Side Skirt Strips Attached

Thanks to the help of Christian and Michael the rest of the skirt attachment strips are attached to the perimeter of the craft.  With the strips now attached we officially have a top and bottom to the craft. (It's upside down at the moment.)

Here are a few pictures of the results of the strips on the bottom.

You'll see that the surface was pretty wavy and as much as we tried to staple and glue it down they still stood up a little.

I forgot to mention that we used masking tape on the backs of the t-nuts to prevent epoxy intrusion into the threads. 


Today we had the luxury of working on much flatter surfaces. Thanks to our previous efforts of sanding the sides smooth, and the areas not being big enough for the plywood to buckle. We also sanded a little bit and brushed off the dust for a better surface treatment.

For gluing on the side we used the masking tape again to attempt to keep the glue in place which worked quite well.

The tape before applying the epoxy.

As you can see we loosly taped the pieces in place. Then we ran tape all along the underside of the strip to keep the glue in place. It also made it really convenient for adding the epoxy, as we just had to take off the loose tape and it folded down for easy access with the brush. After which it could be folded back up and taped into place while being stapled.

Here's the timelapse from today.

Skirt strips applied

Today I was able to attach the skirt strips for the bottom of the vehicle. Thanks a lot to Christian for the help today!

We attached the strips to what will be the bottom of the boat where the inside edge of the skirt will attach. 

Here's the timelapse view of our work. 

The strips as prepared before. We applied epoxy to the strip and then used a staple gun to staple the strips to the hull. The staples will provide shear stiffness and help hold the strips down while gluing.

There were a few areas where we had issues keeping the strips down due to wavyness of the plywood. When stapling I tried to hold it down as well as possible but the staples weren't strong enough when there was a valley between two peaks of the waves. I added some of the buckets afterwards to try to help weigh down the problem areas.

The next step will be to do the sides. It's going to be a little tougher as it will be not on a horizontal surface. But the sides are much flatter so we won't need to worry about weighing it down or gaps forming. 

More skirt stirps

Having started on the skirt strips there were a bunch more to do. There's actually quite a bit of perimeter of the skirt. There needs to be both strips lining the outside along the side of the hull, as well as on the underside holding the skirt to the bottom of the hull.

My fabrication technique was relatively quick and the hole are probably +- 1/2" so the outside strips will likely need some slightly larger holes with washers. 

After the previous test run I was able to put together the rest of the strips I needed for the inside.

The next step will be to attach them all to the hull.