Additional epoxy and ply

I am now two days in the north of Holland at my holiday home to prepare it for an extended stay after we move from our house that we have sold.

Major item this time is to get a good working internet connection. During holidays that is of minor importance but for "normal" life it is essential nowadays.

Yesterday someone from the phone company came to check things out and today other people come to dig and get a line in.  People that look cannot dig.  :-)

So yesterday afternoon I had some waiting time and decided to drive to "de Bootbouwer" (www.bootbouwer.nl).  That is guy some 45 minutes driving from my holiday home living in farm country, no sailable water close, who has an excellent stock of plans, tools and other material for boatbuilding.

Besides having a broad stock of goodies he also is willing to sell ply per half sheet.
So I acquired half a sheet of 4 mm ply and some epoxy and hardener.
After a chat and a cup of coffee I drove back knowing I could continue to work on the Peapod in the weekend.

The fourth plank is on

Today I could spend some time on the boat and scarfed both parts of the fourth plank. After that my usual battle with epoxy resulted in a fitted fourth plank. It did look quite well actually.

I  noticed that I am almost out of epoxy and 3x16 stainless screws. Some shopping to do before I put on the other fourth plank.  Would be a bit stupid to find out in the middle of the operation that I have not enough of them.

By the way I am now quite sure I need an extra sheet of ply. At first I thought of making an extra scarf to lengthen the ply but that almost feels like cheating.
We will see...

Test fitting 4th plank

The new week started with working on the boat.

First I again sharpened my plane and chisel. It is amazing how quickly they get dull on the plywood.

Now it was possible to improve the bevel and gains. Of course the angle of this plank is easier than the garboard one.

Making the first long part of the plank was relatively easy. The second part caused a problem however.

I had cleary marked the scarf joint were the planks overlap but forgot to add the 38 mm scarf width. Consequently I cut the plank 38 mm short.  I had to use a new piece of ply to get the good one.

Now I am not so sure I have enough ply in stock to finish the planking. It would be a bit silly to buy a new 122 x 244 cm ply for such a short piece of plank.

In the picture both parts are screwed on the boat but not yet scarfed.

Due to other business I hope it will be feasible that the 4th plank will be scarfed and glued on Friday next.

By the way I succeeded in getting the epoxied screw out by heating the screw bit with the heatgun. If you put it on the screwhead after heating it just makes the epoxy soft enough to get grip on the screwhead.

Maybe next time I will remove al screws after curing.

Cleaning done

With a heatgun and a paintscraper I did remove most unwanted epoxy from the hull. 

In the process I noticed that a few screws that I had covered with epoxy were at the surface.

With the thin 4mm plywood you don't want to countersink the screwhead to much in view of the risk that you pull the screw through the ply.  As a consequence apparently I did not sink a few far enough. 

Getting the screw out will be difficult. Too much use of the heatgun at one spot will cause delamination. Have to think how to solve that.

Tomorrow our grandson is coming. His parents are out for the weekend so not much work, if any, will be done on the boat the coming days

The 3rd planks are on

Today did some fine tuning on the planks and the bevels.  Of course also made two scarfs.

Afterwards I smeared epoxy on both mating surfaces and also something on myself.  It gets cramped in my shed.  No jokes please on slimming.  Heard them all....

If there is time available tomorrow it will be spend on cleaning the hull. 

Still two (times two) planks to go!

Some work done.....

The bevels and gains are cut. I also made both parts of the second 3rd plank (bit difficult way to express myself..) with the jigsaw.

The rough cut plank parts are now clamped on the boat.  Next step is to fine tune the planks, cut the scarfs and glue the lot on the boat.

Something work left to be done tomorrow.

Happy New Year

After all the New Year celebrations I picked up working on the Peapod.  I did the fitting of the short part of the third plank.

The nice thing of the stringer system is that you can use the stringers to mark the outlines of the plank.

Bit easier than spiling using a compass.

Aterwards I cut the plank almost to the right size with the jigsaw.

As you can see on the picture there is hardly any banana shape anymore.

In the vise I cut the sides to measure using a spoke shave while smoothing out the lines.

 I have copied both parts of the plank on a piece of plywood so fitting the parallel plank is much easier.

Next step is to make the scarf.

Followed by gluing the plank on the boat.

Messy as ever.  After gluing on the other third plank hopefully tomorrow or Thursday I will put in a cleaning day to once more remove excess epoxy from the outside  of the hull.

But first finishing bevelling the other side, cutting the gains and jigsawing the other plank parts.