One Tack at a Time

Since back from Okoumefest, I was able to get the bow nice and pointy and the panels aligned. At the suggestion of Chris, I drilled a 2 inch screw through a small wood block and used that as a clamping surface to draw the panels together. Lots of creaking and groaning - the larger Irwin says it has 600 pounds of torque - to get those panels to play nice together.

First clamp goes on. You can see the gap in the panel.

Second clamp goes on and closes the gap for stitching.

Other side. Ideally you'd want some blocks here, too, but it worked without them.

One extra thing I did which worked well was to be sure that the blocks were relatively long. This was so I could spin them in the direction that needed alignment. If the top panel was too far inside the hull, for example, I could spin the top block until it met up with the bottom panel and straightened out. Then I clamped them together and stitched.

The bow was a little more tricky. At first, I had blocks on both sides but the Irwin just wouldn't grip very well and I still had a gap of maybe 1/4" at the bottom where the side panel meets. So I removed the port block and squeezed and behold! 600 pounds of torque brought the the bow together to a point where I could stitch at my leisure. The separation at the bottom part of the side panel is less than 1/8" for about an inch. I say good enough.

First attempt at the clamp. Didn't work well. It worked better when I removed the port side block.

Bow clamp. No block on the port side, just the starboard side. This worked better than expected and drew the bow panel together.

Inside view of the bow stitched together. This looked much worse before the clamps.

I then went about the boat and checked all the stitches, perfectly ready to drill more holes into the hull for the clamp assembly, but alas that wasn't needed. Just good, old fashioned knees, elbows, and foreheads to draw the panels together. I also (finally) added the sanded bulkhead 8 to the hull assembly, officially installing all the components of this part of the build.

The next day, I started the tack welds. I figured I'd start with an area that no one would really see if I really mucked it up, which is the watertight compartment in the bow. I laid down the tape and resolved to do the best job I could. Sure enough, I kinda mucked it up, but as most things, got better with practice. Eventually, I got pretty good at laying these down to the point I felt confident not to use the tape anymore, though I'll put tape down when I do the full fillets.

Few things to note. I was doing maybe 20 pumps of epoxy at a time (fyi: by pumps, I mean 20 pumps each of the resin and the hardener for 40 total). Mixing in some wood flour to just under peanut butter, then adding a bit of cell o fil to round it out. I wasn't concerned with precision here. With practice, it's easy to tell when it's ready because it won't run off the mixing stick yet is still smooth to apply.

This concoction got poured into a zip loc bag as the "pastry bag" which was then squeezed carefully into the area needing the tack weld. The first few came gushing out as I was squeezing too hard. The second few were too light. And some of them were really good but I had to lean into the bow and so was afraid to fall in so weren't as good as they should've been. By the time I was done with the bow compartment, I was exhausted, so I finished out the zip loc bag and meant to call it a day.

I left the typical "beads" that are in the manual and in other blogs. However, as I stepped back a bit, it didn't make a ton of sense to leave the tacks like that because only the area in contact with the weld and the wood would actually be useful. The rest of it would be sanded away as waste at best and in the way at worst. I figured it'd be much easier to apply the fillet when the tack weld itself somewhat conformed to the final shape. So that's exactly what I did. I broke out the trusty teaspoon and flattened out the beads into smooth mini-fillets between the stitches.

There was a lot of "leftover" epoxy after flattening them out. With the extra, I laid down a thin fillet at the transom. This was pretty good work without a net (also known as tape) though the other side didn't come out as well. I was going to do the outside seams but didn't have enough and didn't feel like mixing more epoxy. One tack at a time is my mantra. At this point, I'm about 2/3 done with the tack welds and should be in full fillet mode over the weekend.

Transom fillet among others.

On other news, the new battery box arrived today. This thing is pretty cool. For only a few bucks more than the "blank" one from the Marine store, it has a voltage light (red, green, yellow), two 12v cigarette adaptors, and a space for external battery connector. The 12v adapters alone are worth the upgrade.

I feel momentum coming on and I can easily see working on the electronics and cabin sole in about a month. Early fitting out will also come into play soon with things such as speaker boxes, battery box holders, internal shelves, and running wires. The customization of the boat is what I'm really looking forward to doing. So, again, just taking my time with it and trying to squeeze the build in between everything else.

Battery box and 2 crazy puppies.