Half boat, half skeleton!

I must say how pleasing this step is. Seeing the topsides dry fitted really feeds the mental image of what I am building. It also rewards all of the hard fairing work that I have been doing; you set those sheets on and they kiss the bulkheads in just the right way…

So it is worth spending the additional time on the fairing, and it is worth not worrying too much about little gaps. I have managed the gaps by screw-clamping only where there is contact, and not pulling it in tight. By drawing the screws tight I will distort the topsides, so the gluing will need to go slowly.

I have set the clamping distances by eye attempting to minimise the number of clamps thus allowing the ply to find it’s fair curve. Heavy close-together clamping will create small divets. It feels “zen” leaving the wood to do it’s thing.

Port topside half dry fitted, bow looking aft.

Inside my head, I am still planning the glue up. I have read the posts on the forum and asked Chris Dearden and Robert Ayliffe many times. My concern is; do I butt join off the boat and use a team to fit it? Do I attach a butt to one end of each sheet first and put the sheets on one at a time? Do I do it all wet at once to maximise the chance of fair joins?

I suppose the easiest will be to work one panel at a time, but do it in one day. Keep it all wet, add the butts as I go. This should be three person job (one mixing, one cleaning up, one fitting).

From the starboard side.

Robert suggests I dry fit and assess the joins to see what is needed. This is what I am doing. The first fit is great, the butt should pull in sweetly. Hopefully this is sign of things to come!

A worrysome gap

So the picture is of a gap on the sheer clamp, here it is at the very top. It is caused through the twist of the clamp at various stations that wasn’t pulled out when gluing them up. In places it is 6mm, and varies over the length of the boat, from nothing to the 6mm.

Now I could laminate on some timber and fair it back, or I could fill the gap with epoxy when gluing on the topsides. The latter is very attractive. It will require clamping on that top edge carefully to not distort the topsides and extra epoxy.

Hardly the craftsman’s choice. But will it affect the strength? Will it ever be seen? I will know, and I think (think) I can live with it…

So these past two days I have been going over the fairing, I am happy except for the gap, but I feel keen to get over this hurdle. I am now studying up on fitting the topsides, the NIS forum on Yahoo has been helpful, as has Robert Ayliffe who is holed up on Kangaroo Island working on a big boat’s keel and answers his phone. Thanks everyone.

Using a straight-edge to check fairness. Also followed up with a sheet of ply to check three dimensional contact.

I think November saw a total of five hours spent on the tools. It is disappointing, but a reality when you are in your 40s. I am a little guilty, but I will not let it permeate my happiness or resolve. So here are my excuses in photos:

This box is old, possibly c1910. It’s handles are gracefully curved so it is a pleasure to pick up. It is light enough to kick around, but strong enough to leap upon.

I know it performed all of these tasks for my grandfather, and his father. I know it gave me the altitude to work at their level when I was small. My little daughters still use it to work the tools.

It also was my treasure chest when pirates were in play. And still it is my treasure.

The mysterious individual had a command of spreading epoxy that I can only dream of, he whipped out 3 meters of herringbone pattern schmeer quicker than I could butter a piece of toast.

Geoff had been watching on since he landed on our building site back in March, offering encouragement and advice and listening to my amateur rants about wood construction. His two brothers and nephew have popped their heads in the shed during their work breaks, but had kept their distance from the actual labour because my lovely wife is running the house build and has a better sense of priorities than I do.

So this week I waited for the epoxy to cure and rested my strained back knowing the next task would be a real thrill, fairing the sides and stem to take the outer plywood skin. Fairing the stem is a satisfying task, you take an ugly laminated lump of scrap ply and make a magic pointy front thing out of it.

It took most of Saturday’s build time, but it felt goooood.

Rough sawn to a line.

Finished and pointy.

I am not sure when it spit, but I know I let the joint bond over several weeks before bending it on the boat. I don’t think any one element caused the failure, but here are my suspicions in order of potential culpability:

1. Did not wet out joint with thin epoxy before adding the thickened.
2. The joint may have been clamped too tightly thus squeezing out too much epoxy.
3. Mixing ratios of the e-glue may have been off, it is tricky to measure 50:50 when the A and B parts differ so greatly.
4. Position of scarfe. Why oh why did I put the scarf at the place of greatest twist and tension!? The stern quarter really kicks up on an NIS.

Regardless of what actually happened, such failures fill you with doubt. I have had great success with traditionally thickened epoxy; whilst mixing it seems to take an age, you can be sure it is mixed. This e-glue worries me.

I have spent some time researching my worries about the e-glue, and I have yet to hear a concern from anyone, so I have relaxed and continued to use it but with attention to the ratio and wetting out of joints first.

Because of the thorough dry run, there was no doubt it would go together, the only doubt has been will the epoxy hold on the narrow surfaces of the bulkhead! Clearly, when the second layer of timber is on, and then the hull of the boat added, nothing will be going anywhere, but releasing the clamping is not something I’ll be doing soon.

You also have to consider that to keep the boat straight you need to tie it up evenly one bulkhead, port and starboard, at a time. My calculations ran out to around 50 clamps.

Robert Ayliffe sorted me out, a quick trip to the big box hardware store and at $0.50 per bracket I had 50 clamps.

You can see they had to be used in two different ways due to access restrictions inside the boat. The inner chine logs can be fastened with screws only, and this was the fastest and easiest because the alignment of the screw that did the drawing in was not critical. In the sheer clamps, I had to use a nut and bolt so the hole had to be drilled and aligned prior to snugging up.

Importantly this must be a dry run first starting from the attachment point, which is the bow, and working aft where the timber can run off. As expected the bow quarter was tricky but the stern quarter required some serious force to make the compound curve.

This force applied at the aft bulkheads even resulted in bulkheads lifting out of the jig, so those extra brackets were put to good use anchoring the last four bulkheads to the gig.

You can see in the photo the timber run off provides leverage for a spanish windlass to help with the clamping.