Days 4 and 5 and PICTURES!

Hello folks!  Took a brief hiatus from boatbuilding last week and headed down to my family's beach house to catch some fish and crabs!  We also took our pet rabbit Dapper with us.  It was his first trip to the beach house, but after the first day or so, he made himself right at home.  Wouldn't you agree?

Now to get back on subject.  My love affair with boatbuilding has definitely progressed from the honeymoon stage into the "I guess I love you, but this is not going to be as easy as I had hoped" stage.  For some reason, the layers of epoxy simply will not go on as smoothly as they should, which isn't the end of the world, but it does mean a TON of sanding is required.  Although there is an electric sander at my disposal, I find it quicker and safer (don't want to accidentally sand completely through to the wood) to simply sand by hand.  It's a great workout, but it is severely delaying progress.  After messing with various application techniques and tools, it seems to me that it is most likely the combination of this particular epoxy with the warm Texas climate that is my problem.  Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it at this point, so I just have to accept that this boat, like most women, really enjoys a good massage.  Although FYI, I did have better success with using foam brushes than with the suggested foam rollers.  It takes longer, but produces less bubbles and a little more even surface.

That being said, the last couple days have been fairly uneventful.  Seeing as how every piece of the boat must being double coated in epoxy (on both sides), the general routine is roughly 4-6 hours of sanding followed by applying a layer of epoxy which cures overnight.  In most cases, this means 4 rounds of applying epoxy and sanding per board.  At this point, I have coated all the strakes, bulheads, and many of the smaller pieces in 2 coats of epoxy, although the final sanding has yet to be done.  The seats, skeg, and rubrails still need to be coated, but since they will not be required for some time, I figure that I can be coating them on the side while I do more eventful things like actually stitching the hull together (I just want to put something together already!  Is that so much to ask???).

In other news, the long lost camera cable was finally discovered... in my computer bag where it belonged.  That being said, I can finally post pictures.  Below is the progression of things so far.

Epoxy and fillers. YAY!

Checking inventory

Gluing the joints together. The buckets are filled with water to apply the necessary pressure.  

You can see the tip of a puzzle joint in this picture...

Gluing the transom support to the bow transom.

First layer of epoxy.  How PRETTY!...

And then the sanding began and things got ugly. Rinse and repeat 4X.

 Applying the final coat (for now) to the bulkheads.

Days 2 and 3

DAY 2: SANDING
After having glued the joints together, the manual said that the next step would be to coat everything in two layers of epoxy.  As I was to discover, there was an evil Step 1.5 that I was blindsided by...

Having waited 24 hours for the epoxied joints to harden, I arrived at the shop around 6:30am hoping that I hadn't glued a stray strake to the floor by accident.  To my relief, the plastic sheets did their job and all was right with the world... sort of.  Upon inspecting my joints, I realized that there was a lot of ugly excess epoxy that had hardened outside of the joints.  The book mentioned a "slight sanding" to remove the excess glue, so I whipped out my handy sanding block and went to work, but after 10 minutes of struggling with a lump of epoxy on a single board, I found myself getting frustrated, as my sand paper was seemingly grinding down faster than the epoxy (and sand paper isn't exactly cheap!).

About that time, Gorman made his early morning appearance (something that is seemingly becoming a routine), and after a polite "good morning" he silently accessed the situation and came over to watch me pretend to know what I was doing.  After I minute or two, he chuckled under his breath and asked, "Have you ever used an electric sander before?"  I said no, and he went to his magical cabinet and manifested 3 electric hand tools I had never seen before.  After a brief tutorial on each one of them and a warning about not sanding through the veneer of the plywood, he turned to leave me to my work, but as usual, I had several more questions for him, the chief one being if there was a way of avoiding so much sanding in the future.  "No, you did fine," he said, "there's no real way around it... tedious work."  And with that, he vanished like Merlin after a cryptic lesson with Wart, and I was left alone to figure the rest out for myself.

The next 4 hours I spent sanding.  The electric sanders were great for taking off the first big lumps of epoxy, but to get all of it off, I had to use some elbow grease.  As Gorman said, the worst mistake you can make is to sand through the 1st veneer of the plywood; it looks terrible, and you can't fix it.  This is extremely easy to do because the epoxy comes off much slower than any wood that might be nearby, and I'll admit that at least twice I scraped a little too much off, but there's no use crying over spilled milk.

There are two reasons that you need to sand when working with epoxy.  First, in this particular instance leaving the epoxy as is would've created ugly bumps in the the finished hull which is no bueno.  Also (and this goes for every time you use epoxy), when the epoxy cures in creates a very smooth finish that those not adhere well to anything, including additional coats of epoxy.

Near the end of my sanding escapade, George, another neighbor of mine, came to pay a visit as well.  George is a friendly old yankee who also knows a good deal about sailing.  He also knows a lot about rocks (he is a retired geologist), and when I was young he taught me all kinds of cool things about rocks and fossils, which were, and still kind of are, a fascination of mine.  Anyway, he and Gorman are good friends, and he drops in every so often just to shoot the breeze.  After seeing the "fun" I was having, he said, "Yeah, Gorman hates sanding."  Well, at least we have that in common.

I slept like a baby that night.

Workhorse of the Day
Me


DAY 3: MORE FUN WITH EPOXY

Despite all my doomsday talk about epoxy, actually working with it is a lot of fun (aside from the sanding afterward, which sucks).  Mixing it is fun; the chemistry behind it is fascinating, but most of all, when you spread it over wood, it makes the wood shine. 

Up until now, the wood has looked rather drab.  Although I knew it was some of the best plywood possible for boatbuilding and even in spite of being able to look over at Gorman's beautiful sailboat, which has some of the same plywood on its deck (and looks AMAZING), the surfacy fact that my untreated plywood wasn't very pretty was disheartening.  That is, until I added my first coat of epoxy.

As usual, Gorman appeared shortly after I arrived at the shop with a few words of advice about how to avoid/remove any bubbles that might appear as I was spreading the epoxy.  Also, we had a very interesting conversation about epoxy, as Gorman used to work at a company where he actually designed and made epoxies, and his understanding of chemistry is awesome.  Then, as usual, he left as suddenly as he had came, and I got to work.

Applying the first stroke of epoxy on that bare wood was an ecstatic experience.  As the roller moved over the wood, the greyish, dusty color of the wood exploded into vibrant shades of amber and brown, and I was filled with hope that this thing I was working so hard could actually manifest into the dream I had in my mind.  Applying the epoxy didn't take long, 2 hours tops, and afterward I sat there planning the next steps.  Quickly I came to the unfortunate realization that I was going to need to sand down this beautiful coat of epoxy before I could apply the second coat, which would temporarily return the wood to a greyish color again (although still a bit nicer than before).  How like life.  At certain points in our journey we catch glimpses of the ultimately wonderful result of our hard work, which is just enough fuel to get us through the impending difficulties that inevitably manifest themselves along the way, but as long as we can hold on to that hope and fight the good fight, He takes care of us in the end.


Nautical Phase of the Day(s): Bamboozle 

The word Bamboozle is actually a throwback to the 17th century during the numerous naval conflicts between the English, Dutch and Spanish (okay, and French...I guess).  In several naval conflicts, the Spanish would get a little dirty and hoist up false flags to confuse their enemies.  This tactic came to be known as "bamboozling". 

Day 1: Checking Inventory and Gluing the Strakes (Aka. EPOXY)

After a couple weeks of acting like a kid waiting for Christmas to arrive, the boat kit arrive last Wednesday, but due to prior plans construction did not officially commence until today!  At some point, I hope to post pictures, but seeing as how I lost my camera cable, the pictures will have to wait for another day (sorry!).

So the first step is simply to open everything up and make sure all the components are there.  Gunwales? Check! Strakes, transoms, seats, mast supports? Check!  Epoxy, thickeners, etc?  Yup, it was all there.  So, after setting it all out and marveling that somehow all of it would assemble into a beautiful sailboat (hopefully!), it was time to get down and dirty.

Actually, not so fast.  The FIRST order of business was to read the manual.  I know; I'm disobeying a cardinal rule of manhood by saying that, but the simple fact is that boatbuilding is not something can eyeball as you go... not at all.  As I was to find out, something as seemingly simple as gluing two boards together would become its own lesson in chemistry.

The manual's first several pages are pretty much a forewarning about epoxy.  To sum it up, it said, "Don't screw up, don't screw up, don't screw up".  But its glue!  How bad can that be?  Well, think of super glue, multiply it's bonding strength by infinity and set it on fire (and that's really quite an accurate description).  There are several ways to mess up, ranging from setting the shop on fire to permanently fixing the hull of your boat to the floor.  Basically, ll epoxies have two components: a resin (a polyepoxide) and a hardener (a polyamine).  Epoxies can vary greatly in strength, and to going further in depth that that would require a little organic chemistry, so we'll leave it at that.  As ling as the resin and hardener remain separated, they exist as nonvolatile, happy liquids, but when you mix them together, they undergo a fairly violent reaction and result in an EXTREMELY hard solid.  As the reaction occurs, it gives off a good deal of heat, and that is why it is vitally important to NEVER mix a large batch of epoxy (larger than maybe 10oz) because it will literally set on fire.  Secondly, because it is an exothermic reaction, the heat generated (and lovely Texas heat) only serve to progressively speed up the reaction, and although the epoxy won't completely set for several days, it will be unusable about 15 minutes after it is mixed, so you have to work fast and plan ahead.  Lastly, one drop of the stuff on an unintended piece of wood can be a fiasco.  Because it makes a bond that is much stronger than the strength of the wood, if you accidentally glue two mistaken pieces of wood together, you might as well throw them away.  Luckily, there is a solution.  Epoxy does not stick to plastic, so as long as you put a layer of plastic (a plastic paint tarp works great, but packing tape and plastic wrap are handy for smaller objects too) between the epoxy and something you don't want to become a permanent fixture on your boat, you'll be okay!

Okay, so NOW we can actually start building.  Let's start with a question.  If wood planks and sheets of plywood only come in 8 foot lengths and your boat is 12 feet long, how do you make one continuous strake/plank/etc?  The answer is to use a joint.  There are many kinds of wood joints, but for my little Passagemaker dinghy, the only two I had to deal with were scarf joints and puzzle joints.  A scarf joint is made by basically whittling down the ends of each plank to overlapping points, and using epoxy to join the two planks.  A puzzle joint is pretty much what it sounds like.  You basically make the ends of each sheet of plywood corresponding puzzle pieces and join them with epoxy.  In theory, this sounds quite easy, and once you get the hang of it, it is, but manhandling puzzle pieces that weigh 20lbs a piece while juggling hot epoxy and making sure nothing unintentionally gets glued together is a bit of a feat.  First off, you have to make sure you have a way of applying pressure to the joints once they are glued together.  In my case, I used either used spare wood scraps (INVALUABLE by the way) pressed down on the joint by a bucket of water or used a piece of scrap wood as a brace and applied pressure with c-clamps (also invaluable... and so are spring clamps!).  All of which had to be wrapped in some sort of plastic by the way.

And just doing this took a good 4 hours to complete.  Actually, while seeing it written down doesn't sound like much, I felt pretty impressed with myself by the time I was done, although I'll save the majority of my self-praise for tomorrow when I check to make sure that it all bonded like it was supposed to...

The next step will be to coat most everything in a couple layers of epoxy, which will take about 4 days.  Oh yes, I forgot to mention that because epoxy is SO hard, it not only acts as the bonding agent/water sealant, it is also the primary casing of the finished hull.  While fiberglass will be added to support some of the areas that will receive the most abuse, the boat will primarily be sheathed in only epoxy because it is THAT strong.  In all actuality, the wood is there primarily to shape the boat rather than being the actual support (and it's quite pretty).

Pictures to come!


Workhorses of the day:
Disposable WOODEN "chip" paint brushes-- the epoxy destroys these little guys in no time, but to those who have and are about to die, I salute you.

Epoxy mixing containers-- Those little plastic disposable clear cups work great.  The red party cups are too big.  Again, I'll probably blaze through 100 of them by the end of the project.

Spring clamps- I am SOO glad I grabbed a couple of these.  While c-clamps are great for applying long term pressure, the spring clamps hold stuff together long enough for you to leisurely screw the c-clamps on.

Nautical Term of the Day: By and Large
Today, "by and large" means "generally speaking" or "all in all", and this term is a throwback to the days of the first triangular sails!

"Large" meant having wind approach from behind the boat.  In the days of square-rigged sails, ships could only travel by sail with the wind, so having a large wind was a favorable thing.  However, "by" was slang for a ship pointing into the wind, which at the time was not of much use. 

Over time sailing ships began incorporating jibs, stays, and other fore-and-aft sails, which enabled ships to travel into the wind, and these new ships were said to be able to travel "by and large", or in other words "in all conditions".  From there it is easy to see how "by and large" became the generalizing term it is today!