At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

[Fuzz]

Loved the old outboard videos! Good on you for getting them back up and running.

[cracked_ribs]

I do like seeing them run again...this boat seems to be a freebie magnet so that's cool. At this rate, if I sell my big boat when I'm done, I may actually join that microscopic class of "boatbuilders who came out financially ahead after a build."

I'm no white-hot outboard mechanic or anything but when the machines are simple enough, I guess there's nothing to know but the basics. That Gamefisher was hilarious when I popped it apart...the magneto on the shaft and the ignition coil with a single wire straight to the plug struck me as really funny, somehow. Charmingly simple. Of course 90% of the parts are now unavailable but I'll have a look inside the carb, it might just need a cleanup and that'll be that. Not much to go wrong. If I can get it somewhat reliable, then my kid will probably learn to sail and to motor in the same little dinghy. Buzzing around on a thimbleful of gas in the 8' catspaw I built, hunting ling cod on the reefs around our place, seems like a great summer afternoon to me.

I sure do like that 3hp Evinrude though...the jet tuning dials on the front of the thing is just super cool. I couldn't believe how smoothly it ran. Of course now I'll have to tune the main to run smoothly. It's pretty nasty still at this point, which didn't bother me since I was used to nasty, lumpy stroker bikes. But now my standards got all civilized up and I'm ruined for smokers that lump along on one cylinder until the power band hits, I actually expect manners.

[Jeff]

Good stuff CR!!!! Jeff

[VT_Jeff]

it was apocalyptically loud.

Out of all the very funny shit in that post, this had me laughing the most! The two bassists and the siren streak were runners up. That's great stuff! This site is literally the closest I get to social media so I appreciate the occasional asides. Glad you mostly lived through all of it and while I'm not a metal fan by any stretch, def want to hear that album once released!

[cracked_ribs]

Well, when I get a copy, I'll put it up - I've only heard the rawest form so I don't know if it'll be any good or not, but it's on tape, anyway...

I'm glad you enjoy the weird asides, I rarely know how much information to include or exclude. I've been lucky to get to do a lot of stuff that I find interesting, but then, of course I find the stuff I choose to do interesting. Some of it's boat related, like living on a tiny island for a while and commuting to my job on a much bigger island; some of it's totally random, like the music stuff.

I have to admit I have no special love of metal per se myself - I'm basically only loyal to the experience of playing at max intensity, and if it's a metal band, then I'll do it in metal. All I really want is to be going hard enough that I'm sweating buckets and out of breath between songs. Strangely enough, watching my buddy's metal band, it's almost the opposite: they're playing this weird slow art metal and to be honest, I'm not really into it. But I guess even he was getting a bit bored and wanted to do something more aggressive so that's why he brought me in, that's the only thing I can do.

Today I very aggressively, loudly put fiberglass tape on on the reverse chines:



Although I did have Black Mountain cranked up on my bluetooth ear pro, which I continue to love. It's not metal but it does keep me moving in the shop. Plus there's a shark, that's kind of boaty.

https://youtu.be/I1kSomQ1uLc

[cracked_ribs]

The updates are coming a little more slowly right now but it's not that I'm not working on the boat; I continue to put in about ten hours each week which is around what I've been doing since the beginning. But now everything is slow and not very easy to photograph in an interesting way.

Some of it just feels repetitive but of course that's boatbuilding.

I taped down the reverse chines just for extra wear resistance, and then I slopped on a couple of layers of what I call hard mix: fumed silica, milled glass, and talc. It's extremely hard when cured so six ounce weave and two layers of hard mix should make for pretty tough chines. I squared up those edges with my usual poster board strips.





I was a little worried the skeg or keel hadn't stayed quite straight enough when I was weighting it down so I hit it with the laser level to make sure. I ended up sanding it in a couple of spots with the long board, and putting a little wood flour mix on the on the opposite sides.



Now I'm happy with it.



Then I worked on saturating the spray rails with epoxy, and getting good fillets on them.





Since I had the laser out, I marked out the rough horizontal from the chine line. In reality it'll sit lower at the stern than that, I just want a reference mark for about where I'll graphite the hull.



Other than that, its just fairing. But it's getting close. To be honest, it doesn't need a ton of fairing; I have to say that I'm quite happy with the way the glass lay down. You can see I haven't put much compound on, but so far, most of it is relatively fair and it's smoothing out nicely.

[VT_Jeff]

Looking good CR, keep it up and you'll be right-side up in no time.

[cracked_ribs]

I sure hope so! This is my least favourite phase of the operation.

But it's getting smoother every day. One day I'll get there!

[cracked_ribs]

Mostly fairing pictures; I'm sorry, I know how boring these are. I'll try to offer commentary that at least explains why I even bother to photograph this stuff.

But first: a good little score, in my opinion at least. A Force 10 kerosene heater, for which I paid basically nothing. It worked but was in rough cosmetic shape, and the guy who had it put a solid fuel heater in his boat and this was just surplus to his needs and came with his boat so he didn't value it at all. It needs a fuel tank - no big challenge there - so I mean I literally paid pocket change for it.



But then it was back to the fairing.

I'm laying on really thin coats of fairing mix because I want the minimum amount of putty necessary to have it as smooth as I want it. Honestly it's not requiring much; I'm basically on my third skim coat of the hull and each skim takes around 18 oz, so I think I've used 54 oz on making fairing mix. The fabric all laid down pretty smooth and that makes a huge difference.





You can see the new sanding block I'm using, now that I'm past the mega monster stage. I had been using a 36" x 4" board. This is a Hutchins 5501, an autobody fairing sander that's roughly 3x18". I knew the Hutchins 5501 was the thing to have, because I'm an expert on this stuff.

In reality it was just the first hit on Amazon when I searched for something about sanding longboards, I don't know anything about autobody stuff at all. But apparently it's a known item. I will definitely say that I like it a lot. I am using a 3x18 power sander belt, cut to be flat. Man, does that ever rip down the fairing compound. I scrape it occasionally with a cheap metal spreader, then wire brush it, and it's lasting forever. I'm half inclined to cancel my order of pro-grade 2 3/4 sandpaper roll...I have four more of those belts and I doubt I'm even halfway done the first one.

The next couple of pics I took to try to illustrate how the chines are getting nice and clean and fair and have a good smooth sweep to them.





It's not that easy to show but anyway, I'm happy about it.

Then yesterday, after about six hours of detail sanding, I slapped on about 6 oz of hard, as I call it: wood flour, fumed silica, milled fibres and talc. Filling little hollows on the chines, and a bit of a skim right where the hull had its harshest transition in the bottom panels.

Today, I cheese-gratered yesterday's hard stuff down as necessary, then spent a few hours carefully laying on a full skim coat.









You can see how thin I put that stuff on, I think. The wood is still visible over 90% of the hull. I just prefer to minimize the putty use, for whatever reason. I really try to make the wood fair, then the glass, and just use putty to get the final 5% or whatever. That's just how I like to do things, I guess.

Oh, and one other thing I did was spend a couple of hours refurbishing that old heater. It seems mechanically intact, so I just popped a buffing wheel on my Makita angle grinder, and cleaned it up a bit.

Of course looking at this picture now, I can see there's still a bit of black buffing compound on it, so I guess I'll have to take a clean cloth to it to finish it off. But anyway you get the idea.

[Fuzz]

Boat is looking better and better. But dang that heater looks almost brand new!