Building a TX-18

Catching up (again)

2011-11-22T08:28:00.000-06:00

You wouldn't know it from reading this blog, but I finished the boat in time for the builder's meet this summer. Truth be told, boats are never finished, but its been in the water - twice. The last few weeks of construction were pretty intense and I neglected to post here. I did manage to take pictures and post on the bateau.com forum, so I'm going to try making a post a day here in order to bring this journal up to date.

The last post was from June 14, so I'll pick up there. During this week, I figured out that the switch panel I'd bought back in 2008 didn't have nearly enough switches to meet all of my requirements. You'd think somebody with a EE degree would have figured that out sooner. Fixing the issue wasn't as simple as getting a larger panel, the console was laid out (and hole was cut) for the panel I had on hand. There simply wasn't room for a larger switch panel in the console.

After much gnashing of teeth and discussion on the forum, I decide to build an "electronics" box to be installed under the T-top canopy. The e-box would hold an auxiliary switch panel, provide a place to mount the hailer horn and GPS antenna. The rest of the box would provide storage and charging station(s) for cell phones. Additionally, the e-box would reduce the number of cables running from the console up the T-top legs and to lights and hailer.

On Friday evening of June 17, I had help from my brother's father-in-law and uncle and we managed to get Kiwi Grip (non-skid coating) applied to the sole and decks. Here's a couple of shots of the results.

According to my forum post, the plan for the rest of the weekend was to finish the T-top anchors, install the rub-rails, put the boat on the trailer and maybe hang the motor. We'll see how much of this actually got done.

T-top and non-skid

2011-06-17T23:17:00.000-05:00

I've got some help this weekend and we've been making amazing progress. I'm just going to post a couple of progress shots and then summarize at the end of the weekend.

Painting progress

2011-06-14T08:38:00.000-05:00

I've been busy preppin' and paintin'! I'm going to keep this short and just show you some pictures. You'll notice that some areas are not painted. A non-skid covering (KiwiGrip) will be applied there an on top of the gunwales. There is no need to paint under the KiwiGrip, so I didn't bother wasting the $300/gallon Sterling paint. Yep, you heard that correctly.

Here is what I get to wear while painting. I have to keep the doors to the shop closed to keep the dust down. I found out the hard way that I needed to wear a long sleeve shirt and something on my head to keep sweat out of the paint. After all, it is summertime in Texas. The two-part paint I'm using is very bad for you, so a carbon-filtered respirator rated for organic vapors is in order. The MEK used for cleanup is even worse - add heavy rubber gloves when handling that.

The Sterling paint is super glossy, making it very hard to take pictures. You can see reflections from the overhead lights, and all the surrounding objects in the shop. This was applied using "roll and tip" and NOT sprayed on. Roll and tip uses a paint roller to spread the paint out and then you break up the bubbles using just the tip of a high quality natural bristle brush.

Don't forget that you can click on a picture to see a larger version.

Catching up

2011-05-27T15:44:00.003-05:00

I've been making good progress, but have been bad about posting. This post will bring us up to date and I promise to stay current. Some cool stuff is about to happen and I can't wait.

I had a little false start with mounting the trolling motor. I didn't want to mount the receptacle vertically in the deck because I feared it would get full of water. I didn't want to mount it on the front frame because I'd be tripping over the cables. I found an interesting plug housing on another forum and actually built one.

After a lot of fairing, I still wasn't happy with the housing and ended up grinding it off and mounting the receptacle in the deck. I'll just have to keep it full of dielectric and keep the cap on it. The plug isn't so expensive that replacing it every couple of years would be a burden.

Here's a better picture of the housing and the quick-release mount for the trolling motor:

I drilled all of the holes for cleats and rod holders in the gunwales. There will be a rod holder and pull-up cleat on each corner of the gunwales. They'll look something like this:

I built a drilling jig to drill the four motor mounting holes. Like all the holes in the boat, they are drilled oversized, filled with epoxy and then drilled in the appropriate size so that nothing ever touches wood. The 2x4's on the jig helped me keep the drill square to the transom.

A couple of guys from the boat building forum showed up to help and learn more about building. There wasn't much going on with the boat other than (more) sanding, so they worked on the trailer. I still had the molds that were used during the initial construction, so they put them together to check out the bunk alignment.

This was a very worthwhile exercise. First of all, this boat is wide - very wide. It's not going to fit between the fender wells. The bunks are adjustable in height and angle, but the posts aren't long enough. Secondly, the inner bunks need to conform to the compound curve of the center of the boat. Oh yeah, all the carpet rotted off of the bunks during the three years the trailer has been sitting outside my shop.

I just acquired some 2" aluminum square tubing to fabricate new bunk posts so that I can raise the boat high enough. In researching solutions to having the bunks conform to the curves, I discovered that green douglas fir is commonly used. The green wood is still flexible and as it dries, it will take on the desired shape. I just picked up the fir at lunch and I'll get the new bunks mounted this weekend. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do at the front of the boat, but I have enough spare aluminum tubing and fir to build some bunks at the front. I'm going to wait until the boat is on the trailer before making any decisions here.

I applied a couple of coats of primer, applied a guide coat, sanded some more and re-primed.

I hired a couple of auto-body technicians to do the final preparation and paint work. They needed a real air compressor - my little portable just wasn't going to cut it. I used to have a big compressor, but it became a condition of sale on my last house. It didn't take a lot to convince me to buy a big compressor. It WAS a lot of work to get it back to my shop and off the trailer. Here you can see it hanging on a come-along from a ring welded to the peak of my building. In the background, you can see the material handler I rented to get it off the trailer. The compressor is now nestled in the corner of my shop. I really like this compressor.

I decided to hire the auto-body techs for a couple of reasons. I want to have a first class paint job and I just wasn't convinced that I knew when to quit the prep work. These guys are amazing - they can do more in an hour than I can in a day - and do it better. Here's the other reason - a three color paint job:

One of the boat building forum members did the graphic design. "Texas Sled" is the name the designer gave to this boat and after a lot of pondering, I decided that I liked this name a lot. So "Texas Sled" it is.

The gas tank is battened down. The transducer that converts the fuel level sender to the NMEA-2000 bus is installed.

I installed a small round cover to provide access in the event that I ever need to replace the transducer or sender.

The ground bus is installed:

Final primer sprayed on, ready for final blocking and paint.

I managed to bend my brand new trailer on the trip home three years ago. I've removed the fender and convinced it to straighten up. I decided the step was a lost cause and ordered a replacement. It's here now and will get installed this weekend.

The Si & Dave Show

2011-03-06T17:45:00.008-06:00

My younger brother recently completed a bateau.com GF-18 with much assistance from his father-in-law Si. This brother lives in Colorado, so its pretty inconvenient for us to help each other out directly. Si lives on the Texas coast and graciously volunteered (I hope I'm not overstating the case here) to help me finish my boat. There will be a Texas Bateau Builders meet in late July, so I have lots of motivation to finish the project.

Si showed up Thursday evening and we worked all Friday, Saturday and half of Sunday. In addition to Si's experience with building my brother's GF-18, he also has many years of actual boating experience that I lack. It was really great to have that experience with me in the shop as we discussed different options for the remaining rigging choices.

I'm just going to use pictures to illustrate the progress we made and some of the decisions that were reached.

Friday was a big day:

finished up front live well plumbing, both live wells plumbed
pulled control cables
pulled engine control cable
pulled transducer cable
pulled NMEA 2000 cable for engine data
pulled fuel line
pulled hydraulic steering hoses
unpacked trolling motor and figured out how to mount it
spent a bunch of money at West Marine
ate some good meskin food
pulled electrical for both live well pumps and bilge pump
pulled electrical for switch/breaker panel
figured out where gunwale mount rod holders will be installed
figured out where cleats will be installed
decided to defer kayak mount

Somehow I managed to miss getting a picture of the trolling motor in place. Most of this work is decidedly un-photo-worthy, but here is a picture of some of the cables and wires hanging out of the console as evidence.

Keen observers will notice that one of the big water tanks is missing. I decided that I really didn't need two 1,500 gallon tanks. I traded one for some help moving the other outside the shop. Getting rid of one made a huge difference in the space. I can now easily work around both sides of the boat and I'll have enough room to park the boat on the trailer inside the shop.

Much of Saturday was spent fitting the rubrails. Here you can see the port rubrail held in place with temporary screws. I'm going to leave them in place for a few days to help the hard rubber mold in shape. Then I'll remove them, drill the holes oversize and fill with epoxy so that the final assembly will have screw seated in epoxy in order to prevent water damage. This was definitely a two man job. Final assembly will be a two man job and if we manage to get the rubber insert in and looking good, some margarita's will be in order.

One of the issues that I've been pondering (sorry Dougster, but I'm borrowing your terminology) for a while now is how to install a bimini top that I can stand under. The tallest bimini top I've found is 60". That is great for a conventional boat with high sides, but problematic for a short sided flats boat - especially with a 6'2" driver. We spent Saturday evening assembling my bimini top frame and experimenting with different locations and options for raising it. We were distracted from the simple approach by a product called the Bimini Butler. I think the Bimini Butler is probably great for a retro-fit application where you have already installed the mounting hardware. For this project, it appears that simply extending the main bow of the top and moving the mounting points forward will work fine. Some late night google-fu provided the solution for lengthening the bow, but I'll save the details for a future post.

Here is a shot of the bimini top hardware in the stowed configuration.

Next, we took some time to dry fit all of the console components and hatches. Here I am with my two co-captains.

Here's a what it looks like from the bow.

Note that the seat-back hatch holds a tackle box . Alternatively, you could remove the modular boxes and just use it for more storage. The seat hatch covers the forward baitwell.

On Friday, we decided to postpone any provisions for carrying a kayak. My original idea was to use gunwale mounted rod holders as sockets for a PVC frame that would let me carry the kayak across the front of the boat. Si had actually carried my brother's kayak across the front of his boat and pointed out that it was very difficult to dock the boat with a kayak sticking out on both sides.

Some more google-fu demonstrated that other fishermen were carrying their kayaks lengthwise between the console and gunwale. Si and I hauled my kayak back to the shop for a trial fit and here is the result:

It turns out that my Pongo 140 fits just fine between the console and gunwale. the bow of the kayak rests on the forward bulkhead, but I have a solution for that - stay tuned.

Thanks to Si's help, the project has taken a huge leap forward. One of the bateau.com forum members has offered to come help in a couple of Saturdays, and the weather is warming up - you should see steady posts from now on.

Indoor plumbing

2010-12-04T18:30:00.006-06:00

If you've been paying attention, you'll be wondering how in the world I could get indoor plumbing in this boat. I'll get to that presently, but first, take a look at how the gunwales look after all the clamps have been removed and trimming with a bearing guide round-over bit.

Almost all of the plumbing in the splashwell has been completed. I'm waiting on fuel line to arrive and I need to wire the livewell pumps. Even after enlarging the aft livewell plumbing access, my hand still looks a bit like hamburger after connecting the overflow line.

All in all, I like the livewell system components that I bought from Flow-Rite. Their Quik-Lok connectors and fittings are easy to assemble, reasonably priced and should facilitate service for all the fittings that I have in constrained spaces. I can't imagine trying to tighten hose clamps on barb fittings in the space I have available.

Shown below is the crimping tool, a clamp a female connector assembled on a hose and a loose female connector. I neglected to show a male connector - its got an O-ring and a lip that the jaws on the female connector slip over to provide positive engagement. I know, I know, this all sounds kind of dirty - just pull your mind out of the gutter.

Finally - the indoor plumbing part. Now that I've got most of the aft plumbing connected, I finally installed the splashwell cover. That pair of 5-gallon paint buckets are partially full and provide pressure for the glue joint since there is no way to use clamps here. So now all the plumbing I've been working on is finally indoors. But more importantly, this is the last piece of plywood to be installed on the boat. After the glue dries, I can fillet the corners and apply the last three pieces of fiberglass; one over the splashwell, wrapping over the front of the moterwell frame and one over each of the two gunwales, wrapping over the inwales and rubrail. After the glass is dry and faired, it will be ready for primer and then paint. I can't wait.

Back on the job (part 2)

2010-12-03T12:54:00.005-06:00

While I've been procrastinating, my little brother started and finished a boat. I can't let him have all the fun.

I've managed to get some time in over the last few days. Its been an odd combination of detail work, remembering details I figured out three years ago, cleaning up the work area and one bit of significant progress. So here's a list for those of you that like details:

(re) figured out hall all the live well plumbing is supposed to work
Ran hoses from stern to forward live well
Figured out that I was excessively optimistic in sizing the plumbing access openings. I enlarged the rear access - I'm going to have to find my keyhole size and mentally prepare for some hand cramping tight quarter sawing to fix the forward access.
Discovered that one of the 90 deg angle fittings just wasn't going to clear. Fortunately, Flo-rite has a new model that looks like it will work. Its now ordered.
Exchanged my almost 3 year old Sears marine battery that died sitting on the shop floor. I got a no cost exchange - you just gotta love Sears warranties.
Cleaned up the shop and found lots of parts in the process.
Mounted the fuel/water separater.
Drilled and trial fit the live well valves and pumps. I need longer bolts to finish.
Drilled the mounting holes for the console mounted rod racks.
Discovered (remembered) that Boaters World only had half the LED light strips that I'm using for under gunwale interior lighting. Ordered more.
Cut hole in console for the ignition switch.
Finished hole for plumbing access hatch in console.
Drilled about nine gazillion holes for mounting hatches, and other trim pieces. Nothing is supposed to touch the interior wood of a composite boat, so you must drill an oversized hole, fill it with epoxy and then drill the correct size hole in the epoxy. I've filled most but not all of the nine gazillion holes and probably have another two gazillion unidentified holes yet to come.
As I sat there admiring my console layout, I suddenly remembered that my VHF radio that was backordered three years ago when I was cutting holes in the console finally arrived and was safely stored in my office closet. I then realized that the nice big open area to the left of the steering wheel where I'd just cut a hole for the ignition switch was where the radio was supposed to go. I found a new place for the ignition switch and cut a new hole for it. I then cut the hole for the radio - the switch was a little taller, so I'll have to fill a couple of holes, but that's easy enough to do with a composite boat. Just a little more epoxy and fairing compound.
My dear wife stopped at Fastenal on her way home from work and picked up some stainless steel hardware for the project. The live well valves and pumps are now mounted.
Now for the significant bit: The gunwales are now glued down. Next step here is to trim them with a bearing guided round-over router bit, add butt blocks behind the seams, fill the wedge where the gunwale meets the rubrail, glass and fair.

Now for the pictures (sorry I made everyone wade through all that boring stuff).

Here is a view of the splash well area with the fuel/water separator and the control valves/pumps for the two live wells. To the left, you can see the new enlarge access opening for the stern live well.

Here you can see the newly glued gunwales and the console with all (I hope) panel cutouts.

Here is a longer view of the boat. This was a pretty significant step for me. With the gunwales glued down, I've only got one more piece of plywood to install (apart from the console shelf) - the splash well cover. Hopefully, I'll have it installed in the next few days.

Back on the job

2010-04-08T22:46:00.012-05:00

It has been almost 2 years since I worked on the boat. I've been told that I will finish it by SWMBO. But at the end of the day, I'm ready to finish it and go fishing...

When I stopped the project in spring of 2008, I was in the middle of fairing the console, forward bait well, and the rest of the insides. I spent some time over the last couple of days cleaning up the shop, cleaning the boat and that task that all boat builders love (not) - fairing. Its tough to show fairing progress in pictures, so I'm not going to try. At this point, I'm satisfied with the console, sole and sides. I still have a little more to do on the forward bait well. Hopefully, I'll finish that tomorrow.

A task that's been nagging me for a long time can be seen below:

Note that the frame is not square while the deck lid is. I had to cut a a piece of plywood to fit in the triangular space and then taper the thickness with my belt sander. You can see the solution below. I still have some fairing to do, but its going to turn out fine. The frame was originally square, but apparently was bumped while the fiberglass seams were still wet. If I had to do it again, I'd probably just cut the frame out and re-install, but at this point, there is a bait well on the other side and a deck lid installed and faired. It just goes to show that you really can fix anything when using this boat building style.

Here you can see one of the gunwale supports is missing a little material on the bottom. I was using up my scraps when I built this and this one had a little bit missing. I've clamped a piece of plywood with some plastic covering it to the bottom of the rail in preparation for applying some epoxy with wood filler. After drying, I removed the form and used a small block plane to clean it up. When its all painted, you will never know the difference.

Another item knocked off the to-do list was completing the job of filling up the epoxy fill for the drain hole. In a composite boat, you need to ensure that all wood surfaces are covered with epoxy. This means that all holes are drilled oversize, filled with epoxy and then re-drilled to the proper size. The transom is about 1 1/4" thick, and this hole is large diameter. I wasn't able to completely fill it on the first go around, but its all done now. Now I need to work on a better way to drill a hole square to the transom.

View from inside. You can see the gap at the top.

Here's a shot of the forward bait well. Its under the seat on the front of the console. I think one more fairing session and it will be ready for the blue tinted epoxy that I used on the aft bait well. That blue is supposed to keep the bait happier and alive longer. After the epoxy tint, I can finish the plumbing and close up the back of the boat.

Here's a final shot showing most of the inside of the boat. There's still lots to do, but it sure feels good to be moving forward again.

Holey Moley!

2008-05-11T15:46:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted. I've been busy with lots of boring stuff that wasn't particularly photo-worthy. One of those tasks has been drilling holes in the boat. In order to avoid wood rot, you drill the holes oversized, fill them with epoxy and then drill the dried epoxy to the proper size. Here are some of the plugs:

In addition to perforating the boat, I've also been fairing lockers and the interior sides of the boat. I started out by using a slurry of epoxy and blended filler to fill the weave in the lockers and then used tinted epoxy to seal them. I wasn't happy with the finish, so I skimmed the lockers with QuickFair, sanded and then used the tinted epoxy. Here's the bilge with one coat of tinted epoxy. It will get at least one more coat. The board extending up from the center stringer is for mounting the Yamaha fuel/water separator.

Here is the battery compartment all (almost) tinted. I originally planned to install two batteries, a battery switch and a dual battery charger in this compartment. I had all the mounting cleats installed, holes drilled & glued and a hole through the frame under the gunwale for a power plug. Then I realized that I'm going to need to use a 24V trolling motor. This means one cranking battery and two batteries for the trolling motor. Since there isn't enough room in the compartment, I decided to install a battery in each fore-compartment and move the dual battery charger to the port fore-compartment. You can see where I've glued a plug in the power plug hole. It needs one more coat of QuickFair and then another coat or two of tinted epoxy.

Last night, I cut notches in each of the frames for holding a push pole, gaff hook, net or whatever. You can also see the mounting blocks where the under gunwale courtesy lights will be installed. If you click on the picture and zoom in, you can see the holes in the corners where the ENT flex conduit will pass through.

It looks like I didn't get a shot of all the framing work I did to support the foredeck. The battery and charger mounts and foredeck is all installed. There is a small sliver of foredeck that still needs to be glued down - I'm expecting more glue and QuickFair on Monday. I've gone through 22 gallons of epoxy so far. I sure hope this will be the last epoxy order I make for this boat. I cut the foredeck oversized and the hatch holes undersized. After the glue set up, I used a bear guided straight router bit to trim the deck and hatch openings flush.

The console is now installed with two layers of 6" biax tape all around the outside. If the fuel tank wasn't in the way, I would have also taped the inside. The hole you are looking at in the seat back will provide storage for fishing tackle.

The space between the console and side of the boat should pass "the bucket test". That means that it should be possible to pass a 5 gallon bucket between the console and the side of the boat. As you can see, this one passes with flying colors.

Here is a shot of the console taken from the stern. I'll post more details on the console as progress is made.

The fishies in the baitwell are supposed to prefer a nice blue color rather than a bright white. The first coat of tinted epoxy I applied used all blue tint and turned out pretty dark. I mixed some dark blue tint with a little white and I think the results turned out pretty nice. If you look in the lower left corner of the picture, you can see the stainless steel tie-down installed. I bedded it with 5200 sealant. Normally, you wouldn't install the tiedown until the paint was finished. In this case, the nuts will be buried in the foam insulating the baitwell and then covered by the deck. I'll just have to be careful cutting the primer and paint around the tiedown.

As long as the glue shows up on Monday, I should make some good progress this week. Then I have a week of travel for work.

Happy Mother's Day!

Slogging away...

2008-04-21T01:01:00.002-05:00

It hasn't all been slogging - I finally picked up my motor this weekend. Its a 60 HP Yamaha 4-stroke. The plans recommend a maximum of 50 HP. The USCG max is considerably higher than that, but 50 HP is supposed to push this boat in excess of 40 MPH at wide open throttle. The Yamaha 50 HP and 60 HP are the same engine and weigh the same. The 60 HP just has a different tune. I went with the 60 HP since it didn't add any weight and it should allow me to spend less time at wide open throttle. Of course, those who know me know that I just like HP. Here's the motor after disassembling most of the crate. Yamaha sure is serious about the shipping container - the pallet is all metal and bolted together. I think its going to make a new bench when I'm done with the boat.

Sunday was a busy day - lot of little projects knocked off. Here you can see the stern baitwell with all the fillets cleaned up, glass on the sole, holes for the fittings drilled oversize and filled with thickened epoxy and foam poured. If you click on the image, you can see that I sliced some dowels and centered them in the fitting holes in order to minimize the amount of epoxy needed. When the epoxy dries, I have to drill most of it back out so the fittings will pass through. This leaves an epoxy liner around the hole, eliminating any chance of water reaching the wood. The back side of the holes is covered with duct tape. The dowel slices are just stuck to the duct tape. I thought about using slices of PVC pipe, but the dowel will be easier to drill out with a hole saw since its solid.

The console baitwell got the same treatment:

In the following picture, the plastic jugs are holding down mounting blocks for the batteries. The stern compartment is very short and I had a hard time figuring out how to mount batteries in there and clear the hatch cleats and deck. I'm using AGM (absorbed glass matt) batteries and somebody suggested that I lay them on their sides. I did some research, and this is a legitimate way to install AGMs. The big woodworking clamps are holding backing blocks for the dual-battery charger. I had plenty of material to hold the screws, but I wanted to provide an air-flow path behind the charger.

Here you can see the final cleats installed for the motorwell cover:

The last bits of the gunwale supports are now installed:

Here you can see where the power plug for the battery charger will be. The outlet has a waterproof cover, but mounting it under the gunwale will afford even more protection. Like all other holes, this one is oversized and filled with thickened epoxy. There's another dowel slice in the middle of this one to save on epoxy. It will get drilled out when I drill the final size hole.

The plans called for 1/4" plywood for all decks. The foredeck has some pretty long spans, so I decided to add additional bracing. Here is the first of two frames installed. Its made of two layers of 1/4" plywood laminated and cut to match the deck camber. I also laminated some 12 oz biax fiberglass to the forecompartment soles. At least one of those compartments will have an anchor tossed in it, so I wanted to toughen up the soles.

I'll be out of town on business all next week, so there won't be any progress until next weekend.

details details ...

2008-04-14T22:54:00.002-05:00

I've spent the last few days working on lots of little details. First of all, the stern baitwell is now glued in the boat. I drew a line around the inside of the well, ran a nice fat bead of fillet glue and then sat the well down on the glue. Now that its dry, its very rigid. When the deck is glued on top, it will be very solid.

Next, I cut out the two stern deck, cut holes for the hatches and glued cleats around the openings so that the screws for the hatches will have enough material to hold them. This picture shows the cleat glue up. I also painted the bottom of the decks with epoxy in order to waterproof them. Since there is some camber to the decks, I cut them a little proud. I'll trim them to fit the outside of the boat once they are glued down.

I finished all the cleating for the bow compartments soles, foamed and installed the soles. Here you can see the foam in the port bow compartment. Its 11:30 now and I just realized that I don't have any shots of the soles installed. You'll just have to use your imagination until the next post - I'm comfy now and not going back out to the shop.

I spent some time playing with console layouts. Here you can see the console, seat and stern decks test fit in the boat. What you can't see is the fuel tank sitting inside the tank on neoprene pads. It looks like everything is going to fit, but I'm not cutting any more holes until I actually have my GPS/Sonar and VHF radio in hand.

I also managed to get a coat of epoxy/blended filler slurry on the battery compartment and part of one of the bow compartments.

Tonight I spent a lot of time fairing and cleaning up glue joints. I then cut notches in the top of each frame for the inner gunwale supports. The inner gunwale supports will be laminated from two layers of 3/8" plywood, 1 1/2" high (same dimensions as the rubrail). I was originally going to use southern yellow pine for these supports (like I did for the cleats). After running some experiments with the SYP between the frames, I decided that it wasn't going to be strong enough. I was also concerned about bending 3/4" thick SYP and having fair curves. Two layers of 3/8" plywood solves all these problems.

I was going to fillet the console baitwell into the console and then realized that I needed to install the hatch cleats first. The livewell will fit just outside these cleats. Here is a shot of the glue up. I'll get the well installed tomorrow.

Finally, here's a shot of the first layer of the starboard gunwale support. I'm pretty happy with how fair it turned out.

Baitwell progress

2008-04-09T07:25:00.002-05:00

I've been working on baitwell design and construction for the last few days. Actually, I've been pondering baitwell design and plumbing for weeks now. I finally settled on a system from Flow-Rite and ordered all of the plumbing parts yesterday. I also made a quick trip to my local Boater's World and picked up a couple of Rule 403-STC 700 GPM baitwell pumps and an 800 GPM Rule bilge pump.

You may remember from my previous posting on the chase tubes (those are the pipes sticking up through the floor of the boat - and for all my friends and family that have asked if the boat will have indoor plumbing: No - those are for running electrical, steering, throttle, shifter and baitwell plumbing), that I'm going to have two baitwells. One will be in the port stern locker for the convenience of those fishing from the back of the boat. The other one will be under the seat on the front of the console for the convenience of those fishing from the front of the boat. Yeah, I know its overkill and I've had plenty of advice that the front baitwell is tough on bait because it bounces more, but the last time I went fishing, both boats had dual baitwells and it was very convenient. Most production bay boats have two baitwells, so I figure that this won't hurt the resale value. If I decide not to use the front one, it will always make a nice cooler or dry storage compartment :).

One of the things I learned about baitwells is that they should have rounded corners. Some types of bait will just swim into a square corner and die. In order to make my square corners, I cut up a plastic 5 gallon can. You can see the white plastic pieces in the test fit below:

I used scraps of 3/8" marine plywood to make the straight sides. You can see how I used a rabbet joint on each end so that the plastic corners fit nice and fair:

Next, I removed the assembly from the boat, taped the outside joints with duct tape, roughed up the PVC corners with some 60 grit sandpaper (so epoxy will bond) and laminated 4 oz woven cloth on the inside. The lamination took two session since I didn't have a long enough piece to go completely around the inside and I didn't want to try to smooth out a second layer of glass. Its tough enough getting all the air bubbles out of one layer - especially on the smooth PVC corners. Here's a picture of the assembly after the second lamination:

Next steps:

Build some re-inforcing plates for the fittings
Epoxy coat the outside
Install in locker by filleting to the locker floor
Pour floation foam in cavity between locker and liner

The dimensions on the forward baitwell are a little different, and mean that I only have to cut a bucket in half to make two ends. This will make for a little less fabrication effort.

BTW - The white bucket is from Lowe's and the orange one is one I bought from Home Depot a couple of years ago. The orange one is a little taller and heavier than the white one. I needed the extra height for the front livewell. Now I have to find another car wash bucket...

The sole is glued in

2008-04-02T23:36:00.003-05:00

We glued the last section of sole in last night. Tonight, I removed all the weights and sanded the seams smooth. The center section was about 1/16" higher than the front and rear section - nothing that 30 minutes with the sander couldn't fix.

Gluing the sole in almost completes the box frame that forms the foundation of the boat. The boat has been getting stiffer as each phase of construction has been completed. Prior to the sole installation, you could still pick up a rear corner and see the hull flex. Not anymore - I tried picking up the same rear corner and I couldn't budge it. The boat is now so stiff that I'd have to be strong enough to pick up most of the weight of the boat. Notice I said "almost completes the box frame". The final step is to use biax fiberglass tape around the perimeter of the sole to finish the connection of the sole and the hull.

Next, I began filling the gaps between the sole and the hull. In some places, the gap was wide enough to merit cutting small pieces of plywood in order to avoid using so much expensive epoxy. I mixed up a very small batch of foam and poured it between the chase tubes and the sole, waited until it dried, and then trimmed it down just below the sole. I used a thick mixture of epoxy and wood flour to seal the chase tubes to the sole. I don't want water getting in around the chase tubes and under the sole. I also cut and glued some cleats.

Here is a shot of the results:

Here you can see the battery compartment deck cleats and the the lower splashwell cleats:

The next couple of pictures show the epoxy seal between the chase tubes and the sole. I may need another application in order to complete the seal.

Here you can see the cleats for the rear of the foredeck and some of the cleats for the fore compartment sole. The C-clamp in the middle of the deck cleat is set below the cleat and serves as an anchor for bending the cleat to conform to the camber of the deck. I cut the soles for the fore compartments, but I have more cleating work to do before these can be installed.

It was about 11:30 PM here, and Fred is ready to call it a night. As I'm updating the blog, she is curled up on her big pillow next to my desk and fast asleep.

The sled gets some sole

2008-03-30T22:53:00.003-05:00

We got up early this morning and glued the battery compartment floor and the rear sole in before heading over to Dougster's to help flip his Nina. Yep, my wife graciously agreed to help mix glue and drop the sole in. Installing the almost 4' x 8' sole sections really is a two person job. Its not hard work, just awkward.

Here's the battery compartment floor:

Here's the rear sole section:

I used a bit of everything from the shop to apply pressure to the sole - 5 gallon buckets of paint, 1 gallon paint cans, leftover epoxy jugs filled with water, a couple of propane tanks, the power feeder for my joiner, some other tools. I just checked it tonight and the epoxy is setting up well. It looks like DHL will deliver my foam tomorrow, so I'm going to take a run at finishing foaming he front half of the boat tomorrow night.

Tippecanoe and Dougster too...

2008-03-30T16:10:00.002-05:00

You've heard me talk about Dougster here on several occasions. Dougster is building an LB-22 (aka Nina) about 35 minutes from me. He's helped me out several times and rode shotgun with me on the infamous trailer trip. Today was the day for Dougster to flip his boat upside down. Unlike the TX-18, the build instructions for the Nina call for a total of three flips. You build the hull upside down, then flip it right side up to install stringers and frames, flip upside down to fair and a final flip returns it to an upright position for the final assembly. Its a nice drive to his house - there are some great views between here and there, and it didn't hurt that he promised smoked pork butt and beer.

I showed up a little early and found Dougster's band practicing. In the boat shop! I'm still amazed that he can build a boat and store the band's equipment in the same space without ruining the band equipment. No dust, no epoxy drips. I would have surely found a way to get epoxy on an amp. Here's the band - I think they were singing the Boat Building Blues:

There wasn't enough ceiling height or room to flip the boat inside the shop, so we had to roll it outside first. One of the frame extends above the sheer line of the boat, so he built a jig to keep us from breaking off the frame ears when we rolled it:

After the initial lift,we balanced the boat and 1/2 the lifting team moved over to the receivers to help catch the boat. Look at the corded muscled in my calves...

And here she is, ready to have her belly rubbed:

We just duck-walked the boat back in the shop and the slide the strong-back underneath:

Even though this is a big boat, the flip was pretty easy - a testament to just how light these boats are. Eight guys, one boat, no smashed toes, cuts and we managed to avoid the red ants.

For some reason or another, I'm not sure why, but the pictures stop here. It might have something to do with the beer and BBQ.

I sure am glad I'm not the one that has to fair that hull!

Backing plates and console progress

2008-03-30T00:23:00.003-05:00

Before I can glue the rear sole section in, I need to install backing plates for fastening the seat. Since I've completely filled the area under the sole, I can't use an access hatch to reach fasteners under the sole. The recommended solution for this is to glue 3/16" x 3" aluminum to the bottom of the sole an then drill and tap for 3/16" machine screws that can be installed from the top. The local box stores don't carry aluminum in this size, so I had to drive up to Round Rock this morning to buy some. In the picture below, you can see my tilt-back seat (without the back installed yet), in position so I can measure for the location of the backing plates.

I used the wire brush on my bench grinder to rough up the surface of the aluminum and ensure there was no oil, paint or other contaminants. I used the last of my SilverTip GelMagic to glue the bars on:

I cut the stern locker floors tonight. In the next picture, you can see two more pieces of aluminum glued to the bottom of the starboard compartment floor. These will be used for battery hold downs.

Here you can see the port stern locker floor installed. This will be the baitwell floor.

Next, I put in some time on the console. I used a bearing guided 1/2" round-over bit in my router to round all the corners. Some additional work with the sander further softened the corners. Lastly, I cut the openings for the two hatches on the front of the console:

The hatch in the seat will provide access to a baitwell. The hatch in the seat back provides access to four Plano tackle trays. Fred got tired of waiting on the boat and took a swim in the pool. Actually, she took several swims in the pool today. I'm going to have to figure out some way that she can climb back into the boat...

It was a good day: while out picking up the aluminum, stopped in Boaters World and checked on a few things, bought a steering wheel; had some good BBQ for lunch, took a nice nap and got several things done on the boat. I'll get the rear sole glued in tomorrow morning and then run over to Blanco to help Dougster flip his Nina. He's promised to provide some smoked pork butt!

Foamin'

2008-03-29T09:38:00.003-05:00

I've been busy foamin' - adding flotation foam to the boat, that is. This stuff is great fun to work with. You mix part A with part B in a 1:1 ratio, stir as fast as you can until the color blends and then pour. You want to be close to the place you are going to pour when you start the mix. If you wait a bit too long, it starts getting warm and expanding in your container and then you are in "Houston, we have a problem" mode. You want to wear a long sleeve shirt when you do this - foam in the arm hairs is no fun - this stuff is very, very sticky.

I started out mixing in a pair of 16 oz plastic cups. Thats a good way to start, but its really time consuming. I switched to one of those paint containers with the disposable plastic liners. Mixing about 48 oz at a time was much more efficient and made for smoother results after the expansion. The small cups gave me lots of lumps in a 3' x 3' compartment. I was able to wipe the liner down with paper towels after each cycle and make the liner last for 4-6 applications.

After the foam has expanded, it invariable sticks up above the sides of the compartment. It looks like muffin or bread loaf tops, depending on the size of the pour container. When it was all dry (doesn't take long), I trimmed all the tops. Some folks use a handsaw, but I have some tight compartments that I couldn't get a handsaw in. I used a hacksaw blade with one end wrapped in a towel. It worked fine, but for the big compartments, you need to be careful that the blade doesn't flex too much and give you a concave cut.

Here are some shots of the final results. Somehow I managed to miss getting any shots before trimming. First up is a shot of the starboard stern compartment. A pair of batteries, battery switch and charger will be housed here.

Next up is a shot of the bilge area. Notice the new 3" chase tube. After my fishing trip earlier this week, friends and family convinced me to add a second baitwell in the console seat. This chase tube is for the baitwell plumbing.

Next we have the port stern compartment. This one will be used as a baitwell for folks fishing off the back of the boat. If you look closely, you can see that I tried to stretch my foam with styrofoam shipping pellets. I won't do this again. I can't say that it hurts anything, but I really don't like the results. Just take a deep breath and buy more foam.

In this shot you can see that the entire boat from the middle frame rearward is now foamed. So far, I've used 8 gallons of foam. The plans indicate that 6 is enough to make the boat unsinkable. Another reason for installing foam are to stiffen up the hull and sole. In the picture, you can see that I have the forward sole section test fit in the boat. If I walk across it, there is a noticeable flex. I'm sure this will be diminished when I glue it down, but still... Lastly, filling the below sole cavity with foam can reduce "drumming". Again, I'm not sure just how important that is, but its now or never. I don't want to glue everything up and find that sole flex or drumming irritates me whenever I use the boat. So...I have another 8 gallons of foam on order. Ouch! A $400 blip in the boat budget.

In that last shot, you can see the console sitting in the boat. My wife came out to bring me the camera and took one look at the chase tubes and asked one of those wonderful wifely questions: Will the console fit over those chase tubes? Confidently, I replied: Sure. But then I took a hard look and my confidence index sank a bit. I whipped out the tape measure and square and checked and got a bit worried. It turns out that while I was worrying about clearing the fuel tank with the new 3" chase tube, I managed to creep a bit far to port with it. A few minutes with a heat gun and a rubber mallet and all is well. Whew - dodged another one - I was worried that I was going to have to dig out some foam and do some surgery on that 3" tube.

I'm not dead yet!

2008-03-28T18:34:00.004-05:00

What's been happening...

I may not be dead yet, but I certainly haven't made a lot of progress on the boat. A combination of the cumulative effects of mistakes on my psyche, burn-out from pushing it too hard and my son coming home for three weeks of leave. He returned to Camp Lejeune in January after a year in Iraq. Words can't begin to describe how happy we are to have him back and safe. It was a hectic three weeks - lots of side trips around Texas to visit family, family visiting from Tennessee and Colorado. We did a little bit of boat building and managed to make a trip to the coast for a couple of days of fishing.

I've been deep sea fishing on big charters a couple of times, but somehow that feels like it doesn't count. Other than those trips, this is the first time I've been fishing for about 40 years and the first time fishing from a normal boat. My brother's in-laws hosted us on two different boats out of Sargent, TX - Caney Creek, the intracoastal waterway and a bit of East Matagorda Bay. We had the dreaded "east wind" and the fishing wasn't very good, but we all had a great time! Neither of the two boats would run in skinny water, so I'm really looking forward to getting the TX-18 down there to play. After that trip, I'm rested, restored and really motivated to finish this boat and get 'er wet!

Boat Progress

On the last day of February, Dougster and I made the trek to Houston to pick up my trailer from Instigator Trailers. The trip down was un-eventful, but the trip back was full of excitement. We left the trailer shop and entered a toll road within a few blocks. As the trailer is wider than my tow vehicle, I was watching the fenders closely as I went through the toll booth. Much to my surprise, the left rear wheel was wobbling. I had no choice but continue through the booth and enter the toll road and then realized that both wheels were wobbling. I pulled over into the partial breakdown lane with cars moving left and wizzing by. I confirmed that it was more serious than loose wheel bolts and called Instigator. They sent a team to meet us and we decided that it was too dangerous to do anything while on the toll road. They followed as I crept to the next exit and found a safe place to park. After removeing one of the wheels, they discovered that it was completely missing the inner bearing. The inner seal had held the wheel on and let it pass inspection, but a few blocks of rolling destroyed the seal. They replaced both hubs after inspecting the spindles. Despite this problem, I'm happy with the trailer and would buy another one from them. Dougster ordered a trailer for his Nina while we were there and I think he's still comfortable with the decision. I bet this is now part of the inspection procedure.

On the way back, we stopped to grab a bit of lunch and I managed to clip the right fender on a brick wall. Nothing serious damaged, but it didn't help my spirits.

Here are a couple of shots of the trailer. All four bunks are fully adjustable: up/down and angle. I haven't mounted my spare tire yet. Notice how long the tongue is. It will be nice for keeping the tow vehicle out of the water, but it does take a bit of getting used to. Its got LED lights and guide bars. I'll probably relocate the lights to the top of the guide bars.

When we last looked at the boat, I had just installed the stringers and frames. Since then, I've installed chase tubes for steering, engine controls, electrical, sonar & fuel line. After that, I glued cleats around the tops of the stringers and frames and along the sides of the hull. The cleats provider a bigger gluing surface than the width of the frames and stringers (3/8", 1/2" or 3/4"). The sole will be glued to these cleats. In the following picture, you can see the chase tubes and the cleats glued and clamped. There are two 2" chase tubes from the center console to the rear of the boat for steering, engine controls, electrical and sonar. The fuel line gets its own dedicated 1" tube. A pair of batteries will be mounted in the starboard stern compartment. There is an additional 1 1/2" chase tube from the console to the starboard bow locker that will carry electrical for a trolling motor, lighting and an accessory outlet.

Next up was cutting the three sheets of plywood that will form the sole. I was very happy with how close the plan dimensions were to the as built dimensions. In the next couple of pictures, you can see the three sole pieces upside down with a coat of epoxy applied for water proofing. I've also glued pieces of plywood to two of the sole sections that will function as butt joints when the three sections are assembled. If you look very closely, you can see where I blew it and cut a couple of frame notches in the wrong place (measured from the wrong side of the sheet - the rear of the stern section really is narrower than the front!). No problem, I just glued a couple of pieces of plywood below them and after they are installed, I'll fill them with some scrap plywood, epoxy and when its all covered with fiberglass, you'll never see it and it will be very strong.

Since then, I've been foaming - lots of fun! I'll take post more this weekend. I promise!

Paint Scheme

I almost forgot. Vman777 on the bateau.com forum does some gorgeous paint schemes. He has graciously done a couple of scheme's for the TX-18. I tried, but never could come up with a personal name for the boat. Then I remembered that lots of commercial boats have the model name on the side. The model number for this boat is TX-18, but the model name is "Texas Sled". I think that's a great name for a Texas flats fishing boat. Here are the two schemes that Vman777 (another David) has created:

Option 1:

Option 2:

So far, the votes are running about 10:1 in favor of Option 1. If you have a google account, login and reply to this post with your vote. I love the design - it will be interesting to hear the reactions at the boat ramp.

My buddy Walter can't understand why I don't want to paint it maroon and white...

Power
I'd been planning for some time to power the boat with a Yamaha 60 HP 4-stroke. I just took advantage of Yamaha's special: if you buy before the end of March, you get a 6 year warranty. I head back to Houston next Saturday to pick it up. Having that sitting in the shop will give me another reason to finish!

Stringers, frames and console progress

2008-02-19T20:44:00.002-06:00

My brother John came over Sunday and helped me fit stringers and frames in the boat. We managed to get the section between the motor well and transom taped and glassed. By then, I was out of EZ-Fillet. I've got more on order and will continue with this part once it arrives.

In this picture, you can see the motorwell bottom in its future home, all the frames in place and ready to be taped and glued. We used the 2x2's to ensure that the tops of each of the frame pieces were straight so that the sole will sit level. We used 1" long pieces of weatherstripping under the stringers to ensure there is a gap for the fillet glue to fill. We used my wire nail gun to tack the frame pieces to the stringers. This certainly holds everything in place. Unfortunately, it doesn't leave a gap between the ends of the frames and the stringers so that there is a wood-glue-wood joint. While this doesn't appear to be strictly necessary for the frame-stringer joints, I'm probably going to remove them and trim them a bit so that I have a better joint. Its been bugging me ever since I realized what we had done.

Here is a picture of the stern section - everything back here is double taped as per the lamination schedule.

That piece of wood laying on the nose of the boat is the bow stem. It will attach to the forward frame and divide the bow section into two lockers. Its essentially a fourth stringer - a very short one.

Since I'm out of fillet glue, I decided to work on my console. I wanted a console wide enough for two people to ride behind and get out of the wind. After soliciting advice on the bateau.com forum, I decided to make the console 34" wide. I used the standard console plan that came with my plans as a base. The top is 34" wide and the bottom is 40". Here is how far I got on Monday night. You can see the fuel tank sitting under the main section. When finished, there will be interior walls separating the fuel tank from the rest of the console. We don't want any gasoline fumes near the electrical switches. The forward seat section will house a livewell. I had lots of advice for building the livewell in one of the stern lockers. I decided to go with this location because the stern lockers are very shallow - I don't think they would have worked well. This location is good for the weight balance of the boat and with the inverted-V hull, the ride should be smooth enough to avoid bashing the bait to death. The battery will go to the side of the fuel tank for the same reasons - good weight balance and those stern lockers are really short.

Tonight I finished cutting and assembling the exterior panels and the bulkhead between the livewell and fuel tank. I just had to see how it looked in the boat. Its sitting about an inch higher than the final installation, but I'm happy with how it looks. So is Fred.

Inside is glassed

2008-02-16T17:35:00.003-06:00

Today was a big day - we glassed the inside of boat. Two layers of tape all around the transom, tape on all five hull seams and three sheets of 50" wide biaxial fiberglass cloth. The "we" was me and my wife. She mixed Ez-fillet and epoxy and I ran the fillet bags an the epoxy roller. We managed to develop a rhythm where she was mixing 12oz of epoxy at the same rate that I was spreading it. It was cool today and working with the slow hardener was a dream. Here is the finished product:

My brother is coming over tomorrow and with any luck, we'll get the stringers and frames installed. I've managed to stick to my schedule so far; if my luck holds, I'll be splashing in late March. I spent every evening last week fairing he sides and transom. I'm very close to being finished with fairing the sides and applying primer. Now I know why eveybody complains about fairing. Every time I think I'm done, I find another low spot, high spot or hole that needs jus a little bi more QuickFair. I think I'm almost done, because at the end of the last session, I only mixed abou an ounce of QuickFair adn I didn' used most of that.

If all goes well next week, I'll be installing the flotation foam under the sole and installing the sole.

That's a BIG boat!

2008-02-07T22:25:00.000-06:00

That was the universal response from the boat flipping crew when they saw it right side up for the first time. I can't believe it, but all eight of them managed to escape without a single picture. We rolled the boat out of the shop on the strongback, lifted it off and then rolled the strongback back into the shop. We rested the boat on some 2x4's while we removed all the frames & molds from the strongback. Next, we simply picked the boat up and rotated it in one smooth operation. We moved the 2x4's inside and laid them across the strongback and then carried the boat back in the shop and sat it down. Here's what it looks like now:

I have to agree - this is a big boat - I think its going to work well for fishing the Texas coast. And its light - we really didn't need so many hands for the flip, but I'd much rather have too many than not enough.

The next major step is to tape and fiberglass the inside of the boat. Before I can do that, I'll need to cleanup all the fillets that leaked through from the outside. I used duct-tape on most of the seams, but still had a little blow-by. Look at all the glue flow that came through from the nose job. I wasn't able to tape the inside of these seams, and didn't mix the first batch thick enough. Five minutes with a cutoff wheel fixed that - but that sure was a lot of expensive epoxy to throw away.

I've also got to clean these duct-tape remnants out of the fillets:

Thanks to all of the flipping crew:
Randy, Taylor, Chase, Kevin, Brandon, Steve, Bill & Chris

Black Bottom

2008-02-05T22:48:00.000-06:00

The TX-18 is now sporting a fresh, black bottom. I painted the bottom with a mix of epoxy and graphite (2 parts SilverTip resin and 1 part SilverTip slow hardener and 1 part graphite powder). That's basically the same graphite as you'll find in your pencil sharpener. Its nasty stuff - spill a little bit and you can paint a 1 foot wide stripe around the world. I applied three coats back to back, waiting until the previous coat was tacky, but not so wet that the roller would push it around. This lets all those epoxy molecules find each other and form a chemical bond between the layers. I'm not sure why I thought this was a good idea for a weeknight. I finally finished about 4 am.

Here's a long shot of how it turned out:

and here's how the bow line looks. Also note that I got the first layer of he bow rubrail installed. I'll smooth those fillets, install the other piece and trim the side rails flush. I'll probably paint the bow area white, but I'm still contemplating different paint schemes. Vman777, one of the bateau.com forum members is working up some options for me. Chicagoross, another forum member building a boat in Guam, is encouraging me to think about shark teeth in the front maw of the boat. We'll see...

Its very hard to see it in the pictures because the finish is so shiny (I even shot the following with no flash), but this finish shows every single blemish in the boat. I think its acceptable for a bottom, but I certainly wouldn't want the topside finish to look like this. I'm going to treat this as hard earned experience and try to avoid the same mistakes with the topside fairing. I found it very hard to see minor imperfections in the unfinished hull. One trick I'll use for the topside is to mist with a cheap spray paint (not paint - just a very light mist). After sanding, the guide coat will be gone from the high spots and still showing in the low spots. You can then circle the low spots with a pencil and hand sand the remaining paint and fill the lows. Repeat until no paint showing. I also picked up a few runs up in the bow area. They aren't noticeable from 10 feet, but I would like to find a way to smooth them out.

Next up - build some cradles to fit the hull in preparation for Thursday's flip. We'll lift the boat off of the molds, replace the molds with the cradles and then set the boat on them right side up. I'll also cleanup that bow rubrail fillet before flipping.

Fair to middlin'

2008-02-04T08:00:00.000-06:00

Actually, I feel like the fairing turned out a lot better than "fair to middlin'". Of course, it might just be because I started some time last week and then had a marathon around the clock go at it over the weekend. I'd get up at 3am and sand then fair, then go rest long enough for the QuickFair to dry and then repeat. I managed six fairing sessions in 48 hours. upped my calorie intake and still managed to lose a little weight!

Dougster came over Saturday morning to get some pointers on fairing and we took a little trip down the road to visit ericsil and see his P-19, but especially to check out his Instigator trailer. The Instigator is currently #1 on my list, but they are in Houston, so checking out the plant directly is tough. I posted a query on the bateau.com forum and ericsil volunteered that he had one, liked it a lot and offered to let us come look. Thanks Eric for the hospitality - I think that P-19 will be fun to camp in off the coast of Maine this summer!

Its tough to see how smooth the boat turned out after fairing in pictures - but it passes the "hand test" with flying colors. Here are a couple of long shots:

And here are a ocuple of shots showing just how straight I managed to get the stern area. There are five layers of fiberglass in some sections of the transom-bottom joint (2 layers of tape, overlap of bottom glass, and then another sheet of glass over the entire transom and wrapped back around the hull). Straightening that bump out was a lot of work (and a lot of QuickFair...)

And heres a shot from the bow - Fred's getting excited - she really likes riding in boats (scroll down a bit).

This is Fred in our other boat - she likes that water splashing on the paddle and bugs. You've got to pay attention or your going to get wet when a 60 pound dog decides to chaise a bee...

And this is what happens if you try to leave without her:

One of these days I'm going to doctor this one up and add a cape:

I'm going to Lowe's today to get some tape, paper, sponge brushes. 'Cuz I'm painting the bottom with an epoxy/graphite mix tonight! I can't wait to see how that turns out.

My first nose job

2008-01-30T23:26:00.000-06:00

My boat needed a nose job, and here's why:
The foredeck normally spans the two bow tips and needs to be tied into the hull with fillets. With most boats, you would wait until after completing the bottom and flipping the boat right side up to install he decking. You can make all the joints from the top of the boat. If you look at the following picture, you can see how the foredeck attaches to he hull. Now imagine flipping the boat, installing the foredeck and then trying to make those fillets from underneath. This wasn't something I wanted to try and neither did Huck when he built his. Huck solved the problem by flipping the boat three times. I didn't want to deal with multiple flips - I'm not sure how many friends I'd have left after dragging them over to flip the boat three times - or how if I have enough money for all that beer.

So, I figured a way to solve two problems at once. The plans call for using 1/4" plywood for all the decks. That will be fine for the narrow gunwales that are supported along the long side by the hull and will have a stiffener on the inside. The foredeck however is almost 4'x8', with some fairly big spans. Most of the fisherman that will be standing on that foredeck are on the largish side - north of 200 pounds. Huck pointed out that there could be a huge stress on the part of the foredeck that spans the two bow points if you ever hit a wave just right. So, I decided to double the thickness on the span by adding another piece of 1/4" plywood between the bow points. I clamped a sheet of 1/4" plywood to the rubrails to simulate the final foredeck and used that to support the V-shaped piece while I made the fillets, taped and glassed the entire section. This took me a couple of evenings as there were some pretty serious gaps where the curve of he hull panels met he foredeck. In the first session, I cut some filler pieces and roughed then in with an epoxy and wood flour mix. The next evening I applied more epoxy and wood flour to the joints, taped the joints and then laid a sheet of fiberglass over all that. Tomorrow, I'll remove the foredeck stand-in and continue with fairing the hull. After I flip, I can install the foredeck as you normally would. The span between the hull points will be strong enough for me and my big fishing buddies. The other spans of concern on the foredeck will have hatches. If it looks like those spans aren't going to be stiff enough, I can add some framing - it will be inside the forward compartments and not visible.

Did I mention fairing? I've been making steady progress on this front. Here's a shot of the current state. A picture really doesn't do it justice. It really is starting to look good. Most of the edges are sharp. They needed 1/2" radius corners in order for the fiberglass to make the bends - but they need to be sharp for the hull to look good and perform well. The transom and the hull near the transom needed the most work because of all the layers of fiberglass that we installed to tie the transom to the hull. That made a noticeable bump on both sides of the entire hull-transom joint that needed to be faired over quite a distance. Somebody said that after your first two coats of fairing putty, you should be 90% done. I think they are right as far as amount of putty goes, but I still see plenty of sessions of sanding and filling. I think that fairing a boat is somewhat similar to floating sheetrock - except that sheetrock is flat and boats aren't. I've never been good at floating sheetrock, but somehow fairing the boat is turning out just fine. I bet I can do a pretty good job with sheetrock now - just don't tell my wife.

Rubrails are installed!

2008-01-27T12:17:00.000-06:00

Well, at least the port and starboard rubrails are installed. This boat also has a rubrail across the bow, but I have to install the foredeck first. I was a bit overoptimistic about how fast the install would go. I originally hoped to glue up all three layers on both sides in one session. However, after gluing up the port rubails, it was late and I was tired, so I decided to stop and save the starboard side for another day. Here's the port side all glued and clamped:

And here is the starboard side after Saturday's glueup:

I used a Japanese-style pull saw to trim the dowels flush and trim the stern end of the rubrail flush with the transom. I've had this one in my tool box for a few years. I don't use it a lot but it really comes in handy for some situations. Here's what mine looks like, if you click on the image, you can see that it has finely spaced teeth on one side and coarse ones on the other. If you look really close, you can probably seem some of my essential fluids on the blade - this sucker is sharp!

The weather on Saturday was really nice - high 60's/low 70's. So it seemed like a good idea to see what all these complaints about fairing that I've been hearing are all about. Before I could get started, I needed to build my sanding boards.

Based on recommendations from TomW on the bateau.com forum, I previously ordered some 4"x36" Silicon Carbide sandpaper from http://customsandingbelts.com. This site sells custom sized sanding belts for belt sanders. If you call them, you can order custom lengths of sandpaper with square cut ends. Since they don't connect the ends together to form a belt, the price is actually cheaper than what's advertised on the web site. I also order a can of 3M spray adhesive for bonding the sandpaper to the boards.

I built two sanding boards, one stiff one for the flat sections of the boat and one flexible one for the curvy parts. I made the stiff one by laminating 3/8" and 1/4" pieces of plywood cut from my scrap pile. I used a 3/8" piece for the flexible board. I cut some 1 1/4" oak dowel 5" long for handles. The following two shots show the flexible board and the 7x70 mm screws I found at my local Lowe's for holding the handles on. I used a forstner bit to countersink the screws.

I found these in the furniture fastener section at Lowe's. They are 7x70mm and have a nice, thin pan head so you don't have to counter sink very much (the thin board is only 3/8" thick). They have an allen drive socket so you can get them very tight.

And here it is after all the clamps are removed and a first pass with the sanding board. I spent a couple of hours with the sanding board and clearly have more to do before applying QuickFair again. And yep, everybody is right - this sanding stuff is hard work - good for lots of WeightWatcher's activity points. I'm glad I'm doing it in this weather and not in the summer.

Here's another shot of fairing progress. That's a piece of aluminum square tubing that I use as a straight-edge for checking fairness on the flat sections.

All that fairing wore Fred out - we call this her "frog position".

I hope to get enough sanding done on Sunday to get another application of QuickFair down. I get bonus points for getting the foredeck and the backing plate cut out.

Started fairing and installing rubrails

2008-01-23T23:27:00.000-06:00

The title of this post would raise a red flag with experienced boat builders. I started the fairing process and then realized that I really needed to install the rubrails first. I did it on purpose, thinking it would be a lot easier to install the rubrails after I fliped the boat. Unfortunately, the rubrails are structural in this boat and they need a good epoxy glue bond to the hull. As part of the fairing process, I had sanded the cotton threads off the fiberglass and filled the weave with a slurry of epoxy and blended filler. After that dried, I applied a skim coat of SilverTip QuickFair epoxy fairing putty.

Folks on on the bateau.com forum recommended that I sand the QuickFair off so that the rubrails would be bonded directly to the fiberglass. My thirty-something year old belt sander did a good job of removing a 2" strip of QuickFair around the entire boat. That sander works well, but it sure does make a lot of dust. I'm glad I bought a nice cartridge respirator for times like these - the epoxy dust isn't very compatible with lungs.

The recommended procedure for building rubrails is to laminate three layers of 1/4" plywood. I made my rubrails 1 1/2" wide. You can use random lengths, just try to use your longest pieces up at the bow where the sides curve the most. I cut enough pieces for the job from my scraps I saved from cutting hull parts out. Here is a shot showing the variety of lengths I ended up with:

After ripping all the rubrail parts, I made a bunch of PVC clamps. You can use C-clamps or you can just make clamps from 3" PVC pipe. I cut up a piece of pipe that I had laying around into 1" long sections and then cut through the pipe on one side. Presto - a plastic spring clamp. These clamps create just the right amount of pressure for epoxy glue-ups. Here is my clamp collection after about 40 minutes work:

You can see one of the clamps holding a section of rubrail to the boat. Commodore Fred thinks they are going to work just fine. You could cut these up with a hack-saw, but in my case I have a nice bandsaw. I just set the fence at 1" and setup an outfeed stand to support the pipe and started slicing.

A friend of mine said that most people wouldn't be able to build a boat since they didn't have the big collection of woodworking tools that I do. Thats incorrect - the set of tools that you actually need to build a boat is pretty small: circular saw, jig saw, drill, random orbital sander, block plane, and misc hand tools. But it is handy to have a table saw for ripping rubrails and I've used the bandsaw for a couple of small tasks.

In the pictures below, you can see the starboard rubrail in a trial fit on the boat. It hasn't been glued to the hull yet. I arranged the 1/4" pieces so that the longest pieces were used on the front, curved section of the hull and so that all joints were offset from the adjacent layer. I first installed with spring clamps, adjusted for fairness and then drilled and doweled at the end of each segment and at some intermediate points on the long segments. The dowels will keep all the layers aligned during the glue-up where the pieces are pretty slippery. Next up is to repeat this process on the port side, remove all the dowels, glue, reinstall and clamp.

In this shot, you can see where I removed the QuickFair in preparation for gluing the rubrails. If you zoom on the picture, you can see the dowels standing proud. I left them long so I can use a pair of pliers to pull them out before gluing. It seemed easier than having to use a punch to remove them. I can saw the ends flush after the glue is dry.

The bottom is glassed!

2008-01-12T21:41:00.000-06:00

Its been a while since my last posting, and I've been busy prepping for today's glassing session. At my last posting, I'd finished stitching the hull together. The next step was to use epoxy putty to "tack weld" the hull together. I used the EZ Fillet putty that came with my SilverTip epoxy kit to tack weld spots near where I had tie-wrap stitches and temporary screws. Here is a shot showing the tack welds:

After removing all the tie-wraps and temporary screws, I (with some help from my wife) cut the biax fiberglass tape for each of the seams and biax fiberglass fabric for covering the hull. We folded and labeled each piece to speed up the upcoming fiberglassing session. Here is a shot of the hull with all the fiberglass positioned and cut:

Dougster (from the bateau.com forum) volunteered to drive over from Blanco and help with the big glass job. I also enlisted my younger brother to help - he drove all the way over from Bandera. Thanks Doug and John! I would have never attempted to do the entire hull in one pass if it weren't for their help. Dougster has built a dinghy and is part way through a LB-22, so has some experience with epoxy stitch-and-glue construction. My brother has some experience with epoxy.

I got up early Saturday morning and started pre-measuring EZ Fillet and epoxy in preparation for the arrival of the crew. I used the same mixing cup strategy as I described earlier. Measuring the EZ Fillet is troublesome because it is quite thick - almost like peanut butter, so you need to go slowly and tap the cup to get it to settle in order to get an accurate measure. When Doug arrived, he brought a small scale and we double-checked the measurements using the Silvertip recommended weight ratios. It was a good thing we did - a couple of cups were off enough to require adjustments.

In order to apply the EZ Fillet, we filled zip-lock freezer bags (they are heavier duty than the sandwich bags) with the mixed putty, seal and then snip a corner from the bag. You can then squeeze putty from the corner just like a cake decorator does. It works well for applying a bead of putty to the seams of the boat. Doug showed me a nice trick for filling the bags - just put an empty bag in one of the 16 oz plastic cups and roll the opening over the edges of the cup. This keeps the mouth of the bag open and leaves both hands free for scooping the putty into the bag. Here is a show of the EZ Fillet putty applied to some seams:

The next step was to apply epoxy to the plywood along each of the seams, apply the 6" biax fiberglass tape and roll epoxy onto the tape until the glass turns transparent. (sorry - forgot to get a picture of the seams taped up) We then started with the center 50" piece of biax fabric. We applied this to the hull dry and poured epoxy directly out of the cups onto the fabric and then used a combination of squeegee and roller to spread it out until the glass "wet-out". In the following shot, you can see the center piece and the starboard piece wet-out and the port piece ready to wet-out. I cut these long enough to cover the entire transom. We changed up a little for the last piece and wet the plywood first. It was a little more trouble to apply the glass, but with two people, it wasn't too bad. I think I like this approach better - but don't have strong feelings one way or another.

After the three hull sheets were all wet-out, we applied a final sheet across the transom and wrapping up quite a way onto the hull. The lamination schedule called for two layers of tape and one layer of fabric on the transom. We have two layers of tape and two layers of fabric. I'm sure its overbuilt, but it seemed like a good idea. As you can see in the following shot of the finished transom, Fred thinks it will do just fine:

And here is Fred finishing her inspection of the job

All in all, it was a great day! The full crew got started about 9; Doug was able to stay to around 2ish. John and I finished up around 4:30. I think there will be a few air-bubbles to grind out and fill - all caused by voids in the fillet putty. In hindsight, we should have paid more attention to smoothing out the exterior fillets. I'm using slow-hardener for this job, so I think I'm going to let this cure all week before moving on to sanding and fairing. Look for another post next weekend.

Who knew stitching would be so hard?

2008-01-03T21:28:00.000-06:00

I was really looking forward to stitching the hull panels together. This is the part where all that plywood starts to look like a boat. Boy was I wrong! I started laying panes on the jig, setting some temporary screws, drilling holes and threading tie-wraps. It didn't take long before veins were standing out on my forehead. I decided the wisest course of action was to stop for a while and take a blood pressure break. I continued on the next day and didn't get far before I was convinced that it would never go together. Time for another blood pressure break. The next session saw some tangible progress in just a couple of hours. Progress came through double checking of dimension, careful alignment and repeated cycles of trial fits and judicious use of a block plane. I tried to keep "strive for fair over fit" in mind - EZ Fillet will compensate for lots of mistakes. I have a few spots with 1/2" gaps but most of my issues were repaired by removing material. Advice from the forum is that EZ Fillet will have no problem filling 1/2" gaps - I just may run out. After a couple more days of these short sessions, the starboard side of the boat was in pretty good shape. A recent series of posts on the bateau.com forum made me feel a little better - I'm not the only one that found this bit challenging. In previous reading, I saw lots of comments about how tedious the fairing process would be and was a bit surprised that this 3-D jigsaw didn't go together in a single evening.

I worked on the port side tonight. I had lots of material to remove from the long straight section of the hull and chine panel. I'm close, but still have some fine tuning to do. I ran out of batteries and the block plane wore me out. I'm going hunting this weekend, so there is no point in rushing. I'll finish fitting the hull next week, tack weld, remove the tie-wraps and temporary screws and if all goes well, be ready to fiberglass the outside of the hull next weekend.

Here is a shot from the stern. See - it really is starting to look like a boat (whew!).

Here is a shot from the starboard bow. Nope, I'm not showing you the port bow yet... or that ugly gap right in the center of the bow.

Hull panels are spliced

2007-12-30T11:41:00.000-06:00

After I finished my jig and cut all the hull panel pieces, I thought I was ready to panel the hull and stitch everything together. Wrong! Each of the hull, chine and side panels need to be spiced together to make long panels. It was time to try my hand at some simple epoxy fiberglass work. ..

I'm going to shift gears here and write a mini-tutorial on using epoxy and fiberglass to splice long panels. I read tutorials on bateau.com, read the System 3 epoxy tutorial, searched the forums and asked a few questions and here is what I learned/how I did it:

I set up a mixing bench by laying a piece of OSB over a couple of saw horses. I covered this with some plastic drop cloth since epoxy doesn't stick to it. The epoxy resin comes in two parts that are mixed in a 2:1 ratio. I marked a couple of 16 oz plastic cups with a sharpie pen - one at 8 oz and one at 4 oz. I marked some smaller cups at 4 & 2 oz. You can then place empty cups inside these marked cups to fill them. You can pour up several sets of cups beforehand so you aren't spending time measuring during your glue up. You never pour epoxy directly in the marked cups, so they can be re-used as many times as needed. When you are ready for epoxy, dump the smaller cup into the larger one, use a mixer stick (tongue depressors work well) to scrap the contents into the big cup and then stir for 1.5-2 minutes. Then empty the cup into a shallow aluminum baking pan. This increases the surface area of the glue, slowing the activation and giving you more time to work before it gels. I used 6" foam rollers to spread the epoxy. Note that these are smooth, foam rollers, not the normal textured rollers you may have used. I've seen them in both pink and white, just look for foam.

As a first time builder, I was a little concerned with estimating how much glue to pre-mix. I finally found a thread where Cracker Larry said he averaged 1 oz of mixed epoxy for every 1' of the 6" tape. I estimated I had 21' of tape joints, so I pre-mixed 2 sets of 8/4 oz cups - enough for 24 oz of epoxy. This is a little high, but everything I had read said that first-timers generally use too much epoxy and get better with experience. Using too much epoxy is expensive and results in a heavier, less efficient boat. You should also have a plan for what to do with any left-over epoxy - its too expensive to just dump. In my case, I have frame A, motorwell frame, bow stem and stringers that will all end up needing at least one coat of epoxy.

Tip: insert an empty cup inside the one you are going to mark and then pour water you've measured with a measuring cup set the level of your line. This compensates for the extra thickness of the double cup.

Here is a shot of my mixing bench with the various ingredients and tools mentioned above. Don't forget to use the nitrile gloves before mixing and spreading. I borrowed a cooking timer from my outdoor kitchen to help me keep track of mixing time. Its easy to set this type of timer with gloves on and that ding wakes you up from any daydreaming.

Oh yeah, before you mix any glue, spread out all of your parts on some plastic sheet and make darn sure that you have all the parts oriented correctly. This boat has some panel sections where the top and bottom are both curved, and its not immediately obvious which side goes to the top. After arranging all the parts, cut the 6" fiberglass tape for each joint and place it nearby.

Now you can mix your first pot of glue. Use the roller to apply a thin layer of epoxy on each joint and then let that sit for at least 7 minutes in order for it to get tacky. Then lay a piece of tape on the joint, and roll epoxy over the tape. When the tape is saturated with epoxy, it turns transparent. You want to use just enough that the tape turns transparent, and no more. When you are first applying epoxy to the tape, the roller has a tendency to pick up the tape. I found it best to start by starting in the center of the tape joint and rolling from the center to the edges. Roll towards the end and avoid back and forth rolling on the ends until its saturated. Once the tape is wet, you can press down and even out the coverage.

I had some troubles with panel edges alignining such that the surface was flat. I'm not sure if it was due to ripples in the plastic drop cloth or what, but I compensated by using wood shims. and epoxy jugs. You can by packages of these tapered shims at Lowe's or Home Depot. If you don't get things nice and flat here, you can end up with air bubbles in the glass which will need repairing and you will have more fairing work to do later.

Here are all the panels with the first splices:

You need tape and glue both sides of the panels. I originally hoped that I could defer the second side until I glassed the inside of the hull. I was told, no - it won't be strong enough. Well, after flipping the panels in preparation for taping and gluing the second side, I agree. With just one side taped, the joints are still pretty limber and will easily hinge in one direction. Its cold here now and even though I've got a couple of heaters running - its still dropping into the 50's in the shop during the night. I'm using slow hardner, so I think I'm just going to let these sit for a few days before assembling them on the jig. I hopeful of getting everything stitched and getting a start on glassing the outide of the hull before my vacation ends, but I think that pushing it will be a mistake.

Here are the panels flipped with the final seams done. Note that this time I don't need wedges and weights to align the panels.

So - how did Cracker Larry's epoxy estimate work for this first timer? On side 1, I ran about 1 oz short with my pre-measured 24 oz. I mixed up another batch using my small 4 oz/2 oz cups (lots of advice out there against mixing very small batches because measuring errors become critical). I finished up the tape and then used the rest on the motorwell frame, part of frame A and the bow stem. For side 2, I had 1-2 oz left out of 24; coming very close to Larry's estimate. After this exercise I'm less nervous about the impending big job of glassing the hull. I'm not confident yet, but definitely less nervous.

The jig is up!

2007-12-27T10:45:00.000-06:00

Well, at least the jig is completed... Before we headed out to visit family for Christmas, my wife and I got up at the crack of dawn to glue up the stringers and transom. She mixed glue while I spread. Make sure you have some knee pads and plenty of ibuprofen on hand before you get started. In looking through the bateau.com forums, I've seen several techniques for applying pressure to the glue joints. Epoxy jugs and cinder blocks are popular. I had a dozen epoxy jugs and eight cans of the flotation foam, but that wasn't going to be enough to cover all the parts. I didn't want to go buy cinder blocks just for this (and deal with finding a home for them when I'm done). I reasoned that gallon jugs of water would work well, but couldn't find a handy supply of those. Cracker Larry from the bateau.com forums suggested filling gallon zip-lock bags with water. As you can see in the following shot, that worked just fine:

Another alternative is to use temporary screws, but you need to be careful. One of the common mistakes with epoxy glue-ups is to apply too much pressure and squeeze the glue out of the joint. You want to have about 1mm of epoxy between the two pieces.

After we got back from our Christmas trip, I finished assembling the jig. I spent a lot of time aligning the frames and molds and using a block plane to adjust stringers so they aligned with the frames. I used a 4' straightedge and the block plane to make sure all the bottom stringer surfaces were straight, in both the bow to stern and port-starboard directions. At about 11:30 PM, I checked the diagonal dimensions and found them to be almost exactly the same; I used that as an excuse to call it a night. Next up: cuting hull panels and stitching them together over the jig.

Here are some shots of the completed jig. Note that I used temporary cleats to attach the bow stem and transom. I originally screwed through the transom and into the cleats and then realized that I'll be glassing over the outside of the transom and that I need to be able to lift the boat off the frames and stringers. I screwed from the cleat side into the transom and removed the other screws. Now, when I'm ready to flip, I can just crawl under there and remove those screws, and then everything should lift right off.

One other item of import - I added a temporary 2x4 stiffener behind the front frame. That frame is only 3/8" and it has the bow stem hanging off it. Daniel Huckleberry said that he had issues with this frame flexing while trying to align hull panels and added the 2x4 brace.

I apologize for the dark photos. Click for the full-size versions; they don't seem nearly so dark.

Stringers, frames & transom are all cut out

2007-12-23T14:07:00.000-06:00

I spent some more time cutting up that gorgeous, expensive marine plywood. I don't have any spare sheets, and some of the nesting is very tight, so I took my time. A couple of times I had to just stop and take a break and come back fresh. I think if I had it to do again, I would make some templates for the one sheet that has all the little parts with odd angles and odd rotations. Its looks a lot like a big jigsaw puzzle.

Here are the stringers and transom parts all ready for glue-up.

Here is frame A and the motorwell frame. I just need to mount these on the jig.

And here are the rest of the pieces that came from the same pieces of plywood. Except for the bow stem, and the motorwell sides, the rest of these parts won't get used until after the hull is assembled and glassed outside and inside.

The next step is to laminate the two layers of each of the three stringers and the three layers of transom. I hope to get that done tomorrow morning so it can be drying while we visit family for the holidays. I have next week off and hope to make some solid progress.

Plywood arrives!

2007-12-21T11:50:00.000-06:00

My plywood finally arrived today. Its hard to believe that all the plywood to build this boat and the console arrives in a package that is only 6" thick. The bill of lading claims that it ways 540 pounds and it felt like it. After hauling it back to my shop, I found a nice spot in the shop to store it flat and pulled the sheets I would need to complete the jig out and staged them on top of my combination machine where they would be near the cutting table.

Here's the stack minus 3 sheets of 3/8" and 2 sheets of 1/4":

And here is the staging on top of my Robland and a sheet on the cutting table.

My cutting table is just a couple of inexpensive saw horses with a scrap of OSB on top. I set the depth on my circular saw so that the blade just barely clears the plywood. When I make cuts, the blade cuts into the OSB and not into my sawhorses. I only had a small piece of OSB laying around; a full size sheet would be better as it would provide better support for the plywood. Its OK for the 3/8", but I may need to do something more when I start cutting 1/4".

I managed to cut up 2 sheets of 3/8" before calling it a night. That yielded three identical transom pieces that will be laminated to make a transom about 1 1/4" thick, a motorwell frame, a piece of one of the interior frames and one of the four center stringer parts. I'm planning to cut all of the parts I need to complete the jig and then do all the laminating of these parts at one time. Then I can finish assembling the jig and move on to cutting hull panels.

Here is a shot of the motorwell frame and the three transom pieces propped on the jig. The stringer and frame parts are sitting on the plywood stack in the first picture.

One thing that surprised me is how much dust was produced by using my little circular saw on this mahogany marine plywood. It made enough that I ended up with dust in my eyes and was forced to put on a set of goggles. I think that I'm going to hook up some of my spare dust collector hose up to the stubbed out line above my cutting table and see how that works.

First mistake - conclusion

2007-12-18T21:45:00.001-06:00

My little snafu with Frame D has come to a happy conclusion. The biscuits and glue are holding up just fine. I corrected the layout for the chines and sides and re-cut. I think this might have been fortuitous - much better to learn this lesson here than when I'm cutting out expensive marine plywood - especially since I don't have any spare and the closest source appears to be in Houston. This mistake was caused by confusing the intersection of a couple of layout lines with one of the vertices. One bad vertex and two bad cuts. I was consistent, did both sides wrong. I think that in the future, I'll put a check mark in pencil next to each dimension and vertex on the drawings as part of my pre-cut check. Other builders on bateau's forum assure me that I'm not alone in making this type of mistake.

Here's how it looks after the repair:

First mistake

2007-12-17T19:34:00.000-06:00

After posting last night, I was reviewing the pictures of the jig and realized that something was wrong with Frame D. If you look at the following picture, you can see that the chine and side angles are wrong for the frame closest to you (click on the picture to get a full size version).

I double checked the drawings and sure enough, I missed the chine-side vertex and threw both off. I won't share my original reaction, but my original idea for a solution was to buy another sheet of MDF and cut a new frame. Later on, I remembered that I still had all of the cutoff pieces and that I owned a biscuit joiner. I thought it was worth a try to use the biscuit joiner to re-attach the cutoff pieces and then re-layout the sides and chines and re-cut. After all, this is just a temporary frame, its not structural. Another sheet of MDF isn't expensive, but it does take time to go to the store and find a neighbor to help me carry it into the shop and then remount and realign the frame on the jig.

Here is one side with biscuits installed and prepped with glue (click on the picture to zoom):

Here it is with the missing bits re-attached and clamped. Tomorrow night I'll see if its sturdy enough to layout and cut.

Huck's boat

2007-12-16T21:00:00.000-06:00

Some have asked me what this boat is going to look like. The study plans on bateau.com have a 3-D rendering of the boat, but Daniel Huckleberry agreed to let me post pictures of his boat. Here's a shot showing how the inverted-V starts out very pronounced at the bow and then flattens out as you move to the stern.

Here is a shot of the boat sitting in the water. Notice how high it sits in the water - its designed to have 5" of static draft when weighing 1,800 pounds. With a hull weight of 850 pounds, there's still plenty of margin for motor, gear and passengers and fish!

A good weekend

2007-12-16T20:11:00.000-06:00

It was a good weekend - I got started on the build. On Saturday, I made a trip to the local Lowe's and came home with a nice new Bosch jig saw (early Christmas present from my wife), lumber for the strongbacks and 3/4" MDF for jig molds (and a little extra for a router table project that I'll eventually get to). By the end of the day, I had the strongback assembly rolling around on some 5" casters. Each caster is rated for 350#, so they should be sturdy enough to support the 850# TX-18. Here's a picture of the mobile strongback assembly:

That's Fred, my helper for this build, standing in the middle of the jig. She seems to think that a tennis ball is a key part of the boat since she keeps trying to hand it to me.

In addition to the mobile base, I got a couple of the molds or temporary frames cut out of MDF. The plans call for using particle board for building temporary frames. I used MDF because I plan to recycle them into future woodworking projects. I made a couple of mistakes on the first one, but caught it in the 2nd check on the measurements. So far all the cuts have been straight and my little Ryobi 18.6V cordless circular saw has done a great job. I've just had to use the jigsaw to clean up the cuts end in the vertex of the V's.

On Sunday, I cut out the 3rd mold, cut string notches in all 3 molds, cut the mold braces and assembled them on the base. I assembled the first one by myself, but get the pieces all level, square and aligned with each others is awkward for one person. My wife helped me with the other two and all three of the temporary frames are now installed and well aligned. The next steps on the jig construction will have to wait on the arrival of my plywood order. Here's how the jig looks now:

Introduction

2007-12-11T21:18:00.000-06:00

I finally decided to join the ranks of boat owners a few months ago. I originally planned to buy a production boat, but then my brother introduced me to www.bateau.com. The idea of building a boat comes naturally - my dad spent a lot time working with a local boat designer on several builds when I was a kid. After spending a lot of time on the bateau.com forums, several things became clear:

you can build a boat that is superior to most production boats for less money
bateau has built an incredible community of committed builders that gladly share their experiences and love helping others achieve their dream
you have incredible access to the boat's designers - it's easy to get authoritative answers

One of the forum members that lives near me invited me to check out his build. A couple of hours with Dougster made me feel much more confident about tackling this project - thanks Dougster!

I've had the plans for the Texas Sled (aka TX-18) for a couple of weeks now. The TX-18 is an inverted vee design that appears to be ideal for Texas bay fishing - it operates in shallow water and runs smoothly in chop. This is a relatively new design for bateau (but based on a much older design) and I'm only aware of one previous build. Daniel Huckleberry has done a wonderful job documenting his build and answering questions. His boat is now routinely putting a smile on his face in Mobile Bay. Bateau designed this boat in response to requests from Texas bay fisherman, but as far as I know, I will be the first Texas builder.

I don't want to mislead anybody - I'm not currently a Texas bay fisherman. I'm not much of a fisherman at all. I live 3 1/2 hours from the Texas coast, near Austin. I grew up in Texas and recently moved back after spending much of my adult life living in New Hampshire. I have a couple of brothers that are avid fisherman, one recently bought a place on the coast. One of my good friends lives in Corpus and likes to fish. I live close to the Texas Highland Lakes (within 15 minutes of Lake Travis) and I believe this boat will perform well there. My son wants to fish and I hope to have the boat finished by the time he finishes his commitment to the USMC late next year (he's in Iraq now). And, oh yeah - I like to build stuff - it was either build a boat or build a kit car or just sit on my butt watching TV. So, if all goes well, I'll be fishin' for reds with my son late next year.

I've reviewed the plans enough to feel confident that I understand the key steps in the construction. I don't understand every detail, but I'm confident that all will become clear as I progress - or somebody on the forum will 'splain it to me. I ordered plywood and the SilverTip epoxy-fiberglass kit from bateau.com tonight. While I wait for the plywood to get here, I'll finish up some projects in the shop and get started on the strongback and jig. I'll post more as soon as I have something to show - probably in a couple of weeks.