Ends attached

With the sides done, I moved onto the ends. This was a little later than usual.

This required extending the pipe clams with the couplers which worked relatively well. The half inch ones on the bottom drooped noticeably. And in the morning I did find one of the bottom clamps lying on the ground.

Also painting the epoxy is notably harder in poor light for confirming coverage. 

The ends in place, late at night. 

Due to the broken boards, I spliced a few extra ones together to spread the load vertically. It seemed to work fine.

One half of the spliced boards

Sides Part 2

The results of the first round of sides turned out well. The masking tape came off cleanly. And the sides stayed attached. Amazingly even the tape on the corners basically came right off the epoxy.

First side piece with tape removed

The second round of sides were put on using the same techniques. The long clamps on the bottom are harder single handed. But I worked out a way with some string.



You'll note that I didn't use as much tape on the top and bottom. I don't think it helped too much, glue still seeped out, and most of what was needed was just the pressure.

I stuck some extra bits of cardboard in to help in a few places at the edges

 After I got things working, I added a few more turns to the clamps....

One too many cranks on the clamps. 

This would have worked better with 1x6" boards instead of 1x8" boards. This also shows how strong the hull itself is, as it was cantilevered off the edge of the hull.

The whole board cracked.

I didn't have anything to replace the broken board so I left it. From the first picture of the broken board you can see that the bottom edge is still well pressed so at least it should be firmly glued at the corners so that's the most important.

The First Sides

The first two sides have been attached. The epoxy is setting now.

However what took the most time this afternoon was the prep work. When gluing the foam together some cuts weren't quite straight and so the sides didn't all quite line up. Sometimes there was not quite enough space. To smooth it off well enough for gluing we used a belt sander. Here's the timelapse.  Unfortunately it cut off before we did any of the gluing. Hopefully we'll get a bigger battery for future attempts. Here's the timelapse.

Technical note: We mostly used 120 grit paper which went through the foam quickly.  When there was some large wood overhangs (~ 0.5") we upped it to 80 grit to go a little faster.  Also the foam coming off in chunks actually clogged the suction mechanism in the sander, but once cleared the suction of the sander plus the shop vac was quite effective.


Jumping to the end you can see the sides held on by the pipe clamps.

Completed application of two sides

As you can see we're using four Pony pipe clamps to hold the plywood to the sides of the craft. The trick we used was to first paint the epoxy on. Then hold the plywood in place with masking tape. (Both for ease of placement and to control the seeping epoxy.

Then there's a layer of cardboard and then solid wood planks on the outside. The goal is that the elasticity of the compressed cardboard will distribute the loading across the plywood and let it conform to the imperfect surface while we crank tight on the wood outside.

Close up of  pipe clamp, with cardboard and outer layer of wood. 

The other risk of this design is that none of it comes off due to epoxy everywhere, but we'll find out another day...

The final results from the back, showing our fancy saw horses.

Thanks again to Michael for all the help. While I was sanding he also did some fixup work on the edge where the plywood had not been clamped down well enough and was delaminating from the foam.

Fixup work for plywood delaminating. 

Plywood for the sides

For the sides of the hull I need to lay up some plywood. To do this I need strips about 6.25". I thought about finding a table saw, but decided just to go ahead with the circular saw.

I made myself a convenient cutting area using a pallet and some loose wood.

My cutting setup

With this I was able to rip using the circular saw relatively conveniently. 

Initially I planned to use 8' and 4' lengths along the sides and 6' lengths spanning the sides. But I realized that would have the same joint locations as the flat sheets so instead I made six 6' sections to have the joints offset from the foam and surface joints. 

The strips of plywood for the sides of the hull.

Plywood Touch Up

The last gluing left some small voids where we didn't get enough weight on top of the plywood and it warped. Here you can see the problem.

Plywood peeling back

I used a small brush and mixing stick to get epoxy underneath and then used a higher density of weight to hold it down. 

Fixing a few locations of glued plywood on the surface.