Glassing The Hull

 I own a sign company, and a conservative guess would be that I have applied more than one hundred thousand square feet of PSA vinyl with a plastic squeegee over the past fifteen years. It turns out that when it comes to applying epoxy to fiberglass cloth, a plastic squeegee is not my friend. Rob Macks of Laughing Loon  recommends using a foam roller to wet out the fiberglass, he gives very detailed instructions in the shop tips section of his website.

Once I switched from the squeegee to the roller method wetting out the fiberglass cloth on the two hulls went very smoothly. The roller gave me more control over how much epoxy I was laying down. Putting the epoxy in a roller tray kept it cooler longer and gave me ample working time to get the batches on the boats.

My two favorite materials are diamondplate and carbon fiber, unfortunately I can't figure a way to incorporate diamondplate into a wooden kayak

Dollars & Sense

In my earlier posts I mentioned that I didn't expect to save any money by building from plans, vs. building from kits. It turns out there is a little savings. The price for two kits at the time I started this project, was $2000, add to that the cost of shipping the kits $250, and you have $2250. I live just far enough away from CLC's location that going to pick up the kits would have been possible, but wouldn't have saved much.

The materials list provided on the CLC site acted as my shopping list. Instead of buying two MAS #2 Economy Epoxy Kits, I purchased one MAS #3 Kit, and an additional gallon of resin and 1/2 gallon of slow hardener, this saved about $50. Sourcing the other materials was an enjoyable exercise. I searched the internet for suppliers and compared the costs to the CLC website, a tie or close to it automatically went to CLC, and I tried to place my orders in large enough amounts to garner free shipping.

The total "plans vs kit savings" was $559. Most of the savings came from eliminating the freight costs for shipping the kits. I saved some money on the fiberglass purchase, but I think it was because I was buying enough material for two boats,  The plywood also saved me a few dollars, but only because I had a good source for the Okoume. If I had been building a single boat the savings would probably have evaporated, and if I had to purchase a decent jigsaw to cut the parts I would probably come up higher. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't expect to save money by building from plans, I wanted to space out the costs over time. I also wanted the experience of making my own boat from a blueprint and a stack of raw material.

The Gluing

Carbon Fiber sleeves hold bungee that holds I-pod

Fillets provide strength to the joins between hull panels. The fillet is made by using an epoxy & wood flour mixture and spreading it in the seam between two panels. Much is written about fillets, the manual stresses the importance of good fillets, the forum discusses various techniques & tools used to get perfect fillets, and many builder blogs highlight the process.

Arriving at the point where I needed to start filleting my seams I had read everything I could find on the subject. It really boiled down to a few simple concepts.

Work Efficiently - I needed to plan the process, there are some great videos on YouTube that show the steps of filleting the seams in various boats. I watched the videos and mentally applied the techniques to my boat. Every process has bottlenecks, and I looked for the steps that had the potential to slow down the operation. I arranged my tools as I would need them, made sure I had plenty of mixing cups on hand, and cut my fiberglass tape to size.

Work Neatly - Simple steps like running a strip of tape along both sides of the seam with the desired width of your fillet in between kept my cockpit from becoming one very large fillet.

Work Quickly - The good news is that the Chesapeake kayaks can be done in sections, with the bow, cockpit, and stern sections separated by the bulkheads, I didn't need to attempt the whole boat in one go. However, once I started filleting a section I had to move quickly to get my epoxy mixture out of the cup and into the boat before it stated to firm up and became unworkable. Each fillet was then covered with fiberglass tape, while still wet, and the tape was wet out.

The manual presents two different approaches to addressing the copper wires when doing your fillets. The first approach is to leave the wire in place and run your fillets over the wires and encase them in epoxy. The twisted section of the wire on the outside of the hull is snipped off and filed down once the epoxy fillet has cured. The second approach is to tack the seams together with small dabs of epoxy/wood flour mixture. These dabs are placed between the stitches, and once cured will allow you to remove all the wire stitches before filleting.

I tried both techniques, on the 17LT I left the wires in, and on the 16LT I removed the wires. On any subsequent builds I will certainly remove the wires. The manual says when you leave the wire in, just cut it as close to the outside surface of the hull as you can and file down the nub. The manual does not say what a pain in the butt this is.

The Stitching

Chesapeake 16lt takes shape

Building from plans means you get to turn a few 4'x8' sheets of plywood into a boat. Seems a bit obvious, but actually seeing the boats take shape was a little amazing to me.
Once the hull panels are wired together the boat is checked for fairness and twist. The wires are tightened and the hull now has a surprising amount of strength.

CLC manual gives detailed instructions to check for twist

A Boat Begins To Form

Hull side panels are stitched together at the bow & stern and a spreader stick placed amidship

Hull panels are stitched together with 18 gauge copper wire. CLC sells rolls that can be cut to 4" lengths for stitching A common occurrence, according to the Boatbuilder's Forum, is for first time builders to run out of copper wire. I found a roll of wire on Amazon.com for around $25, and it will probably last me two more boats. 

Thoroughly reading the manual and browsing the forum before beginning stitching was a great help at this stage. Many other builders outlined the obstacles they ran into stitching their boats together, and more importantly, indicated the best ways to avoid or overcome those obstacles. Reading the forum and other build blogs was useful throughout the entire process.

Hull bottom panels are stitched together, & then stitched to the side panels

Amazon.com was my source for the 18 gauge copper wire

Help Is A Mouse-Click Away

So, you're building a boat in your basement? There's a "Support Group" for that. I've done my share of internet forum surfing, forums are great sources of information. The CLC  Builder's Forum is an exceptional resource for boatbuilding. I've spent many hours going through the forum topics, reading several thousand posts on all topics.
The "experts" are knowledgeable, encouraging, courteous, and extremely helpful. This forum is a treasure trove of terrific information freely shared in a friendly environment.

Most common piece of advice on the CLC forum - You can't have too many clamps.

One good thing about building two boats at the same time, is being able to try different approaches to the same task to get better results. When I glued the sheer clamps to the hull side panels on the Chesapeake 16lt I wasn't as careful with the excess glue as I should have been, the panels ended up being a little stuck together and were difficult to separate. When gluing the 17lt I was much more careful and the panels came apart easily.

The sheer clamps are long strips of 3/4" stock glued to the tops of the side panels, the deck will attach to these.

Cutting & Shaping Hull Panels

Stanley Block Planes

My dad always called himself a Jack of All Trades, and he had an extensive tool collection to support that statement. When he passed, most of these tools came to me, including a great set of Stanley block planes. "The New Kayak Shop" makes a point of noting how enjoyable it is to shape the parts of your boat with a sharp plane, this enjoyment was compounded for me by using these inherited tools. The hull shapes are drawn onto the wooden panels, then these shapes are cut slightly oversized with a jigsaw, and a sharp block plane is used to cut them to the exact size and shape. The two hull bottom panels and the two side panels are each clamped together in pairs and shaped with the plane.

Hull bottom panels are clamped together and shaped with a sharp block plane to make sure they match each other.