Skerry build day 43: more fillets, epoxy on spars

Despite having the eyes dilated from an eye exam, I managed to do a decent job on the interior fillets (the underside of seats) and patched a few holes in the daggerboard trunk. The mast partner also went in, and fillets went around it (just in case).

The last bit of fun was sanding the spars and coating them with one layer of epoxy. I'll probably stop there (perhaps one or more layers on the bottom couple of feet of the mast, where it will bounce around in the partner and step) and let the varnish truly protect them.

Time: 4 hours
Total: 125 hours

Skerry build day 42: daggerboard holes

A quick bit of work in the morning turned up to be a bit painful: using the router to cut holes for the daggerboard. The squeezed out glue on the inside made the cuts all wavy and then I spent a whole hour sanding the holes straight. As usual, nothing's simple with this boat.

Time: 1 hour
Total: 121 hours

Skerry:watertight

Rain came through this evening and my trusty tarp failed. As you see below, I found the boat full of water. There are two good pieces of news, though: 1. the boat didn't leak; and 2. the saw horses did not break.

Cleaning up the water was a bit of a pain but since the boat's already epoxied I shouldn't have any other problems

Skerry build day 41: seat fillets

Today I've filleted the tops of the seats. The process went a lot faster than I expected, though the corners and the areas with really wide holes were quite a challenge to deal with. I used 1/2, 3/4, and 1 1/2" radius fillets depending on how much filling I had to do.

Once I put the fillets on the bottom of the seats and cut the holes for the daggerboard the boat is officially finished. Just painting left.

And here are the beautiful fillets (well, not so beautiful at spots):





Time: 2 hours
Total: 120 hours

Skerry build day 40: mostly seats

Today the seats went in. There are some quite big gaps at spots but I'll fill them up with thickened epoxy once I get to the fillets. The fillets will be a bit challenging - I'll probably have to go as high as 1 1/2" at spots where the gap is really large. Hopefully it will be strong enough in the end.

Also I started cleaning up the spars. The sprit is all ready now and it seems like the other spars will be pretty easy to get ready. I've decided I will give them all one coat of epoxy, just in case...

Finally, one more coat of epoxy on all the foils. Some creative sanding coming up, then one last coat.

Here's the status so far:




Hiding in the front compartment is a beetle that had the misfortune of getting stuck in the epoxy. I moved him to the stem and had him encased in epoxy for ever. Hopefully he'll watch over the boat.


Time: 3 hours
Total: 118 hours

Skerry build day 39: fillets, rudder, daggerboard and mast holes

Today I've filleted the inside of the boat. Worked quite well, and due to the heat I was able to smooth the fillets within about 1 hour of putting them in the boat. Cleaning up the epoxy has been a bit harder: the bulk came off easily with a squeegee, but the thin parts left behind solidified too quickly for me to get them off with alcohol. Hopefully they'll sand invisible enough.

Mast step got fillets on the inside as well, and went into the boat.

Rudder, daggerboard, and rudder head all got a first coat of epoxy all over.

Also, I rounded over the holes in the spars using the router (the bearing is just under 1/2" which means it fits in the hole). Some of the holes don't look too great given that the drill ripped up parts of the wood. Oh, well. I might patch the breaks with thickened epoxy or just pretend they are OK. That's work for tomorrow.


Time: 5 hours
Total: 115 hours

Skerry build day 38: mast step, daggerboard, and rudder

Today I sanded and epoxied the mast step, and added fiberglass to the leading edge of the rudder and daggerboard (the idea being that they'll better survive groundings... We'll see how well that works.

Browsing the internet a bit I found a scary mast step story: http://www.clcboats.com/forum/clcforum/thread/16140.html. I'm definitely going to put epoxy fillets on mine.

A second coat of epoxy on mast step and one side of dagger board/rudder completed the day. Weather's in the 100s so it's not much fun to work on the boat now.


Time: 2 hours
Total: 110 hours

Skerry build day 37: light gluing and shaping

I've started putting together the mast step. It's all glued up now and roughly shaped to fit in the boat. Some additional shaping will need to happen after I fillet the forward bulkhead. Also, I've drilled holes in all the spars and glued the pegs in the sprit.

Time: 1 hour
Total: 108 hours

Skerry build day 36: starting the fillets

I started with the fillets in the bow and stern. I think the epoxy was a bit too thin which caused a bunch of voids. Probably if it's thicker it will make better fillets. The temperature outside was nearing 100F which meant that I really only got ~1 hour of workable time with the epoxy. Good thing I didn't mix up too much of it. The big problem was that 2 hours later, when I went back to smooth the fillets, they were already too well set. Oh well. At least most of these fillets will be invisible, and the visible parts should sand smooth fairly easily.


Time: 1 hour
Total: 107 hours

Skerry build day 35: daggerboard trunk and daggerboard

I finally got the daggerboard trunk in the boat. Worked out quite easily, though my countersink makes holes that are a bit too big and the bottom screws did not pull the trunk very tight. I should still be OK given that I'm adding thick fillets around the daggerboard. The whole process took about 1 hour, mostly to make sure everything is square. Of course, as soon as I drove the screws, the trunk moved 1-2 mm so it's no longer as square as I would have liked. Yet another one of those imperfections I'll have to live with.

I also spent an hour sanding and rounding over the daggerboard itself. This was quite painful as I couldn't easily get inside the handle with sandpaper and there was quite a bit of epoxy goop in there. Again much work could have been saved if I'd been more careful when gluing. A bit more sanding left and I can epoxy it.

Time: 2 hours
Total: 106 hours

Skerry build day 34: one last coat of epoxy

Hurray. Today I added one last coat of epoxy on the inside of the boat. Took quite a bit of sanding to get everything smooth as there were many runs from last night. Also, the edge of the fiberglass was sticking up and it took a bit of effort to clean it up. Again, would have been easier to do while the fiberglass was not yet fully dry.

All's good now, took some pains to get everything coated evenly, went over a few times with rollers and the brush, and with the sponge brush. All looks fairly well, though I'm starting to see some 'dry' spots. Not sure if these are truly dry, or if the epoxy had started drying there faster.. In any case, if these give me troubles later I can patch them up as I go.

Daggerboard trunk is done too. If all works well I'll install the daggerboard trunk tonight so that I can start working on the fillets and seats over the next week.

Woohoo. I'm almost there.

Time: 4 hours
Total: 104 hours

Skerry build day 33: inside fiberglass

Finally I got to the inside 'glass. I had to spend another couple of hours sanding, then went on to put the fiberglass in the hull. By now the process was quite easy, except for cutting off the fiberglass at the end. There was always the one strand that wouldn't cut and ended up pulling the fiberglass off the hull as I was trying to remove the scraps. Eventually it all worked out and it's all done for now.

The only other small project was to start epoxying the daggerboard trunk. If I'm lucky that will go into the boat tomorrow evening and I'll be all ready for the interior fillets next.

Second coat of epoxy went on as well. The hardest/most time consuming part was getting rid of the masking tape I was using to protect the #2 panels while laying the fiber. I should have taken this out as soon as I cut the fiberglass.

Time: 8 hours
Total: 100 hours

Skerry build day 32: sanding, sanding, and more sanding

Today was dedicated to getting the inside of the hull ready for the glass. I thought it would go faster but still spent most of the day sanding and have probably another hour to go. I tried to clear most of the lumps of thickened epoxy using a scraper and a chisel, then moved on to the sander. The hardest part have been the stems. My orbital sander does not fit in and I had to use the mouse sander. I'm using the mouse sander for the frames and frame-panel joins where the orbital sander can't reach.

I also took the opportunity to fit the seats. The process wasn't too bad - I had a bit harder time in the stern but I was done in ~30 minutes using the rasp. I then marked on the hull where the seats sit so that I remember not to sand too much below. I rough sanded the 'hidden' compartments so that I don't have surprises when I lay up the fiberglass but I'm not worried about any stains or dents. Regarding the seats, I'm not sure if they are perfectly horizontal (probably not) and I've decided I won't care. They won't be once the boat is in the water anyway, and a bit of a slope towards the center of the boat will keep water from collecting in the stems.

I also sanded the rails smooth.

Next step: more sanding and then inside fiberglass.

Time: 5 hours
Total: 92 hours

Skerry build day 31: some light gluing

Today I got to glue to tiller to the rudder head and the chocks to the daggerboard. Not much to say here other than getting the chocks lined up quite right took a bit of fiddling. By now I'm quite accustomed to cleaning up after myself and it seems I won't have much sanding to do before I epoxy all the remaining parts (I should not forget the daggerboard trunk which will go in sometime this weekend or next week).

Time: 1 hour
Total: 87 hours

Skerry build day 30: sanding and shaping

Today I flipped the boat over and sanded the rails. My trusty block plane made quick work of evening out the rails with the top of the boat, then I followed with the sander. It's amazing how quickly the sandpaper runs out of steam - I've used about 3-4 disks for the rails.

Next step was rounding over the edges. This was quite painless with the router, though my dewalt is a bit heavy and was tricky to keep flat. A trim router might be a better tool. Once the router was out I also rounded over all the spars and the tiller. Now it's all ready for epoxy/varnish.

Rounding over the rails I noticed that the top panel had delaminated on the aft port side. This panel had delaminated before and I'd thought I had fixed it but now another bubble had appeared. I filled the hole with ligthly thickened epoxy and now it all seems fine.... If it delaminates again I'll have to figure out a better solution, especially as by then the boat will be all epoxied. Hope I don't have to figure this one out.

I also got the chance to shape the rudder and dagger board. Now I can epoxy those and call that part of the project done. I'll probably put some fiberglass on the bottom and leading edge of the foils just to make sure they don't get too dented during the inevitable groundings (which I hope to 'enjoy' not too far into the future).



Time: 4 hours
Total: 86 hours

Skerry build day 29:more epoxy

Today I sanded down the rails and skeg and added two more coats of epoxy. It's not the worlds most perfect job, but will have to do. I might patch some of the worst spots before painting, and hopefully sanding will take care of the most egregious runs.

Time: 2 hours
Total: 82 hours

Skerry build day 28: rails and skeg

All's done and glued now. Time for a first layer of epoxy on everything. I first plugged the screw holes in the rails using plugs cut from the rail endpieces. My smallest plug cutter is 3/8 while the countersinks were about 1/4 or perhaps 3/16. I tapered the ends of the plugs with some sandpaper and they ended up roughly fitting into the holes. Then it was on to peanut butter epoxy in each hole, on the plug, then bashing the plug into the hole.

Once the plugs had set (overnight) I planed and sanded the skeg and rails smooth. The plane does an excellent job in evening out the rails and cleaning up the extra epoxy. The hard part, though, is figuring out the direction of the grain. I ended up ripping up several chunks of wood when I was not careful.

Then it was on to one layer of epoxy (~5 pumps were enough for both rails and skeg). I only did two parts of the rails (bottom and side) as the third part (top) still needs to be cleaned up and rounded over. This way I won't need to clean up any epoxy that happens to drip off the edges (hopefully not much).

I would have liked to do a second layer soon after the first, but time is not on my side. I'll do it all about a week later, which means part of the day will be spent sanding the already epoxied parts smooth and cleaning the dust with alcohol. It might be OK anyway as debris fell on the wet epoxy and also the skeg 'outgassed' a bit (despite my best efforts at popping bubbles with a foam brush).

Time: 3 hours
Total: 80 hours