Back To Work

It's been a while since I have had time to work on the boat but I'm excited to get back into it. The past week I was in Boyne City on vacation with my family and then this weekend I attended the Tough Mudder event in Wisconsin. Tough Mudder is a 10+ mile obstacle course with proceeds going to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. They are a group who are helping the service men and women of the United States who have been severely wounded.

Anyways, I was able to start the 1957 Evinrude 18 hp that I will be using for the Squirt. After I replaced the starter prawl I gave it a few pulls and got it start up. It sounded pretty choppy at first but after it quit and I read the instructions under the hood about the starting procedure I turned the dial for the high speed control nob and started it up again. This time it sounded great and ran a lot smoother. My dad and I took it out to the lake on our 13' Zodiac hard-bottom and again it ran great. It even got right up on plane with no problem.
More to come soon.

Looks Like More Fairing

After fitting the plywood and scratching my head a few times, concerning the joining of the side and bottom planking from the second frame forward, I went back to my trusty Boat-building With Plywood book. I thought that I understood the lap joint procedure and how the plywood would fit on the chine but once I had the side planking on I realized the bottom planking wouldn't have anything for the screws to fasten to. Everything fit well up until the second frame forward where I ran into this problem. I researched the topic in the book and after rereading it the procedure seemed to 'click'.

What I was suppose to do when fairing the chine from the second frame forward was too find a spot on the chine where the wood began to start to twist toward the stem, and then draw a line down the middle of the chine. On the lower side on the line would be where the side planking would lay and on the top of the line would be where the bottom planking laid. This meant I had to re-fair the chine and sheer; though most of the wood on the sheer had already been taken off so it was a quicker process than before. Overall this makes a lot more sense to me and makes me want to kick myself for not seeing what is the most obvious way to fasten the planking. I guess it all goes with your first build! The picture below shows the chine and the line drawn towards the center to which either side will be faired.

Re-Fairing Chines, Sheers, and Stem

 

Edit: Fairing (Not) Complete, Plywood Cut

Today I did the final fairing on the boat and was able to get everything ready for plywood. Once I went through all the transition points I realized I could improve in a few spots so I spent some time going back over the sheers and chines; it didn't take too long though. I have plywood pieces for the sides cut out and a few pieces for the bottom but I can start the bottom planking until I reinstall the batten that I had break. Below is a picture of the fairing I had to do and it shows how much wood I had to take off of the sheer. You can see a line through the wood and that is the space from the lamination I had done. This picture is from last week but it's hard to capture all of the fairing process.

Fairing Sheer

Evinrude Trouble

This past week I have been working double and with my online classes I haven't had time to work on the boat until today. When I arrived home though my pressurized gas tank finally arrived and looked great. Of course before I started any work on the Squirt I needed to start up the Evinrude. After running to the gas station real quick for a few gallons and adding the oil I put the motor on my dingy and primed the gas tank. Before I started it up I took a step back to see how the outboard looked on the dingy since it's about the same size as my Squirt and I wanted to get an idea of how large the motor would be. To say the least it looked great; very classy. Anyways, I get in the dingy and take my first pull but when I have the rope about halfway out I here something break. Crap!!! (I may have censored that ha) I go to pull it again and there is little to no resistance. I decided to take the hood completely off and then took off the starter housing and found a few pieces of broken plastic. When I saw this I realized it was going to be a cheap and easy fix so I put everything back together and found the piece online which had it named the "starter prawl". It was under $10 with shipping so I'll have it next week and will get the motor started then.

Broken Starter Prawl and Friction Spring

Concerning the building process, I'll try and have all the plywood dry fitted soon and will post pictures when I get a chance. Fiberglass will be starting soon as well so I'll be continuing the research process on that too.

Batten Broke

While doing some last minute fairing my batten broke. I posted on the Glen-L forum for some help on what I can do to not break it next time and got a few good ideas. First I'm going to trim of the edge of the frame where the batten sits and bends on which should relieve some pressure. I'm also going to wrap a towel around the end of both battens with a hot towel to loosen up the wood. One reason for the break was that the stress point was at a knot in the wood. There are also times when a good looking piece of wood will break from a crack unseen to the eye. I'm going to reattach another batten which shouldn't take long, and then add the plywood this week. Here's a picture of the broken one and the one on the side still intact.

Broken Batten

 Broken Batten and Intact Batten

Fairing Sheers

The last part of fairing I have to do before planking is the sheer to chine area. I saved this for last so I could build some confidence up doing the smaller parts after I started it didn't seem nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be (this seems to be a re-occurring event). I have the sheers faired up to the second frame on one side and then almost to the breast hook on the other. Last summer I purchased the Boat Building With Plywood book from Glen-L and haven't used it until this process and it has been extremely helpful. I'll be reading that more as I learn the best way to fasten the plywood.

Sheer Fairing to Frame #2