Skerry build day 8:stitching

Today is the big day. Finally started stitching the hull. All went well for a while - the #1 panels went in quite easily. The frames were a bit of a challenge as I forgot to pre-drill the bottom panel. Doing it after the fact is a bit painful given that you have to push quite hard to get the frames into place. A second pair of hands would have been useful but I used a simple trick: I made the wires much longer for the middle frame and slowly pushed down, tightened the stitch, pushed down a bit more, etc... until it all went into place quite nicely.







I started doing the port side of the # 2 panel but ran into a problem While the bow is flush with the # 1 panel, the stern is about 0.5" too short.. Not quite sure how that happened. I called CLC and they suggest I use a mallet to bring the panel a bit to the stern (probably need to loosen the stitches a bit). It should be OK if the ends are not fully aligned given that I will be filing them down flat then rounding them over later on in the process. I'll give it a try in the evening and see how it goes.



Time: 3 hours (panel 1 both sides, panel 2 port, frames)2 hours (fiddling with the port side panel 2 and attaching the starboard side as well)
Total: 28 hours.

Skerry build day 7: Sanding and marking

I spend all day today sanding the finger joints smooth. The process was fairly painful as some of the joints were not as well aligned as I thought they were. Also, the epoxy thickened with silica is quite a pain to sand through. But in the end I had some pretty flat boards that will hopefully hold together well.

The next step in the process was to mark the frame positions on the bottom frame, and to drill the holes for the wire stitches. That went smoothly though it takes a while if you doublecheck everything.

Time: 2 hours (sanding), 2 hours (marking & drilling)
Total: 23 hours

Building the skerry day 6: Sailing kit, cutting gains, gluing panels

Today was a busy skerry building day.

Started by going to Annapolis to get the sailing kit. Had a wonderful helper so all went quite well, the only hitch being that CLC did not have the sail itself. Hopefully they'll mail it to me so I won't have to take another trip to Annapolis.



Then I got to cut the gains (tapered rabbets) at the ends of the panels. These are needed to make the bow and stern of the boat flat (the chines don't show up there). I used a rabbet plane that we bought at a yard sale in Normandy. The poor plane needed quite a bit of work to get the rust off and clean up the edge. As I was cutting the rabbets I also realized that the shoe of the plane was uneven. I cleaned it off with one of my other planes and it magically started to work well again. The gains were quite a breeze to cut once I got the hang of it.





Finally got around to gluing the panels together. No rain forecast for the next few days, though it did shower right as I was gluing which led me to frantically run around looking for stuff to cover the planks with. The process was pretty painful as the puzzle joints take quite a bit of fiddling to get together, then lots of pounding to get everything lined up. Good thing I checked - a few of the panels were mis-aligned (i.e., the left and right parts were not quite identical) at the joint and I quickly rearranged them before the glue had fully set. The sanding pain starts tomorrow.



Time: 3 hours (trip to Annapolis), 1 hour (cutting gains), 2 hours (gluing)
Total: 19 hours

Skerry build day 5: gluing at last

Quite a bit of pain for a simple process. Glue a little box. I've learned to hate epoxy with a passion - as soon as you clamp the whole things slides along and lose alignment, etc... Hopefully it's all aligned now and pretty much cured. Should know if that's true later tonight.





Time: 1.5 hours
Total: 13 h

Skerry build day 4: One more coat of epoxy

Finally ready to 'paint' the undersides of the seats. The process is working easier than the original paint - apparently experience helps. I was a bit worried by the 'stains' left by the epoxy that leaked from the other side, but they seem to blend in quite nicely.

I'm adding one more coat to the daggerboard trunk and hopefully tomorrow I can glue it together (and experiment with thickened epoxy). If I'm lucky I'll also get to coat the seats one or two more times.

Time: 2 hours
Total: 11.5 h

Skerry build day 3: Sand baby sand

Today I took about 2.5 hours to sand flat the first two coats of epoxy I've put on the seats and daggerboard trunk. It was an absolute pain and there are still some uneven spots, but I've eventually decided they wont' matter much. The main lesson here - work hard to keep the epoxy even when you apply it.

Time: 2.5 hours.
Total: 9.5 h

Skerry build day 2: Epoxying the seats

Today I started epoxying the seats. After lots of sanding I was ready to play with the epoxy. Worked quite well as you can see. I started slowly with the epoxy mix ~ 6 pumps at a time (roughly enough for one of the end-seats). Could easily go to ~8-10 pumps without a problem. The epoxy doesn't seem to set too quickly. But...working under a tree is not ideal. I already have quite a few bits of debris and trapped insects. Hopefully they'll all sand away nicely.

I was thinking of saving the chip brushes (vinegar cleans them quite well) but I think I've decided against it - if any vinegar is left behind it will interfere with the curing process and it's not worth risking this for ~$0.9 per brush.

Yikes - had to entertain the kids and when I got back I found the drop sheet had been folded over the epoxied plywood and made some very interesting (but unwanted) patterns. I guess sanding is next...

I took advantage of some of my free time in between coats to mark the gains on the #1 and #2 planks. I also cleaned up the edges to get rid of the tabs left behind by the cutting machine. I'm not sure how I'll cut the gains as an experiment on scrap ply failed miserably. I guess I'll try to sharpen the blade better and take very very small cuts.. I'm a bit anxious about this step.

Time: 1 hour sanding, 1 hour 'painting' expoxy (first coat) 30 minutes 'painting' epoxy (second coat)
Total: 7 h

Skerry build Day 1: Prep work

The weather hasn't cooperated and I still can't get out and start gluing. After reading the manual the requisite 2-3 times I've started doing some of the prep work to save me time later on. The plan is to:

• build dagger board trunk
• laminate skeg
• epoxy the seats
• shape the breasthooks (round over the edges)

Today I had some time and managed to shape the breasthooks, clean up the edges of the seats and frames (they have quite a few 'tabs' left on from the CNC cutting machine), and cut out the holes for the inspection ports in the forward and aft frames.

The breasthooks were a breeze on a router table with a roundover bit - if you don't have a router table I strongly encourage you to get/build one. I recently attached one to my table saw and I now can't imagine how I ever worked without one.





Cutting the inspection port holes was easy enough - CLC has pre-cut the first few plies in the wood so it's easy to follow their template using a jigsaw. I spent a fair amount of time sanding down the edges using a sanding drum on my cordless drill. A drum sander, or in the very least a corded drill, would make this job a lot easier.


Time: 1.5 hours
Total: 4.5 h

Skerry build Day 0: Buying the kit

Woohoo, bought the kit from CLC and safely brought it home. The kit fit quite well on the roof rack of a Subaru Impreza. I was a bit worried I'd have problems getting it tied down well enough for the highway ride, however a few trucker's hitches got it snugly attached to the car.

If you don't know what the skerry is - check out the CLC page for it.

Time: ~3 hours (driving to/from Annapolis)