Week 16 before launch - Glassing the hull and fitting the keel

17.08.-23.08.15

Glassing the hull and fitting the keel

tailored and rolled up glass cloth

Monday after the weekly boatround I tailored the glass and rolled it up from both ends and positioned it midships.

Preparing for the sheathing

The glassed and ready epoxied hull

Tuesday we started the process with wetting the first three planks with epoxy. Then we carefully rolled out the glass end wetted it smoothly with epoxy again beeing aware not to move the cloth too much to cause no harm, like airbubbles.


Beeing wet you can't see the fabric, which is only on parts of the first 3 planks



After a view hours curing time I  put on an epoxycoat over the whole hull to prepare it for the next step. But that had to wait ten days cause I had to go back to Austria for 10 days.

While I was gone Ant kept the project running and started with finishing the stems and the keel. Therefore they had to add two "Cheeks" on the forestem and to shape them to the keel

The added cheeks on the forestem

Then they scarfed both keelparts and screwed a "Blindkeel" to the place where later the leadkeel will be.

Testfitting of the keel with the screwed on blindkeel

Everything seems to be fine....

While being at home in Austria I stayed in contact with Ant to know how the work on my boat was going on. My friend ensured me, that everything was going well and the keelfitting would soon be finished. But that was only half the truth. But let's not talk about that ....

Week 17 before launch - Preparations for the sheeting

10.08.- 16.08.15

Preparations for the sheathing

At the end of this week the sheathing of the hull was scheduled. We didn't get that far, because preparing the hull and testing out how to do it best took some time.

To find out how the sheathing could be done best I produced some samples, trying different fabrics and kinds to do it.

Although I was told, that it is too tricky to get glass around the edges of the planks I wanted to sheath the garboard and the next 2 planks to get some abrasive protection. I knew that it could be done and so I produced some testplanks to find out, which fabric works best.

My different tests. On the left my best result with 200g woven cloth

The decision fell on 200g woven cloth in combination with fillets and rounded edges.  The testresult looked good but sheating a larger area is a different issue. You have to work very carefully when wetting the glass to avoid air bubbles in the cured sheathing.

Apart from the testing of methods I had to prepare the hull for the glassing.

The hull needed to be sanded, the edges of the planks had to be rounded and the landings had to be filleted. 

sanded & filleted planklandings

Week 18 before launch - Production and fitting of the Sheerplank

 03.08.-09.08.15

Producing and fitting of the Sheerplank 

was this week's task. Or let's put it different, the hull was supposed to be completed at the end of this week!

Ant working on the really long sheerplank

The sheerplank I want to leave bright finished. Therefore I ordered a special kind of plywood from Germany. The deck-veneers of this plywood sheets are of quartercut Sapeli. So the surface shows nice grainlines over the whole length of the boat.







 

In the meanwhile the process of getting the lines, cutting and scarfing as well as fitting the glued plankpieces to the hull has become routine and so the weekly target was reached.

both Sheerplanks are ready to be fitted

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday I happily posed with Eva in front of a finished new doubleender-hull.

Isn't she pretty?

Week 19 before launch - Oar- and sparmaking & the 6th planks on "My Way"

 

27.07.-02.08.15

Oar- and sparmaking-week & the 6th planks on "My Way"

 This week there was the oar- and smarmaking on the school-schedule. 
 
As I decided to need no oar for "MyWay" I made one for my collegue Ant. I finished on Wednesday and decided to use the time left to produce a nice paddle for myself. 

Ant's oar is getting shape

 

I started to shape the paddle, but ran out of time and couldn't finish it. The finished one will be shown later.  Here a view pictures from the beginning.

First I glued a piece of mahogany as stringer between to parts of spruce.

Then I drew the shape on the raw piece of wood and cut it out.

..... will be continued...

 

In the evening hours I continued working on "MyWay". To get back to schedule I worked very late every day and the result was that plank number 6 on both sides was glued on friday evening at 10 pm!

                                                                                              My ladies....