Week 2: It's ALIVE!!!!

Okay, so after finally getting out of the 100-grit desert, things have finally gotten interesting!  Once all the strakes and transoms were coated and sanded, it was finally time to start piecing things together.

The name for this style of boatbuilding (stitch-and-glue) is quite apropos.  In this case, the "stitching" is done using MANY pieces of copper wire to stitch the strakes in place.

The lowest strakes stiched onto the bottom panel

 Stitching the third panels on.

 Tightening a few loose stitches

 

A rather impressive row of stitches if I don't say so myself!

As one can imagine, this takes a fair amount of time because the stitches (about 250 in all) are prone to breaking.  It is vital to make sure that the hull is stitched exactly in its proper shape because one the hull is glued together, there is no going back.  Once the first couple rows of strakes were stitched on, I used the center bulkhead (which I just eyeballed the placement of) to help shape the strakes as I stitched them on.

Once the strakes were stitched on, it was time to to attach the fore and aft transoms.  

 Stitching the stern transom in place.

After being stitched on, the transoms were then permanently glued into place.  To do this, an epoxy fillet (pronounced fill-it) had to be made.  To do this, the epoxy had to be thickened with wood flour to a peanut butter consistency, which was then applied to the seam by squirting the thickened epoxy out of a hole cut into a zip-lock bag.  The line of epoxy was then smoothed out by using a "filleting tool": Basically, it's just a big, homemade Popsicle stick.  And for the record, the peanut butter epoxy was nasty stuff!

 Did I poop in a bag?  Nope, that would simply be an over-thickened hunk of epoxy that nearly burnt my hand!

 The hull with the transoms glued on permanently and the bulkheads stitched in place.

The next big step after the transoms are glued in place is to glue up the seams of the strakes, but first, a couple smaller tasks. 

First, a discussion on how to remove the stitches once the pieces are epoxied in place.  While ideally one can simply snip the stitch and pull it out, it is nearly impossible not to glue some of the stitches in place as well, so how do you get a glued stitch out?  Luckily, the epoxy can soften when its heated, and since the metal stitch conducts heat, you can simply heat up the tip of the stitch and then pull it out.  I was a bit leery at first, but sure enough, seemingly immovable stitches slip right off when a little heat is applied!

Second, before we glue the strakes together forever, we want to make darn sure the hull is in its proper shape.  The way to ensure this is to stitch the bulkheads into place, which is what I did.  Once that's done, it's time to flip her over!

 Belly up!

Once she's on her back, it was finally time to stiffen her up for good by filling all the seams with epoxy.  The trick to getting it right is the consistency of the epoxy.  If the epoxy is too stiff, it will not fill up the seam.  If it is too runny, it will just seep straight through the seams and make a mess on the inside of the boat.  As it was with affixing the transoms, the first gluing was more of a "tack-weld" around the stitches so that the stitches could be removed.

A tack-welded seam.  Notice how there is no epoxy under the stitches.

The tack-welds are more than strong enough to replace the stitches, but on their own they are neither all that aesthetically pleasing or, more importantly, watertight.  Therefore, after the welds dried, I removed the stitches and filled in all the holes in the seams as well as all the drill holes for the stitches, which was a fairly tedious process.

Also, I decided that I would build all the sailing components from scratch instead of buying the kit.  After crunching some numbers with Gorman, we realized I could probably save about $300 if I built the parts myself and made the sails, which doesn't bother me as it would be exciting to learn how to make my own sails!  To do this, I had to buy the full boat plans that include full sized cutouts for every part of the boat, which is kind of neat in case I ever wanted to build another boat or if anyone I know wants to in the future!  

Nautical Phrase of the Day: Boxing the Compass

Although this isn't really a common phrase used today, it's a fun sailing phrase so that's good enough for me.  Basically, it refers to a constantly shifting wind, which can be a bit of a pain to navigate under sail.  I don't know, it tickled my fancy so I thought I'd share.