Boat Builder Central - Builder Forums

On January 6th, a friend and myself started on a epic journey to build "Measure Twice", which one day might just turn out to be a 22' Panga.

Build Location: Daphne, AL (My garage just fits it)

Start Date: January 6th, 2012

Finish Date: Somewhere between Summer 2012 - Summer 2016

We built the strong back yesterday, using 16" wooden I-beams.

Just picked up six casters today to mount underneath the strongback. I plan on ordering the plywood this weekend, hopefully it will be in before long so we can start cutting the frames!

Drew the boat up in Google Sketch-Up, pretty cool little program.

Welcome to the group You've made a good start, I like the wood I beams, can't beat them for straight and true.

The plywood doesn't take long to arrive. I ordered some Monday before Christmas and it came on Wednesday.

Got a little work done on the jig. Mounted stations D,E and F, for those stations I am using throw away molds. For the other 5 stations I'm using the actual meranti that will eventually be used for the frames in the boat. Still waiting on my plywood shipment to arrive so I'm at a standstill right now. All of my epoxy, cloth and filler arrived in the mail a few days ago.

We've made a lot of progress since I last posted.

Cut out all the frames, bottom and side panels.

Joined the panels by using a piece of 12oz glass on either side (I planed down where the glass was going to lay about 1/64" to hopefully make fairing a little easier later.







In the pictures the panels are just sitting on top of the frames. Since then, we've actually taken down the side panels to make sure the bottom panels get bent around the frame right. This is very difficult to do with this Meranti plywood. Any suggestions?

Right now I've got some tie-down straps around it trying to bend the plywood to conform around the frames. What do you all recommend? Boiling water and a towel down over the wood? Kerfing?

Kerf. It is done on some of the larger boats. I am pretty sure there is a panga where it was done in the picture gallery.
I have not sone it myself but others have. Meranti is tough to bend where the bend becomes sharp at the bow. Had a dickens of a time on the FS17 I am finishing.
BF2

nm

I was thinking about kerfing it similar to what is shown in the bottom image. I'm a little confused about the drawing, is the bottom drawing suppose to be the inside of the panel and the top drawing the outside of the panel? In other words, make about 30 diagonal cuts in the inside of the panel and just 1 cut on the outside??

You can kerf but the panels look good without it. That gap is not excessive.

If you kerf, the fan type cuts on the outside are the most important ones and they don't have to be as dense as we show.
4 or 5 cuts along those lines are more than enough.

You're already really close. Give the tiedowns a few days or a week, the panels will get used to their new shape and then you can tighten them to the final resting place. If you're floating off the frames, you could also try some weights on the top (bottom) of the hull, maybe sandbags.