Getting Started

This is my boat, or will be, with luck. Got the lumber home from my local chain builder supply store. I dug through a whole stack of quarter inch 4X8 sheets of BC plywood but it was worth it. Found some really nice ones. And I dug through the pile of 1/2 sheets of plywood as well. And the pile of 2X8X16's and 1X3X8's. That was a whole lotta digging that took a couple of hours. But I did get some nice boards.

While at the store for wood I also picked up everything else that I needed. Screws, glue, rubber gloves, sandpaper, etc. Ordered epoxy and fiberglass tape online.

Here I've cut a 20"X8' piece of plywood for a hull side panel and am getting ready to use it for a fence while I rip the gunwales from the 2X8x16.






Here the gunwales and chines are ripped. Still have plenty of board left for the other pieces. I decided to use a 16' length rather than the longer length suggested in plans. Looks like it'll work out ok.

The plans show a ripping guide you can put together and attach to your circular saw to get smoother more accurate rips. If I was doing this over again, I might give that a try. Even with a fence clamped on the 2X8 my rips came out a little rough. I think I might end up redoing the chines cause the sloppiness of the bevel is nagging me.


Here you see some frame pieces cut from 1X3's. So far I'm just cutting up boards into the pieces needed to start building the hull.





Here the 8' X 20" plywood hull sides are being joined together with epoxy and fiberglass to yield two 16' X 20" plywood sheets from which the hull sides will be cut. The joint is setting up under the weight of the tool bucket and assorted stuff that was handy. Had epoxy on my rubber gloved hands so I didn't get any pics of the process of putting this together.




Here is one of the cured hull sides that was set up in the above pic. This was my first time working with epoxy and fiberglass. It's neat stuff, pretty cool.

The plans give a good explanation of the process of attaching the sheets together. I watched a couple of youtube videos of people wetting out glass which also helped me feel like I could do it. I think the joints came out pretty good.


Here I'm marking out the shape of the hull on the hull side panel and am clamping a piece of wood on the marks so I can draw a nice line from end to end.