Budget Boater's Blog (12)

These photos are from last year, but they show some of the progress and work being done.

 

 

Filling in the…

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While assembling the starboard hull, we made our first "off plan" modification. We wanted to have a secure place for a water bladder and have a way to protect it from other gear that may be stored around it. We decided to build a separate compartment under the main bunk to house the bladder and a water maker.

The…

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Once the hull sides cure into place, we remove all of the screws (about 500 total) and fill in the holes. We also fair the hull sides to the backbone. Then comes the dreaded sanding. Though the sanding is not difficult, it is time consuming to do it right and get everything smooth.



When mixing up the epoxy fairing compound, it gets small air bubbles which become exposed during… Continue

The bow and stern sections are by far the most difficult parts of the boat to fit and glue in place. The ply is under some serious strain and twist and does not voluntarily want to do what we force it to do. Once we apply the epoxy and glue to the piece backbone, stringers, and bulkheads, we carefully align each piece and work towards… Continue

Melissa and I removed and coated the cut parts and prepared the for being glued onto the stringers. While Melissa spread epoxy onto the plywood pieces, I coated the stringers and bulkhead edges with a thickened epoxy mixture. We then carefully aligned the pieces and screwed them in place.



Thanks to Norm & Linda Stark for… Continue

Because the move of the Hull went so quickly, we were able to immediately start on the second hull. In the span of 3 1/2 days, we were able to assemble the back bone, assemble and install the bulkheads, assemble and install the stringers, and dry skin the lower hull. WOW!!! Part of this speed was born from the experience gained on the first hull, the fact that the parts were cut on the CNC for the second hull, and having Chuck's set of experienced hands. This same process took me 2 months on… Continue

Again, Chuck and I devised a way to move the hull out of the shop so that hull 2 could be started. We devised a plan to use two 1000lb furniture dollies so that we could roll the hull outside. We both question the stability of the hull while on the dollies, but decided to give it a shot anyway.



We jacked up the hull in one location and inserted a dolly under the hull stand with Melissa's help, then repeated it on the second stand. Then we strapped it all together. We contemplated… Continue

With a visit from Chuck for a couple of weeks, we were able to blitz through an enormous amount of work. He being an experience cabinet maker made our tasks much easier. We were able to finish the upper stringers, put on the upper hull sides, and epoxy glass the upper hull sides.



We were able to work together in unison without much communication. This made the work go smoothly and quickly. tackling any problems that arose were usually… Continue

I had to spend some extra time on this stern section due to dropping the stern during the turn over process and the hull landing on the post and cracking. The butt straps in the pictures were lengthened and extend down into the stern area. They were tapered to fit into the tight area, and notched to cover the surface of the exposed area. We screwed and glued them in place, then added the fillets over the entire structure. It is now very… Continue

This is the Ehecatl stem head. There will be two carved, painted, and varnished pieces of hard wood to go on each side of the stem head once the decks are on and complete. These will add the detail and make the bows of this boat stand out.

I have not been able to access the blog on our regular site blog, so am moving the blog here. Many of the next few blogs happened over the last 4-6 weeks so are not what I am currently working on. I just need to get the information up.



I started cutting out the parts for the upper hull bulkheads on the CNC. It took a little longer to draw the bulkheads and parts… Continue

This is more a test than anything else to see if we can continue our main website blog here so that comments can be made and more people will have access to the information.



We spent the afternoon painting the portions of the hull interior that were about to be covered with bunks, interior decks, and/or seating. I had spent about an hour applying tape and paper in preparation for spray painting, but then found that both of my sprayers were dead. So, we bit the… Continue