Back in Action - September roundup

We basically took August off due to vacations, heat (the epoxy hardens super fast in hot temperatures, meaning you have to work fast and it's hard to clean up), and bugs (mosquitoes biting us and lovebugs loving the epoxy liquid as it dries - we have all kinds of fossilized bugs in our boat!), but now we are back to work and moving along at a nice clip. The hull is almost complete (minus fiberglassing and finishing touches).

Here is the curly maple lumber we used to make the skeg. In order for the skeg to fit the curve of the bottom of the boat, we used an ingenious device: pencil and a block of wood.  We drew a line on the board, and once we cut that line, it fit perfectly to the bottom of the boat. The skeg is two pieces of curly maple to add width at the base.  After we had one all cut out with the tail end how we wanted it, we just traced it onto the other piece and cut out a matching piece, then glued them together.

Here's the skeg with glue drying - no nails or screws to hold it together.  After the glue had dried, we tapered it so that it is narrower at the top and wide at the base.  Then Daddy had a brass strip pre-drilled and we fitted this onto the top of the skeg and pre-drilled into the wood.  The brass strip will be attached to protect the skeg from wear and tear on sand, shells, etc when it's beached.  We sanded down the whole skeg nicely and glued it to the bottom of the boat before we finished the side panels - it's hard to crawl under the boat, but it's about to get much harder once the sides are all glued on.  We also filled the pre-drilled holes with liquid epoxy, and then we'll pre-drill again so that the screws that will have direct contact with the water will only be in epoxy and won't be touching any wood - no chance for water to get into the wood.

Dry-fitting the side panels. Once we had these shaped right, which was much harder than first imagined, we went ahead and screwed them onto the stringers and frames temporarily and then pre-drilled holes to be used to permanently glue on the sides.

Shadowfax supervises.  (Actually she doesn't like to be 5 feet away behind the gate in the backyard.  She would much rather be tied up right next to us.)

Again dry-fitting the sides and chines.  The side panels are the at the top of the boat and the chine panels are the middle panels that fit between the sides and the bottom.
We have completely glued the sides on and the two short sections of chine panels are glued on.  The sides were scarfed to make long panels that run the whole length of the boat, whereas the chine panels are each being connected with a butt block - a small piece of plywood that is glued to the inside of both panel sections where they meet.  We have made our butt blocks and are just waiting for a non-rainy and not-too-hot evening to glue on the long chine panel sections, and then the hull will be complete!