It's a boat!

We have our first boat.  Granted it's a boat in only the most technical sense of the word in that it could float and keep the water out, but you couldn't do much more than drift down river.  Still, a small milestone has been passed.

Last night we glassed and epoxied the chines and installed the sheer clamps with thickened epoxy.  The sheer clamp was constructed of three 8' lengths of 2x2 lumber that we scarfed together.  This very long piece was then cut along the diagonal on the table saw and trimmed to length to fit along the sheer.  Near the bow the sheer clamp is at the correct angle to accept the deck, but as the hull flares out towards the stern it sticks up above what will be the deck, so it's going to have to be planed down to make it flush.  We screwed it along the sheer with drywall screws to hold it in place while the epoxy dries.  Here's a picture of it; unfortunately it's not too clear:

For those keeping score, I've updated the name of this blog to reflect the fact I'm documenting the Portland fleet build now rather than just my boat, but I'm not going to change the URL at this point so that people can still find us.

Also, if there are any other potential builders in the Pacific Northwest out there lurking around, get in touch!  We can help out with materials, advice, and possibly shop space.  We want to have as strong an i550 fleet in the PNW as possible, so we're happy to help out to get other people's builds on track.

Finally, my wife is expecting our first kid (due in 4 days!).  At her baby shower they decorated baby clothes.  There were a few things left over that didn't get decorated, so I decorated one too...

So, does anyone know how to actually build a boat?

It's been a little while since I've updated this blog, but lots has been happening the past week and a half - and some of those things have even been productive!  Actually, things are moving along quite nicely when you consider that the five of us are really trying to accomplish four different tasks: 1) get our shop space setup; 2) figure out how we're going to coordinate everyone's schedules; 3) get materials and tools together; and 4) build some boats.

Last week we put together a cradle.  For the base of the cradle we recycled the bottom of the crate in which Tim packed our plywood kits.  We traced out the bottom of frames 53.5, 124, and 169.5 onto OSB, cut them out, and then attached them in their respective places with some 2x4's.

At the time it seemed like it might be a good idea to include support on the cradle for the boat's side panels, but experience pretty quickly showed us that wasn't such a hot idea, so they got cut off.  It's not the prettiest cradle out there, but it seems to work pretty well.

We also have started to accumulate stuff.  Lots of stuff.  This is fifty gallons of epoxy resin and 10 gallons of hardener:

And this is a 10 pound bag of colloidal silica:

 

 Yeah, colloidal silica doesn't weigh very much.

This week we managed to put together what looks like a boat-shaped object.  After some hemming and  hawing and head-scratching, we managed to stitch together the hull bottom, side panels, stem, and transom.  It's pretty impressive; a few days ago we didn't have anything but a pile of plywood and all of a sudden we have what might technically be a boat.

Once the fillets are in it becomes much harder to bend the panels with respect to each other, so we wanted to make sure the panels were roughly oriented to each other in their final configuration.  To do this, we trial-fit a few of the frames, and we discovered, as others have, that to get the frame in correctly requires a little muscle.

You might also notice in the above picture that the frame has been pre-painted with epoxy.  The idea was to get them wet-out with epoxy now so there's less crawling around later.  The one problem has been that our shop is not heated, so the epoxy has been a little slow to cure, and it's a little unwieldy to wrestle with panels that are still tacky.

For our stitch-and-glue method, we're using little pieces of electrical conduit to ensure the panels line up nicely corner-to-corner.  A lot of people out there have advocated for zip-ties instead of copper wire, but we're going with copper wire because you can get a lot more leverage on the copper wire and really force the panels to comply with our wishes.  For the fillets we're using epoxy thickened to peanut butter consistency with colloidal silica.

We also got three 8' lengths of 2x2 lumber scarfed together to form the sheer clamp.  Once the epoxy has setup we'll rip it along the diagonal and install it.  I forgot to take pictures of this, but I'll include some next time.

So, things are moving along.  This weekend we'll probably get started on installing some frames and taking care of other assorted details.  Fortunately, we'll have supplies to keep us going...

In the beginning...

Yesterday was day one of construction. Mostly we worked on clearing out the space, going through the parts, and generally figuring out how 5 guys who all have slightly different ideas on the best way to do things are going to build 5 boats together.

We even managed to do a little boat building - we glued the panels of the first boat together. For this we cut 4" wide strips of the scrap ply that Tim shipped along with the parts, butted the panels together and stuck on the strips with epoxy thickened with colloidal silica and a few tacks to hold them together tightly. We didn't bother with lightening holes, but we were clever enough to leave room along the deck edge for a sheer clamp and room along the chine edge so there won't be any interference when the panels are stitched together. The plan is to glass over the strips for extra strength, and so for this we put a 45º bevel along the edges of the strips to make a smooth transition.

Next comes a cradle and then the stitching fun begins...

Plywood.... and lots of it!

Presenting the first 5 boats of the Portland i550 fleet!


Some assembly required. :)


After their long journey from Colorado, the plywood kits finally arrived today. They're not much to look at right now, but the plan is for things to start moving quickly now. We have two bays rented from Rivers West, so we will be building two in parallel. Hopefully the stars will align for us a little and we'll be able to get at least one out on the water for the summer.

Here's another shot of one of the bays. It's surrounded by plastic sheeting, which should (hopefully) allow us to keep it warm enough for epoxy.

There will be more pictures and more updates as things move along, but for now I'm excited and just wanted to share.

Thank you, Susan and Tim at Watershed Sailboats, for all your help!