Water Tight

Well in theory it has been watertight since the outside was glassed but now finally, four weeks later the hull base is complete.

Week thirteen and talk about doing things the hard way; according to the instructions the inside layer of fiberglass can be laid one of two ways. Length wise like the outside or with the fiberglass cut in short strips and laid across the hull. The advantage of the second method is that its easier, while the disadvantage is that you need to overlap the sheets leaving visible lines after all is done.

Of course I decided on a third option. Instead of cutting each sheet side to side, I cut enough to lay one side at a time. I was half way done on one side before I paused to wonder if I had read the instructions correctly.

Oh well.

On the upside it there will now be two layers of glass on the inside of the stem to give it a bit more strength.

The actual job wasn’t too bad, although it took a a while before I got my technique right, just in time to wet out the last sheet!

What the boat looks like at the end of this week. Since then I’ve given it a final coat of epoxy and now its time to let it dry.

Next step is to install the bulk heads, inner gunwales and ring frames. But before I can do that, I need to buy more wood. The plywood for frames and bulk heads will be easy enough to find, but I’m at a bit of a loss on what to do for the gunwales. Bunnings only stock pine and rimu timber (I suspect it will be true for Mitre10 as well), while from my online searches it looks like all of the timber merchants only stock large sizes that will need to be cut to the sizes I need. This will also be a problem when I need to build my iakos and the boom.

I don’t want to get a band saw so my options are looking limited.

1. Settle for rimu.

2. Borrow a band saw and cut to size (not sure where from).

3. Get another company to dress the timber.

Stay tuned…..