Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A bad day at home.....

is better than a good day at work! Correct? We've got some nasty weather heading in and I saw some clouds circling over the river! *shudder*

I booked the day off today so I could go see an Amish gentleman about some lumber. My carpool buddy Tim had just bought a huge stack of rough cut pine for his garden shed so I thought I'd give him a try too. Glad I did. For $420 US I can get all the lumber to build the Bow Shed. That would have easily set me back double that here in Good ole' Iroquois. Sorry boys, maybe next time!

For those that were wondering this is what a bow shed looks like.....



Photo: Far Reach Voyages dot com

We'll be pretty close to our estimate of $1K for the shed. :-)

The first load of fiberglass and sticky stuff (epoxy, 6 gallons) showed up today with a few other boxes of boat building supplies (solvent resistant paint rollers, chip brushes, fiberglass tape, pecan flour and a digital electronic scale).

I should be able to pick up the lumber in a couple of weeks. It's a special order to get in the 20' logs so it's to be expected. So that's about it, not much will happen around here for a couple of weeks. Standby.....

PS. My splicing experiment on the 1 X 3's worked but now I don't have to do it! :-) Will post a photo when the weather clears up. Standby to standby again....

PSS. Just did some online window shopping for the epoxy & fiberglass I'll need to complete the hull..... *sigh*

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Sunday Night Doodling

Most designers of boats (or anything else for that matter) don't like you dickering with their designs. Well if no one ever dickered with an original design we wouldn't have all those nice custom hot rods & bikes & things to play with. Some designers take it more personally than others. I'm hoping the designer of our boat (Jacques Mertens) doesn't take offense to my doodling with his design for a really great boat. The fact is we want to be able to use our boat for longer cruises, 2-3 Months ++ and be able to do things like the "Great Loop", "Down East Loop" etc. One day I'd even like to have the boat shipped to Europe and do the canals. I know Lori wants to get back to the Phillipines some day and maybe we could hook up with Del & Lena over there!

Anyhow back on track.

This is "as designed".  Length overall: 28' 2"

(you can click the image for a larger version)

Modified Version. Length overall: 31' 5"
(you can click the image for a larger version)

This is the latest sketch of the modifications we want to make to the boat. Stretching it 39-1/8" by adding another Frame "F". This will allow us to move the galley up into the main salon. Once we do this we'll have enough room in the fwd cabin for a double berth instead of a v-berth. It'll also allow for the inclusion of a pantry and hanging lockers. We've also added sliding doors, Port & Stbd as well as a full hard top to cover the cockpit. The fwd section of the main cabin has been moved ahead 1' which will allow more dash space and the inclusion of a chart table (in the inventory listing).

In order to build our Bow Shed to plans we need to source some 1 X 3" strapping 20' long. Well none of the typical suppliers around here can get it any longer than 16'. I'm checking for some custom saw mills but it doesn't look likely. So in the mean time I'm conducting a little experiment......

What I've done is try to splice a 4' section of 1 X 3 onto a 16'er. I've bevelled the ends to be matched up and epoxied them together. The first try I tried to do all steps in one shot and it didn't work too well.

I wrapped the pieces in fiberglass and some of the blue shrink wrap plastic we got to cover the shed. This should have provided a good strong splice but was murder to handle when it flopped around trying to turn it over to do the backside. The shrink wrap worked as planned and squeezed out the excess epoxy.


When I took the plastic off after 24 hrs the epoxy hadn't kicked. Maybe I didn't stir it enough or it's too old. It work somewhat. The splice held but wasn't all that strong. It wouldn't break but it would bend with the poor epoxy job. Anyhow back to the drawing board. This time I just glued the pieces together and will put the fiberglass on in a second separate operation with new epoxy



That's it for now. Back to work tomorrow to make some money to buy more supplies. Standby.....

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

A stake right through the heart!

The first ceremonial stake that'll help support the bow shed has been driven into the ground. No ceremony, no fanfare, no marching bands, just me and a sledge hammer!



Only about 29 more to go! *Sigh*

I've got to get this thing built as I'm rapidly running out of room in my 8' X 8' garden shed!

Saturday, July 10, 2010

More of the ingredients are coming together.

Picked up the Dr. Shrink wrap that we'll use to cover the bow shed. If you're wondering what a bow shed is check this out....  http://www.by-the-sea.com/stimsonmarine/bowroof.html

We've got very few choices to create a structure that'll fit within our budget. I found these plans after reading numerous posts on the boat building forums. Ordered a set of the plans, $20 US, great investement. When all is said and done a 20' X 32' building shelter will cost us just under a grand and should last 3 or 4 years.

So I'm ready now to shrink wrap the crap outta somethin'! :-)


Nest posting should be the shed going up. Standby....