Inner stem almost done!

Last weekend I finished laminating the chine logs and sheer clamps thanks to the help of a mysterious individual who should have been doing something else. <thank you Geoff the builder who stopped building our house to help with my boat>

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.

Scarf failure.

Not the happiest moment when I glanced around the starboard side of the sharpie and found my freshly attached chine log split at it’s scarf.

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.