This weekend was to be my big opportunity to finally get my planking finished & start prepping the hull for fiber glassing. Starting to get somewhere now, aren't we. Schedule unusually clear, prospects looking incredibly positive. Who knew? Best laid plans and all that. Never underestimate external influences like, oh, I don't know, the bloody WEATHER!
So Saturday kicked off a bit slow as usual. Pretty buggered (I'd just worked six out of the last seven days, the majority being all 16 hour days (including commuting) and a pretty miserable, grey, drizzly day all round. Regardless, I got back into it feeling pretty good.
After fiddling around with the last lot of planks & sussing out a plan of attack, I realised that I might run out of glue, so I went to the hardware for more, plus some other stuff. Finally I got back home & renewed my efforts. One cool item I'd picked up was a "SurForm" (see below).
I've heard about these things before & was wondering if they'd be the go for the initial rough cleaning up of the hull. I started trying to clean up the bow stem a bit, to see how it performs. I'm also curious about what the planking looks like under all that glue.
It worked real well, quickly cutting through the glue & jutting bits of timber. I stopped when I started hitting staples, but it's at a point now where it can be finished off with a sander. Perfect for the job I think. Slightly worried about some of the planking I uncovered though (time will tell).
Anyway, then it was time to resume planking again. It was a pretty wet day and it was early afternoon, but I was (naively) still confident that I should be able to get the planking completed once & for all.
The planks in this part of the hull become more of a challenge for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, due to the more vertical aspect of the glue joint, the glue has more of tendency to roll straight out of the cove. To counter this, I started holding each new plank vertically upside down, then laying a strip of glue along the bead edge. Then reverse the plank, glue up the hood ends & fit it in. Messy but seems to be the bet option.
The second challenge turns out that each new plank now fits full length, meaning that I no longer need to use butt joints. So far I could re-cut the hood ends numerous times to achieve an almost perfect fit and then cut the other end for the butt joint to fall on a station mold appropriately. Now I have to cut hood ends at both ends simultaneously & just hope that I've gotten it right. Needless to say, my profound lack of carpentry skills is becoming appallingly apparent. Oh well, I'm hoping that drowning the joint with glue will fill it enough. At least this part will be under paint, so I can use heaps of filler if required. I'm not too worried about loss of strength in these areas, because this whole area will be doubled up with fiber glass. I'm also thinking about using a bit of the more structural type filler on the inside bilge area, especially to compensate for the poor garboard joints that I described earlier. Don't know if this is paranoid overkill, but since I'm planning to use this canoe in the surf at Box Head a lot, a piss weak hull bottom is the last thing I'm wanting to be worrying about.
The third thing I've found is the fact that these hood ends are now getting longer & longer, in fact way too long for my trusty little Japanese pull saw. There's only two levels to go now & the final one is going to have to be ripped full length, plus hood ends cut. It's power tool time.
Since it was by then pretty late & getting quite dark, I had to pull the pin & stop for the day. The photo below shows how close I got to finishing.
All of the news over the last few days has been filled with concern over some epic bad weather on the way, apparently due to hit this region on the Sunday. Heavy driving rain & cyclonic winds were predicted & we were warned to prepare for the worst.
"Bugger" I thought, "I'm going to lose a whole day now". Never mind, can't be helped I guess, so I had a good clean up and lashed the canoe in place, so it couldn't possibly blow over.
This morning dawned bright, clear & calm, as you can see in the photos below.
Since I could see lots of cloud on the horizon, I agonized for ages as to whether or not I should untie the boat & continue with the planking. Eventually I decided that it'd be bad to finally get it all finished and then have the bad weather hit, forcing me to tarp up & lash the hull again, this time with wet glued planks.
Instead I resolved to continue with my experimental test panel, which has sat in my shed for weeks. I gave the epoxied panel a quick sand and found what I had suspected. The epoxy mix was way too thick when I'd applied it & hadn't saturated the weave enough. Also, the single coat of epoxy wasn't thick enough, meaning that I'd had to sand into the glass cloth in a couple of parts.
I'd emailed Dave at Drive Marine (Boatcraft Pacific's agent here) sometime ago and asked him about it and he replied that I should use an additive that increases viscosity. So I picked up a bunch of scrap bits of cedar & whipped up another panel.
My plan is to order the additive (plus some other stuff) & have another go. This time, I'll also apply two coats of epoxy before the peel ply. If that all goes well, then I can go one step further & try applying the Aquacoat, to see how that looks finished. I'm glad that I spent this time experimenting with this system. I want to have it all properly sussed out by the time I actually go to apply it to my boat for real.
And how did we go with the apocalyptic weather predicted? Well, it's now about 1600 and it's still clear & sunny outside. Wonderful, wasted the whole day. I'm back to work Monday & Tuesday but then I have the rest of the week off to try & make some progress. Only problem is, they're now predicting rain for the whole week. Hopefully they're just as inaccurate with this prediction as they were with today's one.
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