Veener layer continues

Not much to say. Its slow going, a bit tedious but getting there.  Heres a couple of photos

Long weekend - reasonable progress

A long weekend so hoped to make some decent progress.   A had another lump of sapelle for slicing up.  I had brought a piece big enough for slices of about 180mm.  However had a change of heart and decided to make the strakes 100mm.  So I sliced about 50mm of the sapaelle and then ran it through the thicknessr.  It has a good grain pattern so I set to slicing it up.

Had trouble early on, my bandsaw set up had got all out of wack.  In the process I think it stuffed the blade.  Took ages to get it running right again.  After that slicing went alright. I still can't get it to run super accurate and so end up with quite thick slices and so the wasteage is very high (about 40%)

After that set to doing another length of lam on the bottom, only the first 500 odd mm is sapelle and the rest of the run is ply.

Then did a fill length on the side.  That went pretty well.  Boards are a lot easier to handle when they are only 100mm.

I have made a big error at the bow.  There has to be a transition from the bottom boards sitting on top of to over lapping the side boards.   I had made a mess of it, but after a lot of shaping and fitting hopefully I have got away with it.

First side strakes on

Its been nearly a month since my last post, and its been a month of frustrations.

Having sucessfully completed veneering the transom and finalised my methodolgy for doing the strakes on the side I set out to get some wood for the purpose.

Took a Friday afternoon off work to get some timber, turned up to find the place closed for stock take.  The place isn't open in the weekend so that was a weekend lost.  Got the timber during the week that followed.  I then tried to prepare it for slicing up in the bandsaw but the thicknesser was really struggling and making a mess of it. 

Took the blades out to find them very blunt (I have had it two years and it's done a lot of work).  I had previously located a mobile guy to sharpen them, but work commitmeent got in the way, and so another weekend was lost.  I arranged to get them sharpened and then the night before he was due to come around he rings me up to say he can't do that type of blade.  So I had to find a plan B. Thankfully the place I found was able to sharpen them in time for this weekend jsut gone. 

So I set about putting a good face on one of the lumps of 150 x 50,  the newly sharpened blades made short work of that.  I then discovered the lump of wood has that same funny grain pattern I encountered early on in the build.  I should have given up on it right there and then, but I continued on and sliced it up.  The first slice went alright until the last 500mm or so,  any way finally ended up with about 6 slices. 

I then put them through the thicknesser and had more problems.  Due to the funny grain pattern it chewed up some of the slices.  It basically destroyed about 1.5 of the slices.

I then set about shaping the first strake and that went quite well. Glueing went well as well.

I then set about shaping and fitting the second one.  Installing it was tricky, really could have used a second set of hands.

Pulling the staples went pretty smoothly.

So now I have about 6m of the first strake fitted.

Lesson of the week,  unless there is a good grain pattern dont bother with it.

Transom proceeding, looking into the sides

So I have done 4  planks on the transon now, and its going pretty well.

Started looking into how to do the sides.  The process is very similar to the transom.  The sideseare going to have 5 strakes, whereas the transom is getting as many 100mm strips as is required.

Because of the 5 strips, the bottom of each plank needs to be shaped as well.  I've figured out a method and I tested it today using some of that crappy marine ply that I had left over.

It all worked out pretty well.  I have come up with some process improvements and so will test those next weekend on ply as well before getting stuck into the "good wood".

3rd plank

Got this spiling game nailed.  Did the third plank last night and got a nice even join all the way along.

First real spiling

Did my first real spiling with a trim router.   This was for the second board on the transom.   This area is the hardest for me to work on as I only have 19" between the transom and the back wall of the garage.

It went very well.  I still have a little bit of fine tuning to do but I am already inside the 1/32" tolerance.

I took my time, secured my plank firmly so that I could concentrate on controlling the router.

The first time I setup I was all set to start when I realized  I had made a mistake in my maths.  It would have still worked but would have wasted 7mm of material.

Lining off and Spiling

So last weekend I cut myself a bunch of veneers at around about 100mm wide.

I then spent the last week doing in depth study into spiling, and discovered I had headed down the wrong track completely.

First thing I discovered was that I need to "line off" the hull.  This process is part science and part art if your to believe the multitude of posts on the web about it.

The science of it is that you decide how many strakes (boards) you want for a start.  Apparently the classic mahogany runabouts had 5.  Then at each frame to you divide the height by the number of strakes, and mark out these intervals. 

Then you take a "lining off" batten (just a long flexible batten) and join the marks.  That's the end of the science.  Then you "adjust" the batten until the line "pleases" the eye.

I gather that getting the perfect  line is more of a concern with lapstrake (clinker) built craft where the lines are more prominent in the finished boat.  With mine the lines will "soften" I think when the planks are sanded and varnished.

So then the trick is to make the planks fit the lines.  This is where I have screwed up a bit.  At its narrowest point my planks need to be about 120mm.  Plus due to the curves of the hull, after fitting your plank you end up with a plank that will be about 120mm wide but curved and so you need a wider plank to cut it out off.

So I am going to need planks at least 120mm wide and in some cases probably twice the width.

This is where the trick of spiling comes in, which is matching the curve of the previous plank in the next plank.  Spiling is an old art, however I have been advised of a newer cheat method.  This involves laying "Clear shelf paper" on the side of the boat and do the "lining" directly on to that.  when layed flat it will present a perfect pattern for the planks.

Another method, and this is the one I am going to try first is to secure the next board about 25mm below the last one, and then use a trim router with a modified fence to route a groove in the new board that follows the curve of the previous one.  Then use a block plane to clean up to the line.  I have practised this method on some scraps and it seems to work OK.

I have a couple of sheets of crappy ply that I am going to do some full size practice runs on.

In the meantime I have decided to use at least some of the 100mm wide planks to do the transom with.  So tonight I glued on the first piece.  This was also my first live run with using staples to secure the veneers on.  Despite my practice runs I have found the staples sink to deep.  I need to get longer staples so I have room to put scrap ply on top.

I'm now waiting for the glue to go "green" so that I can pull the staples.

I'll post some pictures of the above tomorrow.

Making Veneers

Set to and made my first lot of real veneers today.

Started off with a piece of pine and practiced various aspects. It took very little time to get a couple of good lengths cut.  I am very pleased with the performance of my 65+ year old bandsaw.  The new blade and other bling is performing well

I am slicing of about 7mm at a time and then cleaning up in the thicknesser diwn to about 4.5mm. This is producing copious amounts of saw dust. 

I tried to make the slices a bit thinner but found that if I let the cut wander even slightly then I couldn't clean it up in the thicknesser

I am getting better at cutting on the bandsaw so I might try again for thinner slices as I would then likely be able to get 8 veneers from a 50mm thickness.

So I ended up with 14 x 3m x 4.5mm veneers, or about 42 metres worth.  Haven't figured out how much I need in total yet.

Nails & Screws, Bandsaws & veneers

I have had a pretty productive week or so.

I'm close to finishing putting all the nails and screws in.  Only about 80 screws to go.  Lost count of how many I have put in,  for nails it must be over a thousand and for screws something like 500.  Had a bit of trouble with them today, not sure why, but managed to strip the head of about 20.  Got really good at getting them out quickly using a ezy-out.

I have also bought a new blade for my band-saw.  I had a little oops as I was setting it up and the blade bit into the table, but it still seems to cut okay.  So I spent an hour practising cutting veneers.  My test pieces were only about 800mm long, and the real trick will be the 3m long pieces, but so far so good.

I then ran my practise pieces through the thicknesser and have ended up with some nice examples at about 4.2mm thick.

Tomorrow will be finishing screwing,  filling up a few holes that were "misses" and generally preparing for putting the seal coats on.

This means that next week I should be full steam into veneer manufacture.  I don't have a lot of timber for that at the moment, but enough to get me going.

Sanding and Nailing

I have been chipping away at getting all the excess glue sanded off and the bottom faired.  It went quite quickly, I think the attention to the previous layers as meant that this layer started off pretty good and has required comparatively little sanding to get finished.

I started nailing off today.  Must have drilled about 400 holes for nailing, broke two drill bits, which is what ultimately stopped me for the night, plus the neighbours were probably going to get annoyed with the hammering fairly soon had I not stopped.

I think I am probably going to need about two or 3 more weekends to finish sanding, nailing and sealing and then will be ready for the next big adventure, manufacturing veneers and applying them.

Finished last ply layer

With a sense if jubilation I finally finished the last ply layer last weekend.  Troubles with my last batch of ply have made this layer a but if a nightmare, but now it's done.

I have made a start on sanding, but there is lots left to do.  I am hoping to start in the veneer layer by the middle of August.

Buzzer

A friend if mine has given me a six inch buzzer in long term loan.  I git it home the other day and gave it a bit of a going over.  I discovered the motor start capacitor was stuffed so $50 later that was sorted.  All the wiring had rubber insulation that was perished, so bext came a complete rewire.

Lastly rhe blades were very blunt.  It came with a new set byt they weree the wrong size so I had to grind an 1/8th of an inch of the backs of them. 

Put it all back together and it works great.  Its missing a gaurd so thats my next task so that its a bit safer to use.

Bandsaw modifications completw

Spent about 4 or 5 hours on modifying my bandsaw.  It now has top and bottom roller bearing guides and a fence. 

The top guide fit without modification.  The bottom one required a bracket to be welded on.  That went pretty well.

The fence required more drastic mods.  I had to take the rable off and cut about 20mm off the front and back.  Then I welded a 5mm x 50mm bar across the front and back for the fence to bolt on to.

Went much better than I expected.

Only problem I have found is I mis calculated for the bolt holes for the fence, and I cant quite adjust it to zero, misses by about 1mm.  Tomorrow I will slot the holes a bit, that will fix that.

The fence doesnt have a drift adjustment but I can add rhat in very easily.   I am going to do a few trials before I do that.

Bandsaw modifications, motor work and more cold molding

A mixed bag of work this weekend gone.   Other commitments took about half the available time.

During the week I bought new upper and lower blade guides for my bandsaw and a rip fence.  The upper guides bolted on like they were made for it.  The bottom ones require me to weld on a mounting plate.

So I went and borrowed my brother's arc welder,  but found the auto darken visor doesn't work, the rechargeable battery is dead. So I took the mask to bits, unsoldered the battery and ordered a new one,  which will hopefully arrive in a day or so.

Mounting the rip fence is also a challenge.  I need to weld a 50 x 5 plate aling the back and front of the table to screw the fence components to. The fence is also about 40mm too short so I either need to cut the table down a little or get another piece of box section to make the fence longer.

Work on the actual boat was not much.  A couple of square meters of cold molding. I am almost out of epoxy resin and almost out of cash at the moment so it might not progress much before next payday.

Lastly for the weekend I bolted on the bell housing.   This went ok, a few minor hitches,  a heat shield I had to trim and one of the bolt holes need a tiny bit of filing. 

Rearranged workshop

I have been a but slack with posting lately. 

I am well into the next layer of ply.  I have had a bit of trouble with that as the ply is not very good.  It snaps easily when trying to ger around the curves at the transom.

I have got both sides done from frame 0 to about frame 6.  I have also made a start on the bottom.

I also spent nearly all of Saturday relocating and rebuilding my mark out table into a workbench configuration with a number of shelves to store tools etc.  I also found I was hoarding a lot of off cuts and so have given them over for fire wood.

The driver behind this was I was running out of space.  With the addition of table saw, compressor, engine crane, engine and more recently the bandsaw there was no room to move.  With the exception if the engine, most of the above is pretty mobile, so my new layout gives room to move these things about as required.  It also means I can do more with the garage door closed.

Start of another layer

Got a reasonable run on saturday which saw about 3/4 of one side completed.

Really dont like the latest batch of plywood.  After sone doubt it has since proven to be BS1088 ply, but it snaps very easily.

Had a funny moment mixing glue. I use a cheap variable speed drill to mix with. It got away on ne and splatted glue in a line about bench height, got me, the boat, pretty much everything on the work bench.

Bandsaw

So on a bit of a whim I bought a second hand bandsaw.

Its reasonably old and has had several modifications done.  Mostly to add or replace guards.   I also suspect it may have originally been powered from a line shaft. The motor seems to have been added on at a later date.

I havent really tried  it yet, gave the power switch a quick flick and it started.  Quite noisy,  probably needs a bit of a lube. It's too late to play with it now; the kids are it.

2nd Coat of Sealant

I did the second coat of sealer tonight.  So thats two coats.  It seems to be soaking in more than last time I did this.

Got in a bit of trouble, the stuff really smells bad, and tonight, despite counter measures, the smell went through the house.

Anyway, here's a picture after the first coat of selaer

Sanding for this layer is complete

Another hour or two with the orbital, and about 4 with the board sander saw the completion of sanding for this layer.  Theres a few bits that are a bit ugly, but in general it looks pretty good.  I had a closer look at the curve right at the stern (where I did a lot of filling).  The shape still isn't right but its not as bad as it was, and I din't think theres really a lot more I can do. 

Next step will be two coats of sealant, then I'll take a closer look at the low spots and stern and decide what if any action I'm going to take.

Thankfully we are having a great autumn, this weekend was brillant clear skies and about 22 degrees.  I am hoping that it never really gets to cold that I can't glue, I remember last year there was about 8 or 10 weeks where it was just too cold.

Engine & Sanding

Spent a good 4 or 5 hours on the end of the orbital sander in the weekend getting off all the glue squeeze and the bigger high spots in preparation for board sanding.  I haven't finished yet,  I'm guessing there is another hour or 2 to go.  From there its board sanding.  That will probably occupy all of this coming Saturday.

Its taking a while, but it looks pretty good.  I have found a area on the chine up toward the bow where it dips away a bit.  I will need to do a bit of filling and fairing before starting the next layer.

The engines diet continues.  Tonight I took the torque converter off.  I thought that was going to be a tough job, but it turned out to be pretty easy.  I then tried to fit the new bell housing but the exhaust manifolds foul.  So off they came as well.  Was planning on leaving them on until I could get the new manifolds but never mind.

So now nothing fouls the bell housing, but the old bolts are too short so I gave up on that.

The engine wiring harness is looking pretty good.  I have got all the unused wiring out, and labelled up the things I am not certain off.  All of the tape on the loom is stuffed, as is the rubber tubing that a lot of the loom was in.  I am going to have to replace that with something.  Its on the to do list.

I still have a large number of wires to sort out, these are ones that go into the computer, but don't come from the engine.  I have quite a few drawings and things seem to match up so its looking ok.

I'll try and remember to take some pictures during the day in the weekend

3rd Layer on the bottom finished

Finally !!!....This layer seemed to drag on a bit.  I admit to getting bored with the process so I have been tinkering with my engine a bit.

Started on a new batch of ply to finish this layer. It has some quite different properties which I will be investigating further before using any more of it.

So ahead of me is a lot of sanding in preparation for sealing and then the final ply layer.  I am concious that I am coming up on the 2 year mark.

The Engine is here

Picked up the engine from the freight company on Friday.  Due to other commitments I didn't get to have a decent look at it till Saturday afternoon.

It looks to be in good condition, both the transmission and engine oil are pretty clean.

First thing I did was remove the transmission

Then today I removed the air con compressor and the power steering pump.

This left about 25 wires to be remove from the loom.  Turned out to be easier to completely remove the loom from the engine and then pulling the redundant wires out was easy.  The have all been cut off at the plug end with about 250mm tails just in case I need connect them to something.

I few of the ignitor plugs broke, which I have read is a common problem.  Everything else came off good.  So I'll put the loom back on next weekend so I don't forget where everything came from.

I have discovered the MAF sensor is missing.

I am going to have to paint the engine, being Aluminium it will fizz very quickly otherwise.  I am thinking about a bright green.

Still have to remove the torque converter,  I have a new bell housing that will allow a Borg Warner 71C to bolt straight on.  I have to get a fly wheel as well, as being an automatic, this engine didn't come with one.

I also discovered during the week that my transmission is not suitable.  I was led to believe it was a 71B, but its actually a 70C, the data plate is missing.  The 70C wont handle the power of this engine.

Lastly, I went and picked up another 10 sheets of ply, which if my maths is right will be enough to finish the ply laminations.

The boat didn't progress a lot this week, did some more of the 3rd layer on the bottom, so that layer is now about 2/3rds finished.

3rd layer, cutting veneers and my new engine

Started on the 3rd layer of laminations on the bottom, so far going without a hitch.

Started the morning by building a jig to help slice up timber into 5mm veneers.  The jig was a total failure.  I am starting to get concerned about how I am actually going to do this

Finished the day by winning an engine on Trademe.  So hopefully in the next week or so (it has to be freighted up from Hastings) I will have an engine to work on when it gets to cold for the epoxy to setup.

Pictures to come.

Sealing, engine lifting, veneer production

Put two coats of the soak in epoxy (CPES) on the bottom today.  I have done two laminations so I figured now was a good time to do some sealing.

I am bidding on engines on Trade me, so I figured today that I better go an get an engine crane so that when I finally win one I'll be able to move it around.  Found one at super cheap autos for $250.

Then I started experimenting with making my own veneers.  The concept is simple, but execution is something else.  I have found that my thicknesser bottoms out at 4mm so that's ok.  Cutting the veneers on my bench saw is another matter.  Since the saw can only do 65mm, I have to do a cut then flip the timber over and finish the cut in order to get a 100mm veneer.  I started off experimenting with some pine, and soon found the concept didn't work so well.   I spent the day refining the process, and by the end of the session I think I have a method, but it will involve building a jig to support the effort.  These strips are only about 500mm long, hopefully the process will work on longer boards.

Last effort of the day was to prep for doing the next layer on the bottom.  Last layer I nailed a strip to the centre line for the boards to butt up against.  It worked quite well but I had to remove it after every glueing session so it wouldn't get stuck.  So this time I have done the same thing again, but laid glad wrap down so that I don't have to keep removing the guide strip

2nd Layer done

Finally finished the second cold molding layer in the weekend just gone.  This layer seemed to take ages, but it was just other things getting in the way.

I haven't done any sanding, but all my bogging and fairing down the back seems to have works.  The shape looks much better.  Will see how it "feels" after sanding.

I have a small dilemma at present.  The plans call for 4 layers of 1/8" ply on the sides, which makes up 1/2" or 12.7mm.  I am using 4mm ply, so I can get to 4mm with just 3 layers.  I don't think I need to worry about the missing 0.7mm, but I am concerned about strength implications by missing one layer of criss-crossing in the cold molding process.  I have posted a question on the Glen-L forum.

I am also chasing another engine on trademe, wont know till the weekend if I have got lucky with it.

I have also started thinking hard about the veneer layer.  I don't have a band saw, and I'm not likely to get one, so I am starting to think about how to get the best results using my bench saw.  Biggest problem is going to be minimising the waste, at this stage I am budgeting that about 50% of my timber will end up as saw dust.  That is going to equate to several hundred dollars. I am going to do the maths on it, as it may justify buying a band saw.

Visit to see another Monaco

I was able to catch up with another builder while in Brisbane a couple of weeks back.

Alan is building the same design, and in some ways more importantly, is using the same engine.  While I loved looking over his build, looking at the engine and discussing how he has or plans to overcome various hurdles was very interesting.

Alan is using a 1UZ-FE it will be a UCF 10 or 11.  These were the first series of the 1UZ's.  I currently am planing to use a UCF 20/21, the major difference is the 20/21's have VVTi and have coil over plugs, the latter gets over the issues with spark proofing the distributors.

Alan bought an engine that was complete with g'box.  He has removed the G'box and is going to mount a 72C g'box up to the original bell housing.

The 1UZ's when used in Automatics didn't have a fly wheel, in addition, if he was to bolt his damper plate to the ring gear flex plate then the input shaft on the g'box wouldn't be long enough.  So he has cast his own fly wheel that has a pronounced step on the outer rim.  The original ring gear will be shurnk on to the fly wheel and the damper plate will bolt to the step which brings the plate about 2 or 3 inches closer to the g'box.


So right now I am on the hunt for a suitable engine.  Problem is most of the VVTi versions on trademe are missing the security ECU and associated bits.  That's a problem as it is reportedly difficult to bypass and wont run without it..

There is a half cut on trademe at present for $3500, seems a little steep.

The second layer continues

Progress has been a bit slow of late, due to spending two weeks in Australia for work.  Currently working to complete the second layer.  I had the same fairing issues on the starboard side that I encountered on the port.

I made an interesting discovery.  For the last couple of months I have been getting very poor results from my brad gun.  What seems to be happening is the hammer is coming down the side of the nail, this generally results in a brad that is only set about 2/3rds the way in.  This hasn't really caused two many problems, just looks ugly.

So on the weekend I nailed a bunch of strips, and then went on to another job, and then came back to nailing some more.  In between I had unplugged my compressor.  As I was coming to the end of my glueing / nailing session, all of a sudden my brads started setting perfectly.

Turns out I have been using way to higher air pressure.  The compressor had bleed down to about 4 bar.  I did some experiments and through ply they work perfectly, if the hit sapalle then they tend to still sit quite proud, but the hammer hasn't gone down the side and munched them up.

I did experiment with pressure a while back, but I don' think I every went below about 5 bar during those experiments.

No photos, because you can't see a difference.

Just checked my schedule and I've slipped about 3 weeks already for the year.  Not helped by the aussie trip.

fairing and cold molding

Having sanded down one of the sides, I decided that there were several spots that needed building up before applying the next layer so I went and got some West 407 fairing powder.  It mixes and woks quite differntly to the glue powder.

I have just about fixed all the hollows, just got a bit at the stern to sort.  This didn't stop me applying the next layer between frame 1 and about 6.

I also added a second layer to the transom.

Again no photos because it doesn't look any different

2nd Layer on the bottom complete

Busy day today.....

Finished the second layer on the bottom. 

Then made a start on fairing one of the sides.  This is hard work with the long board.  I wore out the first batch of sand paper then had to go and buy a heat gun in order to peal the sand paper off.  I read somewhere a heat gun and scrapper would release the sand paper from the board, I didn't think it would work but it did, it worked really well.

The heat gun I bought was a Bosch one, to continue my love affair with Bosch tools.  There wasn't a lot of choice, a couple of cheap crappy ones, and a couple of expensive good ones.

Also trimmed the bottom planks to give a nice curve again, looks really cool.

 Focus now is on fairing the sides in preparation for the second layer.  I think that's going to take several days of hard work.

Update on the dodgy compressor and the second layer

Ended up buying a new pressure switch for the compressor.  This one has an adjustable cut in pressure and adjustable differential.  However even with the differential backed right off, it still is about 2 bar between cut in and cut out.

And I've ended up with a small leak.....sigh......


But on a happier front, I am closing in on the finish of the second layer on the bottom.  One side is about 95% done, the other about 80%.  We have another holiday on Wednesday and my goal is to push the second layer over the finish line.

I haven't bothered posting photos, because its hard to distinguish in the photos between layers.

Also spent up larger on another 12 lt pack of epoxy and 12 lt bag of glue powder.  My first 12 lt set is almost shot.

With a bit of luck I will also be going shopping for my motor sometime in the next 6 - 8 weeks.

Dodgy compressor

I bought a second hand compressor off trade me.  Cost me a $141 vs buying it new from Super Cheap Autos for $250

Got it home and first deiscovered it had the wrong type of air fittings.  So had to go and buy the parts to make an adaptor.  $18.

Found a label hanging off the oil filler plug saying to remove the filler plug and fit the supplied air breather.  Well that wasn't supplied when I bough it so there is another $9

It seemed to charge up with air ok, but the output pressure wouldn't stay constant and the regulator seemed to vent pressure at weird times.  I decided there must be some dirt or something blocking it, so I took it off to take to bits, in doing so I discovered an arrow on the body.  The arrow was pointing back into the compressor, which seemed odd, I figured it was supposed to show flow direction.  A qucik call to a friend who used to work at Norgren confirmed this.  So I moved all the fittings around and put it back on the compressor, great that now works. Muppets at Super cheap or their suppliers.

Next problem, the pressure switch appears to have about a 2.5 bar differential.  This means that even with it set to turn off a 8 bar, it wont turn on again until somewhere between 5 & 5.5 bar.  The switch itself is a cheapy and has no adjustment for differential.

I have two choices, either try and figure out the mechanics behind the differnetial and try and "adjust" it, or replace it.  Thats another $50 + postage.

Second layer underway

I've been a bit slack at updating this blog lately.

In the weekend I finshed all the fairing and then got stuck into sawing up ply and cutting, dry fitting etc the second layer on the bottom.

Then last night I got home to find nobody there, so that gave me the perfect opportunity to test out my new compressor and glue some planks down.

Well gluing the planks down went ok, glue consumption is now up 3 fold.

The first photo shows the plank that I layed along the keel to butt my lamination planks up again.  Once they were all nailed down I lifted it to stop it getting glued down.  The result is a nice straight edge along the keel.  My guide plank is still nailed at the other end so I can put it back down accurately and carry on.

Second photo shows the results of my first glueing session of the second layer

First layer complete

Way behind schedule buts its done. The process got a little tedious towards the end, got tired of climbing inside the hull to scrap excess glue; but this was balanced by the ever more "boat" looking appearance as more planks went on.

As a round up of the process; it's pretty easy to do, my problems were that I didn't switch to narrower planks early enough on the aft end. The once straight edge of a plank becomes convex as they are bent in, and you need to make the next one concave so that I didn't have big gaps top and bottom. This is really only a problem from about frame 6 forward.

I also put a bevel on the planks to make a channel for the glue to sit in, that mostly worked.

I am glad I used the raptor brads, would have gone nuts using staples, I shot over 6000 on the first layer. My poor brad gun is encased in epoxy.

So now I am on to fairing again, so far I have only started on the bottom on one side, and things look pretty good, a portion of plank here and there is high or low but nothing major. I guess given the demands on my time it will take a couple of weeks before I am ready to start the next layer.

I went and looked at the schedule I published at the beginning of last year, based on that I am two layers behind. So time for another rough timetable.

Mid Feb, second layer on bottom complete

Mid March, second layer on sides and third on bottom complete

Starts getting colder

End of April, manufacture all the veneer strip complete

Next bit will depend on temp

End of August final layer on

End of October, fairing complete

End of November, fibre glass layer complete

Early December fit rudder, prop shaft, strut etc.

Xmas holidays, painting the bottom.

First layer nearing completion

Been a while since I made a post. Life has been a bit hectic lately and hence progress a little slow. However I am nearing the end of the first layer. It is starting to show many minor fairing issues and a couple of bigger problems. None that can't be dealt with in one way or another. I will have to invest in a bag of fairing powder to get things faired out nicely before commencing the second layer.

It's actually a little more complete than this photo shows, but it's the most recent photo I have at the moment.