Month: November 2020

The stringers needed a fair bit of fettling to achieve the correct shape. I did spend a fair few hours on these. Hand plane in the main, although the belt sander did assist getting excess material off quickly.

There was a good tension in the stringers towards the bow that needed some encouragement.

Then to the sides, I decided not to join them together off the boat with the butt joints but do them as each panel went on. I did not really have the space to lay them out off the boat, but also made sense to get them fitted correctly on the boat and add the panels. Worked well.

There is a lot of epoxy needed, I over applied it to the frames and stringers then used the excess to create small fillets on the inner side. It was was possible to achieve a smooth finish with some acetone but will still need some sanding.

Never thought I could use so many clamps! Also used lots of 3cm stainless screws (all A4 incase they don’t come out) to hold down panels on frames. I removed all of them after the epoxy has gone off.

Everything so far is fairly straightforward, plans are an excellent reference and the B&B video gives great guidance. The stringers are from my experience a bit trickier. Getting them let in correctly took quite some time, as did bending them in several axis caused a some resistance from the wood. We had a few arguments and sometime the wood won and sometimes I won. One stringer did not survive and needed replacing for a more compliant member of the yacht.

Letting the stringers into the keel timbers was a bit fiddly as well. The chisels got a good workout.

I found by working front to back and back to front on the frames they slowly came good. Lots of late evenings.

All in and started to plan them down for the sides and bottom. The chin board goes on last. This will take a while. Must make sure perfect symmetry on both sides, functional strength but might as well make sure it looks good! Got some neat plans for painting.

There was some sanding of the frames to take off the excess epoxy, I tried to keep the excess to a minimum so was not much. The boat yard has fantastic extraction systems that suck away sanding dust and filter it. I also have access to compressed air for the sanding tools and vacuums for the tools so there is virtually no airborne sanding dust / epoxy dust. I still wear a high spec respirator when sanding and using epoxy.

So with the frames all sanded I ran round them with a router to take off all the edges on the yacht insides. Save some work later when access might not be so good.

Right on with the frames.

I made up the bunk sides to use as a setting out aid for the frames. None of the frames are epoxied in yet, dry fit with the help of a laser level. The laser level does horizontal and vertical axis allowing me to get the frames very accurately set-up. I screwed them onto the strong back when I had the sat correctly. This was quite time consuming and took a good few hours. Needed the helper kids really but their definition of an exciting after school project was not the same as mine so I went solo.

I also glued the stringers together as could not be delivered 6.6m long. Came in 2.2m sections.