Flotation! Finally!

It's been a month of hard work, and tonight we finally took it out for the first test paddle! Verdict: she floats!


There was no leakage either! Tonight definitely had the thrill of satisfaction

Call it, Friendo

We're done! For now at least. We glued the decks on this morning, and then coated the inside twice and let it dry up for a while. It also started raining just as we were cleaning up from epoxying the inside, so we quickly threw the tarps on and ran inside. We didn't have paddles, so we headed up to Dick's Sporting Goods. They have cheap wooden paddles for $30. They actually look really good, and should hold up for a while.

The sun was shining when we got back from the store, so we decided to go ahead and flip the boat, and apply the last coats to the bottom of the hull. Just as we were finishing up, we were hit by another downpour. We put the tarps up again, probably in the best configuration yet. It's basically a really big tent that's staked out over the whole boat. I'll get some pictures up later tonight.

We're going to let the epoxy cure for two days, then go for a test paddle/fishing trip on Tuesday night. We would probably do it tomorrow night, but our grandma's birthday is then, so no go.

Getting there...

Alright so now it looks like a canoe!

It's got seats! We took apart old folding lawn chairs that have these sweet teal webbing in them. We built a box frame for the seats, and then wrapped and stapled the webbing to the frames.

This is the storage bucket in the stern bulkhead. It has a nice lid that's hinged. We still have to put the decking on, but this is pretty much what the rear will look like.

Another look after the gunwale clamps came off today. We put the rest of the gunwales on first thing this morning, then took the clamps off around 6. The canoe doesn't look straight or square in this picture, but it is... somewhat.

Nice, level gunwales. Tomorrow we install the decks on top of the bulkheads, which we've cutout already, then coat the boat in epoxy! Almost done! It might get a float test tomorrow :)

Gunwales

Yesterday we installed one side of the gunwales, and the bulkheads. In some of the pictures below you can see the rectangular cutouts in the bulkheads. These are for the hatches we are installing for storage.

We thought we could install all of the gunwales, but we didn't realize how many clamps it would take, and how few clamps we actually had! Will install the rest tomorrow.


We also tried to make an end pour at the front, for installing a rope handle. The directions we have make a poor suggestion of making the end pour 'frame' out of cardboard and taping it in place. Bad idea! The large amount of epoxy melted the tape, and started to leak out into the nose of the boat just in front of the bulkhead! DOH! It turned out to be a huge waste of epoxy, but we did manage to scoop some of it up and onto the sides of the hull that need to be covered in epoxy anyway.

Frames In

A rope around the hull to keep it tight


We filleted the frames to the hull with wood filler, then fiberglass taped them.







We've got an idea to implement some buckets with lids into the bulkheads. The lids will almost be flush with the bulkhead. I'll get some pictures of them tomorrow once they're sanded down. We need ideas for seats! Nylon webbing or something else??

Stitching done

I didn't get a chance to post what we did on Thursday. After we had glued the seams and waited for them to cure, we had taken out the stitches. Once these were out, we sanded the seams down to nice curves, and then fiberglass taped two of the four seams. We were running out of time before we got to the last two seams. Our dad has been helping out lately, too. He's always wanted a canoe, so I think he's hurrying along so he can ride in it! Sorry, no pictures, this was a messy night.

Completion of stitching and hull tack welding

We worked well into the night, about 11pm. Long night, and we even got started early...


Stitching the frames on, now you can see the curves of the canoe.


Frames in place now.


Putting the top panel on. We decided it would be easier to stitch the ends of the top panels together, then spread them and start stitching from the middle out to the tips.




Check it out! we've got a canoe!


View from on top of the deck.


Gettin kind of dark...


Here we're putting the epoxy/wood filler mix into the seams. This is the 'tack welding' process. Once these dry, we can take the stitches out and fill in their holes.

Back under the tarps for the night

Stitching

Tonight we moved the workshop outside since the basement windows/doors are too tight to get the canoe out once assembled. We threw together a simple table instead of saw horses, and it's a lot sturdier.

It looks like a canoe! Almost there... It's curved downward in this picture, and obviously it's supposed to curve the other way. That's because the side panels aren't pushed out as far as they will be in the end, and the wood needs to be pushed out at an angle, hard to do when you're air-paddlin.

It was getting pretty dark, we didn't make much progress because we had to build the table, too. We usually start around 7, right after dinner, which doesn't give us much time. I need to start going to work earlier and getting off before 5.

We finished up around 9:30 tonight. The flood lights in the backyard don't provide too much light, and some of the bow is in the shadow of the deck. Also, it's not supposed to rain for at least a week, but we put two tarps over it just in case. We don't need any bird poop on it.

A bit mo work

Ok, so I've been out of town the past weekends/weeks on vacation and such, so we haven't had a chance to get some quality work knocked out. The other night we glued the panels together, then fiberglassed over the seems.

These panels are looong
I'm about to head down and pull off the plastic to see how well we fiberglassed the seems.

Tomorrow we are planning on starting to stitch the hull together! We have to move our operation outside, though, because the canoe, once built, won't be able to fit through any of the windows or doors in the basement. We're going to setup a large tent in the backyard to work under, and hopefully you will see this thing floating soon!