Little boat update

I was able to put some time into the little boat while I was at home this past time. Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife had a busy schedule, and my kid is still in school, so I was able to knock out the honey-do list in a few days, signed over one arm, one leg to Home Depot and get things shipshape and do the heavy lifting that often gets put off while I'm out getting baked on fuel fumes at work.

 I spent 30-45 minutes in the morning and again at night on the first week just filling nicks in the hull, priming, then wet sanding, etc etc until diminishing returns made me call 'good enough' and I painted the hull a semi-gloss black- the ultimate color for showing off dings, nicks, surface irregularities and lack of fairness. It came out respectable.

I set it outside in the sun to bake all day after the paint set. The black shows off the dust I was kicking up. 

  Between the wood, fiberglass, epoxy and paint, the hull is up to 6lbs now. At 4 1/2 feet, that's pretty light. I'll need at least 50lbs of ballast when the time comes to finish it.


 Over my second week home, I found time here and there to build the lower house, shape the curved front of the house up forward, and install a coaming in the hull so that the house will be removable (there will be a motorcycle battery under it) but snug enough to be waterproof the when set in place so I don't fill up the boat with any splashed water on deck.

The bowed front was made by joining the upper and lower frame up forward with 30 or so 1/4" sticks, then bondo'ing between them.

While I was gluing and screwing the lower house, I also mocked up a cardboard jig to shape the after deck raised platform that will cover the rudder compartment, and another one up forward in the bow. These were slow to come together, as I wasn't working off the plans, which don't quite capture the shape of the boat proper. I made them with a cutout piece of basswood ply and again with the 1/4" sticks glued down. I also had to reshape the cap rail over the fantail, as it was out of true- the boats back in the day had a complex bend to the sheer, and they're very elegant looking, and I wanted to do it justice, so I spend another day or two making dust by building up the cap rails and sanding them down again. 

 

Yes I am a big dork, thank you for noticing.