In the last 10 days I went from a pile of wood to something that actually looks like a boat. After getting the panels all lofted, cut out and marked up I began putting it all together. I first wired in the two side panels in an afternoon, spent the next day cutting and preparing the bow and transom panels and then an afternoon wiring those in. I then spent an afternoon getting in more bolts and wires to just make sure it was coming together well and another afternoon ripping my mahogany into strips for the rails. By the time this was all done I had what looked like a hull.
Monthly Archives: March 2018
Ready to start assembly
Panels beveled, marked and drilled for assembly
It has been a busy four days since I picked up my wood last Friday. Over the weekend I managed to get the plans lofted and luckily caught and fixed my lofting mistake. Yesterday I cut out the sides and bottom panels with my new pullsaw and went to pickup epoxy supplies at SystemThree. Today I have beveled the edges of the panels, marked them up for drilling and fiberglass tape and got holes drilled on the bottom panel for wires. This afternoon I am going to a friend’s house to use their table saw and cut rails. So, I’m ready to roll on assembly tomorrow which is video #5 in the series of 30-odd videos on building this boat. Hoping to get the sides wired onto the bottom tomorrow so I can loft out and cut the transom and bow pieces and then get those prepped and wired in on Thursday. Within a week I’ll have gone from a stack of wood to something resembling a boat hull. Hopefully by then it will have warmed up enough that I can start with epoxy work.
Measure twice (no three or four times) before you cut
Oops, a few mistakes but I caught it early and fiberglass will cover these extra holes anyway
I’ve spent the weekend lofting my plans onto the panels for the bottom and sides of the boat and finally have everything marked off and ready to cut. This process involved making 1′ station lines across the boards then plotting points on offsets either from the bottom of the panel for the sides or the center line for the bottom. The corners were a bit tricky on the sides since they involved offsets from the bottom as well as the side (transom) or the last 7′ line (bow). I went through and re-measured all the offsets on the station lines on both panels to make sure they were golden. After I got the lines drawn in for the sides I started on the bottom. With the bottom lines in and looking good I measured the arc length of the bottom, 89 3/4″ on both sides, perfect. Then I measured the arc length on the side panel which should have been 90″. Nope, it was 87 5/8″, what the heck?
So, I spent a half hour going back over all the measurements and found I had not double checked the bow and transom points on the side, my transom was fine but the bow was off – I had measured the horizontal offset wrong and had to move things to the correct spot, re-measured the arc length and had to move it just a smidge more to get it right. Whew, glad I didn’t start cutting before triple checking all these measurements and making sure to check arc lengths.
Now onto cutting these panels and then starting to stitch them together before lofting and cutting out the transom and bow panels. At this rate I should have something resembling a hull later in the week.