My messy garage. The deck (inverted) of the Guillemot is on the bottom left. Bottom right is my Chesepeake with a fresh coat of varnish on the hull. The boat had been out in the backyard in the sunlight (to make room in the garage for building the Guillemot) and the UV had degraded the varnish such that it was starting to peel off. That's not good, because the varnish protects the epoxy from UV. Without the varnish, the epoxy will break down (so they say) which would be pretty serious. Between the two boats is my plywood storage rack (on casters so I can roll it out of the way, thank goodness!) Hanging from the rafters on the left is the Guillemot hull. In the top far right you can see the Guillemot strongback hanging. I can use it to build another boat, should I ever choose. (Put myself through this much work again? I don't know.)
Here's another project I'm working on - a shell for the back of my Toyota Tacoma. I had to buy a better vehicle after Stubby, the Fun Van, started to poop out (a new water pump, new radiator last summer - the light switch died this fall.) I'm very happy with my newly-acquired truck, but there's no way to carry kayaks, and no way to keep a bunch of stuff out of the weather. I needed a shell and decided to build one, using the techniques and equipment from kayak building.
Here's the front view. It's about ready for fiberglass, but I
wasn't sure if I'd have enough left over from the Guillemot - which meant
I had to finish glassing the inside of the deck - the last big glassing
job. I did that today.
Here's the inside of the cockpit recess. The epoxy has been on
for about 5 hours at this point - long enough to cut the excess glass off
with a utility knife. When I glassed the inside of the hull I let
the epoxy set for a few days before I trimmed off the excess glass - mistake.
It's much easier if you do it before the epoxy is fully set, but I think
it's important to wait awhile until the epoxy has started setting.
If you tried to do it before the epoxy was hard it would be easy to pull
the cloth away from the wood when trimming.
The ends presented a problem. Way back when I started building, I chose to use an interior stem piece, thinking it would give more strength. I'm not sure now it added any strength at all. At any rate, the problem was abrupt angles between the deck and the stem pieces. The glass wouldn't conform to such an angle. My solution was to mix up a batch of dookie schmutz and apply it liberally to the ends to make a curved transition. Then I glassed the whole inside while the schmutzy ends were still wet. Wet glass sticks nicely to dookie schmutz, and I could make a smooth curve using my finger (inside a glove, of course.) I think the results will be very strong, and should minimize the amount of epoxy mix I'll have to add in the end pours.
Here's the bow. The glass comes up over the edge here, and the
schmutz makes it too hard to trim with a knife. That will be easy
to grind down flush later with my random orbital sander.
Here's the stern.