Now it’s obvious, the pile of plywood will become a boat.
Contrary to the last winter I am now a bit under time pressure. Because I have to build the boat to a point where it can be moved and rest in a cradle outside over the next winter without taking damage. The time frame is about 5 months from which I will be 2 months away from the project. It will work out, everything is pre build, but I have to work effective. No time for fooling around, because there is no plan b. I started with a simple strongback. That wasn’t a big deal because the floor is already almost level.
At next I put up the stations and the backbone. At this point I levelled everything with a laser for almost 1 day, because I had the idea that it would be important to have a absolute accurate fundament. This was a bit foolish because while laminating everything together and cutting the notches for the stringers, I had to realign everything slightly for several times anyway. It is still wood. Even a industrial product like plywood isn’t perfect straight and I’m not a cnc machine. So again the note to myself, don’t overcomplicate things. First I laminated the front part of the backbone to station 2 and then the backbone together. After that I simply glued all stations to the backbone. Just a few meters of fillets and biax and everything is bulletproof and very sturdy. I know what epoxy is capable of, but I’m always again impressed. Sometimes this is almost spiritual. Church of the epoxy.
Anyway. After that I notched all stations to take the lower chinelogs, an laminated them because of the curvature. After glueing them and the skegs in place I started with the bottom and bow panels. From that moment on, everything was irrevocably connected. I cut the notches for the other stringers and began to laminate them. In contrast to the lower chinelogs, I didn’t pre laminate them but glued the first layer directly to the stations. In the second week of July I will be able to continue the build. Oh, and all wood I used to this point is pine for the ply and larch and pine for everything else. Cloth is 160 or 320g/m² 45° biax. I used roughly 70kg epoxy, probably 2kg of microballons and maybe another 2 kg of cotton flocks and thixotropy powder so far.
