The bulkheads and side panels are almost ready for assembly. Everything has 3 coats of epoxy and I spent a lot of time sanding all visible surfaces to a nice uniform flat finish. I'm hoping the effort to do it now will pay off by not having to sand a lot at awkward angles once the boat is assembled. I think I have this epoxy coating down. It takes a bit of practice to lay down thin and unifiorm coats. Working at above 70F makes for a much nicer surface due to the epoxy flowing more easily. Normally that's not a problem here in FL but, as I have complained before, this winter we have only had a handful of days even close to 70 so some of the panels needed a bit more sanding. This one turned out well, almost a shame to sand it.
Looks like this once sanded, the final coat of varnish will bring back the shine.
The hull assembly has given some folks a bit of trouble when it comes to aligning the bulkheads with the hull side panel bottom edges. The alignment is difficult once the chine logs have been glued on. So I decided to mark and drill the side panels and bulkheads before the side panels are glued together. Panel marked with bulkhead locations.
Temporary screw holes drilled.
I aligned the bulkheads and used the pre-drilled holes in the side panels as guides to drill the bulkheads.
Now when the time comes to assemble the hull all I have to do is line up the drilled holes and everything should go together correctly. The curved and beveled sides of bulkheads 1 and 2 were impossible to clamp in place for drilling so I just drilled one locating hole per side.
Once marked and drilled the side panels got glued together with a splice. The ply has a bit of curve to it and it's amazing how much weight it took to get the ends to lie reasonably flat.
It is taking forever to get all of the bits and pieces coated with 3 layers of epoxy. This is mainly because it's still COLD. I'm hoping to be ready for hull assembly in a week or so.
The Goat has a balanced lug sail. This is a bit different from your typical mast and boom arrangement in that the top or head of the sail is held up by a stick called a yard. It's somewhat like the top batten on a modern square head main sail. Just not nearly as high tech.
Here is the designer, Michael Storer showing off the lug rig:
The yard should be made of strong, light wood like Douglas Fir. I could not find a suitable piece locally but did find a nice piece of Cypress. I found out later that Cypress has a tendency to warp when cut so it's not the best choice for a long straight stick. I must have gotten lucky because this piece remained straight after ripping to size. I ripped the final piece in two and glued the two pieces back together with the grain reversed. This should prevent any warpeage in the future as the two pieces will fight each others warp.
You can't really tell in the pictures but the yard is tapered on both ends. The designer provides offsets at measured intervals to define the tapers. After laying the taper out on one side I ran the yard through my little band saw. Then I rotated the yard 90deg, marked the taper on one of the cut sides and cut to shape. The resulting tapering square cross section is planed to an octagon and then rounded. I did not round the yard in order to make it a bit stiffer to compensate for the Cypress being a bit more flexible than the specified Douglas Fir.
The sail maker needs to know the bend characteristics of the yard in order to build the proper shape into the sail. The bend measuring procedure involves hanging a weight, in this case 35lb, from the center of the yard and measuring the amount of flex relative to a string line. Measurements are taken at 3 points along the yard since it's tapered and therefore bends unevenly along it's length.
As with all pieces, the yard gets 3 coats of epoxy. The #*@!! contaminANTS (thank you Doug) were out in full force while the epoxy was curing.
Making slow progress getting all components coated with 3 epoxy coats. I bought slow epoxy hardener because it's often a fight to keep the epoxy from going off too quickly in the FL heat. But this winter has been unusually cold with temps rarely getting out of the 60s. This slows down the coating tremendously as it takes hours for each coat to kick.
The weather has been bad but not too bad to take the mobile boat building van to a pleasant spot.
I'm epoxy coating all of the hull components before assembly. It's much easier to get a smooth run-free coat while the ply is horizontal. A lot of the sanding will also be done before the parts go together. Michael Storer recommends skidding a foam roller to smooth out the epoxy. It worked so well that I used it to spread and smooth the epoxy. No need for a squeegie. It lets yo put down a very thin uniform coat which does not seem to trap bubbles and does not run much. I did the interior faces of the buoyancy tank bulkheads first to practice on parts which will be hidden. I read somewhere that if the air temperature is rising significantly during the epoxy cure, bubbles can form as air trapped in the wood expands. I tried this on one piece by coating in the morning and sure enough it's the only piece I had any bubbles in.
The areas where framing is bonded on are masked. I'm not sure this is necessary as the secondary bond between cured and scuffed up epoxy surfaces is really strong.
After the 3 coats of epoxy cured I glued framing to the bulkheads. To keep bugs and dust out of the wet epoxy I'm putting the pieces inside our van and closing it up. I can't do this with the mast and it's a constant battle with the bugs. Why do these things like wet epoxy so much??
In order to minimize waste I cut the rollers into 4 quarters. Each quarter can be flipped over and used twice if you don't slop epoxy all over it during the first use.
I spread the leftover bit of epoxy from each coat on the underside of the fore and aft seats which will never be seen so any uneven epoxy is not important.
Did some final sanding on the mast and laid down the first coat of epoxy. I was planning to use the wet-on-wet technique Mik recommends but with temperatures in the low 60's the epoxy just would not go off fast enough so a bit of sanding in between coats will be necessary. It was easiest to hang the mast from both ends but the swinging proved to be a nuisance. The next coats will be done with the ends of the mast resting on something rigid. Spreading the epoxy with a foam brush was slow and cumbersome. I also tried skidding a foam roller as per Mik's instructions and that was slow as well and the swinging mast made it infuriating. I ended up just slathering the epoxy on with gloved hands like greasing a pole. It was fast and worked surprisingly well.
I did not bother to shape the base plug accurately since it is bedded in thickened epoxy and the mast base is not visible with the boat rigged. But it looks ugly and I just realized that with the mast de-rigged on the trailer the base of the mast is very prominent. Oh well next time the base plug fits better.
Spent most of today laying out and cutting all of the major ply parts. Things went smoothly since I already did this once during the China ply debacle. This time around I used Joubert brand Okoume and it is much better looking stuff.
These are all of the major ply parts other than hull sides and bottom.
I'm going to epoxy coat the individual pieces before assembly as it is much easier to spread and sand epoxy on flat horizontal surfaces. I drove the wrong car to move the pieces to my garage from Dave's (where the boat is being built) but they fit, kinda sorta.
Still no progress on the Goat. But there is a reason. We have completely lost our minds and acquired a MAJOR boat project. We bought a C&C Mega30 in need of .... well everything. The plan is to use the hull as the basis for a maxi-trailerable, tropical, shallow water cruiser. Nothing is firmed up yet but it goes something like this: cut the deck and about 8" off the sheer then build a pretty new deck and cabin. Throw on a free standing cat ketch rig and enjoy. Yes there will be a blog documenting this multi-year project. The Goat has to get finished before any real work starts on the big boat but it already has been a huge distraction so between the new "boat" and the holidays coming up I don't expect to get any GIS building done until January.
