2007 building logs

October 07 Rest of the strip planking

With the Port hull strip planked it is on to the rest of the strip planking, the Starboard hull, the inside bow of each hull and the forward deck turn. The strip planking is the point at which the boat is being build from the top. The strip planking after this is the cabin top and the daggerboard cases. These will be next. A month or more of strip planking ahead.

October 01 Fairing the strips

After such a productive weekend it was disappointing today to get so little done. I managed to finally get the holes drilled in the 5mm stainless steel straps with some help from James, well truth be known he drilled them! I was using the drill at super high speed and blunting the drill bits, the key with stainless is very slow and plenty of lubricant, we used liquid soap. If you get an orange peel type steel splinter rather than particles you are on the right track. So once they were drilled I got the blocks drilled and dry fitted into the beam. I still have to shape the blocks so that the top of the beam will fit without the block stopping it from meeting the bottom half. Then I will glue the blocks in, glass them in and glue the 2 halves of the beam together, hopefully this week.

I also filled a few more of the larger gaps on the strip planked side by inserting duracore off cuts and started to trim the planks up and down, but it was 32 degrees and I left early after getting only 2 hours work done (I am logging 2 hours but the reality is closer to an hour of actual work), most of that walking around not doing much, to go for a swim. In the end I didn't even go for the swim, whilst it was still about 25 degrees the water felt much colder and I chickened out! Kind of typical of the day really. You got to take the good with the bad.

October 06 Gluing the planks

The hot weather has arrived. I faired up most of the planks during the week, Wednesday was very hot so I didn't get much done and yesterday I went for my motorcycle license. I passed. Today was also very hot, its only the first week of October and we are already getting 30+ days. And it is magnified in the steel shed. We are going to have to see about getting another door or window installed to increase airflow through the shed. Up on the deck of the boat it feels 10 degrees hotter!

So today I started to glue the planks together by squeezing glue into the joins with a scraper. The trick is to get the glue runny enough to easily go all the way in between the joins but not so runny that it just drips right out again. And the wider the gap the thicker the glue needed to stay in. So I varied the mix thickness all day depending on the gaps, deliberately bypassing wider gaps if the mix I had was too runny and coming back to them later with a thicker mix. For those that don't know, to make a thicker mix I use more 411 power, the ratio of resin to hardener is fixed and cannot be messed with but the amount of powder is variable.

In such heat I cant mix up too much glue at a time or it will set in the pot before I have had time to get around to getting it all on. Which is fine as I needed to vary the thickness with each pot anyway. After I have done about a meter I go inside and scrape any runny glue that has run through and is dripping out. I put plastic down before I started to help keep the drips off the floor. I have peel ply on the soles but glue makes it hard to get it off. I wait for a while before I run the glue into the gaps from inside so that the glue on the outside is going rubbery, this stops the glue from being pushed out the front when I push glue in from inside.

The glue looks a lot messier in the pictures than it is, and once it is set I have to sand it smooth for glassing anyway but the smoother I get it now the easier it will be to sand later. I will sand and glass the outside on the boat, then once that is set I will take the curved panel off the boat to sand and glass it inside.

I glued the curved deck from just in front of bulkhead 6 to the bow. I have not fully formed the shape at the stern so I thought it might be easier once the rest of the planks are glued to each other so they cant move much, then I can remove the strips holding them to each other and reshape the stern before gluing that section. That is why some of the strips are still unfair at the stern.

 

Tomorrow I will remove all of the fairing strips and all but the very top and bottom screw in each bulkhead and glue these sections. Then I can sand it in the afternoon if it is still hot tomorrow, although a cool change came through and the temperature dropped from the mid 30's to about 20 today. Once the curved deck is sanded I can glass it. I may even apply a thin layer of bog whilst it is green and sand it on the boat so it is fairly fair (is that correct grammar?).

October 07 Sanding the planks

The rough look that the planks have before they are glued or even after glue is applied disappears with a light sand. The contrast is amazing. As mentioned when I was sanding the forebeam, the curve is made up of a series of flats but when you sand them after they are glued you are in effect taking off the sharp corners of each turn making the whole section rounder. It still has flat sections that will fully removed when the glass and bog go on. But already with just glue and a sand the panel is much rounder.

I removed all of the mdf trim tabs and all but the top and bottom screws in each bulkhead. (I left them in just to hold the panel in the correct place on the boat until I glass it. Once I had sanded the already glued sections I set about trimming up the planks and then gluing the stern. I have left the very last section unglued as I still have to split some of the planks again to shape the last section. I then back filled the areas that were under the tabs or where the screws were.

So after I sand the stern and the back filled glued sections and shape that final section at the stern I will be ready to glass it on the outside. I will also apply a thin layer of bog whilst it is still green to save having to sand the glass (or peel ply it). Then I will take it off the boat, sand the inside and glass it before putting it back on the boat to set. Hopefully I will be able to finish this panel next weekend so I can start on the other side by the following week.

There has been some more progress on Nine Lives. The deck is all glued on and the cabin turret is also glued on. Next I think they glass all of these panels.

October 11 Still working the planks

I am almost ready to glass the first strip planked section. Because I have modified the height of the outboard well the turn of the planks is a bit harsher than it would otherwise be and I am not able to get them to bend exactly the way I would like. This is not unusual, I have seen a photos of the stern sections being filled on another build and they had similar problems. The solution appears to be to get the planks glued as close to the shape as I can then use bog to achieve the shape. So I have a small 200mm section to glue in and some shaping with bog to do, I am not sure if the bog should be before or after I glass, maybe both. At times the planks have resembled weatherboard cladding on a house but the gluing and sanding soon levels it out again, so hopefully there wont be too much bog needed once I have glued all the parts in and sanded it to shape.

I have had to glue small sections at a time, which means waiting until the next day to continue. The reason is that the planks just wont bend the angles and distance needed, they just break so I am bending a short way, holding them there with screws and blocks while the glue I have applied sets then I work it a bit further. But I think I have gone as far as I can now with this method and I will just glue the gaps up then fix the shape up with bog.

I am hoping that I can glass the outside of the planks on Saturday, then remove the hole panel and sand and glass the inside on Sunday, re attaching the panel to the boat to set.

Tomorrow I will glue the last sections and trim the glass to shape ready for the weekend.

October 12 Ready to glass the planks

I have figured out how to fill the last section of the planking. Kerfing! I had been scratching my head trying to figure out how to get the shape I need in the planking whilst filling in the gap in the planking and it finally occurred to me that kerfing was the answer. So I cut a few planks down to fill the gap vertically rather than horizontally and by kerfing the small sections I got them to bend to the curve of the deck and with the help of a lot of glue and bog the void was filled.

I smeared glue all over the place then overfilled it with bog. I covered the bog with peel ply to stop it sagging. I probably made the bog a little runny and its base was wet glue so in the end peel ply was the solution.

Now tomorrow morning I will run the sander over the area to shape it up a bit better, then I will glass the whole panel and hopefully also bog it whilst it is green to save having to sand it again. Then if I manage to get that done tomorrow, I will take the panel off the boat on Sunday and hopefully sand and glass it and get it back on the boat to set completing a good weekends work.

October 14 Planks glassed and bogged

I am deliberately posting a lot of pictures and description of this section of the build because most new builders find it a daunting prospect, but I have found it should not be so worried about. It is a fairly easy job. Not physically or mentally challenging and can easily be done single handed. I am almost finished the first strip planked hull to deck curve. I have to take the now single panel off the boat, sand the inside and fill with thickened glue and then glass it whilst the glue is wet. I may peel ply the inside also.

The first task I had yesterday (Saturday) was to sand the bogged curved section back and try to shape it. In retrospect I probably could have done a more thorough job of that before I proceeded to glass and bog but I can fix it later. I could not see the imperfections as clearly before the glass and bog went on, it looked ok but after I bogged it I could see that I was still a bit high on the corner. Being low is easier to fix after the glass is on but being high may mean sanding through the glass to get to the correct height meaning I will have to glass a patch on, again not a big deal but more work nonetheless.

Once I decided the shape was good I cut the glass to size ready to wet it out, then starting at the bow (for no particular reason) and working back I wet it out. It is better to work from one end to the other rather than from the middle out to the ends unless you have 2 people glassing and even then I would recommend each starting at the ends and meeting in the middle, that way the meeting is of fresh wet resin not wet onto partially green resin, especially in hot weather. Some people use rollers, I prefer just a 60mm paint brush. You are wetting out on a horizontal surface so you are bound to have drips and spills, you simply cannot avoid it and I find it easier to control or clean drips with a brush. I also recommend you put something on the floor to drip onto. I put the mdf sheets down, its easier than cleaning the floor later.

The shape I wanted from the bogged section looked perfect with the glass on dry. The curves and lines in all directions looked fair. Regular readers will know that once the glass is wet it becomes opaque and the surface below becomes visible again. Once I had wet the glass I could see the imperfections in the panel and that more work and bog would be needed to get it fair.

Once the glass was wet out had gone a little green (tacky but effectively set) I scraped a thin layer of fairly sloppy bog on. This meant a long 2 hour lunch. It meant that the glass would not move under when I trowelled on the bog but I would still get a chemical (molecular) bond. Again I started at the bow and worked to the stern. I scraped up any runs that had run onto the hull panel below as I went and then once I had finished a thin layer all over I used the last of the mix I had to fill any obvious low spots. This layer of bog is basically to just fill in the grain of the glass as most of the panel should be pretty fair, and then more bog can be added to the low spots. A lot of people believe this is double handling and that it is just as easy to put a thicker layer of bog on, but I think sanding it off is harder so I prefer the thin layer method. I had it drummed into me (and you should take note of previous builders advise) that weight is the enemy so I put the minimum bog on I can get away with, and then if I need more then I add it, but more compelling is that I hate to sand the stuff back off again!

All in all I am pretty happy with the way the planking has gone and I like the way it looks and it is a satisfying part of the build. I am looking forward to planking the rest of the boat, and I don't have trepidations about doing it.

I didn't spend much time today actually working on the boat. The bog was not yet set enough to sand so I did a little more work preparing the forebeam for gluing together and the rest of the time cleaning up the mess I made making the strips down the port side of the boat. I will need the space clear to work on the inside of the planked panel but I include cleaning up in the work hours of building the boat as it is a necessary task to completion.

So tomorrow I will probably spend some more time cleaning up a little after sanding the bog and if I have time I will pull the panel off the boat and sand the inside but I doubt I will get enough time to glass it, which means not much progress on the boat for another week or so because next weekend, starting Thursday I am busy with one of the most important weekends on my calendar.

Next weekend is the Annual Schionning Muster and I have business in Melbourne on Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday I am open to visitors that want to visit the build to see it in person. If you are interested in visiting please Email us, we will be there all day Thursday. If you are interested in great catamarans I thoroughly recommend you visit the Schionning Muster at Lemon Tree Passage, NSW next Friday for the boat show, you get the opportunity to see finished boats close up at the dock and then sail on them on the weekend, contact Schionning for more details.

Jo has been noticeably missing from writing and photos on the site and has finally decided to add to her page again, check it out here and find out why.

October 23 Preparing inside of planking

I have not done much work (well almost none actually) since last week. On Thursday I had some visitors that were on their way to the Muster drop in to see my build for themselves. Max (and Elvie) had visited before, Stefan and his father Gilbert are building a 1320 but have not started on the hulls yet, Mike is thinking of building, and Dave and Tim from New Zealand are also going to build but are still to settle on a design. I hope visiting my shed was helpful to them. There does not have to be a muster on to visit our build, if you want to see it for yourself, send me an email and we can set a time.

The muster was very helpful to me this year for a couple of reasons, first the demo was of fairing using the notched trowel bogging method to fair curved surfaces such as the forebeam. Very timely as I am just about to glue my beam and will need to fair it. The method described will save me a lot of work.

The other great benefit was in seeing a finished cat that had many features we would like to implement on our build, 3 ideas in fact from an Alaskan 41 power cat. Firstly the use of linings to save on fairing inside, such as vinyl wall and roof linings and the use of timber veneer. The use of cork flooring in the cockpit and steps, untreated it is very soft and cool underfoot and has a natural non slip function and looks great, Jo's only concern is spills such as butter or red wine would stain it. The saloon and galley set up also suits us and we will adopt it as much as we can, we are restricted a little in that we cannot put the stairs as forward as they are in the Alaskan because of the slope of the roof and the side walls not being as vertical due to the higher windage that would cause. We like the idea of the kitchen facing aft looking out of the huge window while in the galley, and the extension this also gives to the bathroom in the hull below bringing the steps forward and making the little hallway much shorter. We also like the shape of the couch and dining table and it also leaves some room for a nav desk. On the other side in front of the couch will be another cupboard on which the TV will sit and also the nav electronics. The doorway will be narrowed to a single width rather than double door and in the space we will fit a floor to ceiling pantry with a curved front as in the Alaskan with a full height wet closet on the outside to hang wet weather gear in. The glass in the windows will be the Schionning method of pulley rope drop down windows.

The muster was as usual not only a heap of fun and very informative, but the best part for me is the motivation to get on and finish that it gives. I use every opportunity I can to get onto finished cats, there is nothing more motivating than being on a finished boat. At the dinner on Saturday night, the Schionning team again thanked us (as they did last year) for having our website for prospective builders to read and for allowing them to visit and see for themselves what the project would involve. It is really our pleasure what we do but to receive their appreciation is really nice and this year they gave us a Raymarine portable VHF radio. Nice. Last year they gave us the through hull fittings for speed and depth. We figure if we take long enough to build they will completely fit us out! Just kidding.

So today I got back onto the building. I didn't do much yesterday as I was feeling really tired. I guess the being in the sun all weekend took it out of me. I gave the panel a bit of a sand whilst it was on the boat, more because I had covered some of the holding screws with bog and had to get them out. In the end I could not unscrew them so I had to push them through the panel and remove them from the bulkheads. With the panel off I now have to sand the inside ready for glassing. I stopped filling the inside with glue because I realised it would be easier to glue it from the inside and then apply the glass wet on wet. Less sanding. So before the weekend I will get the inside glassed and back onto the boat to set before I take the temp bulkheads out of the port hull and put them up in the starboard hull to strip that side.

October 25 Glassing inside of planking

After getting the sanding of the inside of the panel done yesterday, today I filled the remaining gaps in the panels that I had not already filled. I decided not to bother filling the plank gaps from the inside of the boat as I originally glued them as I felt I could better achieve it with gravity on my side when the panel was off the boat and then glass onto the fill wet on wet. I found that sanding the pre glued sections was actually easier than sanding the non filled sections and that filling and then wetting out as I went was a lot harder than I thought. I used a roller to spread the resin and I cooked 2 rollers in the process as the resin went off in the roller while I was filling the next section. Usually you would use the Kinetics resin which had a longer gel time but I am running out of that so I used West which sets faster. It was easy to spread resin with a roller but I only had 2 so when the second one started smoking before I finished (I was about 2/3 of the way along) I had to use the squeegee to spread the rest of the resin around.

So the procedure was to lay the glass out on the panel, trim it to size and roll it up again, then I start to fill a 2 meter section at a time, filling the gaps with thick glue. Then I rolled out the first 2 meters of glass and wet it out. Then filled the next 2 meters, then wet out the glass onto the glue wet on wet and so on until I had done the whole panel. At about half way I used the squeegee to squeeze out excess resin and the roller tool (I forget what its called) to press out any kinks or air bubbles. And so it went until I had the entire panel glassed. It was hotter today than I thought. It was raining but humid so it didn't feel hot until I started working. Then it felt hot and the resin set fast, especially the wool rollers!

Once I had the panel glassed it was time to put the panel back on the boat to set. The reason for doing this is that if you don't the panel can set out of shape and later when you want to fit it to the boat it will not fit and mean using more force to pull it down and possibly break the glass or using more bog to fill any unfairness, but I guess most importantly because it is harder work! You can see from the last picture that just being off the boat 2 days and only glassed on one side the panel had changed shape slightly and a 40mm gap would have been the result. While the glass was only set on the outside the panel was easy to pull down to the bulkheads (imagine if it set the other way, too small to fit back on!) and when the inside glass sets it pulls or pushes against the glass on the outside and sets to a rigid shape that will hold its shape off the boat for as long as I need it off.

Putting the panel back on the boat was a lot harder than I thought it would be. There were only 2 of us and we just could not lift it back on without a third person, so I had to run next door and get a helper. With a third person we were able to lift the panel back on. It is not that it is so heavy because it isn't overly heavy it is just so long and awkward. I was relieved to have the panel back on, I then replaced the holding screws on top and bottom of each bulkhead to pull the panel back to the correct shape.

After the panel is set I need the temp bulkheads for the other side and I need the panel off the boat for fitting the dagger case and also some more internal glassing on the bulkheads. I can then replace the panel and glue and glass it on.

So on the weekend I can start to set out the temp bulkheads on the other hull and perhaps start on the planking on that hull.

October 27 Starting on starboard planking

I noticed today that I have some blisters in the internal glassing of the strip planked section. This is because the panel had opened up whilst only the outside was glassed and was upside down for the internal glassing, and when closed up on the boat this pushed the glass together and created blisters. I tried to roll them out with the special tool but some just would not stay down. One solution would be to put a temp bulkhead at the bow and another at the stern that could stay attached to the panel at all times, or just removed for a moment while I glass under it, meaning that I would be glassing the panel in the correct shape so that there is no stretching or bunching of the wet glass then replace the panel on the boat in the correct shape.

To fix the blisters I will grind them out, then lay another layer of thin (surfboard) glass over the top, not a difficult job but more work, which is always annoying.

I have moved all of the temp bulkheads over from the port hull to the starboard hull, levelled and plumbed them so I am now ready to plank the starboard hull. I will make a start on it tomorrow.

October 28 Starboard planking

Today was a most frustrating day. It was hot and the going was slow. Do you ever have days where you seem to be working hard but have little or nothing to show for it at the end of the day? Today was one of those days and little things slowed me down all day, as well as the heat. So despite spending 8 hours working on the boat, it only looks like a couple hours of actual productive time. You get days like these I guess.

I clear taped all of the edges so that the panel wont stick to them, adjusted a bulkhead here and there where I saw a dip that would create an unfair surface that would otherwise have required more bog than necessary to fix, I ripped strips for planking and attached some of them to the hull.

I really expected I would have most of the planking done today, but in the end I barely got a start. It was hot all day so in the end I conceded that it was on of those days and knocked off and went swimming. Jo was in Sydney all day finished here Marriage Celebrants course, so pending getting her authority from the Attorney Generals department she is a qualified celebrant. If we can organise the correct insurances we may perform weddings on the boat one day, tied up to a marina as we are not building to survey, I will have to look into the undoubted reams of red tape.

We passed a minor milestone this week, we started working on the boat in October 2005, so we have passed 2 years. We started on the strongback in early October 2005 and in the last week of October we started gluing panels together on the strongback. We set a 5 year goal and we seem to be on target, in fact we are hoping we may even be able to finish in 4 years, so we could have just passed half way, although half way would be 2000 hours as they estimate 4000 for the build.

I am sure I will make up for lost time during the week by getting the rest of the planks on the boat by next weekend when I will glue them and maybe even glass the outside by the end of the weekend.

October 29 More starboard planking

I made up for a little lost time yesterday even though I only put in 2 hours today. I have now got most of the planks on, and should be able to get the rest on tomorrow. Then I can start on levelling the planks and gluing them to each other. I am doing a much neater job on this hull, which is not surprising, you get better at most things second time around. I have decided not to taper every plank as they get to the bow, deciding instead to only taper the planks that actually need to be trimmed to shape to fit into the narrowing spaces at the extremes of the hull. This has resulted in a neater job overall.

Once I have all of the planks on, I will need to shape the stern at the last bulkhead and besides making sure all the lines flow correctly I also have to ensure that the 2 hulls are the same shape at the stern.

It was hot again today so after 2 hours I went home for a swim, but I think there is a cool change coming which will make gluing a bit easier, as I get a longer pot life. I think I can have the planks glued by the weekend, and perhaps be ready to glass the outside.

October 30 Starboard planking done

The starboard planks are on the boat. I still have to trim some of the planks at the stern and finish shaping it, then I have to level the planks to each other, which I should get done tomorrow. Then I can glue them on Thursday and Friday afternoons, sand the glued planks on Saturday morning and glass and bog on Saturday afternoon. Its a bit of a push and best laid plans etc but I don't think it will be too much of a stretch to have the outside glassed by Sunday afternoon. I still have the stern to sort out and last time this took me a few hours, but I have an idea now how to finish it so that should save some time.

Even though there is still so much to do on the main build, I decided I would do a little on the dingy today, for 2 reasons, there has been increased interest on it from readers here and members of a multi hull forum with some expressing interest enough in buying plans (if I can get them properly and accurately drawn so anyone can follow them, I am hoping to sell them for $100 which for an existing or contemplating catamaran builder is a bargain considering it replaces an inflatable that costs $2000 and is far superior and can be built virtually for nothing except some offcuts and a little glass and resin and about 30 hours build time), so I want to get this boat finished and on the water so I can take some better photos and videos and get the detailed plans available, so for those that read this and are interested I am working on it, and of course with summer coming it will be fun to have it on the water. I am even working on attaching a wind surfer mast and sail and a rudder and seeing if the dingy will sail. More on that later. That is the reason I cut the anchor hatch in the top of the bow section instead of the vertical bulkhead face which is where I would glass in a mast tube.

I am also hoping a friend of James will airbrush the sides for me but I wont mention that yet, rather hoping to show stunning pics of it later to surprise everyone. I also have one other reason to get the hatches on the dingy done, I want to practice coring and filling the panels as I will need to do that efficiently soon on the main build. I know I did it on the uni troughs but that was on a fairly straight line, but I need to core around corners for hatches and door and window frames which have corners or curved sides so the practice will be helpful.

All in all, considering the muster fell in the middle of the month I haven't done too badly this month. With a few hours tomorrow I should get close enough to 70 hours for the month. I have to start to lift this to 100 hours a month over the next year, then 150 a month in the final year to get anywhere near finished in 4 years.

October 31 Jinx

I spoke to soon, the temperature was about 10 degrees cooler today, perfect for gluing the planks to each other, as luck would have it work came in and I didn't have much time to work on the boat today. I only had about 1 spare hour so I used it to core out the balsa on the dingy, on both the hatch surrounds and the lids. I used a router blade like a saw blade parallel to the table that cuts a slot into the balsa at varying depths and then a chisel can be pushed easily through the slot to remove the rest of the balsa in the slot. I did this along the exposed edges where I cut the hatches out and on the hatch lids so that no raw balsa is exposed, otherwise water will eventually rot it. Ironically not salt water, it cannot rot timber, but rain water.

With the balsa removed tomorrow I will fill the troughs with a glue/filler mix which once set can be sanded square with the sharp edges sanded off. I will then attach the lids again with hinges and latches. I may waterproof the side hatches (make them dry hatches) but I wont bother on the anchor locker as it will have water in it on the rope and chain so in it I will glue a drain. I will also glue a drain into the stern below the outboard plate with a bung, and give it a coat of 2 pack primer ready for the paint.