At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

[cracked_ribs]

I got sick of looking at the rough spots towards the bow so those got some fairing; I also got to work on the rub rails and spray rails. Now I'm starting to think the whole thing is coming together.







The screws are temporary, of course...they'll be removed and everything will be held together with epoxy.

The rubrails need to be extended right to the transom as well, but that last section is almost straight; I can knock that off pretty easily. The forward 3/4 or so was the part that actually benefited from rails cut to fit the sheerline. The rubrails are 2 layers of 1/4" meranti plywood; the spray rails are meranti 1x2s cut in half. They probably aren't necessary with the reverse chine, but on the off chance I end up with a nice paint job, I thought it'd be nice to have some semi-sacrificial rails for the fenders to go bouncing off rather than the paint. The utility of them would be pretty dependent on me actually doing a good job on the paint, though, so probably a waste of effort.

But I have spent so much time in my big boat tethered to docks loading and unloading that I figured what the hell. Also, maybe I'll manage to get a decent finish on the rails and they'll look nice. It goes with the classic lines, I think.

[Fuzz]

Looking better and better every time you post. Never heard anybody saying they regret adding rub rails, I am sure you will be glad you have them.

[cracked_ribs]

Well that's encouraging - I'm glad it didn't peak for looks when it was just a stack of plywood and get steadily worse from there; that would be pretty defeating.

[cracked_ribs]

Quite busy at the moment but the screws are all out and the clamps are off; the various rails are now permanently attached.

I believe this is the first time I've gotten the boat in one picture, although of course the angle and the shorter focal length necessary to get this picture do distort it a bit.

[Fuzz]

I have to admit I am still not sure what I think of the bow but it is starting to grow on me

[cracked_ribs]

It may not remain exactly in its current state anyway; I cut the stem large enough that I could trim it if I found it excessive. But even with epoxy and wood flour, I still think it's easier to take off the excess than add extra, so I cut it at the maximum I figured I would want.

And of course, there are surprises yet to come, so...

[VT_Jeff]

Well, as I used to occasionally shout after a short breather between songs back when I was the singer for a hardcore band...enough rest, it's runtime.

Please roll tape!

[cracked_ribs]

I mean I guess I could have said "please roll tape" instead but I was never that polite, despite my obvious national handicap of Canadianness.



Seriously, I doubt there's any footage of that, or, well, there is footage but it would all be on old VHS tapes or something, in the hands of a guy I haven't seen in twenty years. He used to film us a lot because we were a bit of a spectacle: two guitarists, two bassists, a drummer with a giant kit, and me. I used to breathe fire on stage. Our shows were on the edge of being riots half the time. I remember we took pride in what we called "siren streaks" back then, which was the number of consecutive shows that emergency services had to attend. We had twelve in a row, that was our longest streak. Often the fire department would show up along with the police on account of the fire breathing. People would call the cops because of the noise, but also our audience was totally out of control. For some reason, at the time there was this subculture of kickboxing that was really big in hardcore at the time and I was a fairly decent kickboxer back then and instead of mosh pits there were these big free-for-alls and it was just insane. I'm surprised there weren't more serious injuries, I'd wade into the crowd and slug it out with random individuals or groups at every show just for fun. We were all basically high on testosterone at the time, I was about 20 years old. In retrospect, volunteering to get hit that much probably wasn't great for my brain but I was young and loved fighting back then. I'd wrap my hands on stage while the band got ready and it was part of the thing...people came to see us expecting insanity and we delivered that, at least. I was super athletic at the time from the ring fighting so I could do these spectacular jumps and stuff...occasionally I see pictures of it and think, oh, that's probably why my knees feel like that when I wake up in the morning.

Later, the lead guitarist and I formed a pretty gnarly rock band and by that time were sufficiently well-financed that we had absurd amounts of gear on stage...I played through a 200 watt Marshall with four cabs, he had two linked Soldano heads and four cabs. The bassist had two Ampeg 8x10s, you'd have to mic the hell out of the drums to hear them at all. So we brought our own PA system to bars, so we could get the drums louder in the mix. We'd play small bars like that, it was apocalyptically loud. The lead guitarist was a real dynamo, too, he'd write songs with a dozen guitar solos in them and I'd take the easy ones and he'd take the more technically demanding ones.

One of the bassists from the original band actually just called me up to go lay down guitar and vocal tracks on a metal album he'd written in the summer so I flew out and recorded and man, I sure don't have the hands, or the throat, I used to. I was basically crippled for a week after that recording. But I think it's being released this summer on some metal label and he wants to go play a couple of big festivals in europe...he stayed in that world and plays in a pretty big metal band now so I guess if that's what we wants, we'll go do that, if festivals ever start happening again. If they do, that'd be pretty fun, I haven't played a show in ten years.

Anyway that's my trip down CTE-afflicted memory lane for the day.

[cracked_ribs]

All right, I finally have a somewhat photogenic update.

I'm working on ensmoothenating the hull...it's actually fairing out pretty fast.



Fairing pics are always super boring though and I won't go to far into that. I am laying down my own mix of epoxy and a combination of wood flour, fumed silica, talc, and phenolic microballons. The talc really smooths out the mix. It's not the easiest thing to sand so as I go in layers, it'll get progressively more microballoons, and less of the rest. I like wood flour because of the microscopic shape of the particles, and the ability of the epoxy to get right into the cellulose. That stuff is amazing. I like the talc because it makes for such a smooth mix, and having a bucket around means I can dust my forearms and hands before I start glassing anything, and I don't really get itchy. Plus gloves go on really easily.

At any rate the fairing process is starting to move along a little quicker now. Somewhere I should still have some powdered carbon from my last boat so I'll see if I can find that for guide coating, and then I'll be rolling on the fairing in a serious way.

What else?

The great saga of the hammer drill finally ended...note hard reference for trigger finger; laying alongside the frame is of course just asking for trouble.



I think I ordered that back in October. Anyway I chucked a wire wheel in to it, after soaking it in acetone for a bit to make sure it didn't have any contaminants in it, and I use it on sections of epoxy that are cured, but have too much texture to sand. It roughs them right up and allows for a good bonding surface, although I was chatting up a local plastics supplier who formulate their own epoxy, among other things, and they thought I was mostly wasting my time and said that unless the cured epoxy was absolute glass, subsequent layers would stick to it really well. I don't know anything on the subject but what I read on the internet, so I'm not taking chances.

The fun stuff this weekend though was all motor stuff.

I spotted a local guy selling a motor I immediately wanted for a kicker: a 1967 Evinrude 3hp. They're cool motors, with a main jet screw dial right on the front, and a lean-rich idle screw as well, so a really tuneable machine, on the fly. The guy wanted $200 but when I showed up to see it, he flooded the hell out of it and couldn't get it going. I still wanted it and after chatting with him for a bit I was pretty confident he wasn't trying to unload a wreck, so I said forget getting it running, I'll take it. He was happy I didn't stand there and make him sort it out, so he threw in a 3 gallon Moeller tank with an OMC fitting, plus a brand new hose. For $200 CAD I think that's a hell of a deal.



While all this was going on, we were talking about the project I'm working on, and how I like building boats, and he said hey, I might have something you'd be interested in...I was just going to hang it on my wall, but you sound like the type to get it working again. Somebody took the carb apart and lost it and I figure it's just but maybe to you, it's salvageable? I'm not great with engines so I was just going to clean it up and hang it like art.

He goes and grabs this Gamefisher 1.2 out of a shed and says "if you want it, it's yours, might never run again but I don't know. It ran at one time, I had it on a canoe, but I don't know how to fix that stuff."



If you've never seen one of these, this is how small it is:



I'm holding it in one hand at arm's length to take a picture of it. If there's another gas outboard you can hold in your hand like that, I've never seen it! I don't know what it weighs, practically nothing. Twelve or fifteen pounds? Nothing. The 3hp is about twenty five or thirty pounds, I'd guess.

So that was my Saturday, going and picking up these two motors. I took the wife and kid and made most of a day out of it; the guy was about an hour away and there's a couple of cool stores near him so we went to a park and let my one-year-old run around, he's just learning to manage walking and running on rough ground, and went shopping, and came home with a couple of engines.

Sunday I had a bunch of stuff to do but around 1pm I freed up for a bit so I set the new motors on my beater motor stand. Mostly I just wanted to make sure the Evinrude really ran.

https://youtu.be/qwaCr4MkL6Y

Yeah, two minutes of effort there and off she went. I love how smoothly she runs up and down the RPM range...this will be a killer trolling and get-home motor. And with a separate tank and hose...not many mechanical problems that take out the main will sideline the kicker, so that's awesome. I lifted her off the stand, and put her away for the time being. By this time I was curious to take a look at the Gamefisher; I've never seen one up close before. I pulled off the cowling and started checking the usual stuff.

The noise of the 3hp attracted this old guy from across the alley. He often shows up to give unsolicited, terrible advice. When I was moving my big boat into the back yard, he kept coming out and walking behind it and then telling me I was coming at it from the wrong direction. He thinks that because a previous owner had a big boat in the back yard, a 32' commercial salmon boat. I know the boat, it was built in a shipyard down in Sidney, BC, about thirty years ago. I saw it on Google's original streetview image from the alley. It was up against the west wall of what is now my back yard.

Consequently, they hauled it out going east, because obviously they couldn't cut the corner around the west wall, which is my neighbour's garage. The alley is actually narrower east of my house, but still, based on the location of the boat, that was the only way to get it out.

The guy from across the alley always tells me you can't get the boat out going west, you have to go east. I get my boat out going west because I don't park it where the salmon troller used to park, there's a garden there now. But no telling this guy, he's resolute that the thing I do regularly can't be done.

Anyway the guy hears the Evinrude and I guess it spurs him into action. He comes out and sees me working on the Gamefisher. This is the best recollection I have of the conversation.

"Can't start her, eh?"
"No idea; she's been sitting for a long time. I just started looking at her now."
"She's probably seized at her age."
"I suspect not."
"Oh I seen it before, that's how they go. She's garbage, me son, you paid good money for garbage."
"Seems to spin okay."
"Seized up like she were welded in place."
"Uh huh."
"I'm only saying so's you don't throw good money after bad. I seen it many time afore, but your generation never seen a machine and you don't know what you're seeing."
"Seized up, huh?"
"Sure as the day you were born, me son. S'only sad you couldn't see her before you spent the money."


This is what I was doing while he was talking:

https://youtu.be/-sQ29umM-34

Anyway I mucked around with her for about forty minutes. Needs a good carb clean but she'll do fine. I'll get some non-marring pads or something and clamp her on the back of my wooden dinghy from 2018 and use her to cruise around when there's no wind.

https://youtu.be/56zdLkOeDY4

I apologize for the sparse updates recently - fairing pictures suck and I've been short on time. But I think this rather large update somewhat makes up for it. Or I hope so, anyway.

[Jeff]

Good deal on the motor!!! Jeff