Small Details

Here are the pix of the leeboard brackets. Note the plural. And note the fact that these are not per Gary's book. In talking with Gary over email he recommended trying a mere timber stiffener rather than the bracket he shows plans for in his book. The timber stiffener starts at the gunwale and goes all the way down to the chine. Each piece is glued and screwed with 8 screws. It was simpler and made lots of sense. I also wanted the option to shift the CLR of the hull a bit as I gain a feel for how Shan Skailyn tacks. So Gary also recommended putting two leeboard locations about 300mm apart. With the swing of the leeboard, there's actually quite a bit of shifting of the CLR that can now happen. You might notice that above each bolt hole I plugged another hole. I was over eager to drill! I decided later (again, due to Gary's recommendations) that the leeboard needed to be a few inches lower. Easy fix.
Then in the other picture you'll see the finished mast step. Nothing fancy there. Just a single piece of wood with a square cutout to fit the base of the stub mast. The really nasty dark stuff on the inside of the hull with the mast step is much worse than it looks. Just a result of doctoring up an overly dark photo. The stub mast is another thing that's been slowly coming along. Nothing worth taking pictures of yet. Actually I wish I'd taken a picture of the original piece of timber for before and after comparison pix. Oh well. Er, wait a minute, I think I did some time ago.

Get 'yer primer on

Didn't have a lot of time to work on Shan Skailyn this weekend. BUT, I did manage to get the first two coats of primer on the aft section of the hull. In preparation for painting I had some little details to finish out, which I did. The leeboard mounting bracket is on and the holes are drilled, the mast step is located and fastened in place (pix forthcoming). At this point, other than some more sanding and scraping I'm ready to really push forward with painting everything.
Had a major disappointment yesterday afternoon when I put the second coat of primer on (planning 4 coats of primer by the way). Not 10 minutes after I had applied the second coat and things were looking really nice, a HUGE storm blew in. The rain was extreme and the wind as well. It managed to blow both rain and mud all the way underneath my house, soaking a bunch of my plywood and my freshly painted hull. Not only was the new paint now diluted and dripping down the sides, but the paint that remained had lots of junk embedded in it! Ughhh! As of this morning, not a huge deal. Everything dried OK and after taking a scraper gently over the affected surface and a quick touch up with sandpaper we're sitting at a nice 1-1/2 coats of primer on this hull section.
Also, up till this point I've not been super happy with any of the bamboo that I've had available for my spars. One of my friends mentioned a piece he'd cut recently which sounded like it'd work. He brought that up on Friday. It's a keeper! The dimensions at the base and head are just right. It's got a nice taper. It's thick walled and has an ever so slight curve up toward the head. So we got all the skin scraped off and I'm currently drying it. Also drilled some teeny tiny little holes just above all the lower nodes to drain out the water that collects in there and slows down the drying process.

Iakos (crossbeams)

Here are the finished iakos. My apologies for not getting pix of the process of making them. I went with the hollow box beam design. I'm really glad I did. They seem really lightweight. I increased the overall width and height dimensions by 10% from the solid wood version per Gary's advice and that of others as well. Oh yeah, still have to put a fiberglass wrap around the end where the ama attaches to keep from splitting.
A word of advice... if you're limited to buying JUST the 6 sheets of plywood recommended in Gary's book, make sure you maintain as much of the waste as possible! Don't be liberal if you rough cut things first. I just BARELY had enough plywood to build these iakos. I had to piece things together a little bit on the second one. Other than some small pieces of plywood it is ALL GONE now. Kudos to Gary for laying things out so efficiently in the plans in his book.

Ama Complete! (well, nearly)

I finished Shan Skailyn's ama this weekend! Also finished the iakos (crossbeams). Ama pix in this post. Iakos will be in another since our email system seems more likely to butch things up with more attachments.
For the ama, I went with Gary's advice and filled them with styrofoam. Don't ask where we got that much styrofoam out in the middle of the bush... we just have it. I filled each section to the max. Will help me feel better about any potential leaks sprung while enjoying God's great big ocean!
The stitch and tape job (oh, that reminds me, I've yet to 'tape' the whole keel joint) went well. Never done that before. Definitely takes some fussing with to get things right though. I'm also really pleased with how the ama struts turned out. I was wondering if I might screw something up there. But everything fit and my double and triple checks reveal that all is well. Pretty sure I got all my angles right too. Nothing backwards or otherwise messed up. Whew!
Not a whole lot else to say except, "Bring on the paint!" Realistically, it'll be a couple more weekends before I get to that as there is a lot of preparatory stuff that needs to happen first (ie. fairing and sanding the fiberglass bottoms and then sanding the entire hull).

Beginnings of iakos and ama

Lots of little details that need working on lately. Most of my efforts last weekend went into the ama and the iakos. Along with those, I've also been working on the solid wood stub mast as well as it's mast step (the step with the square hole). Next to that you'll see the mast step for the luff spar (the step with the round dish carved into it. Saw the idea for that one mentioned somewhere by Gary on his website. This seems like a reasonably simple way to make a universal joint for the luff spar when you don't have access to windsurfing supplies. The base of the spar, which will have a rope passing through it, will sit in the cup, with the rope passing through that. With the rope pulled and fastened tightly on the other end, it will provide a great universal joint. And it should be easy and quick to drop the sail if needed. Just loosen the halyard and the rope passing through this mast step and the whole thing comes down.
Should be ready to finish gluing up the ama and the second iako this weekend sometime.

All done glassing

(Ah the joys of email from the bush over HF radio... sorry this post was screwed up again. Here's the text that belongs with the last two pix)

Not a whole lot of progress this last weekend. Just a few hours on Saturday then less than an hour Sunday afternoon. But it was enough time to finish glassing the bottom of the two end sections. Looking good! For some reason, I feel a major milestone has been passed now.

I used less epoxy on the end sections than I anticipated. One thing that made a big difference was that I used a different squeegee; one with a rubber piece on it. The last one I had used was just a soft plastic. I also tried the squeegee on the 2nd and 3rd coats of epoxy as well. Worked pretty nice for the flat bottom. Using thinner coats of epoxy got me a lot more print through of the weave (see picture), but it all scrapes down smooth without cutting into the glass, so it must be just enough. All in all, the total epoxy used for both end sections was exactly what it took to just do the middle section; five 5 oz dixie cups full.

Other than that I was able to take the scraper (just using a utility knife blade) to the middle section. All's nice and fair and smooth now! As I was scraping I realized that I may have put the 2nd and 3rd coats on a bit thick. I'll save the final sanding until just prior to painting.

Oh yeah, and I was able to finish getting everything ready to glue up my hollow box beam iakos. All the station blocks are screwed in place for clamping it into it's curved shape. All the wood is cut and just sitting, waiting to be glued.

Next step is getting my solid wood stub mast ready, including the mast step and collar. After that, I think I'll be ready to start prepping the hull for painting!

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Beginner's experience with fiberglass

I finally deemed the hull ready to fiberglass this weekend. Being my first time ever working with fiberglass I've been nervous about it. I've gathered tons of online material about fiberglass for offline reading in the bush. I've asked a number of questions to glean from Gary D's many years of experience too. He, by far, has the most simplistic, least wasteful, least time consuming method I've come across so far. So I made that first step into the unknown on Saturday morning and fiberglassed the middle section.
I went with Gary's advice about the squeegee. Worked great. Poured the stuff on, starting the center of the hull and then squeegeed it around. Then I followed up with the brush. I'm overlapping the fiberglass 2" up the side of the hull. Squeegeeing didn't work too well on that part. Went with the brush. I also went with Gary's suggestion to try to get all three coats done in one full day, applying subsequent coats prior to the previous one fully curing. We're quite cool here in Mibu. So in order to get the temps to a point where things would cure fast enough to get all three coats on in a day, I started off in the morning by putting the hull out in the earliest sun light available, to warm it up a bit. I also warmed up the resin by putting the epoxy containers in warm water 1/2 hour before getting started. When ready, I moved the warmed hull indoors where the sun quickly warms things because of the corrugated tin roofing. I figured this whole process would have the hull actually cooling down rather than heating up as the resin cured, so as to not make bubbles from air expansion. OK, so done wetting by 9am. No bubbles to speak of and ready for second coat by 11am. Cloudy day, cooling off again around noon, so next round not ready till 2pm. There you have it... all three coats in one day.
All in all, the whole process worked like a charm. This morning, I'm seeing a very clear lay up where all the detail of the wood is visible. Not that clarity matters since I'm painting over it, but hey, it's nice to know I can do it in case I ever want to build another boat someday. However, I can see the cloth on close inspection (see pic). Yet the detail of the wood is nicely seen.
OK, let's talk quantities here; For the middle section (largest surface area to cover) I used a total of 5 dixie cups full of resin. I'm talking about the little 5 oz kids cups here. The initial wetting of the glass used 3. Actually I mixed up three and only used about 2.25 of them. The rest got 're-allocated' to strengthening joints, filling gaps and shaping out the very front end of the foredecks around the stem. Back to numbers... The subsequent coats of epoxy each took significantly less epoxy to fill the weave, each one taking exactly one 5 oz dixie cup full. All in all, glassing the bottom of the middle section of Shan Skailyn took only 25 oz of resin, or about .7 liters. Again, that number is skewed a bit because I made about 3/4 dixie cup too much for wetting out the cloth. So it really should have only taken about 21-22 oz total. I would imagine that each end section would be about two-thirds of the surface area of the middle section, thus using that much less resin on each one.
At this point, I'm a lot less worried that I'll have to buy more resin. I think I'll have enough to squeeze by, especially if I'm careful with the glassing of the end sections. I've been paying careful attention to measuring my resin up to this point, using large syringes to measure out my quantities. Once I got an idea of how much resin is needed for glue, I've been able to use it with very little waste. Being careful with the measurements like that is paying dividends now as it looks like I'll be able to make this thing using 3.75 liters of epoxy (about a gallon) per Gary's recommendations in his book.