Finally we've got to painting the hull.  Here's a few shots of it being rigged to move, and a couple of it with its primer coat on:

Other than caulking the outer edges and mounting some handles to the front and back not much has happened today.  As such no pictures.

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  Finally!  After so much cutting, hammering, nailing, gluing, and screwing up the boat is finally complete.  Or at least the boat section of it.  We've sealed all the edges and nailed the deck to the top.  Now all that is left is to paint it, mount the rudder/keelboard, build the mast/sail, and go! 

Here's some pictures of us sealing it and of the final completed boat.

We're edging inexorably closer to final assembly.  I've removed the middle panel, added the joints for the mast, took 1/8th off one side (accidentally making a giant gouge in the middle of the right edge), and replaced it.  We've also now glued it in place so it should be finished as soon as we nail it down.

The panels are just taped on at the moment as there's still some work to do inside the bulkheads.  I need to nail a few pieces in place, I need to caulk all the edges to give one last layer of sealant, and I need to glue the small doors on before I can put the top decking on permanantly.  All this will have to wait until tomorrow though, too tired to continue today.  (8 p.m. and I'm in bed most nights now due to how tired I am from all the hammering, bending, gluing, and moving of stuff about).

Anyway, here's the pictures:

I'm officially declaring that we won't be sailing on Sunday. Sadly too many delays are pushing back the paint schedule. Most of it was losing too much time in Home Depot researching supplies, and the rest lost to the troubles custom fabricating all the remaining pieces. That said, everything other than the rudder, keelboard, and mast are now complete and we've finally begun the final assembly. Using some 2x4 to keep the angles of the corners 90 degrees we glued the rear side on.

Next came the rear inner bulkhead wall. Due to the thinness of the plywood used the sides were actually bowing in, which created a unique problem. With the sides pushing in we could neither get a straight line on the bulkhead.  On top of that, the bulging was pushing against the bulkhead and thus moving the sides out further than they were supposed to be, making the boat look more like a parallelogram. Thankfully though I already anticipated this problem and picked up something to solve it. This something was a set of comealong ratchet straps. Lashing them over the sides then across the top of the inner bulkhead I ratcheted the straps tight. This had the effect of pulling the two side pieces together. The bulkhead in the middle pushed back against the inwardly bulging sides, flattening them out and allowing us to glue it down.

That problem solved, we turned our attentions to the front. It suffers the same problem, though much more pronounced. So pronounced in fact that we weren't really able to position the forward inner bulkhead wall at this time. To make it easier for ourselves we've attached the front outter wall to the front. Once that dries and is nailed in place (we've forsworn screws for shank nails, which seem to hold just as much) we'll batter the middle wall into place and finally glue it down.

You'll notice in our picture that the bulkhead hatches are cut out. A big thanks to my boss for loaning me his jigsaw. It made the work both possible and easy. The method of using it was simple. First I drilled big 2" holes with my new power drill (a decent 7amp one with a good strong torque, forward mounted handle, and variable strength trigger) then just cut straight lines to each one. Method suggested by my father, who is in France worrying endlessly about my doing this project and the possibility I'll sink beneath the waves .

The weight of the boat has gone up a bit due to the extra wood and bracing I've put on. Better safe than sorry though, and I'm planning on stopping by home depot tomorrow to look at roller wheels to mount to the side. that way I can just tilt it up then roll it to the truck :) I have to check first to make sure I can mount them above the waterline to prevent them dragging in the water.

Anyhow, here's the view. I'd have gotten more photos showing the various joints (a week of prior planning, measuring, gluing, cutting, botching, and working all has come together surprisingly fairly well) but sadly my camera ran out of power after the first photo. As such here's the only shot I've got. I know it's similar to yesterday's though this time the work is permanent. :)

Posting an update whilst I wait for one of the sides to glue. Sadly I don't have enough clamps to glue too many long things at once so on this downtime I thought I'd post the pictures.

The boat itself is rapidly approaching actual assembly. I've cut all the sections out and attached most of the braces (technically they're called chine logs but I doubt if most anyone would know what I was talking about if I said that in this blog) to the various panels. After the final braces are connected I need to put together the parts to hold the mast in place then it's time for final assembly. I'm running out of time tonight, with any luck I'll get it put together tomorrow so we can start painting it. Fingers crossed anyway.

Here's the photos for today (boat secured in these photos with just duct tape):

I just did some more cutting of braces and I'm gluing the right side down, so there's nothing really to photograph that isn't already on there.  Tomorrow (thursday) should have some big leaps in construction though as most of it will be coming together.

Oh, forgot to mention I made a great discovery last night at Walmart.  I was picking up some bacon and bread when I decided to go check out their sporting goods section.  I was curious about the price of oars.  While over there  I stumbled across 3 nylon cleats (see previous post) tucked away on the back of a shelf next to the oars-nowhere near the rope/tiedown section no less.  I quickly bought up all three (2.50 each). 

Day 3: Tuesday 2 July.  Using only the circular saw for most of the cutting has demonstrated some of its limitations.  Namely, it is rather tricky to get straight cuts and it's even trickier to get precision cuts.  Something tells me I'll be using a lot of caulking glue to fill in the cracks between a few of the beams.  That said it's not the worst tool and it is still the only one I have access to at this time.  Next time I do a project though I'm going to see about getting a tablesaw to help cut the sections.  It'd also help to have a planer or a super strong sander (I have a decent hand-sander with a hard grit on it but it's both noisy and slow going so I try extra hard to get the cuts right so I don't have to use it)

The circ is still required to cut the plywood though and even though I've swapped to using a guide rather than eyeball cutting down a pencil line it's still a bit off.  That said this boat is being designed on the premise of loose tolerances.  How much that comes back to bite me will be seen in the final construction, but until then I'm doing the best I can and double measuring/sketching/labeling ahead of time.  It does take back some of the time saved by using the circular saw but I'm still both confident and happy with the progression. 

I cut out the panels for the rear bulkhead.  My boss is loaning me his jigsaw for the weekend so I'll be able to cut a small hatch into it for storage and access into the bulkhead when needed.  The main reason for having them at the front and back though is for flotation.  If/when the boat capsizes these will give it positive bouyancy even upside-down and also provide flotation if flooded.  This should make recovering/sailing it possible without a tow or rescue.

Anyhow, with those and a few more cross braces for the front bulkhead cut out, and a front wall piece clamped and gluing, I finished up for the night.

Day 2: Monday 30 June.  The next few days I only have a limited amount of time (about 3 hours after work each day).  As such progress will be a little slower.

I had to stop at Home Depot again to pick up some more wood.  Namely bracers 3/4" in width.  Basically these will be for the front/rear sides and also as the supports for the bulkheads.  I am also keen to find them cheaply, rather than 5$ each.  To that end Home Depot has 3/4" x 1&1/4" x 8' sections which will work well enough.  Sadly it increases the overall weight of the boat by a couple pounds but nothing too serious.

That aquired I went back and hacked up some more plywood.  2 rectangular sections to go on the front and back, which we then secured bracing to with nails and clamps.  The nails we're using are copper, or at least "copper treated."  I looked long and hard to try and find some brass nails, but what few I found came in packs of 2-4 for a dollar, and we are using somewhere around 100 nails.  As such I went for the next closest thing I could find that shouldn't rust. Copper is fairly good in that respect (they'll hopefully last longer than the lifespan of the boat, and in any case they're just supporting the glue which is what is really holding the ship together) so that was the choice.  I did manage to get a box of brass screws though, and for the critical joints I'll be going back and screwing them down.

With the rear sections cut out we called it a night.  You can see some pictures here (for any careful observers, I actually have the sides backwards, they should be swapped around so the bowing bits are in the middle):

and to give a really bad sense of scale:

Day 1: Sunday 30 June.  I was feeling unwell Saturday otherwise I would have then.  But today's the day, and it's time to get going!  Before we can start though, I need to get some supplies.

First and foremost is the wood.  To that end Home Depot was entirely useless.  Their plywood section (in any of the 3 stores I visited) was horribly and confusingly laid out, which made going through the different types hard.  Furthermore they didn't seem to carry the types nor sizes I needed at all.  To that end I bought my wood at Lowes.  It was both easy to find what I was looking for there and their selection was much better.  I also took the opportunity to pick up a few new power tools (in all cases 1 or 2 steps up from the absolute cheapest) so that I didn't have to steal any more of them from friends and family.  Or at least steal many more.

The bracing wood I got for the bottom of the boat strangely turned out to be the most expensive piece in scale.  While it is only $1.29 for an 8 foot section of 2x4 it was $5 for a 3/4"x3/4"x8 length of wood.  My only guess is this is some piece of trim and thus the companies claim it's more expensive that way.  That said, I only needed a few to brace the bottom with so overall it isn't too bad.

Finding the rope tie-down cleats seems to be near impossible though. These are the bullhorn shaped metal bits on the sides of boats that you would commonly tie ropes to.  I.E. 

I've checked all the Home Depots and Lowes in the area and dispite them being on the websites and people claiming to have found them there I have yet to discover any.  Thankfully I don't need them for a while.

But getting back, after several trips I've finally aquired enough material to begin construction.  The first stage involves cutting the sides of the boat out of the 1/4" lauan plywood.  This is a curved cut using a circular saw along an 8' length of plywood.  That I've never used a circular saw before let alone made a curving cut with one made the task a little daunting.  Thankfully a quick visit to the internets turned up a video on how the saw works and how to do curves.  Setting the blade at just below the depth of the wood you're cutting makes curving the cut easy.  So with some fear and trepidation over the fact I was holding a spinning 7 & 1/4" steel blade of death in my hands I went at it.

It was EASY!  This thing is an awesome tool!  Why did I never buy one before?  It's rather annoying that precision cuts are a bit hard but the main cutting is made super simple by virtue of this tool.  We'll take the sander to the rest to hopefully smooth things out.  Anyway, with the sides cut out and the braces nailed to them, clamped them tight and let them glue for the night.  Some pictures after we finished:

Day 0: Saturday, 28 June.  I've developed a strange overwhelming desire to build a boat.  This actually stemmed from looking at renovated barges along the Seine river in Paris, though obviously I have neither a river nor a barge around here, nor the $500k to redo one.  However whilst stumbling on the internet on this subject I came across a cheap plywood idea that was well within my reach and capabilities (and budget).  I could describe it but I think the picture on their main page says more than I possibly could:

http://www.pdracer.com

So yes, I have now set in motion a plan to build and sail one of these.  Some balk at the idea of me trusting my life to something I created.  Some say I'm crazy.  But I'll show them when I sail confidently off into the sunset! Bwahahahahahhahahah!