Catching up

So it has been a long...long time since we have updated the blog. I could blame the delay on a vacation to Paris....but I still have a few more weeks, I mean months to account for. Well the good news is the kayaks are almost done!!! Stay tuned!

Coaming and Hatches

Now that the deck glass is on we turned our attention to the cockpit coaming. The coaming consists of 3 layers. The lower 2 layers are tacked in place with two nails with epoxy between each layer. Then the top layer is placed on the top with epoxy and clamped in place.

Now would probably be the appropriate time to Thank the many people who loaned us clamps for this project. Below are all of our clamps, along with clamps from friends J, Mimi and Bruce. We truly have learned you can not have too many clamps.

Now we move on to the hatches. Using a template we traced the location of the hatches and then using the bonzai saw Luke carefully cut out the hatches.

Voila!

Next we have to reinforce the hatch openings by attaching a second layer of plywood inside the openings. Once again...more clamps needed.

Then we prepared the hatch covers. Unlike Luke's boat, The Chesapeake uses separate pieces of wood for the hatch covers. Here you can see the hatch stiffeners are attached to the covers using fiberglass tape and epoxy. The stiffeners also help to give the hatch covers the right amount of curvature (along wiht the help of Bruce's hatch jigs, THANKS)

Glassing the Deck

Now that the deck is on, we need to fiberglass it. This was a little more tricky because unlike with hull we only had one sheet of glass. This sheet had to be cut into two triangle for the bow and stern. Here Susan is triming the glass so that it overlaps the hull by about an inch. Like on the hull Luke poured on epoxy and using a squeegee filled the weave in the cloth and feathered the overlap into the hull.

Here is a preview of a future step...attaching the combing

Attaching the deck

The deck comes in two pieces and is nailed and epoxied to the hull. Above you can see Luke laying the deck panels on the hull.


Then using a nailing guide we hammered in ring nails every 3 inches. Ring nails have ridges around the shaft of the nail that help them hold. Even though there are nails every 3 inches we still needed tie down straps to help hold deck in the correct shape and ensure that the deck was held tight to the shear clamps during the 24 hours that it takes the epoxy to cure.


Once all the straps were on we turned the boat over to allow gravity to help us keep the epoxy where we want it.

After the epoxy cured we turned the boat over and using a Japanese Saw (cuts on the pull not on the push)trimmed the excess deck off.

Looing Good!

End Pour and Foot Braces

Before we attach the deck there are a couple of things we need to do while the deck is still off. First we do the end pours. We take epoxy with microballoons and pour it into the ends of the boat to make sure the ends of the boat are water tight, provide extra strength in case of impact, and allow us to drill a handle. The microballoons are lighter than the other fillers we have used thus far. They foamed up like a middle school chemistry experiment.

Then we take the chance to measure where we want the foot braces. We drilled out a larger hole than is needed. That is filled with epoxy so that when we actually attach the foot braces (after varnishing) we are drilling into epoxy not wood. This prevents water penetrating the hull. This was the first time Susan sat in the boat....Fun!

Sheer Clamps

Next step is to get ready to attach the deck to the hull. To do this the Sheer clamps must be planed to the proper angle. Luke did this step with a low angled block plane. This resulted in lots of wood curls everywhere. The angle changes at differnt points along the boat. The two different radaii are constant in front of the cockpit and behind it. CLC includes two guides in the kit to help with this. But transitioning from the one radius to the other at the cockpit must be done by eye.

Catching up

So we have been so busy working on the Kayaks that I haven't gotten around to telling you all about it. Let me catch you up. After the hull was sanded smooth we applied the fiberglass. Here Susan is smoothing out the glass cloth. Then we poured epoxy and spead it into the glass with a squeegee.

Above you can see the hull with the fiberglass hanging down from the edge.