Boat Builder Central - Builder Forums

My plywood kit from Rainbow Boatworks arrived yesterday, and I'll be gluing up stringers, sides and bottom soon as I can get the garage up to 60 deg. I'll be taking photos when there's something to take photos of- I'll post when I've added some, or check the builder's gallery: http://gallery.bateau2.com/thumbnails.php?album=39 . woohoo!

I built the strongback and assembled the jig today. Got the two bottom panels on the jig, and had decided to call it a day, but just HAD to try and see how much pressure it would take to bring them together at the bow. Not too bad. Then I decided to push a little harder and see if I could force the point over 1/2" to the centerline. *SNAP* The 4" woven tape splice on the outside of the starboard panel broke. Oh, well- I went ahead and reinforced the forward splice on both panels with a layer of biax tape. Should be cured enough to continue Saturday.

I've been taking pictures, and will post them soon.

Bummer! Were you supposed to use woven tape for splices? I would think that biax would have been better.

The assembly instructions say "Use the plain woven tape, one layer on each side. Later we will cover the inside seams with one additional layer of the biaxial tape." I'd put the biax on the inside, so the joint didn't break completely, just sorta "hinged" when the outside tape broke. Live and learn- in the future, I'll go right to the biax for any splice that's going to be under bending stress. I had some fast hardener that I'd bought for repairs left over, so the new tape is already dry to the touch. I'll probably try stiching up the bow tonight.

All in all, I'm loving the process of assembling the hull on a jig. With the D15, I was never sure if the hull was the right shape, or if I was distorting it with how I was supporting it. The jig takes all the guess-work out of it.

It's cool when you see that stuff happen. I remember it well even though it was about 1 1/2 years ago.

I got the hull stitched together and tabbed with fiberglass. I removed the ties from the side I tabbed together yesterday, and everything held fine. I was a bit worried because of a bit of a peak that developed on the splice that broke earlier. It flattened out fine where the panels come together, so I'm sure I can grind out whatever high spot remains in the middle of the panel before I glass. I'll probably work on taping the seams this week, and hopefully glass next weekend.

Bob,
When you re-splice those panels back together, make sure you sand off the old paste!!! Dad and I popped two seams on our side panels when we lifted them into place on the jig. We used biax on only one side too which also proved to be a mistake. Cloth the seams front and back. Save yourself the time and disappointment.
Anyway, once we started fairing we could see where those seams had popped, and fairing it in, to make it smooth and uniform proved to be a genuine pain in the backside. So, advice is just simply save yourself the time, and sand that seam even and reglue/tape.
BrianS

BrianS wrote:once we started fairing we could see where those seams had popped, and fairing it in, to make it smooth and uniform proved to be a genuine pain in the backside. So, advice is just simply save yourself the time, and sand that seam even and reglue/tape.
BrianS

Thanks, Brian- that reinforces what I was thinking. I can tell I'll have to grind through the glass in the middle of the panel to get it fair, so that's what I'll do- sand it down and re-tape before I glass the exterior.

All the exterior seams are taped! Took a little longer than i'd hoped to get to this point, since I developed a slight dip in the keel after removing the stitches. I restitched and retabbed that section and gave it a couple days to cure before before removing the stitches and moving on to taping the keel.

On the D15, I had trouble wetting out the biaxial tape by just coating the wood, laying on the tape and coating and squeeging the tape until wet. I had to make some repairs where the seats join the transom due to sudden failure of my transom saver a couple years ago. While working on that, I wet out the biax in advance, then squeegeed it between 2 layers of plastic to remove excess epoxy before applying. It worked great on that, and I've been doing the same thing on the seams of the GV17, then using the "poor man's peel ply" technique while they cure. So far, so good- no dry spots, and as far as I can tell, not an excess of epoxy in the cloth (scraps aren't brittle at all). I'm planning to try the same techniques for the biaxial cloth when I glass the hull- I'll report on the results.

Davef wrote:Bummer! Were you supposed to use woven tape for splices? I would think that biax would have been better.

To avoid flat spots, we specify the lightest tape that can take the bending.
Later, the chines and bottom will be covered with heavy biaxial.
I knew that we were close to the limit there but 1/2", whow . . .