New Build Space

Well, after a few months of inactivity, I've finally started setting up a new build space. To the determined few who still check the site, I admire your dedication. I think that I got 8 hits today, but you eight people rule. Especially you, guy from Croatia. Yeah, you know who you are. You're awesome.

About the space. Up until now, I had the boat in a spot next to my mom's house that was just too exposed to the weather for my tastes. Not that I've had time to work on it while we're adjusting to our new life/jobs/house/etc, but it got wet in the rain and was exposed to dirt and UV (UV breaks down unprotected epoxy for those not in the know). Fortunately, a spot at my dad's warehouses opened up and he let me have it for free. And by a spot, I mean a Cavern of Rock that laughs in my old garage's face and then steals its girlfriend.


I could build a 40' sportfisher in there. No more sucking in my gut and inching around the boat trying not to get epoxy all over the front of my shirt. Maybe I'll build a pocket bike track around the boat to keep occupied while epoxy sets.........


Yeah. Feel it.

Don't think that the Cap'n isn't still around either. He's been hanging out on my porch staring me in the face every time I leave to go to work in the morning. Displeased to say the least. Now he has a new perch to hurl insults down from.

"Arrrgh. Your boat be crap me boy."

He's happiest when he can be surly. Hopefully, all this means that I will start making some progress. Money is really tight, but I enough material left over to get me started at least. I've also been able to poach some materials off a jobsite or two. Updates as soon I get something done.

Speed Testing

I got the FS18 up to 70 mph today......


.....and my bike........



.......at the same time!!!




I have successfully moved the boat to my mom's house in the Panhandle. No problems during transport, but a nerve wracking experience nonetheless. I had visions of all my hard work tumbling down the highway the whole time. It shifted a little during the move but not enough to be a problem. Everyone who has seen it so far has said that it's considerably larger than the impression that they got from this site. That's a good thing I guess. I was really lucky in that I didn't run into any rain on the whole 5 hour drive. If you've ever been to the area, you'll know that to drive anywhere along the Gulf Coast of Florida on a summer afternoon and not encounter torrential downpours rolling in from the water is a statistical anomaly. I was a little concerned with how well I had epoxy sealed all the wood, so I was glad it ended up being a non-issue.

The next few weeks will be devoted to packing, moving, unpacking, and settling in to the new house and new job. After all that is finished, I can start working on the boat again. So expect updates in a few weeks once everything has calmed down.

Elie

Inside Glass

I've been working like a demon on the boat recently in order to get it ready to move tomorrow. I put in 10 hours on it today and with the help of a modified build crew, got the inside glass finished. After prepping the boat in the morning, Frank and Matt came over to help. Things went much more quickly and smoothly than the outside job did, but I guess that's what experience gets you. The procedure was essentially the same as last time, taping the seams, then laying the glass cloth on top of everything. The only differences were that we skipped the peel ply this time and that the seams first required a putty fillet with a 1/2" radius so the glass would take the turn. Almost all the glass here will be either covered by the sole, or hidden under the decks so the peel ply would have been more work than it was worth.

Precoated panels, fillets in place, overlapped tape on keel:


Chines taped:


12 oz. biaxial cloth laid out, cutting down centerline for the bow fold:



Frank of "Frank's Canoe" fame, me, and Matt, professional termite sorter:



Putting together the bow overlap.



No real pictures of the glassing process. We used the squeegees primarily, and it worked out great. Prior to starting today, I cinched the the ratchet straps down on the frames and measured the width at each one. This way when we were done glassing I would know how much to pull the sides in even though the frames had been removed. Hopefully, this will help me get the shape I want when it's time to put the frames back in.





I differed from the plans a little and ran the cloth all the way up the transom. I probably could have glued together my transom sandwich a little better when I started, so I figured this couldn't hurt.



I'm pumped about how the inside laminate has turned out. It looks great. I can't thank Frank and Matt enough. I couldn't have finished this on my own today and I HAVE to get this thing out of here tomorrow. My jackbag of a landlord is going back on his word and kicking us out a week early. Gotta get moving. Thanks guys.

Elie

The Flip!!!!

Today was a big day in the build process of any boat, the flip. I finished up the 3rd layer of the rubrail last night in preparation for today. It all went well, just took longer than I expected, about 4-5 hours for each layer. It stiffened the boat up a good bit, but the tension from it pulled the sides of the boat away from the frames as well. More on that later.

The only place where the boat was attached to the frames was the transom, so those screws came out and we were ready to pop it off the strongback. After remembering to disconnect the transom knees halfway through the move, Frank and I wrestled it out into the front yard. For what it is, an 18 ft boat, it is amazingly light (maybe 100 lbs.) But with just the two of us trying to lift it over our heads to get it off the frames, it was a bear. I think I pulled something in my neck. It's still howling tonight after 2 BC's and 2 Sierra Nevada's.

Anyway, here she is in all her glory:




The truck and flatbed in the background are borrowed from my dad and will transport this Bad Larry to its new home in the Panhandle. It was still tough to get a great shot, but you can at least get a better idea of the lines. She just looks fast, being shaped a lot like what I think a boat tail rifle bullet looks like. The main task for the day was to make a cradle to affix to the strongback to hold the flipped boat. This is the kind of thing that Frank is good at and he took the lead on the design. In short order, we had 4 cradles to match the hull.


Some scrap carpet and trimming of the ends of the cradles and they were ready to screw to the strongback. In the flipped boat, you may be able to see where I marked the locations of all the interior pieces while it was still on the frames.


While most people will keep the whole stringer/frames assembly intact, flip it and put it back in the boat, I don't have room to do that. I broke down all the frames and stringers and stacked them to the side, so I need to know the exact locations of everything I took out, so I can later put them back in.

The cradles we made held the boat well, but the strongback was now way to high to get into the interior to do the next glassing step. The boat came back off and some very bootleg engineering brought the whole assembly to a more reasonable height.


Yes, my shop is an embarrassing mess. This is standard and I think goes well with the hurricane damage hole in the ceiling. Have to get it cleaned before the next big glassing party. Like I mentioned before, one problem that I noticed when we test fitted the frames was that with the force of the rubrail bowing it out the whole thing has sort of opened like a book in the middle, pulling the sides away from the frames. This has been exacerbated by the flip because the weight of the sides pulling down now make it worse. With some ratchet straps cinching it together at the frames, it has all came together beautifully though. Dealing with the straps will be impossible when we glass, so we'll make some presized braces based on the current beam that will pull the sides in right after we do the inside (thanks for the tip Bob). With the glass still wet, we hope this will help in retaining the proper shape.

I have to say that I'm proud of myself today. After months of sanding, today it hit me, I'm actually building a freaking boat. For the first time, I feel like fishing out of this thing is in the forseeable future. Sweet. I think I'll go have another beer. Cheers everyone.

Elie

Rubrail - Part 1

Like I mentioned before, it's time to get the Spook ready to make the haul up to the Panhandle. So I called Frank over to help me rip half a sheet of 1/4" ply into 1 1/2" strips. My new Freud blade worked like a charm. Unfortunately, on the last strip, the bearing in the saw decided to try to catch on fire. Epoxy dust from all the sanding I've been doing probably got in there, and that's a death sentence.

Since I don't have any room to work, I had to turn the boat into my lamination table by covering it in plastic. I then laid out the first round of strips that I had prefitted to the boat earlier. Following the lead of some other builders, when the strips were prefitted on the boat, I drilled a few 1/4" holes through each one. These would later be fitted with dowels in order to align the strips when they were slippery with glue. Next, I precoated the inside face of the strips, the edge of the hull, and the dowels with straight epoxy. Here's the setup.

I've been scrounging clamps for about a year so I was ready for this moment, and I used every damn one of them. I could have used about 10 more. Once the precoat was tacky, I mixed up a batch of Gel Magic. I measured it by weight this time and things went much more smoothly. I slathered it on each strip and then used a notched spreader to even things out. Being the middle of July in Florida, temperatures inside the garage border on preposterous. I mixed up enough Gel Magic to do one strip on each side. If you get it on the strips quick, and don't let it spend much time in the pot, you can do two strips at a time. Barely.

Applying the strips is tricky. The dowels are tough to pound into a slippery strip of ply. And then pound into the side of the hull, all while trying not to get the glue on the faired surfaces. Once the dowels are in, you're golden though. I couldn't take pictures of the process, but suffice it to say, it's messy and nerve wracking. Here are some pics of the finished result.


One of the bow strips requires both a miter and a bevel for them to butt up properly. You can see it in this closeup, as well as a couple of the dowels. Dowels and bow will be trimmed up tomorrow and then the whole process will be repeated again. And then again, for three layers total.

I went around after everything was glued up and cleaned up all the glue squeeze out, creating a nice bead of glue where the strips meet the hull. This would be a nightmare to do when it is hardened up.

Still Fairing

I’ve had a lot of comments recently, all basically amounting to, “I’m tired of looking at that damn fly. Put up a report.” So, I’ll give you guys what I’ve got ……. and what I’ve got is fairing. The bow seam and transom edges need some work, but otherwise the whole boat now has a rough fair on it. By this I mean that all surfaces have had at least 2 coats of Quickfair pulled on and then sanded off with the random orbit. This has eliminated pretty much all fiberglass edges and smoothed out the majority of the big imperfections. It's tough to tell because of the patchy color, but it's all pretty smooth.

It's tough to get a good pic of the boat in it's entirety in the small work space. I'll make sure to take lots of pictures when we flip it. What remains is work on the bow and transom, filling a slight dip where the hull panels were spliced together, longboarding the crap out of the whole thing, and then putting a slight radius on all the hard edges. But all that has to wait. I'm about to get the hell out of the bum-ridden crimefest Gainesville is becoming. This means I have one month to get the boat ready for transport, so I am abandoning the fairing at its current state and going to concentrate on making the thing structurally sound. First step in this is the rubrail. Unlike in many production boats, the rubrail on the FS18 (and a lot of other Bateau designs) is integral to the strength of the hull. It is composed of three layers of the same 1/4” ply that the rest of the hull is made from. After I sand the fairing compound off the edge of the sides, these are glued on in a sandwich about an inch and a half wide. Here’s a 1 ½” strip that I marked as a guide and then sanded off.

Once the rubrail is complete, we will pop the empty hull off of the strongback (looking forward to this step), leaving behind all of the framing still aligned and attached to the base. The inside seams will be filleted and taped, and then the inside will be sheathed in a layer of glass like the outside was. Once it’s all cured the stringers will be filleted and taped into the hull and then it should be plenty strong enough to load onto my dad’s flatbed trailer and move to it’s new home in the Panhandle. Here I can take my time and finish the inside right instead of trying to rush through the whole thing. Bonus. For a better explanation of all of this stuff, check out Bayport Bob’s website in the sidebar. He’s already done it and has pictures of the whole process.

I wish I were progressing faster, but fairing is a slow process and things have been totally hectic recently. It’s definitely one of those things that you just have to do an hour or two at a time and trust that you’re making progress because nothing obvious is getting done. I have had a lot of things take precedence over the boat in the past few months. I'm trying to get all my loose ends tied up here. Cole moved to P-cola, so he and I took one last fishing trip before he left, down to Sanibel in search of our first snook, especially on the fly. We had limited success but a good time. Some faces were rocked. We reached the conclusion that snook are awesome and we would like to catch more of them. Check out Cole’s report on his website in the side bar. Between that, trying to pack the house up, finding a place to live in the Panhandle, and ramped up intensity in the lab, making progress on the boat has been and will continue to be a challenge. Posts may be infrequent until I get settled in August, but I’ll do my best.

A Fly in the Ointment

I'm making some headway on the fairing. I feel like the hook is close to being done (plus I'm tired of looking at it), so I started pulling fairing compound foward today. I also pulled the first coat on the transom. I feel like the rest of the hull will go more quickly than the hook because I'll just be smoothing out the lines left by glass overlap, filling small imperfections, etc. I'll have the hull to use as a guide. With the hook, I've basically been sculpting a new bottom out of thin air, which is taking a lot of time. Today, the DHL man brought me a big vat of Quickfair and a resupply of spreaders, stirrers and cups, which should get me through the bottom of the hull at least, so I'm good to go. I need to find a flexible straight edge to pull the Quickfair up near the bow. The radii on the curves are much tighter up there and the piece of aluminum saw guide I've been using won't work on anything with much compound curvature. I'm told there is a large sheetrock knife at Lowe's that might do the job.

Frank finally finished his cedar strip canoe and it's pretty sweet. For pictures, check out his website through the link in the sidebar.

I went out to trim up some half-cured Quickfair tonight and found this robber fly stuck to the hull, a victim of the fast curing fairing compound. These guys ambush other insects in midair, especially honeybees, drag them to the ground, and suck the life out of them. Karma's a bitch sometimes, I guess.

You guys thought I gave up didn't you? I haven't been posting because with this fairing process, there's been a lot of work, but there hasn't been a whole lot of visible progress. The whole boat has been sanded with the RO, filled with a thin fairing slurry and then sanded with the RO again. I mentioned before that I had about a 1/4" hook in the bottom of the hull a couple feet foward of the transom. This was much more minor when I was stitching up the hull, but the buildup of fiberglass where the transom meets the hull made it deeper. It took a lot of time, but I used Bayport Bob's method and filled and leveled at the keel seam and chines. This was done with a longboard. I then dumped a bunch of fairing compound in the gap, and used a straightedge to drag it down the boat. You can see the filled back end here.


The right side has about an hour with a longboard put into it. The left side is untouched. You can see the low spots where the board didn't hit. The edges are purple because they were done with the epoxy/microballoon mix. The filler is QuickFair. This stuff is awesome to apply. It comes in two buckets, one part has the consistency of cake icing and the other of warm Crisco. I weigh them out on the same sheet of plastic, mix with a spreader and then apply to the hull. The mixed product has the consistency of mayonnaise and pulls across the hull really smoothly. It works great. I won't say how much is in the hook. An embarrassing amount.

I also have been squaring up the chines on the back 2/3 of the boat. They had to be rounded over for the glass to take the bend but the boat should corner better with a harder chine.

The final product won't be this sharp. Once they're fair, I'll put a small radius on them. They still have a ways to go.

The bow curve wasn't very fair and I wanted a slightly less canoe look up there. Again, it needs more work, but it's getting there.


Too put it bluntly, fairing is miserable. It has to been done manually, which is agonizingly slow, and I'm not real clear that I'm even doing it the right way. I have a long, long, long way to go on this. Keep plugging I guess. All the previous steps were short enough that the next new thing was just around the corner. Not here. It's tedious. This is where a lot of people give up on the project. I can't though. When I sit on the couch, the thing mocks me from the garage. "I can hear you in there, Elie. Come finish me. You'll never catch another redfish on that flyrod if you don't finish me. You know who doesn't finish boats, don't you? Hippies, that's who. You're not a hippy, are you? ARE YOU?"

Damn boat. On a positive note, Clutch has created what might be the ultimate boat building music in their new album, "From Beale Street to Oblivion". Songs about giving O'l Scratch the boot. Check. Songs making fun of vegan bike punks. Check. A song called Mr. Shiny Cadillackness. Check. Bluesy yet totally ass-rocking. Chiggity-check. Cole burned it for me and it's my current fairing music.

Also, there is a new website dedicated to the class of boat I'm building. It's called www.microskiff.com . They had a get together last weekend that I went to and got a lot of advice on setup from people who fish these boats every weekend. It was a great experience. Many thanks to all the people I talked to. I also got to spend most of the day on the bow of a Hell's Bay Whipray (Thanks Jason). What a sweet skiff. Anyone out there who wants to trade a Whipray for a partially faired FS18 hull, please contact me. I think we may be able to work something out. Didn't have a whole lot of luck with reds though. Spooked several hundred, but only managed two this size.

I've never seen fish that skittish. More to come as soon as something noteworthy happens. Click on the map in the sidebar to see where people who check out the page live. Don't ever say people in Russia and Australia don't like the FS18. I have the proof.

Quick Fairing Update

A quick update on the fairing process. In the first couple feet foward of the transom, I've got a pretty good amount of hook, which is basically a depression in the hull. This can negatively affect the way the boat performs on plane, so it needs to be filled, making the back 6-8 ft of the boat a straight run. Bayport Bob had a similar problem and spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to correct it. He's had the best success by trueing up the keel and each chine. These can then be used as guides in the same way that wooden forms are used when pouring a concrete sidewalk. The area between the chine and keel lines are filled with fairing compound and and it is pulled down the hull with a straight edge laid across the panel in the same way that the sidewalk is leveled off to the wooden forms. After screwing around with the fairing compound a bit, I think this really is the best way to go. By tonight I should have the keel and chine lines pretty close. I made a longboard by gluing the biggest belt sander belt I could find onto a piece of hardboard and gluing a couple handles onto the other side. I used it on the keel last night and I think that it will help enormously in getting things straight and fair. I may make one out of scrap 1/4" ply too as I think that a stiffer version might be even more useful for the back half of the boat where everything is pretty flat. As I had hoped, the fairing compound has turned out to be much easier to sand than anything so far. I'm sure I will get tired of hand sanding, but right now it's a welcome change from the noise and fiberglass hell that is the random orbit. Will post again when I have something good. Right now, it's just puddles of purple stuff on the hull.

The Fairing Begins

Well, the bottom glassing turned out pretty well overall. It seems we should have used a little more epoxy than we did with the peel ply, because when I pulled it off, the surface wasn't totally uniform.


In places the weave didn't fill in completely, but the peel ply did smooth things out nicely and sucked excess epoxy out of areas where we'd put too much. Places where the weave didn't fill in all the way looked like this.

First thing to do was a quick pass with the sander to open up all the little pockets a little bit. This is my current setup.

The shop vac really eliminates most of the dust, makes your sandpaper last longer, and in this case, kept all the little holes from getting filled with sanding dust. A little information for the uninitiated: surpassing the previous champions, diamonds and a mid-90's Phil Anselmo, epoxy without any fillers is officially the hardest thing in the world. It laughs in 60-grit's face. But a little bit of time last night and I had the weave opened up a little.

The peel ply really did suck things down pretty well because if I sand just a little below the surface, I start hitting glass. Next, I mixed up a very thin fairing compound. A mixture of phenolic microballoons and silica is added to the normal laminating resin to thicken it to the consistency of runny ketchup. I smeared this all over the hulh with a spreader, making sure to make some of the passes in the direction of the weave. The purple color is from the microballoons.

The mix was made so thin so it would settle down into the weave and it worked great. It's tough to capture in a picture, but the weave filled most of the way in, with very few of the pinholes that indicate a bubble was trapped inside.

I have a ton of sanding to do on the sides of the boat and around the transom. The peel ply made a mess in these areas. I already hit them with a paint scraper, so that should cut down on time a little. I'll fill the weave on the sides and then probably switch from the microballoon mix to Quickfair. This is a Silvertip product that is basically like epoxy-based marine bondo. It's very thick, cures in three hours, and sands like butter. It's also pretty expensive. I'm in the fairly common position of being both poor and fundamentally lazy. But to me, it's entirely worth it to spend an extra $50-100 on the hull if it will save me hours of sanding time. I haven't even started the real fairing yet and I already detest sanding. I have to admit that the idea of the amount of work I'm going to have to do to get this ready for primer is a little overwhelming. I let it rest for a few days to try and relax but everytime I do that all I think about is how I'm going to do the next step. The thing won't leave me alone. I'll just try and follow my plan of getting at least one thing done each day and I'm sure it will all come together.

Bottom Glass

The bottom glass is done!! This is a major hurdle in the build, and one that a lot of people worry about, but having helped with the glasswork on Frank's canoe, it seems it just takes time and attention to detail. The night before Cole and I laid out all the pieces of glass that we would use and trimmed them to size. Then we rolled them onto pieces of PVC for storage. For those of you doing this, first press the tape you use to secure the rolls onto the hull or something to cut down on its tackiness. Too sticky and you'll destroy the glass when you pull it off. This morning I put a layer of epoxy onto the hull. Cap'n Gnarly surveyed from the Crow's Nest.

I've mentioned before that this coat saturates the wood and prevents it from sucking later epoxy coats out of the glass. You have to make sure that the precoat starts to set up for this to work though and with the cold front, it took a couple hours to get tacky. I then called up the build crew so we could get going. Frank and Cole showed up with a quickness in their matching Jeep Cherokees. The Flatsstalker Army had arrived. It's hard to overstate how much help these guys were today. Pure gold.

Right off the bat, the epoxy started flying. Frank has to developed a pretty burly allergy to the West epoxy he used on his canoe and didn't want to risk reacting to the Silvertip, so he was the designated mixer for the day.


For those paying attention: yes, that is a pubic louse on his shirt and yes, the tag line does say, "Crabs, the butterflies of love". The French term for crabs is papillon de amor (or something close to that), and that's what it means. We just call them crotch crickets. Entomologist humor is a unusual at best. These are the people I work with everyday. Yeah, I know.

With epoxy all over our hands, we didn't get pictures of every stage of the glassing, but we snapped a few every hour or so. First, the chines, keel, and edges of the transom are laid up with biaxial tape. There are 3 layers on the keel, 1 on the chine and, two on the transom.

Where the tape is layered, the edges are offset to make fairing easier later. (Note: I have differed from the designer's recommended lamination schedule, with what should be a minor decrease in strength. I do not recommend doing this and if you choose to, do so at your own risk.)

With some discussion on the best techniques, we settled on:

• Frank mixed in a cup and poured into a disposable tupperware container that Cole was using.
• Cole slopped the epoxy onto the tape with a chip brush.
• After waiting to let the epoxy soak in I used a flexible spreader to move the epoxy around, force it into the glass, and make sure the fibers were oriented properly.

Here's the completely taped hull and Frank sampling the epoxy for some reason. It does smell kind of sweet I guess. Tragically, he died later that day. He always was a dumbass.


Gaining some confidence with the tape, we moved on to the sheet of bottom glass. This is the same material as the tape (12 oz. biax), but in a 50" wide section. We made something of a mess getting it straight on the sticky hull, but once on it laid out nice. We abandoned the brush with such a large area, and simply poured straight from the cup and used the spreaders to move the epoxy around. This glass soaks up a lot, so having a dedicated mix man is a huge time saver.

The roller in the foreground here was fantastic for getting air out of multiple layers of glass.


The area by the transom has a lot of overlapping layers of glass which makes it something of a bastard........

.......requiring the triple team.

Since Frank's mixing duties weren't full time, he was able to jump in and touch up areas that needed attention.

Before long we were finishing up at the bow. Once we finished every 6 feet or so, we would stop and put on a layer of 60" peel ply. I broke down and ordered some real peel ply and the stuff is awesome. It a polyester fabric. When pushed into the glass, excess epoxy bleeds through to its surface. It should eliminate most of the weave pattern in the final laminate, and help to keep the glass to epoxy ratio equal, making it stronger. What you're looking at in these pictures is the peel ply not the glass. When I pull the peel ply off tomorrow, the actual glass and epoxy should be pretty smooth with a matte finish ready to accept fairing compound. Let's just hope it comes off.


The actual glassing, from tape to peel ply, only took us five hours. That's killer. If I'd done it alone I could expect closer to 15. This would mean I would have to do tape and fabric separately. What we did today is termed working "wet on wet". This means that each layer, the precoat, each layer of tape, and the fabric, was wet when the next was applied. What this gives you is a chemical bond between each layer, essentially making the wood and up to 5 or 6 layers of glass in places one cohesive whole. Nice. It also makes fairing easier later. The alternative is sanding between each layer, basically making a mechanical bond between each layer. This brings the weak. The Flatsstalker Army made my boat stronger than I ever could have done on my own. This is why they rock the house and will always have a spot up on the bow whenever they want to catch some reds.

This is the first time in the build that I've been really pumped about how one of the building steps turned out, the first time I thought, "Man, we really kicked that one in the face." I couldn't be happier with the glasswork. I hope I still feel the same way when the peel ply comes off tomorrow. I'm tired. I'm going to bed... just as soon as I see if the epoxyis green enough to scrape out the runs.