Honey BucketFebruary 7, 2010Some days I feel like this boat is going to be a breeze to get done before halibut season in May, other days I feel like it might be a huge push and a bit of luck to have her ready for the 4th of July weekend family event and tuna kickoff the following week. So let's start with the tidbits of completion. This was a compilation of small projects that needed to be done before larger progress could be achieved. We start this installment with the gauge cluster (original Clippercraft set) going into the now-faired controls console.  Cool, that's a little achievement already today! How well are those fuel tanks going to fit, since we are in here and all...
 Ooooh, that's a little snug, we will have to figure out a way to restrain the tanks without impeding their ability to flex and give Moeller their 3% expansion zone all around. Sweet, good progress, now let's finish cutting sole panels and get them tidied up so they fit all the newly-faired corners and such.
 Extra Razoo if you ask me. Now there is a sense of something actually looking like the finished product inside the boat. Sole goes down smoothly, seat boxes stiffen the boat up substantially, All wonderful achievements. Time to get down to a little, erm, business.
A good friend down the lake gave me a portable toilet for the boat for free, as he had no use for it and it had never seen any use. The scary part is once again, I have built something strong, clean, and made it all one piece. But, alas, it needed to be hacked apart and made into a hatch to install something. Out comes the circular and dozuki saws. Marked out an approximation of size for the toilet to be easily removed, and went to town.  After freeing it, time to put it back in and see how it looks set up.
 Not too shabby so far. The toilet isn't going to sit in the V shaped space on its own, so it is time to put in a pad. Just made a little piece of square MDO from the sole fit in the bow resting on the forward frame, and blocked up the other end with some CVG fir 5/4" stock. This made a level surface that I can screw cleats to in order to keep the pot where it belongs. Shall we see?
 Of course any good follower of this site knows that the fit MUST be tested before final certification can be completed:
 The model was feeling quite shy at the time, so please consider the modesty gesture as a sign of respect. Another task complete.
A couple hours left to burn for the day until some other event was eating up time, so why not throw together a batch of fairing compound? That tape on the seat box is looking primed to be faired, and needs to be ultra-smooth, as that is where prying eyes will be looking at fit and finish.  With a little bit of remaining epoxy, the panel supports and base support are glued up and clamped before closing up the shop for the night.
 As a nice addendum to this post, I just want to show the difference between lumber availability in western Oregon v. the available lumber in Spokane. The lighter colored wood on top is expensive CVG fir from a local woodworking specialty store, note the straight grain and spacing between rings. The darker wood below is CVG fir from the original Clippercraft build, out of the sole support. This wood has a ring cound aruond double or triple the newer wood, with gorgeous grain and amazing strength. I do wish more of this were available today.
 Today was Stupid Bowl Sunday, so I worked on the dock (massive ice damage this year, needed to fix some jacking that happened to the pilings), watched snippets of the game while eating and visiting with friends, and in the evening gave everyone my time in this post. Tomorrow we tackle just a little bit more of this Clippercraft gone awry.
Ear PainFebruary 3, 2010Ahh, archiving day. So the seat boxes have had their own page in the archive created, giving you an opportunity to enjoy the mocking and building process, as well as the swearing fit associated with the fuel tank debacle. After a brief trip to Canada to ski, we are back on the warpath in the shop. First stop was completing the fairing job on the seat boxes. I dropped a thick coat of phenolic microballoons on the tape seams (though I did it without grinding the selvage edge off the tape, I hate doing that) while they were partially cured before leaving. They had cured up nicely in 4 days, and sanded quickly to show the touch up areas still needing attention.  Not my finest work, sad to say. Plenty of grinding and a little extra Quickfair to get everything looking nice. This morning it was determined that waiting needed to cease, so I got out the glue board and went to town installing the seat boxes.
 On it you see all my goodies, such as MarinEpoxy and the medium and fast hardeners, a few mixing sticks, some commercial cake decoration frosting bags, and chip brushes.
A request was tendered to show my "Dairy Queen" technique for determining the appropriate consistency for a filleting compound. Thought being you pull a litte DQ tail in the compound and give it 10-15 seconds to sag. If it stands up proud the entire time, it's ready to stick anywhere on any angle.  Take that mix, grab your handy-dandy custom made filleting tool (scrap wood), and smash goo into the crevices until they look like this:
 Mixing assistant get over-zealous and mix a double batch on you? Cram it into new and interesting places. The boat naturally drains to a low point in the bow, which would allow water, gurry, blood, and other malodorous goodies to creep up into the sleeping quarters. Easy fix if you have too much thickened epoxy.
 Then, lunch.
After giving the fillets a few minutes to stiffen, come back in and coat them, along with the surrounding wood, with a liberal coat of neat (unthickened) epoxy. To that, add your fiberglass tape or cloth, brush it down with a dry(ish) chip brush, and fill the weave in any dry spots that appear after around 2-3 minutes.  Rinse, repeat.
 While I had aspirations of getting the cabin roof scarfed today, it took 7 hours to get all of this work accomplished. Ah well. I will skip a trip to Lake Roosevelt to slay trout tomorrow and get back in the shop. El Nino tells me the albies will be close to shore this year, so I need to get this thing DONE.
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