Transom Knees Finished and Frames Started

Not sure if people would prefer many short updates or intermittent large ones that show a lot of progress, but the guys on www.microskiff.com keep telling me to finish the boat instead of spending time over there. Gotta show them something. Last time out I ran fillets on the transom knees and glassed parts of them. The tape shown here had peel ply applied to it in hopes that it would eliminate some of the resin running out of the laminate that I've been experiencing. It worked to a degree, but at least it's a relatively clean layup.

What I hadn't counted on was the fillet not filling the gap between knee and stringer. I had to leave these to cure and then come back today and radius the sharp edge on the back side of the stringer. This allowed the glass to make the turn. Well, it allowed the glass to make the turn in a half-assed, not quite cooperating sort of way.

I've also been experimenting with wetting out the glass off of the boat and then applying it after it's been wet out. Professional builders have a high dollar machine called an impregnator that does this. I don't. It will take a little more refinement, but I think that I have worked out a way to wet out the tape in a disposable tupperware container and then remove the excess resin before moving the glass to the boat. It's much faster than trying to wet out the tape on the part with a chip brush, and I feel like I'm getting better glass/resin ratios. I'll post pics when I get a better handle on how to do it. Anyway, here's the finished product. Not the prettiest layup (should have radiused the stringer edge even more), but at least there's not resin pooling everywhere. The stringer/knee joint was just too difficult to wet out to risk messing it up with the peel ply on this one.

I also started the frames. Sort of. These are the undersole midframes that will replace the temporary frames used in the construction of the hull. I cut them to width, clamped them in the boat, marked the bottom profile, and then cut the profile with my trusty Bosch jigsaw. I swear that's the best power tool I have. They're now tacked in with some putty. Next time out, I'll fillet and tape them in.

That's it for now. I'm terrified that I'm going to glass in all my frames and then realize after the fact that the boat has some twist in it. The floor of the warehouse looks like a panorama of the Andes, so the sawhorses all have shims under them. I spent a good bit of time with a laser level trying to get everything straight, and I think it looks OK. Keep your fingers crossed.