Time to put on the deck

Well, Cathy came through for me one more time and helped apply the second coat of epoxy to the inside of the hull and deck floor on Monday. I followed this up on Tuesday by tackling the first part of the deck installation. I started the process by carefully locating the daggerboard slot on the deck floor and undercutting the opening about 1/4 inch in all 4 directions. I sanded down the deck cleats with my nifty long board sander that has the vacuum hose attachment (It works great - you don't have to clean up the sanding dust mess after your done!), and laid on a thick coat of epoxy glue. I carefully installed the deck floor on-top and made sure it was aligned prior to stapling the flooring the cleats. For good measure I added clamps at the rear end of the boat.

During the deck installation two things popped up:

1. the daggerboard locker alignment is about 2 mm off center. I'm pretty sure this has something to do with my previous issues that I had with the alignment (see older posts for details). I'm confident that I can overcome this with the

installation of the small wooden blocks that will align the daggerboard inside the daggerboard locker. The good news is that the daggerboard is 15 mm thick, and the locker is 20mm. this should give me enough play to align everything up perfectly and get it true to the hull.

2. There was a bit of a gap between the deck floor and portions of the bow sections. I fixed this by wrapping a tie down around the nose of the boat to bring the hull in contact with the deck floor, and by laying a thick coat of epoxy at the joint. I followed this up today with the filleting

epoxy which I will let sit for a couple of days.

Finally I got the first coat of epoxy on the underside of the side deck panels today. I'm hoping to get the 2nd coat on tomorrow and install them on Friday. I'm still pondering how to line up the wing beams correctly for the gluing operation. More to follow!

First Coat of expoxy

Cathy and I spent a couple of hours getting the first coat of laminating epoxy on the inside of the hull and the bottom of the main deck panel. I mixed batch after batch of epoxy and she used a small foam roller to epoxy the inside of the hull. After she got the bottom of the hull and sides epoxied she used the roller to epoxy the back bone and bulkheads while I used the brush behind her to catch the areas she couldn't reach and also to make sure that the bottom of the deck cleats got a coat of epoxy also. Took a little longer than anticipated plus the weather is back on a warming trend! Again my wife ROCKS!

The inside of the boat looks a lot more uniform with everything epoxied. One more coat to go before I start joining the deck to the hull!

Prepping the hull for the deck

Today's effort revolved around sanding all the bulkhead / backbone cleats so that they were good and fair so the deck would lay down flat. I also went ahead and filleted the rear 45 degree wing / deck support in place along with adding the final cleats on the transom.

It's worth noting that I have a little strange issue going on between the height of the gunwale, the top of the wing / deck supports (same height as the gunwale) and the top of the transom

(1/8 below). I had noticed that the top of all the bulkheads adjacent to the wing where about an 1/8 inch below the gunwale level, but had not paid too much attention to it since the wing gets attached to the wing beam which I installed level with the gunwale. Once you hit the transom there is a noticeable gap. In order to combat this I went ahead and glued the transom cleat at an angle so that it is flush at the inboard end of the wing, and at wingbeam/gunwale elevation where it matches up with the 45 degree beam. It will create a small gap once I glue the deck on, but it will be filled fairing compound when I start the finish on the boat.

I went ahead and dry fitted the deck panels to the boat to check fit. Looking good!

My wife is a saint!

Well I convinced my wife once more to give up her coveted parking spot in the garage for a few weeks so I could get going on the boat again. Sunday I set the boat cradle back up and with the help of my wife took the boat down from the garage ceiling and got back in business!

1st step is to get the last 45 degree wing supports installed. This was something I was dreading at first, but turned out to be pretty easy. I got the slots cut out, the supports glued in and while I was at it I also glued in a couple of missing cleats on the bulkheads.

The plan for the weekend is to make sure the deck lays completely flat by sanding the cleats on the bulkheads then it will be time to give the interior of the hull a good sanding and give it two coats of epoxy along with the bottom of the deck. This will get it ready for joining the deck to the hull.

Let's build a Rudder!

Ok, nothing too much has been going on in the boat building realm due to the fact that it's been too oppressively hot to do anything in the garage. Also, I'm not sure that working with epoxy when it's over 100 degrees outside is the smartest thing!

Well finally I decided to get back on the project and work on something that is small and easily manageable in small doses so I decided to start working on the rudder. First things first - I went to home deport and bought a new 60tooth fugro saw blade for my table saw.

I photocopied the template for the rudder, cut it out, and glued it onto one end of the board I had previously glued up. I started the process by cutting kerfs at 1/8" intervals on both sides of the board using the glued template as a guide.

Once it was cut I started by cutting down the ridges using a #5 plane until it got close to the bottom of the ridge

. I then switched over to the belt sander to get it really close to final, and finished it up using a long board sander. Initially I was a little tentative with the belt sander and tried to use the long board sander to do the bulk of the sanding. This ended up being a lot of work. Once I switched to the belt sander it went a lot quicker!

As you can see it turned out pretty nice! Next step is to apply the fiberglass.

Let's get this started..... Again?

OK, the heat has been nothing more than oppressive these past several weeks (Got upto 115 F!), that combined with some issues I had with my speedboat (Broke a leaf spring on the trailer!) left the Paper Jet literally hanging!

So it's time to get back on it. This weekend is going to be about joining the deck plate together. Got the various pieces cleaned up, sanded, and fiber-glassed up. Tomorrow I'll flip them over and do the other side.

Let's get back on this project!

Well the boat has been on hold for the past several weeks due to some much needed vacation (Went to Venezuela to meet some family - Good times!) and also due to the fact that it is currently STINKING HOT!! Prior to going on vacation I made my wife a happy woman by attaching some eye bolts to the ceiling so that I could store the boat. This allowed her to park her car in the garage - a first for the past several months (Which has been a bit of a sore spot with her!!). It also has set the permanent storage location of the hull once it is finished.

This Sunday during a fit of "Cabin Fever" I went outside in the garage and braved the heat. I cut out all the deck panels from the main sheets in preparation for the next step of installing the deck. Next step will be to clean up all the pieces that I cut out and join the two pieces of the deck floor together, along with the two pieces of each internal side panel. Working with epoxy in this heat should be fun - Now I know why I ordered the slow cure laminating epoxy!