At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

[Cowbro]

Just when I think that boat can't get any cooler, you go and throw that transom on there like that and totally blow my mind.

You mention your Instagram page... what is your handle?

[OneWayTraffic]

I'm very psyched about the open space inside; it'll have three times the fishing room of my current, much larger boat. Absolutely can't wait to start glassing the interior.

Also pretty revved up to get some clear epoxy on that transom!

Fishing space is great on tiller boats. My old 3.5m dinghy had more space than my C17 will, thanks to the cabin. But a cabin is a cabin.

[cracked_ribs]

Just when I think that boat can't get any cooler, you go and throw that transom on there like that and totally blow my mind.

You mention your Instagram page... what is your handle?

It's DoubleEagleIsland...but it's not something you want to be looking at on the company laptop, just as a heads up. Sex, violence, and rabbits is a pretty good description, I think that was VTJeff's comment. I worked in the arms industry for a long time so it's a lot of guns, mostly rare or weird or some pre-production version a company was paying me to wring out. And a lot of my wife who is really strange and I think I'd say maybe...trying to go through life as a piece of pinup art?

And she has an obsession with rabbits, and a set of keys to the account as well, so you just never know what's going to be in there. You've been warned!

Fishing space is great on tiller boats. My old 3.5m dinghy had more space than my C17 will, thanks to the cabin. But a cabin is a cabin.

It's true, there's a real upside, and a real downside, to open boats.

One almost wonders if someone has a design for one boat, that's both...

Do we have an emoji for "whistling innocently?"

[cracked_ribs]

One heck of an update!
Glad to hear your wife seems to be doing ok now, that had to be scary. Speaking of scary head wounds on kids is it. They always seem to bleed all out of proportion to the wound.
Boat is looking good! A nice looking transom is a good thing indeed

Yeah I have to say I'm personally pretty used to seeing injuries to vascular areas but at the same time, when it's your own kid you don't have the same level of detachment, of course. And heart issues combined with consciousness issues are definitely A-list serious, even though this turned out to be nothing. But it's enough to give you a bit of a rattle, all right.

Damn, son! Glad the wife and kiddo are safe and sound, that's a lot of excitement!

Transom is going to slay like that, great idea!

And now, empty canvas, has to feel awesome.

We call them "taut lines" btw. Imaginative, I know!

Taut line, taut line...I have heard that, now that I think about it. I think I got "waco hitch" from a old guy I knew when I was little, who used to use pack horses a lot. He was really good with knots but came from a time before everyone had access to a million reference materials that established standardized names for everything, and that's probably just what they called it on the ranch he worked when he was young, or it's regional, maybe. I know I've gotten blank looks when mentioning it before so I'm pretty sure "waco hitch" is not a name most people recognize.

Ditto on the wife and kid. Love the transom!

Thanks guys, yeah, also glad to see them running around like normal!

[cracked_ribs]

Was a little to beat to even type this up last night but a step forward over the weekend for sure.

My birthday was earlier in the week and I don't usually give it much thought but for whatever reason my wife went really nuts on it this year. Part of that might just have been the spectacular weather we were having, but then she ordered a bunch of stuff well before the sunny streak started, so I don't know. Anyway boatbuilding went on hold for a couple of days and I played hooky from work to just hang out with the family at the beach.



I monkeyed around with finishing up the transom - the bottom couple of inches will have antifouling on them anyway so I didn't put a ton of effort into getting them perfectly aligned like the rest of it. It also would have meant using up the spare plank, so I just used an offcut from the main part and pieced it together.



Then I just wanted to tune the shape a bit for trueness. It wasn’t far off but you know how floppy they are at this stage and I didn’t want to start glassing anything inside until I was happy with the alignment of the whole thing.







Corner to corner was within about an eighth of an inch, so I’ll take that.

I’ve never really gotten to work wet on wet on this boat because it’s always been too cold, which means I’ve had to heat everything inch by inch to get it to wet out, which means putting on a single piece of tape could take two or three hours. Friday, I prepped up the tape in the hopes that I’d be able to start laying it on wet fillets on Saturday…naturally Saturday got cold again, and I had to go back to heating the tape to get the epoxy to flow. Still, where there’s a will, there’s a way.



This reveals my overkill lamination schedule. I don’t know why I decided to go so heavy on tape, I could probably have cut it in half and been fine. But my last boat we actually had to break ice with the hull so what the hell. Two layers on the chines, three on the keel, two on the transom.

Herewe are, all set to start filleting. This is about 10 AM Saturday.



And this is about 6pm the same day.





That was a long freaking sprint. It wouldn’t have been too bad, except the garage was cold again and I didn’t have firewood set to go because it was summer around here until Friday evening. So just non-stop heat gun work to keep the glue flowing. I didn’t stop long enough to take pictures of anything, really. But you can all imagine it with one piece of tape on the keel, or two, I’m sure.

Anyway all fillets and tape in a day. I was pretty tired but overall happy with the outcome.

Sunday morning I reviewed the work, took some ibuprofen, and got back on the horse. I had to roll out my back with one of those hard foam rollers to get going; I’m not used to working at floor height in a weird awkward crouch on a slope and I definitely paid for Saturday’s take-no-prisoners approach.

So naturally I loaded up with coffee and went back to it. I rolled out the fabric and started mixing 18oz batches around 9am. It was still cold. I had to hit every inch of it with the gun to keep it flowing. It
wasn’t fun. My lats started seizing up around 1pm and I had to support myself with my elbows on my knees for a while and just work close to my body, although I got my wife to bring out muscle relaxants and a couple of shots of rye and that loosened them up. It was cold in there but I was working so hard I was sweating, so I had strip down to just my pants to stay cold enough not to drip sweat in the mix. Which, incredibly, I think I managed to do. I don’t think I got a single drop of sweat in anything. These pics are at 6pm.





So there you have it. Fillets, tape, fabric, wet on wet, two days. Unpleasant but I’m happy with the outcome.

[OlivierP]

Hi, beautiful work !

Strange that you had to use a heat gun though ? I built a new boat this winter in my garage while it was often freezing outside, it went well with the following measures:
- Warmed up the bottles of epoxy for 15' in hot tap water before use
- Diluted the mix with 10-15% solvent, it really helps
- Heated up the garage above 15°C (usually 17-18) for 2-3 hours while epoxy sets

Good luck for the next steps

[cape man]

Going to be a tank!!! Lots of hard work there sir!

[Fuzz]

One heck of a two day glass session. Good thing you are young. Us old guys could never do a glass marathon like that

[VT_Jeff]

Happy Escape-from-the-womb Day.

Man, way to power through it! Rye and Muscle Relaxants are an interesting addition to the normal chemistry of glassing but they seem to have yielded great results, I've made a note for future reference. The brutality of the marathon wet-on-wet session more than pays for itself in a number of ways, as I know you're well aware of.

Now that you've got the inside taped and glass, you can look forward to a few months of back-breaking/rye-drinking/muscle-relaxant-popping interior work as your reward. Congrats!

[cracked_ribs]

One heck of a two day glass session. Good thing you are young. Us old guys could never do a glass marathon like that

I don't feel too young today, I'll tell you that!