Rants and Revelations

Today I did the part I’ve been dreading, glassing the inside of the hull. And for all the dread and worry, it ended up being about 18 times worse than my worst fears. The glass ended up bumpy and full of bubbles. It also went majorly wrong in the ends, where the glass cloth ended up bunched up and impossible to epoxy down. Fortunately the end parts are going to be filled with epoxy, so that’s not so bad. And most of the big bubbles are going to be in parts of the boat that nobody will see, but some of them are in the cockpit where I’ll see it every time I sit down.

I’m hoping and praying that I’ll be able to cut down and fill some of the worst of the bubbles.

A summary of the last couple of days, as it relates to kayaking (mostly because there isn’t much that isn’t related to kayaking in the last couple of days).
Continue reading ‘More kayaking, and some construction too’ »

Today the glass tape under the deck was dry, so I took the deck off the hull again. I cut two 9×23 pieces of fibreglas cloth. (The instructions said to use scrap cloth, but since the previous time I was using cloth it didn’t mention keeping the scraps, so I had to use “good” cloth.) These were used to reinforce the deck recess area behind the cockpit.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Finishing the underside of the deck’ »

Last weekend I ran into trouble trying to epoxy when it was too hot. So on Tuesday night I went down to the local distributor for System 3 Epoxy and picked up some “slow” (aka “hot weather”) epoxy hardener. I also bought a box of Nitrile gloves, because the cheap-ass no-name rubber gloves let some epoxy through and leave my hands sticky afterwards.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: All that work and it looks exactly the same’ »

Since I “wasted” the first three days of the four day weekend doing stuff like resting up, kayaking with my dearest wife, and doing an ill-advised upgrade on my Linux box, I felt like I really needed to get at least something done today. And what I had next on the list was to take off more wires and fill more seams with epoxy. And more importantly, to see how I could fix up the horrible mess that is the stern. Unfortunately the first three days were also the days when the weather was perfect. Today it’s hot as hell, and getting humid – and it’s going to stay like that until Thursday.

First I sanded and scraped the bow half of the deck, upon which I’d already done this wire removal and fill job a few days ago. Next I tried to make tape “dams” on the stern area, so that I’d be able to hopefully fill the gaps in with epoxy. Because I was going to do this filling, I mixed up two ounces of epoxy. I was a little wary of mixing two ounces in this heat, and I should have listened to myself.

When you fill seams, you use a dental syringe with about a third to a half an ounce of epoxy in it. I was having a bit of problem with the syringe leaving a decent sized trail of epoxy, and then suddenly splooge-ing out a big wad all at once. (If you’ve read “The Meaning of Liff”, think of it as a “Toronto”.) But I was doing ok, squeegee-ing up the big splooges, on my second or third syringe when I realized it was getting uncomfortably hot. I dumped the remainder and went back to my cup with the remainder of the two ounces I had mixed up, only to discover that the epoxy in the cup had solidified, and was also hot as hell – so hot it was melting the plastic cup.

So I mixed up another ounce to finish, and used about half of it. I didn’t get all the bits filled that I’d hoped to, but maybe when the temperature comes down below 80 I can continue on.

Yesterday I glued the seams on the deck of the kayak. Today I’m supposed to be taking off the wires and filling in any seams that didn’t get filled. I took a look at them, and there are some major problems and some minor ones.

Major problems:

• The tail section didn’t go together correctly. It was so bad that I’ve had to cut the glued seams with a carpet knife. I’ve tried to slide a bit a scrap wood under it and using a combination of nails, tape and clamps tried to get it to sit right and I’ll have to re-glue it later.
• Two places on the deck, around where the bow and stern temporary forms are, the deck has actually slumped down too low and is too wide for the hull. I’m hoping that after I glue the under side and put it back on to dry, I can somehow manipulate those sections to sit right, but I fear that I’m going to end up carving the wood along the shear line to make it fit.

Minor problems:

• lots of glue spills on the outside of the boat that need to be scraped and sanded off
• some HUGE glue spills on the inside of the boat, some that went down into the hull will require lots of work to get off
• Most of the epoxy has set up correctly, but some is still rubbery. Hopefully that’s just a matter of time, and not that I somehow didn’t mix the hardener in correctly.

It’s times like this that I have to keep reminding myself that nobody else will see all the flaws.

Today I finished wiring the rear deck panels, attached the deck recess plate, and positioned and taped the deck down on the hull, and tightened all the wires. I was going to start gluing the deck seams, but a thunderstorm started as soon as I was about to start mixing the epoxy so I called it a day.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Finishing the deck wiring’ »

Haven’t been out to work on the kayak today, but now that Vicki is home I can finally take some high resolution pictures of the kayak. This one shows the deck panels up on top of the hull (although they’re just lightly wired and not connected to the hull in any way).

Another view. Note the wires sticking up.

Oh, two posts in one day! After the epoxy had dried a bit I went to scrape off the excess and I realized it was actually dry enough that I could work with it if I were careful. So I started wiring the deck. And it went pretty well. It was great to see that the lessons I learned from the hull are making the deck work much better. I got the front panels (panel #4) wired together, the shear panels (panel #3) drilled and wired to the front panels, and started on the rear panels as well. Everything is wired very loosely so that I can make adjustments afterwards.

It looks great, and I can really start to see the beautiful lines of the kayak for the first time. It looks exactly as I hoped, a hard chined British-style.

And once again, I am reminded that no matter how tempting it is, you should not put the portable drill down on the battery pack as shown in every catalog picture you’ve ever seen. I’ve now knocked over the drill again and broken a third 1/16th inch drill bit. I’m trying very hard to put the drill down on its side, in the hopes that my last 1/16th inch drill bit will last until the end of this project.

Today I start on the deck. First task is to glue the back of the cockpit together. That took about 30 seconds. But since once that’s done, the next step is to start putting assembling the deck on the boat. So I took the time to remove the two seven inch high pieces that were screwed onto the temporary frames when I first turned the hull upside down to work on the outside.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Flipping the hull’ »

I added a new category to the blog, “Kayak Construction” and moved all my construction project postings to that category. Mostly that’s for my own benefit, so I can find them again if I need to. But like all Wordpress blogs, each category has it’s own RSS feed so if you want, you can just subscribe to those posts if you really want to. (The only time I used that separate feed capability is when LUGOR set up a “Planet” feed of LUGOR members blogs, and I just gave them the URL for the feed for the “Geekery” category.)

Remember how yesterday I expressed surprise that after coating the cloth, it was textured rather than smooth? Well, I guess I should have done a bit better job of reading ahead in the instructions. I mentioned that today I was going to put on the keel reinforcement “tape”. Well, it turns out that you roller on a “fill coat” of epoxy over the whole hull, and then put the tape on and stick it down with more epoxy. And then when that all dries (tomorrow, it appears), you do another fill coat. So I guess it ends up smooth after all.

The instructions just say to

roll on a coat of epoxy over the entire hull to fill the weave of the cloth. (Do not squeegee fill coats.)

but when I do that, I ended up with bubbles and foam, so I went over the coat with a paint brush to smooth it out. Once again, I wish the instructions had mentioned things like this.

Then I put on the keel tape, and wet it down and stuck it down with the paint brush. That went relatively straight forwardly.

Then I went around the boat again with the paint brush and painted out bubbles and drips from the keel tape. Until I find my real camera, there is no way you could see any difference between today and yesterday with the cell phone camera, so I didn’t bother.

Tomorrow I do another fill coat. Then it’s time to start the deck panels. And maybe I’ll have a few days without sticky hands.

I’ve spent the time since the last time I blogged about my kayak project working on epoxying the seams, and trying to round them. This involved a lot of messing about with files, sanding sponges, and the palm sander, and syringes full of epoxy thickened with wood “flour”. Yesterday I declared “good enough”. It’s not perfect, but I think that after putting more layers on it will be fine.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Saturation coat’ »

Today’s mission: flip the boat over and glue the outside seams.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Gluing the seams’ »

Today’s first task was to set up the kayak with the keel on a straight 2×4 to verify that the keel is straight where it’s supposed to be, and that it has rocker where it’s supposed to be. Turns out that it’s flatter than it should be, so I’ve tried to prop up the ends and pin down the middle.
Continue reading ‘Kayak Construction: Too Hot To Epoxy’ »