needed work and strapped it back together. I could probably leave things as they are but I will work a bit more on getting things as close as possible. I put some before and after shots in of one of the gaps I fixed

I still don’t know how you get the forms to stay in place while you shape the boat. I see pictures on the web sites with the forms just sitting where they need to be no problem. That is not how things work for me

I thought I had a better picture of the form problem I have. But as you can see in the photo here 2 forms are in place and the left side is not pulling up on the form at all. I don’t know if I am supposed to tack the board to the form or what. Then when I put the last form in place the 2 forms you see become loose and just fall over.

Pictures of the forms

2008-02-13T07:50:00.000-05:00

I took some pictures last night of the forms while I finished cutting them out.

There are 5 forms. A center form and then an A and B template. I cut out all three shapes and then used the router to duplicated the A and B forms. Using the router on the copies takes about 30 seconds as opposed to the hour it takes to lay out the whole thing and then cut it out with a circular saw.

I was fairly annoyed when I put in the end forms and all the center forms fell out. I don’t know how you are supposed to get them all to stand up. Patience will win I suppose you just have to make sure everything is right before you start gluing

I also included some pictures of how the seams are lining up in the plywood. As you can see some places the seams are perfect and in others there is a gap of about 3/16” I am waiting to get the forms in place to start working on fixing the gaps. They say you can have gaps as big as 1 cm and still be fine but I just don’t think Norm Abrams would approve of that. Of course he would build the whole damn boat in 30 minutes but that is a different story.

Cutting the Forms

2008-02-12T10:59:00.000-05:00

I had not seen anything about cutting out the forms that go inside the canoe while you are getting everything tightened up and fit together. Now I know why. It is crappy work. They are not fun to cut out. There are tons of measurements that you can mess up, and in general you are in the mood to work on a Canoe not some forms. It is necessary so nothing to do but do it. Realistically these may be the most important part of the build. How would I know? I think they had better be right or else the canoe won’t be shaped right but I don’t know how exact they have to be to not cause problems.

I took advice from somebody’s blog and cut these with a straight edge and a circular saw using ½ mdf. I have so far cut 2 and have one left. I completely forgot to take pictures probably because I was not having much fun doing it. Once I cut the 3 out I will use the outer ones as templates to cut their replicas with a router. That way I won’t have to do all of the measuring again. I have a hunch that I won’t get to work on the boat again until Friday but we’ll see how things go.

Looking at the canoe all strapped together I think I have a lot of trimming to do to get all the seams to fit tightly together. I don’t know if the forms will make things better or worse but you know what I am hoping for.

Putting together the pieces

2008-02-09T21:54:00.000-05:00

This is not a simple matter. I am surprised how hard it is to strap this thing together. I think it gets much easier after the first 4 pieces are together. It seems the key is getting the ends pulled together very well before starting the next piece.

I quickly ran out of zip ties I think it will take 250 to do it all

I plan to finish up tomorrow and maybe cut out the forms

I wrote this long winded blog entry last night explaining the rest of the process and it got lost. I was using that POS computer the OLPC. Maybe I will rewrite it tonight. For now here are some pictures

Moving right along

2008-02-07T15:22:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days where the visible progress is low but there was quite a bit of progress.

First off I went and found the right size zip ties. I had big ones and little ones and I needed the medium ones. If you go to the store looking you need the size that holds 45lbs the ones I got are 6 inches. The 75lb 8 inch size is too big and there is a 4” size that is too weak.

My son and I had already marked all of the places to drill holes for the ties so I just needed to drill the holes. I believe I already mentioned that a friend told me to drill the holes before epoxying the strips together so I would only need to drill 5 sets of holes instead of 10. That was a big time savings. I made a little jig for drilling that made sure all of the holes were perfectly vertical. It also makes sure that all of the holes are the same distance from the edge and will be covered by the fiberglass tape. It is just a block of wood with a large hole for seeing the line to align the jig with and a small hole to put the drill bit in.

Then on the underside a small block of wood is attached to line up with the edge of the plywood.

I had done a test piece to be sure the epoxy worked the night before which it did. So all that was left was to line up some panels and epoxy them.

The first thing I did was rearrange my shop. I put the table saw against the wall and moved the workbench which is on wheels out to the middle of the shop. It is 8 feet long so using that and some roller stands gave me a good workspace. My shop is only 24 feet long so leaving room for the door on one end and the band saw on the other end there was not much extra space.

I was surprised how hard it was to get everything clamped and straight. It took about ½ hour and 2 beers to get 4 pairs clamped up. Finally everything was straight and I put on the epoxy. 1 pump from each container was about perfect to do 4 seams. I put it on rather thick so I could sand it later.

Tonight I hope to epoxy some more and maybe draw out the shape of the forms that go inside the boat during construction. I may not have time though.

One last item, I sent an email to Fisher with a question about whether I need to put fiberglass inside and out or just inside an was impressed to get a response in just a few hours. They have been great to deal with in every way. Remember they are thousands of miles and an ocean away from me but are as helpful as if they lived around the corner.

I love the internet.

I usually tape both sides of the centreline seam. The bow and stern l use a large epoxy fillet on the inside and tape the outside. the other chine seams l tape the inside and simply fill the outside with thickened epoxy.
Regards,
Paul Fisher
SFDesign

Epoxy Instructions Link

2008-02-05T09:15:00.000-05:00

http://www.gregboats.com/pages/epoxy.html

I went and bought all of the fiberglass and epoxy for this rig. It ends up you need West 105 and 205, plus 2" fiberglass tape. I was fairly surprised that it all added up to $244 by the time I was out the door. Hopefully I wont need any more epoxy

What I have learned today

2008-02-05T08:44:00.000-05:00

I did not have time to go and buy the epoxy today but I did take some time to read about how far apart to make the stitch holes and how big to make them. The website says to make the holes 1/8” if you are using zip ties and to put them 8” to 12” apart. I guess the straight sections don’t need as many stitches as the curves.

I did make a thin piece of flexible plywood with marks for the stitch locations that I can just hold up against the edge of all of my strips to mark where the holes need to be drilled.

A friend gave me a good piece of advice which is to drill the stitch holes before I join the long strips together (turn the 20 pieces into 10) so that I only have to drill the holes 5 times instead of 10

Things I don’t know:

I have not found out how far from the edge to drill the holes for the stitches yet

I have lost the information that said which number West Epoxy to buy

Tonight I hope to buy the epoxy and zip ties and drill the holes

Triming the Strips of wood

2008-02-03T17:21:00.000-05:00

As I said before I was quite disappointed with how things went cutting out the strips of wood for the boat. So I just cut away from the line and planned on Planing or filing the boards to shape. If that did not work I would make MDF templates and cut them out with a router. It ended up that using the 3 tools shown in the pictures it was not too diffictult to get them all planed down to the correct shape. It took about 5 hours to cut out the last four sets of strips and plane them all.

The plane you see in the pictures with the blue on it is an interesting tool I bought at a woodworking show. If you are not good at sharpening it is the plan for you. It uses box cutter razor blades that are very cheap and rather than do any sharpening you just throw away the blade and move on.

If you are not currentl good at sharpening planes look up an article called "Scary Sharp" it explains how to sharpen a plane with wet sandpaper and it works very well I did this about a year ago and it was a tremendous help today when using the plane. I had read that the plane would dull very quickly on the plywood but I never had to sharpen mine all day.

I will buy some epoxy resin in the next few days to start attaching the panels together

The strips clamped into the face vice on my workbench

On the other end of the bench I clamped in a board to support the strips

I was able to put a clamp under the bench using the bench dog hole and clamp the strips to the side of the bench.
This was very helpful

Underside of bench

Plane that uses razor blades

Me Planing

I don't know what this is called but it works real well for this job

My hand plane

Making sure everything is square and stopping at the pencil line

Cutting out the strips

2008-02-02T17:59:00.000-05:00

I am really quite unhappy with how things are going so far with the cut out. As you can see from the pictures the jigsaw just does not cut straight enough for this. I know you are thinking user sucks but really it is not going well. The problem is not just cuting straight on the horizontal. On the vertical it wobbles too. If you get off line and turn the blade does not stay vertical.
I have a couple of ideas. First off I cut this first section proud of the line and I will try to grind, plane, sand or rasp to the line and see how that goes. If that does not go well I will make a template out of mdf and then cut the rest of the boards with a router and guide bearing. One way or another it will all turn into a boat one day

Just found a good link that will be useful in the future I hope

2008-02-01T11:27:00.001-05:00

I found out that Yahoo has a Selway-Fisher Builders group.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFD_builders_sailors/messages

Shared Knowledge makes the world go round

Layout Photos

2008-01-31T20:37:00.000-05:00

These are some pictures from doing the layout for my canoe. As you can see part of my work table right now is my Table saw. I will roll it out of the way soon and use saw horses instead. In the second photo you get an idea of what the plans they sent look like they are good although some of the numbers are hard to read. In the last 2 photos I thought you may be able to see some of the lines from doing the layout but they are pretty faint

In the last 2 photos I thought you may be able to see some of the lines from doing the layout but they are pretty faint

Starting out on my first Boat

2008-01-31T14:04:00.000-05:00

I have been talking about building a boat for quite a while now and after lots of searching finally came up with a plan that I liked for a boat.

It is now January 31, 2008 and I have gotten the plans and the plywood for the boat and now I am ready to start.

The boat is a Selway-Fisher Prospector. Usually just referred to as a Fisher Prospector. Plans available at http://www.makeacanoe.com/. I ordered the plans on a Thursday and received them on Tuesday which impressed me since the company is in the UK and I am in Florida. I looked around quite a bit at plywood for the boat and got down to 3 choices. Luan which is very cheap but did not seem durable enough $12 a sheet, 5.2 mm Birch which seemed like the best choice. Nice grain and good flexibility at a decent price of $16 per sheet. The last choice was just pine plywood that was ¼ inch. It was just too ugly for the boat although $17 per sheet was not bad. I went with the Birch and took it home to get started.

I will take some pictures and try to make it interesting and informative so that others might be able to build their boats more easily.

The picture here is copied from the vendor’s website