I haven't done much work on the boat recently, since the next step is a big one: glassing the remainder of the deck. So in lieu of construction pictures, here's a few of the skiff built by VMG. It's a sight to behold.
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Did a full sealer coat on the wings, as well as the mahogany gunwale strips. Sanded everything down and vacuumed up the mess. There didn't seem to be much outgassing from the sealer coat, so I think I'm ready to apply the glass.
The glass comes in a 50 inch wide roll. The wings are 22" wide at the widest point. I was going to use the remaining glass from glassing the hull to glass the wings, but the strips I cut off aren't wide enough - so I have to use the main roll of fibreglass (I hope there's enough left for the rest of the deck...)
Since I had a bit of time before I could glass the wings, I decided to trim the stern edge correctly. When I trimmed the hull I trimmed it about 1/8" long which means when I complete the trim for this it should be 1/8" short of the aft edge of station 14. (Since the transom is inset 1/4" from the aft edge of station 14.) I used the jigsaw and pullsaw to do most of the trimming, and then came back with the belt sander to smooth things down even. Just be careful that if you do this, the belt is pushing the strips towards the rest of the hull, otherwise you get problems like this.
With the glass all laid out, I drew a pencil down the grove of the step to figure out where to trim it off. This sheet of glass I trimmed about 1/2" from the bottom of the step; the deck piece will overlap by about 1 1/2".
Next is the actual epoxying step. I pulled four 10-squirt cups of resin; as it happens, four 7-squirt cups probably would have sufficed. It took about 40 minutes to do a single wing. Again: start in the centre, work towards the edges, always make sure the edges stay wet. Start by wetting out the glass, then come back and pull off excess epoxy for the dry but still wet look. The trickiest bit was dealing with the threads at the bottom of the step - I figure I'll just come back later and sand them down.
Return four hours later for the filler coat; this goes much faster if you use a roller, but the roller is thirsty and drinks a lot of epoxy. Also be sure to tip off the surface with a brush. Return again four hours later for the third coat.
After that, it was just removing the cured glass from the edges of the gunwales, and cleaning up drips along the step.
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Almost ready to glass the wings. There was a bit more sanding to be done - and then it was time to fill all the holes. I have done this before so it wasn't a big deal this time. There was one spot where the strip was oddly cut and had a long gap, so I wanted to get that filled in, plus a few smaller holes around the pattern. I also filled the screw holes in the gunwale and a couple missing chunks of mahogany. After that, it was just one two three. The third coat went over the entire pattern - the mahogany seems to have a tendency to blow small bubbles, so I wanted to ensure I sealed it.
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Now that I had a cured cylinder of three layers of 8oz s-glass, I bonded it in place. I used a whole ton of epoxy/silica in doing this - more than I probably should have. The underside of the bow started to bubble once all the epoxy kicked off, and I'm going to have to go back and sand off a bunch anyway.
However, shaping the bow was just a bunch of time with the belt sander, then the random orbital, then a block. Add a bit more fairing compound, and things get pretty fair.
Next step was to plane down the top edges of the gunwale and the strip running along the top edge of the step. This resulted in many curlies, which Tristan picked up and put in the trunk of his orange car.
Once those were ready, I installed the front edges of the step. The position of the gunwale edge and step edge of the front step is fixed by the deck plan. The angle it sweeps back is up to you. Mine sweeps back 1 1/2" from vertical - I decided that looks good. I aligned everything up, drew a few straight lines, and used the jigsaw to cut away the pieces. For the vertical part of the step, I just used the pull saw - jigsaw can't reach in there. I cut about 1/8" from the line, so I could sand things with the correct bevel.
For the actual step, I just used scrap hybrid. I cut a pattern with a piece of cardboard, cut out the hybrid a bit large, tried the fit, and drew a rough line of what the angle should be. Then I just adjusted the disc sander and sanded the bevelled edge. I didn't worry too much about a perfect fit - plenty of epoxy filler is going to be in here. Once all that was done, I installed the pieces; everything looks pretty good.
I also started pulling staples and scraping the wingtops. Once that was done I built a very flat longboard out of two pieces of 1/4" ply glued together, and started sanding.
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