Getting going on the keel and skeg

Welcome back!  This installment finds me marking and painting the water line and getting started on the skeg/keel.  Once that's done, I'll do a bit more painting, then flip her over and see what the inside looks like right-side-up.  In theory, I could put off ALL the painting until the boat is right-side-up, but it is so easy to paint this way, with the boat at a convenient height, that I couldn't resist getting going with that part of the project too.

I used a laser level (cheating, I know) to set the water line, then mixed up a slightly paler batch of primer to see what that looked like.   I think I'm liking this grey-green, or is it green-grey.  It looks pretty glossy in the photo, I think I'll go with a semi-gloss in the finish coats.

I was fortunate enough to find a very nice piece of white oak, perfect for the whole keel/skeg structure, with some left over for other stuff!  (A piece of Douglas fir would work fine for the skeg--or a stack of Doug fir pieces glued together--but I couldn't resist using the oak.)  So here I've made a simple support (scrap ply) to hold the board in place for marking.  First I leveled the top of the board, since I knew the top of the final skeg would also be level...

Then I used another piece of scrap as a marking stick.  Running this along the bottom of the boat (held roughly plumb, NOT perpendicular to the bottom) gets me my bottom line, which I then cut on a bandsaw....

Voila, a pretty good fit.  A bit of tuning with a hand plane and it will be fine.  I'll cup the edge of the boad slightly too, to make sure that plenty of goo can glue the skeg to the bottom.  Note how the painted waterline curves around the stern end of the bottom...I'm hoping that looks good out on the water.     

After drilling the skeg for its two 1/4" bronze bolts, I made my own using a piece of bronze rod and a die to cut the threads.  Probably not worth it to buy a set of dies just for one boat, but they are mighty handy to have around if you plan to build a few boats.  Three dies in the 1/4"-5/16"-3/8" range should cover you for just about any small boat...and will save you quite a bit of money over store-bought bronze bolts. (Sorry, the photo is a bit out of focus.)

Here I've cut the aft edge of the skeg (and coated with epoxy) and test-fitted the long, 11-1/2" bolt.  It goes through the skeg, then through the 5/8" bottom, and finally through the transom knee.  This should add tremendous strength and stiffness to the stern of the boat, tying the skeg to the bottom to the transom.   Note that I used a level clamped to the skeg to make sure it was nice and plumb while I drilled through the bottom and transom knee.  You can see one of the screw holes for the transom knee in the transom.  Once the knee is installed and these holes are bunged, I'll be able to do final sanding of the transom and get on at least a couple of coats of varnish. The end-grain of the plywood planking will be painted, which will help to give the boat a traditional appearance.

Here I've added the forward part of the keel, gluing and back-screwing it to the bottom.  When the glue dries I'll do the final shaping to the intersection between the outer stem and the keel, to make it a nice curve.   

Next up:  using more nice white oak to finish the keel/skeg. That means making the two pieces that run on either side of the centerboard slot, stiffening the bottom and protecting the slot area.  Since I've got some extra oak, I may also make a couple of "runners" about 18" long around 'midships to further protect the bottom from bumps and scrapes on launch ramps and rocky shores.  Then a bit more paint and over she goes.

Stem, transom knee, and a bit more paint

With planking and puttying done, it's on to the stem, transom knee, and skeg/keel.  Actually, I haven't gotten to the skeg/keel quite yet so this update will cover just the stem and knee.

A few #10 screws hold the outer stem in place, but mostly the epoxy does the work.  Here the rough-cut outer stem is drilled off and ready for final shaping.

I then cut the front edge of the stem down to a little under 3/4"...later I will add a 5/8" brass half-oval to the stem and keel.  Once the boat is flipped over, I'll cut down the stem to the final profile.

Here's the transom knee getting glued up.  I first made a patter from scrap ply, then glued two pieces of Doug fir at the correct angle (that is, the angle between the transom and the bottom).  Then, as shown here, I glued four plies of 1/8" Doug fir along the edge to add strength to the knee.  In theory I could have laminated the entire knee--which would have taken at least 10 plies--but that seemed to be overkill in this case.  In addition to this knee, the transom will be supported by the edge of the aft well and, near the top, by the side decks (see Sketches and Plans).  That should be plenty for a trolling motor or perhaps a 2hp outboard.

It's hard to see from this photo, but I tweaked the color a bit and primed a couple of strakes on the other side.  I found the original color a bit "minty", so I added a bit of grey to the mix to tone it down.  Again, hard to see in the photo, but I'm pretty happy with the color now.  But I might tweak it a bit more before this is all over...or maybe just revert to a classic off-white!

With the transom knee done, now I have to make the skeg/keel pieces and glue and screw and bolt those to the boat.  I'll be making up a couple of bolts to support the skeg out of 1/4" bronze rod, I'll have some photos of that soon.

Have you seen the new Harry Potter yet?  I'll catch it on DVD myself...

First paint

I've been brewing various color schemes for the last few weeks, but I'm still undecided.  So I went ahead and painted a couple of planks with my current favorite hull color just to see what it looked like on the boat.  That should give me a better idea of what the boat will look like than a couple of square inches of paint on a piece of scrap plywood.

The photos show the result, as you can see I'm leaning towards a cheerful green-gray-white for the hull.  This is just the primer coat, the final finish coat will look better.  In other words, I tinted the primer (which is white) to the color I wanted  using a super-secret formula buried in a steel vault in the back yard.   The finish coat will look the same, but I can make it glossier by starting with a glossy white or "matter" (is that a word?) if I start with a matte white.

Right now I really like the color but I might tweak it before all is said and done.

I'd better get some varnish on that transom before I dribble paint all over it.

The white putty you see on a couple of planks is 3M Marine Putty.  I'm using that putty to do final fairing on the topsides, and I think I'll thus be able to skip a coat of primer.  Usually, I'd put on two coats of primer and two of finish paint.  In this case the surface is smooth enough--and I've tinted the primer to the color I want--so I think one primer coat should be fine. The bottom has plenty of epoxy, so I'll skip the putty there.  Like everything else in boatbuilding, there's a lot of different ways of epoxying/puttying/fairing/priming/painting/varnishing a boat.  This blog will show how I did BELLE;  there are certainly other perfectly reasonable ways of going about it.

In any case, seeing some paint on the boat is a real morale booster. Back to carpentry tomorrow...

Epoxification etc.

Greetings from the boatshop...and Happy Independence Day!  Only two photos this time, but let's get right to it...

After a couple of rounds of hole-filling and fixing various dings and such, I coated the planking with System3 Clear Coat epoxy. I rolled on one coat and then, about an hour later, hot-coated a second one. The transom will be have plenty of varnish on it when the boat is done so I decided to leave that alone.  That said, I've given it a good sanding and I'll apply another coat of thinned varnish soon.

Here's the forward view showing the coated planks.  Two of them have "splotches" of epoxy putty to fair out a flat spot right at one of the molds. Alas, I did NOT catch this unfairness during setup, so I'm paying the price now with some extra fairing work.  First I notched-troweled West System epoxy mixed with 407 filler and let that set. After sanding down to fair, I then filled the notches--and any other low spots--with epoxy mixed with a blend of about 50% 407 and 50% 410 filler. Mixing in some 410 makes it easier to sand. 

I also managed to glue the seat risers to the inside of the hull. This turned out to be a bit of a pain, I think next time I'll wait until the hull is flipped over before installing. I don't have a picture of this now, but you'll see them once the hull is flipped over and I get some decent photos of the inside of the boat.

Hmm, it seems to me the photos in the last few posts have been pretty dull, just shots of planking and more planking and epoxy coating.  Well, the next batch should, I hope, have some shots of the skeg and outer stem getting put together and on the boat.  That'll be more interesting.

Incidentally, one other thing I've also done is note any deviations between the molds--which are based on my original lines drawing and 1:4 lofting--and the final boat.  In other words, in some cases to keep the planking nice and fair I allowed small gaps between the molds and the planking.  The battens used in planking the boat (shown in previous posts) were very useful in figuring out where to "let go" from the molds.  Basically, I trusted (1) my eyes and (2) the batten.  That way, if there are any future boats built to this design--hey you never know!--the molds will incorporate these updates.  This is part of the "tweaks and updates" to the drawings mentioned on my Sketches & Plans page.

I'm looking forward to getting the remaining work done on the outside of the hull so I can flip the boat over.  I hope you are too!  That's it for now.