New Transom Knee

Between the weather, school, and spring cleaning it's been a while since I have had time to work on the boat. Yesterday though I did have time to cut a new transom knee out, as the one I had made last summer didn't have the right angle to fit tight against the transom. I was also able to install the carriage bolts from the stem to the keel and do some fairing in the spaces where the battens crossed over the frames. Since the weather looks promising for all this week I will be attaching the new transom knee tonight and hoping to get the chines on tomorrow; we'll see though. Below is a picture comparing the new transom knee to the older one. The new transom knee is the much wider one (I need to trim a bit off still), though I will be using the bad one as extra support after I re-cut it to the right angle. By the way, I just saw my finger was in the way of the picture so that's the cause of the blurriness on the left side of the picture.

New vs Old Transom Knees

Battens Attached

The build is starting to get addicting as things are coming together and it's been hard to focus on anything else. This afternoon I was able to attach the battens but before I did so I cut the ends at an angle as I have seen other builders do. I tried to get everything as level as possible to help with the upcoming fairing process so it took a little longer but it will pay off in the end. I was suppose to install the transom knee before adding the battens but I'm still studying up on how I'm going to add the carriage bolts and fair them down. Next will either be the transom knee or chine. I hope to have the planking started this weekend.

Making Sure The Battens Fit Tight

 Battens Installed, Rear View

 Battens Installed, Front View

Keel Attached

Progress continued today as I added the keel. The keel is screwed and epoxied to the frames and transom and then carriage bolts are used to connect it to the stem. The screws that were used are bronze and they aren't very strong, especially going through the mahogany, so I drilled a hole for them before screwing them in. Despite this I still had quite a few break while drilling them in which left part of the screw in the wood. I drilled a fairly decent sized whole before I attempted to drill them in and they fit well but about four of them I had to re-do. I guess this goes with the whole never-built-anything-before skill level, though for the most part things are going pretty smoothly. Next up comes the transom knee and battens.

Keel From Front 

 Keel From Rear

Frame #1 and Transom Attached

Today I finished getting the last of the framing pieces on the jig which included the first frame and the transom. This was fairly simple as the only hard part was deciding how to lock the transom in place so it wont move until the planking is finished. I have it pretty well locked right now but I will probably add some more just to be safe. Progress has been decent though and I made a goal to have the hull complete in two weeks for the Spring Lake wooden boat show where they are accepting pretty much any wooden boat and older fiberglased ones as well. Stay tuned to see if I get any where close to this goal.

     Framing From Front View

 Framing From Rear Side View

Frame #2, Breast-hook, Stem Attached

Today was productive as I was able to first attach Frame #2 to the jig and then after add the breast-hook and stem. If I wasn't o excited to get this boat done I probably would have nailed and laminated the stem and breast-hook today, and then waited until tomorrow to nail and laminate that piece to the second frame. What made it hard by doing both processes back-to-back was that my mixture of epoxy was starting to set in my mixing container while I was making sure everything was level on the first piece. Then when I went to do the stem to frame #2, the epoxy was starting to thicken but it turned out not being a problem.

I took a break after I did this to let everything set a little more before I add frame #1 and the transom to the jig. It's starting to look like a boat and it's getting really exciting to get an idea of what the body will look like. Putting the transom and the first frame on the jig won't take long so I'm hoping to have time to add the keel. After the keel is added then the transom knee is next followed by the battens, chine, and sheer. After those are added its a solid few days of faring everything and then to add the plywood.

Frame #2 Attached

Breast-Hook and Stem Attached to Frame #2

Jig Finally Complete

Tonight I finally finished building the jig in which the boat will be built on. I had it built last summer but the wood had warped and it became untrue (I ended up re-building the whole thing and replacing a few pieces with new wood). It's important for the jig to be true from all sides so the boat isn't crooked when complete. Being that it needs to be true, I had to think of a way to keep it in place so it wouldn't move if someone nudged it or accidentally ran into it. It also sits near the lawn mower and the garbage-can so the likeliness of it getting bumped is pretty high. To do this I glued a few spots with gorilla glue where the jig was touching the cement; hopefully that will hold. Tomorrow I plan on getting the frames nailed or screwed to the jig so I will have more updates tomorrow or not long after.

Last Of August 2010

 The transom sits on a 12 degree angle and because of this you have to cut the transom at such an angle. With the help of my dad we set the fence on the table saw and went to cut but we finished with a bad end result. It turns out the fence had moved when we were cutting which left us with about 1/2'' cut-off on one side and almost 2'' cut-off on the other. In the end this turned out to be a good thing because I hadn't realized it before, but after reading a post on the Glen-L Forum I found that the transom had a slight V in it which I had not made. Since school is out and I'm back on the build I made a new transom so I have a total of two at the moment. I have decided that instead of trying to scrap the bad transom, I will instead finish it and make it a piece to hang on the wall. I'm going to use some scrap 1/4'' mahogany plywood to extend the sides an inch or two and then put two exhaust vents on it. I'll put pictures of that when I am done putting the plywood on the squirt and know how much scrap I will have left.

July - August 2010 Building Time

I had originally started this project during early July of 2010 but with work and online classes through WMU I could only do so much in a week. Besides that I had to move back to WMU and get ready for my junior year at the end of August so these first pictures are from that first month of building. I had never cut any wood or built anything before and this was my first time using a table saw, jigsaw, circular saw, etc. I was pretty intimidated once the wood came because I wasn't sure how I was going to turn it all into a boat. Though with every cut I gained a little bit more confidence, and as the first frames were made and placed on the floor it was comforting seeing how they resembled pictures I had seen of other builds.

 Picture of the Squirt from the plans

 These are the frame pieces that mount to the transom

 This is frame #2; gussets are not yet nailed

 Transom pieces, Frame #1, Frame #2

 Epoxying the two pieces of the stem together

 Transom with framing piece epoxied on; epoxying the motor board

 This is the wood before any cuts; it's African Mahogany

 I transferred the plans to the mahogany using wax paper

 Frame #1