Memory lane: first boat project

I first got interested in boat-building in the summer of 2002. The first boat I contemplated building was a 12' Compumarine classic dinghy design. I really liked the strip-built look, and John Clark (the Compumarine owner\designer) had a ton of good how-to information for beginner builders. I bought the plans, and got started. Here's a picture at the very beginning of construction:

I made good progress at the beginning. I ripped and routed my own strips, assembled the strongback, cut out the frame molds, constructed the transom (a nice, curved one), and was making good progress on the stripping. Here is a picture of the transom:

I was trying to build the boat without using any screws, staples, tacks, etc -- not even temporary ones. The benefit of this is that the resulting boat doesn't have any holes to fill in or show through the final (clear) finish. The downside, is that construction is slow (I was doing 2-3 strips per day, at best), and it can be difficult to force the strips to conform to the molds; you have to be really creative with clamps:

And:

Here's one more picture, partway through the stripping:

For my project, as I began to strip over the side-to-bilge curve, the strips started moving away from the molds. I tried to correct this, but just couldn't get it right. Here's a small picture to show what I mean:

For a new builder, this was very frustrating and I wasn't sure how to recover from it, other than by tearing off some of my already glued strips and starting over, which I couldn't bring myself to do. The project essentially hit a major brick wall, to sum it up. I did nothing on it for the next year.

Finally, late the following summer I got sick and tired of sharing the garage with this 12' behemoth. Despairing of actually finishing the job, I sawed the entire thing into scrap. The strongback and the frame molds were saved and stored in my shed, on the offchance I decide to attempt this project again (next time, I'll use nails\staples to hold the strips in place).

The failure of this project left a bad taste in my mouth, and I pretty much blamed myself being a lame boat builder. :-) And after that waste of time and money, my wife had sworn that if I ever wanted another boat, I'd have to buy it, not build it. So for the next year or so, I stayed away from boat stuff.

Float fairing continues #5

(Non-F22 info: we attended my daughter's high school (Bothell High, class of 2007) graduation ceremony last night. Congratulations, Cindy - we are proud of you! Yeah I know - Dad is being dorky again. :) )

Working in and around family events, I've gotten a few things done on the boat project.

The starboard float hatches, have all had the foam edges dug out and filled with putty. I started with a wire wheel on a dremel and finished the dig-out with a narrow wood chisel:

This went easier than expected -- I am definitely beyond the 3/8" min depth called for. Next I filled the edges with putty, and the next day after it was all cured I sanded them down to a rough smoothness:

I am pretty excited about how the hatch holes turned out -- they (almost) look professionally done. (I try for that effect with everything I do, but alas...). You can also see in the above pic, that I finally trimmed the beam-to-float location dowels down to size.

Another thing that got done, was the takedown and dismantling of my heat lamp fixture. I needed to get it out of the way, to make room for some chains to hang the floats from while painting, and it's not going to be useful anymore, I think. The heat lamps themselves will probably come in handy though.

I am also still fairing on the outside side of the port float. The weather has been uncooperative (rainy, chilly) these past couple of days, and trying to sand not-quite-cured fairing compound is a waste of time and sandpaper. Ah well. You can see from this picture, that I am mostly down to some very small imperfections:

I do have one builder's tip. When joining my floats, I used tie-down straps to help pull the upper float half into alignment with the lower float half. At the time this seemed a reasonable thing to do, but I now think that that procedure was responsible for producing some of the low spots that I've had to spend so much time fairing out. If I had to do it again I think I would spend more time getting the float halves to line up "naturally", so that the innate fairness of the float halves is preserved as much as possible.

I have been making my own "mortar boards" for mixing fairing putty, by covering up cheap plywood scraps with masking tape. At first I was thinking I could peel off the tape and re-use the wood, but it's just not worth the trouble. So I've been mixing lots of little batches, and stacking up the old junk boards. Time to throw these out, I think:

I've also purchased several gallons worth of Alexseal Super Build Primer, Converter, and Reducer. Expensive stuff! But I'm all ready to start priming, once the fairing is over.

Finally, I took a few pictures of the inside of the starboard float, by holding my camera down inside the access holes. Some turned out okay, and I figured I would post a few for fun. Here's the bow, looking forward of course:

Aft beam bulkhead, looking aft from the center bulkhead:

And the center bulkhead, looking forward from the aft beam bulkhead:

That's about it for now. I'm hoping that my next post will have a picture of a float covered with primer.

Float fairing continues #4

I was able to declare the starboard float as finished today, after three more sand and fill passes. I don't want to waste too much space on more pictures of the fairing, since they look no different that the ones before. Here's the starboard float, right after taking it down off the form frames:

I also got the first layer of fairing compound applied to the last float side (the outside side of the port float):

Originally, I had planned to suspend each float in mid-air so that I could apply each primer coat in one shot. This is still a good plan for the top coat, but I think I'll do the primer coats piece by piece, as the floats are laying on their sides. Main reason is that the primer coats will need sanding (of course) and I don't want to be raising and lowering the floats all the time.

The other thing I got done today, was to cut out the holes for my hatches on the starboard float. You might recall, that I wasn't too keen on the Ronstan inspection hatches. My wife however thought they looked much nicer than the Tempress model, so the Ronstan's are here to stay. I'll have to remember, not to do any dancing on top of my floats.

Here I'm stretching a string so I can measure and mark the hatch locations on the center line:

Here's my circle-drawing tool in action; note the use of A550 corecell foam - it gives the tool extra stiffness so that more accurate, marine-grade circles are produced, which is of critical importance for this application:

Once the hole outlines are drawn, it's just jigsaw work. Here's how the hatches look, set into place:

I did notice one issue: looks like the center bulkhead flange drooped quite a bit and did not fully glue itself to the deck:

I'm not too concerned about it, but just to be safe I'll probably swipe some sandpaper back and forth in the gap, then stuff some putty up there and clamp the flange to the deck.

Finally, here's one more shot of of the large hatch in action:

It feels good to do something boat-like again, after all this sanding. :) Tomorrow I'll dig out the exposed foam edges and fill them with putty, while the fairing putty is drying on the other float.

Float fairing continues #3

Another week of fairing has passed. I am very nearly done now with the outside side of my starboard float. This means I am averaging about one week per float side - but I have no idea if this is good or bad. :-) It is about as fast as I can go though; rate of progress is controlled first by the curing time of the fairing compound, and then by how your schedule fits with that. Warmer weather helps -- it's been mostly nice this week, but today is raining heavily with temps in the mid-40's deg F which sucks because the fairing putty is taking forever to cure.

This past week I managed to do one sand & fill pass every night after work, and 3 passes yesterday. At this rate, I hope to be applying primer to both floats around the middle of June.

I've been taking a lot of pictures, but I think it is hard to really tell the quality of the work from the pictures - you really need to be there to gauge how good or bad the fairing is. And I'm certainly no expert - that said, here's some more pictures and notes.

For some reason I hadn't found time to go pick up a darn notched trowel, and so last Sunday I decided to just get on with the job the same as before. So here's the float side, part-way through covering it with a thin coat of fairing compound:

This float side has very few bubble patches, and the fairing work went pretty smoothly -- but it's still hard work. The longboarding motion very much resembles an upper chest bench press workout in the gym (a place I haven't visited in too many years) -- I was getting a bit sore earlier in the week. This is a picture partway through the initial longboarding:

When longboarding the bow area, I use a tiedown strap to hold the stern down:

The first coat of glop after the initial longboarding is extensive:

Twenty-four hours later though, it's starting to look better (keel line looks pretty fair too):

This was taken Friday evening, after I had longboarded and filled more low spots:

I've also been working on the side-to-deck join radius. This job seems harder than it should be. Here's my "tool", it's just some adhesive 80 grit sandpaper stuck to a piece of PVC pipe:

And here's what it looks like in use:

I should probably glue a handle on it; still, it works okay for the most part but you have to be pretty finicky to make sure the edge looks uniform and even all the way down the float. I have a lot more work for this, on both float.

I think my starboard transom area is looking pretty good too; the longboard doesn't help much here, it takes careful hand sanding:

I've also been working on my port float deck and its inner deck-to-side radius join:
My Ronstan inspection ports finally showed up. I am not 100% happy with them. True, they do have the nice wide top that covers up the screws, but they felt relatively flimsy to me compared to the Beckson and Tempress models that I've looked at it. There's almost zero ribbing underneath the top of the hatch - some folks (especially one particularly hefty boat builder) could step on it someday and crack it. I am still pondering, but there's a good chance I'll end up returning them.

Ian sent out a F22 builder's update mail today. Lots of stuff mentioned, but the most important one IMO is that he is going to be printing and sending out updated plan books. I am happy with this -- there've been a lot of PDF updates sent out, but it's easier to keep track if everything is up-to-date in the plan book.

Oops, this post is getting a bit long. Sorry. One last bit of info: I should be on vacation from work the week of 6/4-6/8. Nine glorious days of...fairing. :) At least progress should be rapid, if I can get 3 sand\fill passes in each day. I also need to get started on my daggerboard case, for which I have the mold all ready from last winter.

Float fairing continues #2

A minor milestone yesterday -- I deemed that the inner side of my port float was faired "enough". After six days of part-time work on it, I've filled all of the low spots just about to perfection, and I'm pretty happy with the consistent sanding pattern I get when I longboard the float side. Every square inch has been longboarded with 120 grit paper. Here's what the bow looks like:

And here's a picture looking aft:

This picture was taken earlier in the day, probably my next-to-last pass on the low spots:

See the extra putty on the keel near the transom? I made a mistake while shaping the keel foam and sanded too deep in that area, so I had to build it back out with fairing putty. Wasn't too bad a job, but it sure does help when you get these things right in the first place.

Fairing seems to be one of those things where you can never quite get to 100% perfection. The imperfections definitely get smaller and smaller as you progress, but I'll be honest, I don't think I've fixed every single one. Some imperfections are very very slight, and I expect the "super build" (Alexseal's product name) primer to fill them up. At least that's my hope.

I ended up filling some low spots 4-5 times. The reason that happened, is that I would be nervous about slopping on too much putty, so I'd carefully squeegee the extra putty to be even as much as possible with the surrounding area. The squeegee (plastic putty knife, actually) has a pulling effect, that causes it to pull a small amount of material away from the center of the low spot, as you drag the squeegee over the new putty. So you start with a low spot, then add some putty, then end up frustrated when you later longboard that area, because a new (but smaller!) low spot appears in the middle of the old low spot. I'm a bit slow, so it took me awhile to catch on to this. I need to remember to pile the new putty a bit higher next time.

When I first thought about fairing, I somewhat had the idea that all of the "standard" ways to do it were laborious, time-consuming, and generally not necessary for anyone with 20/20 vision. In other words, why bother with guide coats, batten checks, etc, when you can just use your eyes and sight down the surface to identify the imperfections? I no longer feel that way. Your eyes can lie to you, at least mine can, especially when viewing a non-shiny surface. But the longboard doesn't lie; if you're sanding an area, and there's a spot in the middle without any sanding scratches, then you've got a low spot. The batten doesn't lie either; if you are pushing a flexible batten over the surface, and suddenly some daylight appears underneath it, then you've got a low spot. After awhile I began to rely on a lot on these techniques. However I did not use the guide coat technique. I'm thinking that that would be the acid test for creating a perfect surface, and I hope I don't regret not doing it; however I'm trying to keep in mind that this is a boat, not a piano (heard that somewhere).

I have learned to detest the bubble patches I had to add. I started out with all of them covered pretty well, but as I slowly sanded down and evened out the putty layers, some patches started to appear. Near the transom was the worst area. In this picture you can clearly see the outline of the patches:

I'm not overly worried that I sanded the patches too much, since they were oversized to begin with. At least I hope they'll be okay. At any rate, I know I'm not about to redo the fairing job, that's for sure!

Here's the port float back in the cradles, with the starboard float up in the frames ready to go:

Well, that was the state of things last night when I got done. Time for me to get out there and get started on the starboard float.

Fairing continues; disaster averted

I wanted to post some more fairing pictures, as a followup from yesterday. Today was a fantastic sunny day in the Pacific NW - generally over 80deg F everywhere, and easily over 85 at my house. I knew I'd be looking at a warm evening in the boat tent, but went out there anyway after work to get started.

But then, as I sighted down the float side that I'm currently working on, I couldn't believe my eyes. There were some humongous bulges and low spots that I just didn't remember seeing before. I'm telling you, this was a serious "What the fudge?!?!" kind of moment; I was panic-stricken for a bit, thinking that the warm weather had melted and deformed my precious float.

I had been delaying the cutting out of my hatch openings, since 1) I don't have the small inspection hatches yet anyway, and 2) this allowed me to sand and fair the decks more easily without the holes getting in the way. It took me about two minutes of frantic thinking before I realized that this was a bad idea since I had neglected to open up any other holes in the float to relieve the pressure. Which explained the bulges in the float. Then I sprinted (okay, walked quickly) for my drill gun. After drilling a nice big 1/2" hole in the middle of the large access hatch areas, both floats hissed and spewed forth hot air for well over a minute. The deformed high & low areas all quickly returned to their original shapes. I hope there's no lasting damage! (And, I have to wonder if this had anything to do with the bubble problem I was experiencing when I was laminating the float exteriors?) Sorry, I did not take a picture of the floats in this condition - it simply wasn't a priority at that moment.

On the bright side, if the floats can hold air under pressure, then I'm pretty sure that they are already water-proof. :) Maybe I'll patent the idea: "Trimaran Float Hull Overpressure Leak Test Methodology using Environmental Friendly Heat Sources". Heh.

After the excitement was over, I got started longboarding again. Here's a couple pictures after an hour or so of sanding:

And:

(The comealong strap is there to hold the aft end of the float down while I was sanding the bow area - the aft end is very light and can easily be levered up into the air.)

It might be hard to tell from the above pictures, but they show significant improvement from yesterday! I am feeling better about the fairing work; it's not easy, but it's not impossible either. Just keep longboarding, fill low spots, repeat. :)

After going as far as I dared with the longboard, I filled the low spots again:

Then I worked on my starboard float deck, using the level to identify the high spots. Same as before, the high spots were over the beam bulkheads, and a slight one over the extra glass for the main access hatch. However I think I'm actually close to being done for this deck -- as another F22 builder mentioned some time back, it's all gonna be covered with anti-skid anyway. I got things to a reasonable level, and then filled the low spots that were still there:

We'll see how it looks tomorrow after I longboard it again. Also, you might notice that I'm not paying much attention to the rounded deck corners -- it's a lot of work to shape those so I figure I will do them last.

Over the weekend I had applied fairing compound to the port deck (the one up on the frames) and did some preliminary sanding, but have now decided to defer further work until that float is in the cradles again -- it's just easier to sand when pressing down, instead of side-ways.

Here's a nice picture (IMO) of my boat tent as seen from the other end:

Now that I'm into some serious sanding, I am very glad that my project is outside -- this much dust would just destroy the garage as well as end up being tracked all over into the house .

Finally, I won't be doing daily fairing updates since so much of the content will be repetitive. I should be doing nothing but float fairing for the next couple weeks at least.