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At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:31 pm
by cracked_ribs
I've never had a build thread here, or not really. I started one on a scale model of the C19 but then suddenly had to move, which ate up a ton of time as I relocated to a different part of the province. I tossed the model in the process of moving; I had really just started it because I was bored not having anything to build but didn't have space to do anything at my old place in Vancouver. I built an 8' dinghy in my apartment living room in 2018, but now I have a kid and wouldn't do that again or he'd end up stuck to it somehow. Anyway, now I have space and I'm back to work.

I do build the occasional boat but I have never done a Bateau design and as a result I've never wanted to put up a build thread: I don't think it's quite right to showcase a competing designer's work. My last boat was a little dinghy similar to the D5 to use at my cabin but it's similar enough to the D5 that I didn't want to influence anyone away from the Bateau dinghy options.

Once again I've opted for a non-Bateau design but this time I think there's no chance that it will drive anyone away from the plans offered here: I designed it myself and it's not for sale anywhere, nor can I imagine it ever being.

What we have here is a 16' skiff, a little on the narrow side, to run with low power. Honestly the bottom is probably not that much different than a scaled down FS17, although the keel is pulled forward further and the bow is fairly plumb just to maximize LWL. I know this'll make it a bit more prone to bow steering but it'll be used in relatively sheltered waters and I don't expect to run from big waves so I don't see it being a big problem. I may have to cold mould the forward part of the bottom; we'll see when we get there.

At any rate I'm still prepping but the epoxy is on the way from BoatBuilderCentral - this was another condition I had mentally for posting a thread here. I can't remember when I signed up here but I have been reading this forum since I think around 2001 and learned a lot by being here, so I like to spend my money here if I can. MarinEpoxy has worked well every time I've used it, so 12 gallons of that ought to leave me pretty well situated. I don't foresee this boat taking 12 gallons but I also don't want to order twice. International shipping is annoying these days.

The slightly odd constraints of this boat are that it has to run with a 1979 20hp Johnson, with about a 17.5" shaft. Long story but I was given the motor; it was mounted on a 14' Mirrorcraft aluminum skiff we used to fish off the west coast of Vancouver Island when I was about eight years old. It hasn't run in 20+ years but they're simple machines and I'm confident I can get it running. It hasn't got many hours and was well maintained before being abandoned.

Anyway here we go: the Cracked Ribs 16.

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This isn't the completed design or anything, it's just a screen cap I have on my goofing-off laptop. The completed stuff is on my big work machine and I don't want to switch that on or it'll load Outlook and I'll see all the emails I don't want to think about until tomorrow morning.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:42 am
by TomW1
Nice looking boat for a home design. Keep the strength of the bottom in mind with plywood and Fg and the frames in the interior. If you have not bought one of Jacques plans of about the same size I would suggest you do. Other wise looks like your well on your way. Good luck and keep us up to dat with pictures.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:08 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks - yeah, should be all right; I don't think I have one of Jacques' designs for this size, but honestly it's a low power skiff built in a garage; it's going to end up overbuilt because that's what always happens. There's not too much span between stringers or bulkheads and it'll get 12oz biax over the seams and hull anyway. I ran across a semi-local outfit that had 37 yards of 12oz biax on a roll that they couldn't interest anyone in - apparently they sell to a different market than us - so I bought the remainder cheap, and now I'm overstocked on hull fabric so the enemy will be weight, I think. I also stumbled across some 7725 that the suppliers were a bit unsure about the provenance of and so they wouldn't certify it for aerospace use. I bought a bunch at $4 CAD/yd so I'm drowning in fabrics now. Or rather, I will be, once the UPS trucks start arriving.

A lot of the design choices here were pointless nods to the workboats of the BC coast which I love so there are valid criticisms of basically every aspect of this design. My own aesthetic preferences took over and I just drew something I wanted to look at, and put a pretty run of the mill skiff bottom on it.

Up until I got given that motor I was going to see if I could design something to plane off well for a 9.9 I had but never used - it would have been much narrower and more restrictive and was an interesting design challenge, but then two things happened in the space of one week:

1) I was given the old 20 hp Johnson
2) The ignition on my big boat started acting up and despite thinking I'd fixed it three times, three times in a week I needed the 9.9 to motor 15km back in from the fishing grounds. Now I'm never going to take the kicker off the big boat no matter how fixed I think it is, so no point in a skinny skiff to run on that thing.

Anyway a simple boat like this will be nice to fish out of and I think not too demanding to build, plus easier to trailer. Right now if I catch a fish and try to bring it home, I think I'm over the tow limit for my truck. Or if the boat gets rained on too heavily.

The main downsides are: much less efficient use of plywood than one of Jacques' designs; much worse support from the designer who I know from experience is unhelpful, occasionally hostile and frequently drunk, and more problem-solving as I go because there's no manual. On the other hand, I typically have only used plans to get the dimensions and lamination schedules in the past. Once I get rolling they usually get abandoned in a corner and I just work by instinct, changing things as I go, so this probably won't be too much different than usual.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:59 pm
by Fuzz
This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly :help: Yours will not have that problem :D

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:17 pm
by cracked_ribs
Fuzz wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:59 pm This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly :help: Yours will not have that problem :D
That sounds like a challenge!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:48 pm
by cracked_ribs
Preliminary steps


I wired up the garage with a couple of outlets today; there was no power in it at all before. Now there's rudimentary power out there. Good enough for now and even if the motor is junk and the project gets scrapped, it’s still worth doing. As is getting that wood stove going.

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With the wiring in place, the infrared quartz heater is up and running. I then spent some time on the stove, taking it apart a bit and replacing a couple of those fiberglass rope gaskets. Now I have it back together, the gasket adhesive drying. Tomorrow I might have a little fire in it just to see if it's sealed up properly. I guess I'll have to get a section of 6" stovepipe just to test it out. I probably should have bought that today but I didn't know if I'd get this far. If it seems reasonable, I'll pump more furnace cement in all the seams and build some kind of simple chimney, and cut some flashing into the garage roof.

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The old Johnson is in pretty decent shape, all things considered. It turns over and there’s spark, so probably a carb refresh and an impeller will make it run. I fed in some seafoam to the throttle body just to get the thing lubed up a bit, and pulled her over a few times. Doesn’t feel bad. A spritz of seafoam, a pull, a spritz, a pull, repeat for a while. I gave it a hard yank after about 20 minutes and she fired up, running briefly on the naptha in the seafoam, I guess. Okay, pretty encouraging. But no love off the gas tank, so I think the carb rebuild is unavoidable. New kit, plus new water pump with all the bits, and a Johnson gas tank fitting so I don’t have to use the ancient metal tank it came with, all in for a little under a hundred bucks from Amazon. Should be here in a few days.

In the meantime, I’m rendering the skiff design, or at least the panels, in Delftship. The software is a bit glitchy but should be sufficient for this design. It’ll get built in glass-ply-glass composite sandwich, with epoxy resin. Should be very light and strong, although it’ll eat a lot of resin. The hull will be ¼” ply with 12oz biaxial fabric on either side. I’ll try to squeeze it into 10 sheets of ply, and will probably burn 10-12 gallons of epoxy glurping it together. That’d put the weight at about 300 pounds.

I think a 16’ skiff around 300lbs should motor along okay with a 20hp two stroke. Of course, I suspect the only difference between the 20, which was a down-regulated Canadian-only motor, and the 35, was the carb. Maybe the intake. And the same skiff with 35 hp will really move.


And so the project begins.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2020 1:52 pm
by Fuzz
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:17 pm
Fuzz wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:59 pm This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly :help: Yours will not have that problem :D
That sounds like a challenge!
No challenge. I see way too much planning and talent for it to end up ugly :wink:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2020 9:24 pm
by cracked_ribs
Fuzz wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2020 1:52 pm
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 2:17 pm
Fuzz wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:59 pm This is going to be fun to watch. Many years ago I built an 18 foot skiff of my own design. It worked for what I needed but man it was butt ugly :help: Yours will not have that problem :D
That sounds like a challenge!
No challenge. I see way too much planning and talent for it to end up ugly :wink:
Oh ye of little faith.

I didn't get as much done today as I was hoping. I do work a regular job and when I'm not working I really like to hang out with my kid so sometimes I'm not that productive but then I really like hanging out with my kid so I think that's a fair trade-off.

The stove is pretty much ready to go; I have tried a couple of fires in it and there aren't obvious leaks although for sure once in install it I'll need a CO alarm just in case.

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The only other thing I got to was starting on the strongbacks, for which I used 2x8s.

Naturally I got a quarter of the way into putting the strongbacks together when my drill began to die. I had thought I’d felt the gears skip a bit previously but now they’re starting to strip. That drill has had a lot of use but it’s an annoying development, regardless. So now I have to get a new cordless drill. I finished up the stuff I was doing with a plug wrench and a ⅜ robertson bit but I’m not doing that for another 48 screws, so I have to see if I can locate a drill that’ll fit my Hitachi batteries so they don’t just go to waste.

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Tomorrow parts should start arriving for the Johnson, so I can get back to that for a bit.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2020 9:26 pm
by cracked_ribs
Back to work on the little outboard.


The carbs on these things are almost absurdly simple. There’s a low speed circuit on the top, which is controlled with a needle valve that screws in through the air cleaner. It’s a single passage with a couple of holes in the top of the throttle body that drip fuel down under vacuum. There’s no adjustable brass jet, you just screw the needle in or out. Factory setting was something like 1.25 turns out, maybe 1.5. There’s a high speed jet that’s a single passage off the carb bowl. Single brass jet. Dead simple. A rebuild kit was around $25 and took me an hour or so to install, and was probably completely unnecessary: after I took the float bowl off, I discovered that the passage to the filler tower in the float bowl was totally blocked, so the main fuel nozzle was probably bone dry. I let some acetone sit in the bowl for a bit, then poked a super tiny drill bit through the passage and gently cleaned it all out. Off to the races!


When I put the carb back on, which is a two minute job, I was feeling pretty confident. I pumped up the primer bulb on the fuel line and gave it a rip. The starter pawl skipped and the motor did nothing. I fed the rope back in and gave it a gentle pull. No, the pawl was jumping over the teeth on the flywheel. Annoyed, I went inside to find out where I could get a new starter pawl. I found lots, in the US, for around $5 a pop. Shipping was $30 for the cheapest option. Very aggravating. I kept searching and ultimately found a two-pack for $12, with $14 shipping. Okay, good enough.


Back to the motor: rather than continue to use the old metal tank, I popped an OMC fitting into one of my 25l Sceptre tanks. I have two because while I occasionally use one for the kicker, mostly I just wanted the ability to get 50l of fuel at a time from the gas station without pulling my boat out of the water all summer last year. But now I don’t really need that ability since I’m not commuting by water every day, so one of the tanks was demercurized and enjohnsonated. Now I really felt confident it would run.


Like most small outboards I’ve known, the old Johnson has an emergency backup rope start ability, you just have to wind the rope on with every pull. I have a ton of rope lying around, so I wrapped a couple of turns on and gave it a good hard pull, and it coughed a bit and died. Very close. So I primed up the bulb again and wound on the rope and pulled, and nothing. I did it again, and nothing. I stood there for a solid half hour just winding on rope and pulling it and trying to figure out why it wasn’t even trying now. I pulled the plugs to see if they were really fouled from all the starting attempts but they were sparking fine. I sprayed more Seafoam into the carb and tried it again and it ran, but quickly started to die as it used up the burnable fuel in the cleaner. I cracked the throttle open on the carb and it roared, but stalled as soon as I backed off. At least that gave me the idea that the high speed was getting fuel, but the low speed might not be, so I quickly pulled the carb again and hit the low speed circuit with compressed air from every direction. The carb went back on, I wound the backup rope around the flywheel and hauled off. Instant start! It was a bit sensitive to choke but the air cleaner wasn’t on; that might calm it down some as it smooths out the airflow into the carb. Lots of two-strokes are a bit sensitive about the shape and volume of the air box.. I put elastics on the butterfly valve linkages to hold the choke closed and let it run for a bit. There’s nothing like old two-stroke ring-ding sound...except WOT two-stroke powerband sound!

[youtube]https://youtu.be/uBnSq7CT040[/youtube]

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2020 9:33 pm
by gstanfield
Congrats on the win! I have a 1959 Evinrude 10 horse that I need to restore and then of course I'll have to build a boat to stick it on. I love the old outboards, at least for recreational use where a fouled plug or dead coil won't leave you stranded somewhere deadly.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2020 11:04 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thank you - it was nice to get some action out of the old seahorse with so little time invested.

There really is something charming about those simple old two strokes...I wouldn't want to rely on it to get me around Cape Horn or anything but it's such a handy little machine. When I got it I just picked it up like a suitcase and walked to my truck and threw it in the back. Same thing at home, one hand on the bracket crossbar and just walk around. Put it on the stand, take it off...thing probably doesn't weigh more than 80lbs.

I'll be sorry if I sell my big boat one day and use the proceeds to buy a Honda 50 or something. Ten times the reliability, no doubt...but three times the weight, I bet.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2020 10:21 pm
by cracked_ribs
Not a ton of action today. Helping with the kid as my wife preps for halloween, which she is crazy about.

I moved a couple of bikes out of the garage and tarped them up outside, and moved the stove into its approximate intended location. The drill won't handle driving big screws anymore; I found a NOS hitachi hammer drill that takes the same batteries on ebay and ordered it but it won't be here for probably another week, and I'm avoiding doing a ton of dicking around with the strongbacks until I have a good drill again. I did screw the 2x3 cleats for the crossmembers into place but it's such a pain doing it with the ratchet that I don't really want to invest a lot of time in it. Years of shooting one or two thousand rounds a month through various pistols, interspersed with hand-cutting checkering on 1911 frames, left my right elbow a bit banged up and I have to watch the repetitive motion...so that's going to be fantastic when I have to spend six months sanding the hull. Anyway, whatever.

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The workspace is almost ready - just need to get a chimney together for that stove and I'll be rolling.

I tracked down a company in Canada with a bunch of 12oz biax e-glass left on a roll that nobody wanted; apparently they sell to a different market than us. I also stumbled into an insane deal on 7725 Rutan 8.8oz twill; I grabbed ten yards of it because why not. The sellers weren't sure of its provenance so they wouldn't certify it for aircraft usage but that won't affect me. It'll do great for anything not strength-critical. Which, honestly, is this entire boat aside from the seams. Anyway I paid almost nothing for it so now I have it.

The next research project is going to be finding out if I can get 35 horses out of that 20. I bet I can. But we'll see.

Oh, also I dropped a beer in my kitchen yesterday and it landed like this and I think maybe now I'll develop superpowers or something.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 7:43 pm
by cracked_ribs
Another little bit of prep work...none of this is very interesting I'm sure but I am going to try to put something in here every day just to force me to keep chipping away at the million tasks that make up one complete boat.

One factor that's been weighing on my mind: can I find the parts necessary to get 35 hp out of the old Johnson? I think so. I talked to a friend of mine in Ontario who works as an outboard mechanic; he found me a carb and intake. I told him that if he did a rebuild on the carb and sent it out with the intake all freshened up, I’d give him a scope I had kicking around that I don’t think I was ever going to use. It took a bit of prodding to get him to sort through his parts inventory, but today he sent pics of the carb. The linkage looks identical; I bet everything will bolt up fine. Worst case scenario is that it doesn’t and I can’t use it, but I still have a 20hp to play with. But my strong suspicion is that this will all bolt together fine.

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I’ll ship the scope in the next few days, but I want to wait until I hear he’s actually rebuilt the carb, because it took him two weeks from when I asked about his...

Okay, let's get something out of the way. There are going to be about four million "johnson" jokes that I'll have to either intentionally make, or just wait for somebody else to. In order to prevent this from taking over half the posts as I write them, I'm going to toss out a bunch right now so the temptation to reuse them later in the thread is reduced.

"I asked about his Johnson."
"I would rather have had a longer shaft Johnson but this'll do."
"For a small Johnson it sure does the job."
"I just don't understand why my Johnson won't work anymore."
"Two strokes is all my Johnson needs."
"I'm a little concerned that my Johnson is insufficiently lubed."
"I asked my neighbour to help me manhandle my Johnson into place."
"I spent most of the day in the back yard, playing with my Johnson. Eventually my neighbours called the police to report a disturbance."

Okay, that ought to prevent too many guys from thinking up lewd stuff about my Johnson.

Anyway yeah, not shipping that scope until I hear something from the outboard mechanic. But hopefully that's not too long a wait. If my Johnson doesn't get a bit of love soon, I'm not sure what I'll do.

The more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to slap Evinrude decals on the side.

Oh the other thing I was going to mention is that although I stumbled across some glass fabric that's already in country, and it turns out there's a plywood supplier in the next town over that takes provenance pretty seriously, the rest of the big purchases are coming from Boat Builder Central. After doing a ton of research I discovered I could get Raka epoxy (which is also pretty good) landed here slightly cheaper than MarinEpoxy from BBC. But I haven't spent the last 20 years learning stuff on Raka's forum. When shipping is prohibitive, I'll resort to other suppliers but I really prefer to spend money here if I can because the service is fantastic and I have really learned a ton here over the years.

Anyway now I'm waiting on the arrival of supplies but it won't be long. Probably just enough time to get the chimney sorted.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 10:04 pm
by Cowbro
CR,

There is no reason to be ashamed of your Johnson. Keep up the updates!

I am curious about the 35hp out of a 20hp outboard, was there ever a 35hp offered that was just a hopped up 20hp? Do you think this affects the reliability of the engine? As someone who used to ride 2 stroke dirt bikes and has had a few seize up on me, i would be worried about bumping the power up almost 75% above stock. I know an outboard is a lot different than a 125cc race bike though.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 10:18 pm
by Fuzz
I have no idea if you can get 35 hp out of the outboard or not but it will not surprise me if you do get more than 20.
I thought Canada did not like hand guns. I know you can have them but there is a lot of red tape. What type of shooting were you doing with the 1911?
Party pooper taking all the fun out of talking about your Evinrude :lol: As for the epoxy deal I feel like the Raka and the Marine epoxy are pretty close to each other. I would do like you and buy from BBC on principle just because of both the forum and their service.
I need another Alaska builder to show up so we could spilt a bulk order :D

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 10:31 pm
by cracked_ribs
Cowbro wrote: Sun Nov 01, 2020 10:04 pm CR,

There is no reason to be ashamed of your Johnson. Keep up the updates!

I am curious about the 35hp out of a 20hp outboard, was there ever a 35hp offered that was just a hopped up 20hp? Do you think this affects the reliability of the engine? As someone who used to ride 2 stroke dirt bikes and has had a few seize up on me, i would be worried about bumping the power up almost 75% above stock. I know an outboard is a lot different than a 125cc race bike though.
Look, I just wish it was bigger and I have to do something!

Seriously though...no, in this case I'm not too worried. The 20 was a Canada-only detuned version of the 25, which could be had as a 30 and I believe a 35 also existed. I don't know why we had a 20 up here but the funny part to me is that the motor is bilingual. The choke, for example, is labeled Choke/Etrangleur (which I take to be very literally "strangler").

So ordinarily I'd share your concerns but in this particular case, the 20 is below normal, 25 was the base model and 35 should be doable.
Fuzz wrote: Sun Nov 01, 2020 10:18 pm I have no idea if you can get 35 hp out of the outboard or not but it will not surprise me if you do get more than 20.
I thought Canada did not like hand guns. I know you can have them but there is a lot of red tape. What type of shooting were you doing with the 1911?
Party pooper taking all the fun out of talking about your Evinrude :lol: As for the epoxy deal I feel like the Raka and the Marine epoxy are pretty close to each other. I would do like you and buy from BBC on principle just because of both the forum and their service.
I need another Alaska builder to show up so we could spilt a bulk order :D
Canada is surprisingly relaxed about handguns for sport although they get really iffy if you start using them for defense, which unfortunately for me is my primary area of expertise...I worked in the arms industry for a long time and did some R&D, among other things, for a bunch of different outfits. I sometimes worked on large agency buys of service pistols or rifles, sometimes on guns that needed design changes to qualify for import, sometimes I wrote for a gun magazine. My own collection has shrunk since I no longer need one of everything for work but I probably still own 12-15 handguns, I guess.

Anyway the type of shooting I did was "all of it." I've been pretty lucky in the things I've done for money. I haven't paid for much ammo in my life, which is nice since I used to burn around 500 rounds a week. But my elbow has never forgiven me.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2020 11:08 pm
by Fuzz
Learn something new every day :D Understand about the hand problems from shooting. I shot hand gun silhouette for over ten years and my hand knows it. My father did some gunsmithing and ran a gun shop for 30+ years some I had no choice but to do a lot of shooting. The amazing part is my hearing is still pretty darn good.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 12:22 am
by cracked_ribs
Wooh, some of those silhouette guns are murder on the joints. A friend of mine used to shoot an old Wesson .445 supermag he'd trimmed down to I think a 5" barrel and it was about as dangerous to give as to receive.

Gunsmithing is fun stuff - I would guess an Alaskan gunsmith would have a very broad scope and a lot of ingenuity. Growing up like that is boy heaven if you ask me.

I'm basically the opposite of an Alaskan smith: there's only a couple of guns I know well enough to work on confidently and enjoy the process...I used to build 1911s and M14s for guys at one time. We had a good supply of TRW M14s that were imported from Israel after your guys moved on to the M16 and supplied the Israelies with the old stock; when the Israelis got out of M14s they welded up the selectors and sold loads of them on the Canadian sporting market. There was a time you could buy a collector pack for a thousand bucks and it would be a TRW, an H&R, a Winchester and a Springfield. They were often a bit rough but you'd find some real gems from time to time.

Anyway I got out of the M14 game but never really strayed from the 1911, although most of my handguns are plain jane service pistols for work stuff. But I have often thought that when I retire I'll build 1911s for extremely patient guys who are in no rush, and charge parts plus whatever I feel like, and pay myself a couple of bucks an hour just to stay busy a few hours a day between fishing and hunting trips.

Assuming I'm not exiled by the Trudeaus of this country by then, I guess, but that's a topic for beers on the boat and my boat has a little way to go before I can host on it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 2:45 pm
by Fuzz
I had to look up Ladysmith on Google Earth. That is a beautiful place you have. I see the timber industry must be big there. And I understand why you talk about commuting to work by boat.
My father moved to Alaska so he could hunt. The big bears were his thing. As he got older he started building his own calibre rifles but they were all heavy on the recoil :help:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 6:02 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks, it's a nice area for sure...I like the fact that I live two blocks from a trail system which heads west through uninterrupted wilderness until about...Japan. But also, I'm two blocks from cafes and restaurants. In a lot of ways I'm sure it's just a more temperate version of Alaska, with cheaper shipping. Big logging industry all right; I have some mixed feelings about some aspects of that but I sure love being on a working harbour with log booms getting towed in and out and loaded onto those big dump barges. And of course I use a lot of wood so I'm hardly in a position to criticize it too heavily.

I moved here about a year ago...previously I was at a place where I REALLY needed to commute by water:

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I belive the population of the island peaked at 13. We have an off-grid place on an acreage there which was nice after living in Vancouver...but for whatever reason, my wife thought it would be worth being somewhere a little more civilized for the last month of her pregnancy so I bought us a house on the big island. Which, to be honest, was a bit of a relief: I had to spend about 3 hours a day commuting with no days off for bad weather, so a lot of slugging it out in south-easters in a fuel-hungry boat.

I admit that a newborn on an island with no running water or electricity would have been a bit challenging, and we still have ocean views so I guess I'll take it. And I can actually run power tools whenever I want. Plus reliable food refrigeration is nice.

But boy, the cabin on the island is quiet. There's hardly anyone on Ruxton and nothing that eats birds except other birds, so it's kind of an accidental migratory bird reserve. One week it'll be all hummingbirds, the next week something else. That's most of the noise you hear there. We usually just sit on the back deck and drink coffee and barbecue meats.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/OdrQKWsXvys[/youtube]

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2020 10:27 pm
by cracked_ribs
I didn’t get the chance to do much that physically got me any closer to a boat today but I did get a lot of little issues polished out on the 3d model. I transposed all the control points of the hull panels into an old version of the same software, Freeship, and compared the unfolded panels to make sure everything was rolling out predictably. I also went through all the various renditions and made sure nothing was left that had been changed in an early file but only in the bulkhead copy, say. I like to split the files up so I can delete everything but the hull panels in one version, or everything but the bulkheads and stringers. 3d design software always seems prone to glitching out when you get points that are attached to multiple planes so I like to take the final version and break it into three or four separate drawings so I know nothing is in them that’ll render weirdly in 2d when it gets flattened. That’s slow, fiddly work to check over so I was avoiding it but anyway, now it’s done.

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I really roughly laid the panels out on a 4x8 grid just so I could mentally work with the plywood sheets. When I go to print stuff out I'll probably print it on 3"x3" grid for maximum measuring accuracy. The construction bulkheads I'll just hack out of cheap plywood; I don't need to waste marine plywood on frames that'll get cut down to a fraction of that size in the actual boat.

I also picked up (I think) all the components necessary to build a chimney to code. Man, those bits are expensive. I spent around $600 at Home Hardware getting rigged up. Tomorrow I’ll try to install everything. I’ll have to build a bit of framing in the garage to support it but I don’t think that’ll be too complicated. Anyway grinding ahead, one step at a time.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2020 10:45 pm
by cracked_ribs
The wood stove is connected. I’ll still probably get a fireboard and when the shipment of more stainless chimney stuff arrives at the local Home Hardware next week, I think I’ll extend the chimney two feet further up. It seems to draft fine now but it’s not quite as tall as it probably should be. Anyway the wood stove is working and the shop is now ready for action. It was a perfect day to do all the chimney work: sunny and warm, maybe 10 celsius? Not bad for November.

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I also got the air cleaner and everything back on the outboard and fired it up for a bit...I didn’t think to film it but it’s running pretty smoothly now so I think I can pretty much shelve it for the moment and focus on the hull.


The next step will be to get some beater plywood in and cut construction bulkheads and start framing everything up. The epoxy (and lots of other stuff) will start arriving next week so I better get ready to start cutting and stitching!


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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2020 11:33 pm
by gstanfield
I can't quite make it out on my phone, but is that a Griso sitting there?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2020 12:12 am
by cracked_ribs
Good eye! indeed it is. That bike took my wife and I on our honeymoon about ten years ago...three weeks of sleeping in ditches and deserts and getting loaded on margaritas in the US Southwest.

Occasionally I run across Guzzi people that recognize this photo which got around for a while shortly after we got back:

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Anyway, that's my bike and wife, mid-honeymoon, somewhere east of Palm Springs, I think.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2020 7:41 am
by gstanfield
Cool photo! To say that I’m a “bike guy” would be a huge understatement. I’ve owned most major brands out there, but so far I haven’t had a Ducati or a Guzzi, but life isn’t over yet!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2020 10:52 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well I can tell you that the Guzzi sideways twin is a fun motor, that's for sure. I love feeling it torque-twist a bit if I blip the throttle at a stop. Very grunty, very strange. The single sided swingarm and shaft drive is a cool setup also. It's not everything I want in a bike - because that would be about five bikes - but it's macho and loud and flashy, while also being stylish and not dependent on insane speeds to be fun. I can't do supersports anymore...I'm too old for that action.

On the boat side of things, a dull update today: I bought some plywood. It’s kind of exciting for me because now things will really begin to roll ahead, but “today I drove to Nanaimo after work to buy plywood” doesn’t make for especially compelling reading.


I guess conceivably interesting is my choice in wood, which is a bit controversial: I bought a couple of pieces of cheap plywood just to build temporary bulkheads out of to wrap hull panels onto, but for the transom and some stuff that’s staying in place, I actually bought marine fir. There’s a lot of people who don’t like marine fir. It checks to hell if you don’t glass it and it’s hard to bend, but for the transom and forward bulkhead I don’t think it’s a bad choice. The transom will get glassed right up so I’m not worried about the checking there, and I can always put a light fabric on the collision bulkhead. The big question is “why not just use tropical mahogany hardwoods?”


I just don’t trust them. I know that’ll sound crazy to some builders, because the world standard is BS1088 Okume plywood. But I have seen that stuff go seriously wrong and I don’t trust it unless it’s from someone like Joubert. Same with Meranti. Meranti I trust more; it seems inherently rot-resistant. But you get a pinhole in okume and it turns into paper mache. Ordinarily the local plywood people carry Joubert plywood but I went in today and they were out, to my immense irritation. I called last week and they said they had tons. In fact they had some BS1088 “something tropical marine.” I think it was alternating plies of a dark meranti with a different tropical hardwood, maybe keruing. I think I used that stuff once. It was fine at first. But somewhere in the decking it got water in, somewhere I couldn’t see, and it disintegrated. Marine fir may be a little heavier than standard, and prone to checking, but it’s built here. I trust it. So at least for the stuff that doesn’t have to bend, that’s what I’ll use. It may be a little harder to work with but it's strong as hell. I think it'll work fine. Depending on how things go I'm not opposed to doing the whole hull in it. I know it has some downsides but man, it's tough as nails.

Up next: I get to start making sawdust!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2020 2:40 am
by Fuzz
I really like using the wood from BBC for anything less than half inch material. Most of it looks like it could be used for making fine furniture. When it comes to half inch and above I have no problem with marine fir. With the understanding the fir will be glassed on both sides and you do not need to bend it much. Fir is both heavy and stiff. Those traits can be very good things when used in the correct places.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2020 9:54 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, so far I am liking the marine fir; I haven't decided exactly where I will use that and where I'll use something else. I'm fairly annoyed that the local place that had Joubert in the summer, now has totally sketchy unknown-supplier asian plywood for the same price. I may end up building the whole thing out of fir just to spite them.

Today the boatbuilding started for real. I started laying out bulkheads on the plywood panels and making sawdust.


It took a while to lay out the transom pieces because I’m going to laminate a couple of layers together and I had to cram two pieces onto a sheet that could barely fit them, and it took a couple of tries to figure out the best setup. Anyway, half inch marine fir doubled up should be pretty solid.

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The only other thing I got to was hacking up a chunk of scrap from the transom cuts. Why is that important? Two reasons: I wanted to make sure there really weren’t voids lurking inside - there weren’t; Vancouver Island plywood mills seem rock solid - and I wanted to make some wood soup.

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In order to test the waterproofness of the wood, I’m boiling it and freezing it. I’m never going through another “supposed to be waterproof and isn’t” episode again, so I have six chunks of plywood boiling and I’ll take them out one at a time over the course of 24 hours and chuck them in the freezer and see if anything delaminates.


But I think it’ll be fine.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2020 8:57 pm
by cracked_ribs
The first round of supplies arrived: 12oz biaxial fabric and some 8.8oz Rutan 2x2 twill. I won’t need it for a bit but still nice to see stuff showing up. My big epoxy shipment was dropped off at the warehouse in Blaine, so I’m waiting on that to get sent up to Canada now. But I still have maybe a gallon or so of epoxy from my last boat so no big deal, I could easily get started with what I’ve got. Even if I were ready with all the panels, which I’m not.

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I did lay out more bulkheads today, that was satisfying. There’s plenty to go but nice to make headway. But the interesting thing to me is the boil test.


Several people have asked me about this. I thought it was well known, but then I have been in the boat game a long time. Basically the goal is to ensure the wood doesn’t have voids, doesn’t delaminate, doesn’t just in general suck. I boiled 6 pieces and took them out one at a time over the course of 24 hours, then froze them. After 24 hours in boiling water they were fully saturated and didn’t float anymore, so freezing them should really want to split them open. But no, all samples were hard as a rock afterwards. Well, all but one.


Somewhere around hour 21, my wife asked me if I’d boiled any of the plywood that failed on me on my prior deck repair on the Double Eagle. I hadn’t.


“You should,” she said. “Do you have any left?”


In fact I did have a few little bits left, so I went downstairs and snapped off a little leftover triangle of $150/sheet marine tropical hardwood, and chucked it in the boiling water and went out to go lay out some panels.

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Zero delamination.

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Bottom line: THIS is why I trust made in Canada marine fir. I couldn’t split the piece I’d boiled for 24 hours apart with a steak knife. It was solid as a rock. Ramming the point of the knife in like Norman Bates it only made it through two plies.



The “marine tropical hardwood” on the other hand…

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Garbage! So there you have it, that's why you test your wood. That $150/sheet "certified BS1088 marine tropical hardwood" lasted 1 hour in the water (and probably less, that's just when my wife noticed it was delaminating and told me to come check it out.)

***no, that garbage wood was NOT supplied by Boat Builder Central, who I trust to have enough pull to ensure real marine plywood. But this stuff was stamped BS1088 with third party verification and everything. So whatever else you do, TEST YOUR PLYWOOD!***

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 10:05 pm
by cracked_ribs
Work continues...the bulkheads are now all cut out; I am just working out the stringer dimensions so the bulkhead layout on the strongback can be set up.

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I put wheels on the strongback today so I can move it around for ease of construction, and put the bulkheads in order to get a bit of a sense of things. I'm pretty happy with how it's looking and will start setting up the jig properly tomorrow. I do need to leave the strongbacks empty to scarf up the long panels; I'll try to get the ply for that on Monday if I can, and scarf the ply together early next week. Then it's cutting panels and stitiching and gluing begins for real.

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The little guy is excited to be in the shop with me. He's too young to grasp any of what's happening but he's just happy to be there.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:10 am
by Fuzz
Making progress!Having the strongback on wheels will make a ton of stuff much easier.
Either the new shop heater is working really well or your wife is Canadian :lol:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 10:56 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, my garage isn't that big, so I think the wheels are going to be pretty critical for access.

No heat in that picture - no epoxy, no heat. But as my wife says..."our people are Nordic."

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 10:34 pm
by cracked_ribs
Just dialing in the jig...going to try to pick up the rest of the plywood and the epoxy tomorrow if I can.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2020 11:43 pm
by cracked_ribs
Everything showed up today and some of it was even correct. Spoiler alert: everything from BBC was exactly right. Everything else was...an alternate.

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Rented a trailer and drove to the specialty wood store a couple hours south of here. Asked for BS1088 meranti...got BS6566 which is a lower standard that is no longer actively maintained. Probably fine and was charged a lower price. Would cost around $300 to do anything about so I'll probably just angrily move forward. Have to boil test it for sure now though. My own fault for not inspecting everything as it was put in the trailer or reading the specific line items on the receipt and cross-referencing them vs the internet. Every time I let my good nature take over and assume anyone else knows what's going on and is paying attention to the outcome, I end up regretting it. I am so sick of learning that lesson.

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Drill arrived a week late from promised delivery time...wrong model, not a hammer drill. Messaged vendor. Annoying. Will require money back to ensure vendor does not wake up with series of new 1/2" or smaller nostrils installed in face. His neocortex is safe primarily because I think I would need the hammer function to get through the frontal bone.

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All the epoxy and supplies, correct and perfect, exactly as expected from Boat Builder Central. I had to move them through customs myself because I went with an independent freight forwarding company; it was easy enough but I needed a PDF invoice that I realized I didn't have. Emailed BBC at 8:14 am. They drew up a PDF and had it in my inbox at 8:26. I doubt I will buy supplies anywhere else again. Jeff and Reid of BBC are just about unparalleled as far as service goes.

The freight forwarding people were also awesome and undercharged me because I was a new client. The Canada Customs agent was also really helpful. The plywood people were also very nice which is why I let my guard down on inspecting the wood. Anyway I'm sure it will be fine and they did cut me a deal on the price after finding out I was building a boat, and had a good story about fishing off the west coast of the island in a little skiff when I was a kid. But man...never again do I just trust the people who are supposed to know what they're doing.

Please pardon my aggravation...lots of effort today, only to arrive at this moment of realization about the drill and the 6566 a few minutes ago.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 3:57 am
by Fuzz
I am not surprised at all by the service from BBC. Every time I use them I am amazed by the service and it is clear they care about their costumers. Narfi and I had an order shipped and Reid s=went beyond the call of duty to get us a great rate. I will give them my money if the price is any where close on stuff. And I have had Jeff tell me where to get stuff cheaper without my even asking. That kind of service earns repeat costumers.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 7:59 am
by Jeff
Thank you guys!! I appreciate the kind words!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 12:26 pm
by cracked_ribs
Don't thank us, you earned it by hard work! I have dealt with, I'm sure, a thousand different companies through their online presence from when I was working for a magazine and having to arrange samples and prototypes sent to me for testing...not many meet your standards of service. I would guess less than one percent, for sure. You guys really are a pleasure to deal with.

Today I guess I'll try to finish setting up the jig and maybe clearing out my actual shop (my garage is just a workspace, I have 99% of my gear in the basement of the main house) for scarfing the plywood together.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 9:37 pm
by cracked_ribs
I never get as much done in one day as I hope, but here's today's update:

Bought more misc lumber for minor tasks like supports on the jig.

All stations are now assembled on the jig although fine-tuning is still ongoing.

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I temporarily rigged up the motorwell-transom assembly. This is necessary at this stage to set the transom at the correct angle, but it will ultimately be a critical load-bearing structure to ensure there's a good strong box beam to transfer the engine loads to the structure of the boat.

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And the only other thing I got around to was relocating the plywood for the hull panels.

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I need to join them on the long axis, which I intend to do with scarf joints - lots of people will already know these but basically, the wood gets cut on a very shallow angle (I'll use 1:8) to give it plenty of surface area for contact, and glued. I want to do it on a nice flat surface, at least sixteen feet long. And it wouldn't be me if I didn't do at least some of it in a totally inappropriate location, after my living room build of my last boat.

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Well, it turns out our bedroom has a nice flat floor, around 20 feet long. Loads of space. And the deck is around thirty feet wide so I'll cut the scarf angles out there on a sunny day in the next week or so, then glue everything up in the bedroom, then cut the panels to shape on the deck and lower them back down with rope. The plywood sheets don't weigh much, so I hauled them up two at a time. Not difficult.

Tomorrow I'll try to finish up the jig, and maybe make a little scarfing jig so I can do that whole process with a router.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:10 am
by Fuzz
Any body who can get away with boat building in the bedroom is my hero :wink:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:51 am
by cracked_ribs
I'm extremely fortunate in that my wife has no expectations of conventional behaviour from me and isn't particularly interested in normal stuff herself...it was actually her idea to do the scarfing in the bedroom. I mentioned I needed a large, flat surface to do it easily and that I would probably have to spend a bunch of time cleaning the basement to do it there.

"But you hate cleaning," she said. "You would have to spend all day doing just that. Could you get the plywood into the bedroom? That's smooth and flat."

It's true, I hate cleaning. I hate anything that could be considered a domestic task. I am not cut out for civilization at all, in fact. I'm pretty good at stuff like turning a small tree into a mast by shaving it down with an axe. But dealing with taxes and mortgages and insurance...those are also problems I would be inclined to solve with an axe, unfortunately.

I believe the conditions of our marriage were pretty much "there will always be loud music, motorcycles, and gunfire; first person to back away from any of the above forfeits."

So a bit of epoxy in the bedroom...not likely to cause trouble. We are both fairly barbarian in inclination.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:54 am
by Jaysen
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 11:51 am it was actually her idea to do the scarfing in the bedroom
Assuming this is the joining technique and not some new "position" that I'm too old to understand, why are you scarfing ply vs the recommended glass backed butt joint?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:12 pm
by cracked_ribs
For one, scarfs are easy so no reason to avoid them. For another I find they usually remain more fair than butt joints - the scarf seems to more closely replicate the bend properties of the wood on either side of the joint. Fairing sucks and getting everything to lay well is a lot more appealing to me than avoiding a scarf.

The only reason I think people use anything else is that the scarf seems to intimidate a lot of builders; Jacques designs in butt blocks etc to avoid that for people. But scarfing plywood is easy and I've never seen the need to work around it. In this case I may use a combination of methods on the chine panels just because the curvature near the transom is so slight that I don't think I'll pay much of a fairing penalty for doing it the easy way. So the second join in the chine panel, I may just butt splice for the sake of convenience.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:45 pm
by gstanfield
Scarfs are easy, I agree. I will say that there are a few benefits to butt joints though.

They are easier than scarfs (easy vs easier)

They make more use of the plywood, no losses due to scarf overlap. This can be a big deal on some designs, especially those that barely fit on X amount of sheets.

They are a bit quicker

It’s easier to visually verify a good fiberglass butt joint vs a scarf since you can see through the glass and know that you don’t have voids.


I’ve built a few boats using more traditional building methods and always scarf my boards and one scarfed all the plywood. I’m not opposed to scarfs, just pointing out that there are benefits and downsides to both methods depending on the design and the builder. On another designer’s website there’s a scarfing tutorial that I wrote along with photos of the process.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:54 pm
by cracked_ribs
I definitely would not argue with any of that... it's also worth pointing out that unlike me, guys like Jacques and Evan know exactly where strength is necessary and design to an actual spec. They choose the joins they do for good reason.

I'm more like a completely unknown, unsuccessful Renn Tolman with zero track record: I'm some dude with a pencil and a saw. Would a glass splice be adequate for the core? Probably. Am I going to engineer it and know that to be true? Hell no. I'll just scarf it and know empirically that it's plenty skookum.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:20 pm
by gstanfield
To be clear, I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t scarf or trying to down your choice. I was just adding to the discussion with a few thoughts. 8)

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:36 pm
by cracked_ribs
No, I didn't take it that way at all. Lots of ways to skin this cat, and most of my decisions are legitimately questionable anyway.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:40 pm
by gstanfield
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:36 pm ... most of my decisions are legitimately questionable anyway.
I can definitely relate to that!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:14 pm
by cracked_ribs
Today was overcast but not rainy so I dragged the plywood out onto the deck and beveled it for the controversial scarf joints!

That's most of what I got done today, but it's slightly fiddly work and I had to do a fair bit of cleanup afterwards so it ate up a big chunk of my day.

I started off by mounting a router on a piece of leftover hardwood flooring...I just punched a hole through the center and then countersunk a couple of machine screws using the router itself.

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That let me bulk off the majority of the wood just by clamping a couple of straight boards to either end of the wood.

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The areas I couldn't hit with the router, I knocked down with a plane until they were roughly in shape, and then fine-tuned it all with an orbital sander. I don't like to overthink this stuff, I just get it into shape and let the glue do the work after this.

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I kind of like the look of the multi-toned plane curls.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:55 pm
by Jeff
Beautiful work and I don’t like scarfs!!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:47 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thank you very much - it's a bit hypnotic to do; lots of people hate them but I kind of enjoy it, in a way.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Nov 12, 2020 10:02 pm
by cracked_ribs
Transom is laminated...this is just two 1/2" layers of marine fir, probably tons for the 35 hp this skiff is scheduled to get. But I might end up throwing in a doubler between the motorwell walls just to bring the thickness up to standard clamping spec. The motorwell sides are also 1/2" marine fir, mostly because I had some lying around in scraps after making the transom. That whole assembly is going to be an anvil.

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Then it was time to rearrange the bedroom. We got rid of our old bed frame when we moved from Vancouver and neither of us care about that kind of stuff so for the last year we've just had the mattress on the floor. I should probably build a frame just to give it air circulation underneath or something but I never remember to do that stuff. I don't know where towels are kept or where dishes are stored. I just don't want to know anything like that so my brain rejects it.

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The scarfs got the same treatment as the transom: 1 coat epoxy, neat, let it soak in for a little bit, then slightly wet peanut butter on both sides, spread with a notched trowel. Like proper peanut butter, the kind that's just ground up peanuts at room temperature.

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I lay down a bunch of waxed paper to separate the epoxy from the floor, and then between each layer. I had a few of these laminated sawn pine shelves around that were part of a headboard I built at our last place; they have nice straight sides so I lay one down on the floor and used it to align the plywood during scarfing. My wife said I would have to buy waxed paper; we didn't have any. I asked where it would be if we did and she said there was a drawer in the kitchen near the fridge...I found this stuff and she said she thought it was "untrustworthy" and therefore didn't count. She speaks English, basically as a first language, but her syntax is a little weird sometimes, I think from being raised by German speakers, speaking English. Her German is actually worse than mine, and mine is beyond terrible...except she understands more spoken German than I do by a factor of about 20. Anyway I don't know what about this waxed paper was untrustworthy. It seemed fine to me.

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Running out of light by the end of it! I'm never in the bedroom unless I'm in bed so I guess the overhead light is burnt out? My wife's little lamp was working pretty hard by the end of the shift. The other thing that's funny is that it was the first time we've heated the bedroom...I like it cold and my wife just piles on blankets to sleep. It took about 48 hours to get up to temperature but it was necessary to cure the epoxy; usually this time of year that room would be around 30-40 degrees farenheit. I'm not sure how I'll sleep the next couple of nights. I might move into the library and just open the windows.

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A couple of 1x12s to spread the weight out across the joins, and a couple of plates to clamp it. That untrustworthy waxed paper sure better hold or I'll have the world's largest, most expensive, custom wooden toe-stubber in the bedroom.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:29 pm
by cracked_ribs
Untrustworthy waxed paper vindicated! Everything peeled apart as expected.

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The scarfs themselves look pretty good:

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Tiny bit of glue squeezed out the sides and bottom on each scarf but overall very clean. I aligned it all pretty carefully which makes a big difference. The waxed paper combined with pressure from a flat surface top and bottom allows for a very clean joint IMO. These two lines are something like 1/8" apart, maybe 3/16".

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The transom also glued up nicely but I didn't think to take a picture of it.

Other than that I mostly just worked on getting the jig aligned. It's pretty close now. The transom assembly is a bit tricky to work with because it's heavy and needs to be adjusted and supported at the same time. But I'm very close now.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2020 10:42 pm
by Cowbro
I cant get over the narration about gluing up those joints in your 30* bedroom. Lol. I like it though, when my wife complains about my boat building I can say that at least I am not gluing scarf joints on the floor in the bedroom.

Carry on!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 12:06 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, I take the whole "if you can't be a good example, at least be a horrible warning" thing pretty seriously.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 9:46 am
by gstanfield
I haven’t built in the bedroom yet, but two of my boats were built in our downstairs “family room”. Anything I build in there has to be small enough to go out a door and up stairs or out a window. It’s great for canoes and kayaks, just gotta be careful not to drop epoxy on the carpet!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 10:46 am
by Jaysen
No in home building yet. But the house is used to hold Lil Bit during hurricanes. Never know if we will need to float out the front door.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 11:42 am
by gstanfield
Days like today where the wind has been blowing a steady 35+ for four days with gusts as high as 80mph and temps in the 20's with snow really bum me out. I have to keep telling myself: At least we don't have hurricanes and summer humidity.


Still, by Christmas every year I'm so sick of winter that I start looking at maps for nice places to move and by April I'm so sick of winter that I start trying to sell things off, but when spring finally hits towards the end of May I know I'm in for three months of incredible weather and I forget all about moving back south.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 11:51 am
by cracked_ribs
My last build was indoors...and on the top floor of our apartment building, when we lived in Vancouver.

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I was pretty happy when the weather got nice enought that I could move it out onto the deck. Fortunately we had a pretty big deck and all the finishing and everything happened outside. And I finished the whole thing bright so there wasn't a ton of fairing dust, although it did mean that I had to lay the epoxy down pretty flat to avoid sanding it much, so that part was kind of a pain.

Once I get the large panels cut up, that should be it for the bedroom build. Although as my wife pointed out last night, it's kind of fun to have the bed up in front of the glass door. We get some pretty spectacular sunrises etc here.

Weather-wise, we aren't subject to hurricanes or severe winters, but you do have to deal with wind and rain. On the other hand, four days ago they were predicting ten straight days of rain, and we got one. Yesterday was mostly dry, and today there's not a cloud in the sky and it's probably a few degrees above freezing out there, making it some of the only land in Canada actually intended for human habitation.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:34 pm
by cracked_ribs
The jig is finally aligned to my satisfaction, which should last until the minute I roll it anywhere. Corner to corner, I'm seeing something like 1/4" of difference and I don't think that's enough to worry about seeing as the panels should float on the jig and self-align to some degree. The stringer cutouts are lined up and everything seems about right. It occurs to me that if I thought it out more carefully, I could have put the baseline on an angle, because the bow has a lot more freeboard than the stern...but it would have been a lot more math, so screw it. I can sand at 4' off the ground.

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I don't know if you can see in the picture above but in case you can and people are raising eyebrows at it...the motorwell bulkhead is not full height; the sheerline doesn't dip three inches between the transom and the motorwell and then spring back up or anything. I just cut it out of marine keeper plywood at the height it will be, because there's enough other full height stations to wrap the sides around and I mostly just need it there to help support the transom.

Having aligned the jig, I'm on to lofting the large panels.

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I know some people hate this process but I don't really mind it. I much prefer it to full-sized templates, anyway. I don't like it as much as nicely laid out plans with good measurements shown but it's not bad, to be honest. And I'm not just working from a table of offsets - in fact the way I'm doing it is pretty easy:

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Here's a screen cap of the kind of plan I'm working from. As you can see it's pretty self-explanatory.

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So I just put on some music or a podcast, draw the grid, and start plotting points. I have the sides laid out now and hope to cut them tomorrow. It'll be really nice to start hanging panels on the jig and have something a bit boat-shaped to look at.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2020 9:54 pm
by cracked_ribs
Big action today.

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This is a 2" strip of lexan that a local plastics shop gave me when I went in looking for a good batten to draw curves.  Pretty helpful!  The little muffins are lead; I use a beater muffin baking tin to make lead into readily melted or alloyed blocks so I have tons of little lead 1/2 lb blocks.  With a little block of wood and a clamp they make a nice batten-holder-in-placer.

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With the sides and bottom pretty much drawn up - there's some screwing around left to go, the sides need another foot and a half on the stern end and the bottom another 6 inches or so, but that'll be easy to splice in with the big cuts out of the way - I cut them out, leaving the sides about a half inch taller than necessary and an inch longer, and the bottom a half inch wider and an inch longer.

Ordinarily I would cut exactly to size - usually I'll measure precisely and cut half the pencil line away.  And in most cases I would be saying look, do you think you know better than the designer?  Cut to the size they recommend, don't improvise.  The builder needs to respect the designer.

But in this case, obviously the designer can't be trusted at all.  Of course, the builder is also kind of a problem child, so it's hard to know whose side to take.  Probably the builder and designer should spend some time in the octagon, fighting it out.  But for the moment, let's proceed under the assumption that an extra half-inch on the dimensions may turn out to be warranted, and it's easier to take a bit of wood off than put it back on.  No boat has ever been built from these plans, so I'm erring on the side of caution.  Or at least: I'm erring.

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Anyway, sides and bottom are cut out and they aren't needed in the bedroom anymore, so back to the garage with them:

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This last picture makes me think two things:

1) I hate that god damn railing...I just bought this house a year ago and haven't had time to do much to it but that railing has got to go.  It looks like someone bolted a bunch of pallets to my deck.

2) This is why I like scarfs for joining plywood.  As you can likely imagine, there were points during the process of lowering the cut out panels during which the apex of the bend was the scarf.  But it held just fine, and the bends were nice and smooth with no obvious hard spot at the splice.

Speaking of scarfs, since I know you're all dying to know what a scarf looks like when sawn through:

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That's a nice clean glue line if you ask me.  I'm quite happy with that.

Oh, one last thing: I figured out why my wife found the wax paper untrustworthy.

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It's godless communist hippy wax paper made from SOY.  If you tolerate soy stuff, you're probably not the kind of person who would spend a couple of decades of your life with me.  Luckily it must have been smeared with testosterone grease or something or it probably wouldn't have worked.

Damn hippy paper.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:02 am
by Jeff
Thank you guys!! I appreciate the kind words!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 10:02 am
by Jeff
Nice progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 12:07 pm
by TomTom
Watching this with interest!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2020 8:23 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys...a million little steps so I just try to keep plugging away.

Today was pretty busy at work so limited progress and even worse pics as I was rushing and forgot to take any of the in progress pics that are usually the most illustrative.

But I did a second round of scarfs, just little ones connecting a couple of scraps to the pointy end of the hull bottom. I think those panels are something like 16'5" long which in retrospect is a dumb design choice but whatever. Start to finish a couple of scarfs like that takes me an hour or less so not that big a deal.

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There's the newly scarfed wood all weighted with random junk.

The rest of my limited boat time today was cleanup - I have a couple of big paper bags of sawdust now which is really useful to me. Every time I get take-out coffee in a paper cup, I keep the cup. I have been doing this for about a year (I don't really buy that much coffee) and now I have dozens. The other thing I have is around 10 gallons of used motor oil, which I occasionally use to temper steel if I'm forging something, but at this point I have more than I need and want to get rid of it. Enter the sawdust: I fill a paper cup maybe 2/3 full of sawdust and 1/3 full of old oil. The oil saturates the sawdust in a few minutes, soaking completely in. The whole cup goes into the wood stove where it burns like a road flare for what seems like an hour or so, and it burns so hot there's practically no smoke at all. I put a few in the stove any time I'm going to work out there in the cold and man do they heat the place.

The one other thing I've been up to is boil-testing the meranti ply I bought a week ago. I was pretty confident in it but still, verify. I put scraps from a couple of sheets in the boiler and went through the whole boil/freeze process again.

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Removing the 24 hour piece.

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It didn't delaminate at all, but it definitely doesn't have the extreme grain strength of the douglas fir. But I'm sure it's well within spec for what it is.

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Nice and stab resistant, though. A bit of glass over that and I'll be pretty confident in this boat.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:56 pm
by cracked_ribs
Today's pictures look more impressive than is actually warranted, in my opinion.

The quick scarfs of yesterday are set up nicely so I cut out the last little bit of panel and lowered them back down to the shop. They sat on the lawn for about five minutes and picked up this little hitchhiker, about the size of a peppercorn:

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I know they're bad for the garden, but I let him go in the lane.

Anyway on to the real action.

This is temporary, I just wanted to do some test fitting. Still:

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Boat shaped opject. Panels are only loosely hung; sides aren't actually complete. But I might as well start getting the bottom panels to take a bit of a set.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 2:04 am
by Fuzz
Nice :D

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 7:35 am
by Jeff
I agree, very nice work!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:31 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys - very satisfying to see it coming together, even if in a limited way.

Unfortunately last night I was up late, and today I was very productive at work, and consequently I didn't get much important stuff done today.

All I have done today is cut out the last bits for the sides:

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The plywood is a little more than 4x8' so the scarfed sections are something like 4x15'11". I need to scab on about another two feet. These I probably will just do with butt blocks because there's practically no curvature in this section.

So there's a pair of side fillers, and a couple of butt blocks. I'll bevel down the butt blocks so I can glass over them. They'll mostly be behind the motorwell bulkhead anyway; I'll find a way to make it look clean.

And I laid out the cuts for the stringers, mostly using a chalkline.

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I also goofed around with the panels as they're hung on the jig, measuring them to see what needs trimming. I cut everything a little large just in case I'd screwed something up in the panel layout, but it looks like that wasn't necessary and I will have to take half an inch off everything. That's fine, it was just an insurance policy. I'm happy not to need it.

Oh, and I tightened in the zip ties at the bow...my plan is to slowly tighten them in over the course of about a week to get the curvature that I need. Initially I was worried it wouldn't work in S&G and I'd have to cold mold it, but no, I think it'll be fine. There were a couple of different iterations of the design and the first one had an even more extreme twist and I would definitely have had to cold mold it; this is more of a compromise and seems to work okay with 1/4 meranti.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:08 pm
by cracked_ribs
Bunch of errands to run after work today so the only real accomplishment was cutting out the stringers. I cut them out in pairs, alternating the scarfs just in case. Each stringer will be two layers of 1/4" laminated together. It probably wasnt necessary to stagger the scarfs, they're almost certainly as strong or stronger than the plywood on either side. But it wasn't much effort to flip one set around, either.

The only other thing of note, stringer-wise, is that cutting the centerline of each pair of stringers, I stayed completely to one side of the centerline, figuring that putting the kerf all on one side of the line would give me a taller stringer and a shorter one, by the height of one saw kerf. That's probably close to working with the slope of the hull. Close enough, anyway; epoxy is very forgiving.

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Not sure if this is interesting for anyone else, but one totally unexpected side-effect of this build and thread is that by writing every single day around the same time, I'm finding it easier to do other writing tasks again. I used to write a lot - as some people know I was once the editor-in-chief of a fairly large magazine - but I stopped almost entirely a couple of years ago, partly because I was sick of commercial writing and partly because I got incredibly busy with moving from Vancouver into storage, then living on an off-grid island, then moving out of storage into a new city, then having a kid. But my life has calmed down quite a bit and now I'm more in a headspace to write again so each night I try to edit 15-20 pages of this novel I have lying around that has needed a tune-up for a few years.

Anyway if anyone reading this has a good literary agent, hit me up. I'm ready to go back to work, it seems. Boatbuilding really does solve problems.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 9:47 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well I MEANT to just butt-block on the last bits of the sides but apparently I just can't bring myself to join plywood without scarfing it.

I was going to just butt splice it but right as I was about to this voice in my head said "you know you're always going to look at that butt block and feel like you cheaped out on the join, right?"

And that's true, it would always have bugged me on some level, so I just grabbed the plane and beveled the plywood out and scarfed it up.

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I did this round by hand as well...honestly the router jig concept was not really worth the effort IMO. I can bevel plywood with a plane pretty fast.

Then I painted all the surfaces with neat epoxy:

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Then slapped on epoxy/wood flour, put everything between between a couple of board for clamping stiffness, and loaded on a couple of flats of coke zero, which is probably my single biggest weakness.

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The bow is pulled in pretty well and should line up fine, although I climbed under the jig this afternoon to take a look and I think my whole "cut the wood a little large just in case" thing was totally unnecessary, so I'll pull off the bottom panels and cut them right to the line. It's a tiny bit of extra work but this is the first boat built from plans I drew in this program and I didn't really trust the "unfold" function. But it looks like between separating the panels into different files and careful drafting, I managed to make it work. Might make some more progress this weekend, anyway.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:28 am
by pee wee
Your skiff is coming along nicely, and I fully understand about not wanting to look back and regret a shortcut.

That's one of the great things about ww* hand tools, just pick them up and go to work- no plugs, and excellent control. I bought a "cordless saw" at a thrift shop for $2, dates to the early 1900's made by EC Atkins and used it recently to cut the angles on the legs of some saw horses I was building. Easy, fast and accurate.










* wood-working

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:47 am
by cracked_ribs
Thank you - definitely agree on the traditional woodworking tools; power tools are of course fast and...well...power-ful. But in most cases I don't find them viscerally satisfying to use. On my last build I was up at my cabin and needed a mast and a sprit for my little sailing dinghy I'd just finished and so I just picked a young Douglas Fir and trimmed it down with an ax and finished it with a plane and it was one of the most fun parts of the build.

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Up next: last night's update, which I didn't post because imgur was acting up but it seems to be working now so hang on one moment...

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:49 am
by cracked_ribs
Hauling and hacking. I wanted to cut the bottom panels to their final size today so I pulled them off the jig, took them back up to the bedroom, cut them out and dropped them back down. I also trimmed the side panels, already up there, to their final size. In retrospect I guess I could pretty much have followed the CAD but what can I say...I’m always paranoid about that stuff.

I know I've gone off about loving hand tools but did I mention I also love that Hitachi worm drive? It just tracks so straight and easy. Here’s a cut I made to take a quarter inch off one panel:

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I one-handed that, no problem. The saw is so settled, it just doesn’t buck or twist at all. I love that thing.

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Off-cut is what, at most an eighth of an inch wide. No problem. It’s a smooth saw.

Here’s another hauling pic which I took to show that A) I also drilled the holes on the bottom panels for tying the thing together, and B) this is another example of why I like scarfs. I have 8+ feet of plywood hanging off the deck and the railing is the only spot holding it up, and I deliberately placed the scarf right on top of the fulcrum just so you can see how strong that joint is. It’s about two feet wide and half a panel of plywood is just hanging in the air, supported by that scarf.

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What next? Get the panels back on the jig and start assembling, I guess.

Not too much weirdness putting it all together. Leaving the bottom panels on half-tightened for a few days sure made them easy to pull together at the bow. I forgot to get a good picture of that; I’ll get one tomorrow. I forgot to tape the stations before stitching stuff up but there’s quite a bit of space underneath, I’ll just crawl under and slide some tape in under the seams tomorrow to keep them from adhering to the panels when I start gluing it all up.

Ties are still loose but everything lays together pretty smoothly as this picture shows.

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I thought I’d include this picture because it’s basically the same pic as the one the other day, only the plywood goes all the way to the transom now:

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That’s about it for my Saturday afternoon…I was tied up with family tasks until around 2 pm - I like to send my wife off for the occasional massage and pedicure and today she had an appointment at ten so I took the little guy for a long walk and then I had to go get us Christmas lights and groceries which took a couple of hours, but still, nice to have three straight hours to work with no interruptions and I had from two until five with no other responsibilities at all so I got a fair bit done.

At the very end of the day I goofed around with the zip ties for a bit, just aligning the panels, but no hurry there...I want to go slow in this phase and be sure everything is lining up well. Here’s the current state of it before I shut down for pre-dinner toddler wrestling:

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:28 pm
by cracked_ribs
Today I just spent my time stitching panels together and tuning the fit of the panels against each other. I had her pretty close then decided to back off the bow a bit and adjust a few things…

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It’s very close now, though, very close.

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This is nice, you can get a bit of a sense of the sheer line.

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And here you can see the bow, it’s not actually under that much pressure to get it this snug. There’s a little bit of a gap at the chine which I suspect I’ll need to work out by pulling the chines closer to the center line in the forward 18-24 inches, but it’s not severe. Epoxy would fill it without much difficulty.

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If you look REALLY closely in a couple of pics you might see some wood fibres poking out right at the zip ties. Those are little bits of those 1/16” or 1/8“ cutoff strips from yesterday, I think. Was it the day before? At any rate I’m using them as spacers to keep the panels a bit separate for gluing. My tendency is probably to build tighter than I should; a bigger gap might be better. That’s the kind of thing I tend to struggle with in stitch and glue.

On a positive note, since the hull is stitched, and the process is called stitch and glue, all that’s left must be the gluing. I’m half done! I guess I’ll be finished in three weeks!

Or, you know, maybe not.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2020 8:26 am
by Jeff
Nice progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2020 10:23 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thank you!

Very little time yesterday or today; I missed doing an update yesterday but there's not much to show, really. I continue to make tiny adjustments in the stitching. I'm very close to how I want it now.

Here's a pic that I don't know if anyone will be interested in or not: I took it just to give some sense of the shape of the forefoot. You can see here how far forward I've pulled the foot to get the stem fairly vertical and to lengthen the waterline.

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And here you can see how I'm messing around with different straps to pull the chine inwards a bit close to the bow. It's working pretty well. As soon as I'm convinced I can't get the shape any better, I'll start gluing it up.

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And then here you can see how I've been going along and making sure there's a bit of a gap between the panels all the way along. I have had to do a bit of trimming in a couple of spots to make sure there's a gap, although I don't think it will matter that much: the real strength will of course be in the glass, not the joints. As long as I have epoxy in the joint and not wood on wood, I think I'm happy with that.

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One thing you can't see is that I went along and put packing tape behind every seam, just to reduce the amount of epoxy wastage as it gets pushed through the seams. Sometimes I see boats that get flipped and every seam looks like it was dripping twice as much epoxy as it was retaining, so I started taping the back sides of seams when I glue them up. One thing I didn't do on this one, although I thought about it and if I had more time when it was at that stage I might have given it a shot, was put 1/2" pvc pipe for the length of the chines and keel. If I'd stuck entire 10' lengths against the seams, A) I probably would have spent less time monkeying around with the strap tension, and B) had pre-formed fillets. I had been meaning to do that on this build but at the correct moment I didn't really have a convenient chance to go get the pipe, so I just kept on building. In general I don't like to over complicate things; just keep moving forward and you get the boat built, that's my experience.

But I've never seen anyone else build with joints temporarily backed by pipe to give it shape, an epoxy stop, and an automatic radius, so I really should have done it just to show it as a concept. Next time.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 8:26 pm
by cracked_ribs
A simple update today: I finished adjusting the panels, and glued between stitches over about 90% of the boat. There's a couple of spots I discovered while working that I think will be easier to fine tune once the surrounding stuff is glued up, so I just worked around them.

I built a big fire in the stove for this to get everything good and warm, and boy, it sure worked. Although it was so much hotter than every other fire I've had, the stovepipe really cooked in, and smoked the hell out of the garage for about half an hour.

Anyway I think it will remain warm enough that the epoxy will harden right up overnight. I'll check it after dinner and maybe build a small fire again if I think it's necessary but it was kicking pretty well by the time I shut down around twenty minutes ago.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:24 pm
by cracked_ribs
Super busy the last few days and haven't written much but I do continue to make progress on the boat.

I have been dialing in a few spots as I go so glued everything up over the course of a couple of days, letting the epoxy set up on the initial gluing and then bending the panels as necessary in the few remaining areas to get the alignment the way I wanted it. Some of the tweaks were really minor, like this first picture I wanted to move the bottom panel out a miximum of about 1/8" relative to the top panel in this one area.

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Other areas required creative clamping to move the sides inward at the join.

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Once the second round of glue had set up I pulled the straps - the epoxy doesn't really adhere to them well so a good yank and even the ones that got in a bit of contact with the glue pop right out - and started smoothing and rounding the edges and corners.

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The hull has taken the shape nicely; that transition towards the bow looks pretty good. A slight compound curve in that area; I achieved it the same way I have achieved everything else in life: p̶e̶r̶s̶i̶s̶t̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ brute force.

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Bike's getting dusty but all the seams are smooth and round. Up next:

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About time to get glassing.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2020 10:50 pm
by Fuzz
The hull is looking good! And you are making fast work of it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:11 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks, we'll see how my perseverance holds up once I'm just fairing the same surface 400 times in a row, but this slam it together phase I do pretty well at. If you need quick and dirty heavy lifts, I'm your guy, but a need for sustained effort on repetitive tasks I typically resolve via arson, so hard to say if I'll slow to a crawl when things get boring. Past boats I have built were either small, or had a workboat finish for a reason.

On the other hand...building boats seems to exploit a task fixation loop in my brain and I am hard to distract when I have one on the go so I'll hammer away as long as I can.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 10:55 am
by Dougster
That clamping program pictured is quite clever, way past "brute force". And 1/8" 8O
Man your "good 'nuff" is what I'd call craftsman work. Sure am enjoying the build thread.

Dougster

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:49 pm
by cracked_ribs
Oh, thanks very much, I'm glad it's interesting.

The reason I'm monkeying around with tiny panel adjustments like having that little scraper prying the panel out with a bit of spring pressure in one little spot is because I'm really lazy. I try to take the approach that fixing problems as you build gets progressively harder at each stage, so the early parts are really critical. My reasoning is basically this: if all you have up are the stations, and one is, say, 1/4" too wide, you could probably locate that problem and solve it in one hour of effort. Once you see it, you cut the panel down a bit and you're done.

If you don't discover it until you put on battens, say, like a more traditional wood boat, it might take you ten hours to locate the problem and solve it, because you'd need to adjust battens and thin out different stuff and blend in other things. But it's still not much wood; the hull is 99% air at that point so there's not much material to screw around with.

If you don't discover it until the hull is sheathed and you have to fair out the whole hull to accomodate that 1/4", maybe you're in for a hundred hours of work, because to fair in a 1/4" bulge at one station could be a huge job. Each stage is like an order of magnitude harder to make a change.

So that's why at this phase, when everything is still relatively easy to fix, I like to tune the panels fairly carefully to sit how I think they should, to limit the amount of hard work later.


What you are really looking at, therefore, is just a complex ode to my own desire to avoid work.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:24 pm
by Jeff
Nice work!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2020 10:25 pm
by cracked_ribs
I didn't get as much done today as I hoped; it was a lot of fiddly little things and preparatory work for the next stage. But the next week or so should generate some real action.

I finished gluing up all the seams; every little spot left over from my various tweaks and twists has now been glurped up nicely. All the stitch holes have been filled as well. These two tasks seemed to take forever.

I also wanted to transfer some fabric from my 50lb roll of 12oz biax to a smaller, more manageable one, so I laid out the cloth on the boat to get that figured out a bit. A couple of 8 yard chunks should do the hull, and then to finish right up to the gunwales I'll use a bit of the 7725 Rutan 2x2 twill I have.

Pretty cool to start laying out the glass fabric; I've never actually used 12oz biax fabric before. It's heavy stuff when you have enough of it.

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And this is the final glued-up hull panel situation...

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Then I wanted to saturate the seams where the biaxial tape will go, so I marked those out to help keep the tape straight and the overlaps in the right spots and then rolled around 12 oz of epoxy on to soak into the wood before the tape goes down. I had fantasies of getting the tape down today but I spent too much time tuning and gluing and laying stuff out to do that. That's okay; these early stages are worth investing a bit of time in.

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At the end of the afternoon, I had a little bit of epoxy left so I slapped on a single short piece of tape at the transom. I hadn't been heating the garage all day because it's partly to my advantage to have the epoxy curing slowly at this point but then of course if I want to wet out fiberglass I have to hit it with a heat gun and it was too much of a pain to bother with late on a Sunday afternoon so I put on the one piece just to get things rolling, and called it a day.

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One thing I like about boat building...I get so focused I forget other stuff. I opened a Winter Dunkel from Whistler Brewing around 2pm and didn't take a sip until after 5. The amount I save on beer will probably pay for the boat at this rate.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:07 pm
by cracked_ribs
It was sunny today so I got cocky and didn't light a fire. Definitely a mistake. I started at about 4pm and the sun was down maybe 20 minutes later and it got cold.

I glassed on the transom, 2x 12oz staggered on all sides, and one chine seam. But holy cow, what a lot of work. I was mixing 6oz at a time, pouring it on and then heating it with a heat gun for paint stripping to get it thin enough to saturate the glass well. I have about half the seams finished now, but it took 3 hours or so and wasn't fun work: burning fingers and freezing toes.

Tomorrow I'll light a fire and get things comfortably warm first, and the other chine, keel x2 and stem x2 should go on a lot easier.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 10:37 pm
by cracked_ribs
Continued to glass seams today; I lit a fire in the stove and it was a huge improvement for sure. I hit the areas I was going to glass with a sander, just in case, but they had a tiny bit of tack left to them so I think it's reasonable to conclude that I'll still get a primary bond anyway.

I actually kept on with the heat gun technique, though. It's faster when the ambient temperatures are comfortable. But what I really like is that it's extremely controllable. I can get a layup that is 50% epoxy by weight and not a gram more; maybe less in some circumstances. The heat just thins the epoxy so well, and yet the ambient temperature is low enough that it cools off pretty quickly after you remove the heat. I think I'll stick with the method for the time being. The only downside I can think of is that potentially you can get a pretty good lungful of epoxy fumes if you're not watching what you're doing.

Anyway, I glassed the keel and didn't have time for much more today. But the glass laid so smoothly on the keel, I was really happy with it.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:03 pm
by cracked_ribs
Not much to say today beyond: all the seams are now taped. It looks much smoother in person; somehow the lighting in pictures always makes fiberglass look kind of messed up. But in reality it's fairly decent. The stem-chine-keel intersection could double as tank armour: two layers on the keel, two on the stem, and one on each chine, but they all wrap around the stem a bit, so I think there's 6 layers total in that spot, just on the outside. That'll set up like granite. But the time the inside gets glassed it'll probably get bought up by GenDyn for use in naval gun testing.

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Will try to get the fabric on the hull this weekend, although if the weather is nice we might take the complete boat out for fun instead.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 10:24 pm
by cracked_ribs
Only one task today: prep for fabric. I went over everything looking for air bubbles under the tape but it's very good. There are a couple of tiny spots at the transom, like 1/4 the size of a dime, that might have air behind them. It't hard to tell. But I don't think it's particularly worth grinding them out to see, they're so small. There was one air pocket between two layers that was about the size of my little finger, that I cut out and I'll just pop a little scrap in its place. Other than that it was just a matter of sanding everything with a bit of shine, until it was thoroughly matte.

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Probably start getting fabric on tomorrow, depending on the weather and how much I feel like taking the big boat out instead. Winter springs are starting to turn up at Porlier Pass.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:33 am
by Fuzz
Boat is looking good! You are lucky, our springs will not be good fishing for another couple of months :cry: And then we have to hope the harbour is not froze over.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 11:30 am
by cracked_ribs
Well...if it's any consolation, I can pretty much guarantee I'll be leaving a lot of fish in the water for you. Two months of determined assault on northward-bound salmon stocks by me will likely result in 3-4 lost downrigger balls, 50-60 pounds of random seaweed hauled up, and something like two undersized salmon that I'll angrily throw back before swearing I'm not spending another season trolling for these god damned things.

But on the plus side I'll probably spend thousands of dollars to accomplish this.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 11:49 am
by Jeff
Good progress, she is looking good!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 2:38 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks - about to go see if I can get some fabric on her next!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 12:06 am
by cracked_ribs
Another simple update: one side is now sheathed in fabric. It took around six hours; I probably could have done it in three during the summer, but in the winter it requires a fair bit of effort to heat everything.

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I'm not sure if you can see the marks on the glass; there's a black tick with a sharpie every 26 inches. Why every 26 inches?

I figure it like this. My 12oz biax is 50" wide. 36x36/50 is 25.92, so every 26 inches of fabric should eat about 12oz of epoxy, if I'm doing exactly 1:1, which would be pretty good for a hand layup particularly in cold conditions.

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But I'm ashamed to admit I couldn't sustain an exactly 50% glass layup. I nearly made it, but at the end, I had to mix 3 extra ounces. I'm not going to do the math just this minute but I believe that makes for a 49% glass layup. Good enough.

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One thing I am very happy with is the extreme uniformity of the layup. It's the heat gun, I have to go over every inch and it gives me a huge amount of control over the end result. There were almost no air bubbles in the entire taping process, for example. Every area that looks even slightly over- or under-epoxied, I just hand-squeegee, using the heat gun to control the viscosity. It's slow but it works very, very well.

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I might try doing the second side tomorrow, I haven't quite decided yet.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 8:07 am
by Jeff
Nice work!!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:28 am
by cracked_ribs
Thanks Jeff - one entire gallon of resin and hall a gallon of hardener down, many more to go!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:17 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well, that's all the glassing that HAS to happen on the outside, although I think I'll throw a layer of that 7725 twill on the sides, overlapping the chines. I don't really like leaving plywood without glass, even with epoxy. It's overkill but the 7725 is only 8.8oz and that should soak up around 100oz of glue. For the minor weight penalty, I think i'll be happy, especially since there is minimal interior framing on the sides.

I'm totally exhausted, though. I might well take tomorrow off of boat building. My wife did a great pork roast tonight, which I wasn't expecting and discovered when I finally came inside, so that took the edge off.

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Definitely feels good to see the hull glassed up.

Hard to believe I bought the plywood four weeks ago tomorrow.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:24 am
by Jeff
Nice work and you are making excellent progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:46 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:31 pm
The slightly odd constraints of this boat are that it has to run with a 1979 20hp Johnson, with about a 17.5" shaft. Long story but I was given the motor; it was mounted on a 14' Mirrorcraft aluminum skiff we used to fish off the west coast of Vancouver Island when I was about eight years old. It hasn't run in 20+ years but they're simple machines and I'm confident I can get it running. It hasn't got many hours and was well maintained before being abandoned.
My wife's uncle stashed a early 60's Evinrude 35 in her parents garage for about 50 years, looked nearly perfect when we found it so I went in search of a boat to put it on. I found a little 60's Texas Maid 15' to stick it on, worked great. So I fully appreciate the "motor in search of a boat" mentality. Your designing and building something goes a fair bit beyond my two weeks of Craigslist searching, what a great way to honor a treasured antique!

I'm following your build closely and am learning a lot from it, albeit too late since I already made a bunch of mistakes that you've talked about, esp regarding the panel fitting, I made some monsters there. I warm up my epoxy in a crock pot but never tried hitting it with a heat gun to get it smooth once wetted out, it's something I'll consider moving forward.

Keep up the great work and detailed posts!

Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:20 am
by Matt Gent
That's a handsome little skiff. Reminds me of an old Aquasport. I've been doodling something similar for a potential build, a little smaller. Like the deep fore-foot and the contiguous stem in profile.

Building inside is one thing; cutting plywood next to the bed (uncovered) is next-level!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:48 am
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys, I admit it's going faster than I expected. I think I have between 50 and 60 hours in it now but of course this is the fast part with big changes every day. I'm sure it'll get slow and boring very shortly. I hope the design continues to appeal when you get a better look at it, come flip day, whenever that is.

I use heat and cold a lot on epoxy; on my last build I often had a couple of batches of different types in the fridge or freezer...it just seems to be the way I do things.

The heat gun was out of necessity, it was too cold and I had to get the epoxy flowing pronto. But it works very well to even out the lamination without dumping a ton of excess resin in. I have used a little under 3 gallons total at this point - without the heat gun I'd probably be up around five.

I'm sure big mistakes are coming but I've been lucky so far. It does make me think that the classic advice of "build small first" is very good... this is my second stitch and glue, and the 2017 experience with building a little sailing dinghy left enough information in my head that I rarely have to stop and think about what I'm doing, I can just work.

In contrast I have a good friend who started on an FS17 something like seven years ago. It's been flipped but isn't much further along than that and it's partly because he's having to figure out everything from scratch as he goes: no experience with epoxy, no experience with fibreglass, no good frame of reference for things going well or poorly. He's using more materials than necessary and he's pretty frustrated with the whole experience. I would have warned him but he's impulsive and figured he could just go straight to the boat he wanted...there are builders who can do that but I think it requires a lot of research.

This is my third boat, the first being a more traditional wood sailing sharpie of my own design, twenty years ago. It's not that there aren't surprises left but a bit of background sure helps you move along more quickly.

One thing that's been a bit surprising, actually...I have never used biax before. I've only sheathed wood with light weave. This stuff sure takes more effort to saturate - I was lucky on that realization. The day I put a single strip of tape on, it struck me how much work it was and reset my mental timeline on those tasks. If I'd set up a table and started wetting out tape in bulk I'd have been screwed.

So luck is a big part of it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:39 am
by cracked_ribs
I apologize for the lack of updates - things were very busy at work and I am spending a lot of time editing in the evening.

On top of that, the progress was pretty boring for a few days - I sanded the hull enough to get the binding threads knocked down and it was a fair bit of work. I don't really trust anything to adhere to a shiny surface so I went at the whole thing, making sure every inch of it was thoroughly scuffed, without cutting through the glass fibers. It was slow and labour-intensive.

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Today I laid on the 7725 Rutan, which is a lighter weave, but allegedly very strong. It's about 11 pounds of extra weight, total, to put this on either side but it also finishes out a lot smoother than biax and I'm paranoid about leaving surfaces unglassed. This is overkill but for 11 pounds, I don't mind. Now I'll never worry about bouncing cannonballs off the side or sticking a gaff through the waterproof membrane.

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Starboard side is finished glassing; I'll try to get the port side done tomorrow.

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I also picked up some dimensional lumber: meranti 1x2s which I'll rip lengthwise for spray rails, and 1x3s which I'm going to try to turn into reverse chines. The reverse chines should knock down the spray anyway but my boats spend a lot of time bouncing up against docks etc and I'd rather have a spray rail to take the fender hits than the paint.

Oh, I also patterened a stem, which is purely decorative, but which I think will suit the classic sheerline. But I didn't take a picture of it. I'll laminate a couple of 1/2" pieces together for that, and bed it on with peanut butter, but probably also tape it. It's a pointless piece of trim but I like the look. I'll tie it into the keel; I think it'll look right on this boat. A bit of a Doug Hylan flourish for a fairly plumb bow.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:12 pm
by Cowbro
I almost posted in here yesterday asking for updates... but i didn't want to seem entitled. lol.

I love the plan for a stem, it will add an awesome bit of style. I feel like there are a handful of boat plans here that could benefit visually from a "faux" stem.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:55 pm
by cracked_ribs
Jeez, the entitlement!

There are a lot of designs here I really love but at times the sheer practicality and professionalism of the designers render vessels that are a little too clean to my eye, if that makes sense - there's no accounting for taste, of course, and adding a stem to a glass stem that's probably five times as strong is, I'm sure, an eye-roller for people like Jacques.

But as a guy who is just building what he likes, I'm okay doing things that proper designers wouldn't consider. I guess I can justify it a tiny bit in this case as the boat will be used a lot as transport to and from my island place and as such we're endlessly hooking and unhooking it from a mooring; for short hooks when I just need to come in, grab something, and go, I'll be able to just toss a loop over the stem; rather than placing a bow-ring low down where a trailer needs it, I can just punch a hole through the stem and have a point that's very easily reached (especially compared to now when you have to lie down on the deck of my current boat, and reach through the railing to grab the mooring line, which sucks in bad weather) and if I omit the bow ring entirely and put a wear strip on the front, I can make better use of it as a push boat, which is another occasional task that comes up at the island.

So in fact even the fairly plumb bow isn't PURELY stylistic; once in a while I'm pushing logs or docks or barges around and maybe there's an argument that a semi-sacrificial stem would even help a bit.

But I could get away without it, I just thought it would look cool and am rationalizing the decision post hoc, really.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:09 pm
by Jeff
Nice progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 4:43 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:55 pm But I could get away without it, I just thought it would look cool and am rationalizing the decision post hoc, really.
I feel about the same about my poling platform(if I ever build it).

Great work, per usual!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 5:13 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thank you - I try to do a good job of this stuff but to be honest I'm not very patient by nature so I really have to stack the deck if I want a larger project to keep moving forward while sustaining a decent quality of work. It's half the reason I work fast...otherwise I'll get bored and want to move on to something else.

I had planned to get the port side glassed today but work is going to hang on to me for a couple of hours yet, so I think I'll just be filling the weave today...I checked an hour ago and it's still a tiny bit tacky so hopefully at least my days of sanding fully hardened epoxy are coming to a middle, and I can work wet on wet for a bit.

Still can't believe I haven't glued my beard to anything yet.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2020 7:09 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Dec 14, 2020 5:13 pm Thank you - I try to do a good job of this stuff but to be honest I'm not very patient by nature so I really have to stack the deck if I want a larger project to keep moving forward while sustaining a decent quality of work. It's half the reason I work fast...otherwise I'll get bored and want to move on to something else.
I'm the same: need to ride the inspiration wave while it's up, never know when its gonna break!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2020 7:59 pm
by Rover1
Hi Cracked Ribs,
Really great boat build!
Special woman letting boat parts be made in the bedroom!
Rover1

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:18 pm
by cracked_ribs
VT_Jeff wrote: Mon Dec 14, 2020 7:09 pm I'm the same: need to ride the inspiration wave while it's up, never know when its gonna break!
Yeah I'm about to hit the fairing grind and am not looking forward to trying to sustain this level of effort...but we'll see how I do.
Rover1 wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 7:59 pm Hi Cracked Ribs,
Really great boat build!
Special woman letting boat parts be made in the bedroom!
Rover1
Thanks man, I think it's coming along not too badly and my wife - she's a character, all right. I can't remember if I was saying this here or elsewhere so I apologize if I'm repeating myself but I think the deal we struck early on was that there would always be guns, motorcycles, and Motorhead at dangerous volume, and the first person to back out forfeits the relationship. She was never looking for a civilized human being and she didn't find one, so the fact that I keep doing stuff like this is actually part of the appeal for her, I think. We watched that German netflix series "Barbarians" and through the whole first episode she was sort of slowly nodding and and watching very intently, and at the end she said "these are our people" which is literally true enough I guess, she's German originally, but I think she meant it figuratively: Rome is order and stability; the barbarians are freedom and chaos.

We're definitely on the barbarian end of the spectrum.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:39 pm
by cracked_ribs
Pretty busy today - the wife sold a couple of bikinis (she designs them and makes one-offs for people who want her specific stuff) and it's a big enough pain to go to the post office right now that I figured I'd better do it. They only let a few people in at a time so there's a big lineup outside and it's better for me to do that and her to stay at home with the kid so that ate most of my time after work.

But what I did manage to do was get the stem cut out; this'll get blended into the hull down at the cutwater and give her a pretty classic profile, I think. It's two layers of 1/2" ply, staggered for a half-lap joint where it'll join the keel. It'll make her more prone to bow steer in following seas but I'm not very worried about it; this boat will probably never see water I'd consider especially rough and if we get caught out I'll just slow down a bit and cork along.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:36 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:39 pm Pretty busy today - the wife sold a couple of bikinis (she designs them and makes one-offs for people who want her specific stuff) and it's a big enough pain to go to the post office right now that I figured I'd better do it. They only let a few people in at a time so there's a big lineup outside and it's better for me to do that and her to stay at home with the kid so that ate most of my time after work.

But what I did manage to do was get the stem cut out; this'll get blended into the hull down at the cutwater and give her a pretty classic profile, I think. It's two layers of 1/2" ply, staggered for a half-lap joint where it'll join the keel. It'll make her more prone to bow steer in following seas but I'm not very worried about it; this boat will probably never see water I'd consider especially rough and if we get caught out I'll just slow down a bit and cork along.

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Good on ya for helping the wife out, happy wife happy life. Can you not print a label at home and have ups pick it up?

Nicely done on the stem, that will be a stare generator for sure!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:50 am
by pee wee
? Maybe something like this? :lol:


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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 9:50 am
by cracked_ribs
VT_Jeff wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:36 am
Good on ya for helping the wife out, happy wife happy life. Can you not print a label at home and have ups pick it up?

Nicely done on the stem, that will be a stare generator for sure!
I guess it probably could be done that way (and likely more efficiently) but in general I don't get too involved with what she's doing, except in an editorial sense: I have been kind enough to give my thoughts on what bikinis look best and even volunteered my labour to oversee the wearing and photographing of her designs which just goes to show how generous I am with my time. But her simple approach to shipping works for her (she doesn't really have to send that many, it's not a huge operation) so I just help with the occasional drop off or pick up of something.

Hopefully the stares it generates aren't from people asking "why is that guy coming back into the harbour backwards again?" but I'll try to offset the bow steering with a keel. I'm hoping it'll help to make the otherwise very shallow V more comfortably in the short chop of the bays and islands here, but I guess we'll see.
pee wee wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 8:50 am ? Maybe something like this? :lol:


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Don't tempt me...I have been threatening for years to do an Oughtred-style clinker ply mini-longboat, and enter it into the Race to Alaska. That could be the next build.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 9:52 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Dec 16, 2020 9:50 am I have been kind enough to give my thoughts on what bikinis look best and even volunteered my labour to oversee the wearing and photographing of her designs which just goes to show how generous I am with my time.
Quite the humanitarian! :lol:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2020 10:43 pm
by cracked_ribs
As I focus more on the large editing job I have on the go, I'm getting a bit strapped for time and so the updates are less frequent but work on the boat continues.

I have glassed everything on the exterior of the boat, and filled the weave with a wood flour mix. It won't be sanded down much at all; a scuff at most so the strength of the wood flour mix is more important than the shapeability at this stage.

Today I laminated the stem, and ripped the spray rails and keel. Here's the stem gluing up:

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The clamps are just snugged, not cranked way down. Just enough to get epoxy all around the edges. Next: ripping the trim bits.
Ripping long sections of wood accurately is really simple if you have a table saw...which I don't.

I drew a line down the centre of this Douglas Fir 1x3 and cut it with my Hitachi worm drive, which, again, I love.

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It's not actually that hard to rip stuff by hand if you're careful. I used up most of my carefulness on not stepping into the whirling macerator of death next to my shins but I still managed to cut a decent line on the keel, which is pretty good since I decided to crank up my productivity by drinking a tall can of vodka-infused energy drink.

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That'll make a nice keel. I think I'll probably glue a strip of UHMW or HDPE to it or something because it'll get grounded out at my island place all the time.

The other thing I did was clean up a couple of spots where the curvature of the bottom was extreme enough that it formed a couple of minor depressions. They weren't severe but the lighting in there hit them at a shallow angle so I was always looking at them and it bugged me, but more importantly I lay a straight edge parallel to the keel and slid it down the side, looking to see if the water would take a goofy path going over those spots and there was about a 1/4" dip. I laid down about an eighth of an inch of peanut butter, then some scrap 4 or 6 ounce weave overtop and saturated the glass. I'll probably have to do one more layer of peanut butter and I might cover that in a bit more weave as well, but then I should have smoothed the transitions right out.

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Mostly fixed:

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The only other picture I have for you today is this: I put the stem in place and took a picture and rotated it so I could get a better sense of the lines. I think that'll do pretty well.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2020 10:00 pm
by cracked_ribs
I should have taken more pictures today, but I didn't, so here's a list of what I got done instead.

1) scarfed the spray rails
2) scarfed the keel
3) turned a couple of 1x3s into what will be reverse chines
4) ground the glass off at the sheerline

All the pictures I took were from the process of ripping the 1x3s. I also took a jigsaw to them every 4" on the stern 8', and every 1" forward of that so I could get them to bend smoothly to the curvature of the chine.

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They're just test fitted, they're not actually gluing down yet. Still, I'm slowly moving forward and that's the main thing. Not sure how much time I'll have in the leadup to Christmas and then after that we're heading to our island place for a bit of vacation so could be a week or two without much progress, but I hope to be fairing in January.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 6:43 am
by VT_Jeff
You have an "Island place" but not a table saw? I'd say your priorities are spot on, well done!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 8:28 am
by Jeff
I agree, well done!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 10:56 am
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys - yeah, up until a couple of years ago my primary residence was an apartment in Vancouver, BC. I bought a place on an unserviced island for a getaway; it's perched up on a cliff, no electricity or running water, just a timber frame cabin and acres of forest and beaches. It's very quiet I lived there for most of last year and commuted to work by boat. Now I have a house on Vancouver Island that's my primary residence but I'm still building back the shop I had to give up when I moved into the apartment about ten years ago.

So island place yes; normal stuff like a proper bed or a tablesaw, no.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 11:40 am
by VT_Jeff
"just a timber frame cabin and acres of forest and beaches. " around vancouver island sounds pretty damned nice. We're hoping to get the RV back up to Skookumchuck one of these days(years?) so my wife can kayak-surf the wave. Fell in love with that area on the last trip a few years back, and that was before we got back into fishing!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 12:28 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, it's not terrible. There are so few people on the island - i think it peaked at 13 last year - that it's an accidental migratory bird sanctuary of sorts. The only predators are hawks and owls, so we get inundated with whatever species is passing through. That's usually the loudest thing we hear. I can't quite see the place from my bedroom here on the big Island but if they hadn't left the Yellow Point peninsula in the way, I guess I could. It's only about 20-30 minutes away by water, which is nice...we used to burn a lot of fuel getting there from Vancouver.

I love Skookumchuck - this whole section of coast is pretty nice, if you can handle a bit of rain. Or, today, wet snow. I think I watched footage you might have shared of your wife in that wave, or else I just remember you describing it and I've seen people taking it on before so I could picture it and I've conflated the mental image with the description.

That's serious water. Which is fitting: as I'm sure you're aware, that's pretty much what "Skookumchuck" translates to. Big, strong water.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 5:13 pm
by VT_Jeff
Serious water indeed!

You remember correctly, I posted some video of her in the wave 6 months ago or so. The paddler in this footage(Dave Fusili) is a good friend of ours. This took place a few years before we got there. I'll remove this in a few days to avoid clogging up your thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEfUblSDzww

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 6:32 pm
by cracked_ribs
Don't feel obligated to remove it at all...so far I'd say this is one of the least-derailed, most focused build threads I have seen. A bit of colour won't kill it!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2020 11:41 pm
by cracked_ribs
It was only a matter of time before I screwed up something that couldn't be unscrewed, and today it happened. I was running a grinder on the surface of the hull, just taking off a little bit of epoxy to give the surface some grip, and that's when I did it. I snagged the power cord and stumbled a little bit and just from the sound, I knew I'd screwed up, bad.

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That can was full, god damn it. The cord caught it and pulled it off the bench it was sitting on and by the time I grabbed it it was half gone, and the remainder was all foam. Anyway I'm soldiering on, and I did have another one in the fridge. Plus they're on sale right now at the local liquor store so the only real victim here is my pride. Still, though.


It's been busy with Christmas and all, but I have gotten a couple of things done. I shaped the end of the keel, or skeg or however you want to describe it:

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It's not going to be a perfectly smooth transition from skeg to no skeg, but I want to have some durability there, while at the same time reducing the amount of cavitation on the trailing end, so I just gave it a bit of an ensmoothening.

And the keel is on:

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Or at least the latter 3/4 is glued down; I wanted that to cure before I start hauling it down to follow the hull lines. I've extended the reverse chine forward, and am just letting things cure before I finish it out with a tapered forward section.

And I also stuck down the port reverse chine, or, again, since I'm doing it in sections, the rear 8'. I'll probably get the rest of it handled tomorrow.

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The transition sections I slopped layers of glass and peanut butter into are shaped but need a skim coat of fairing mix; the side lighting makes them look really rough but they're not too bad and the hollows they've filled are now about right; I just need to handle the cosmetics there now. But I'm about to begin fairing the whole hull, so that's no big deal. I'll skim coat the whole thing in the next while, although I'm heading off to my cabin in a couple of days for some relaxation, so the next update might be a bit of a wait. I'm hoping to get all the trimmy bits glued on before I go, but hard to say. I only work on it an hour or two here and there, so progress is pretty slow. But the important part is that I keep moving ahead, a bit at a time.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2020 2:44 pm
by Jeff
Good progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2020 8:00 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thank you - given the amount of time I have to work on it I'm pretty happy with how it's moving along.

I had a couple of hours yesterday and a few more today so I continue to chip away at things.

Yesterday I got the stem glued on and the keel mostly sorted:

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I needed to make a template to fill this little triangular section so I found a piece of paper I knew I couldn't possibly benefit from reading and scratched the inner lines with my thumbnail to get the dimensions, then cut it out and chopped up a bit of scrap fir to fill the space.

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Then it was finishing off the reverse chines:

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Which I have also begun to blend in with a bit of filler.

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Seeing the hull with the trim bits on the bottom is pretty exciting. I am looking forward to rub and spray rails; then I'll really feel like it's a boat that needs to get smoother, not a half-built project in the garage.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2020 8:57 pm
by cracked_ribs
Squaring off chines, blending surfaces, cutting rub rails.

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I just cut some poster board into strips and mashed it up against the wall of epoxy to use as a dam. It's quick and easy and keeps the epoxy in place until it kicks. I know a lot of guys clamp boards with packing tape against the hull to achieve this effect but this is a quick and dirty version and it'll all be sanded so I don't bother with anything fancier.

Here's one after I peeled off most of the poster paper, which took about 15 seconds:

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The rest will get sanded off at some point, which will take about a minute.

Here's my beloved Hitachi worm drive with a block clamped to it so I can make 1 3/4" strips off the hull ply remainder. More bedroom work, which always makes me smile.

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And a stack of rubrails and inwales on the hull.

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About the only other stuff going on is me blending in the chines and the stem to smooth that all out. Still a ways to go there and the pics don't really look like anything.

Off to the cabin on the island for a bit; may not be any updates for a little while. First trip there since my kid learned to walk; should be interesting. I will have to figure out a way to keep him away from the wood stove.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2020 9:19 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Dec 30, 2020 8:57 pm Squaring off chines, blending surfaces, cutting rub rails.

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I just cut some poster board into strips and mashed it up against the wall of epoxy to use as a dam. It's quick and easy and keeps the epoxy in place until it kicks. I know a lot of guys clamp boards with packing tape against the hull to achieve this effect but this is a quick and dirty version and it'll all be sanded so I don't bother with anything fancier.

Here's one after I peeled off most of the poster paper, which took about 15 seconds:

Image

The rest will get sanded off at some point, which will take about a minute.

Here's my beloved Hitachi worm drive with a block clamped to it so I can make 1 3/4" strips off the hull ply remainder. More bedroom work, which always makes me smile.

Image

And a stack of rubrails and inwales on the hull.

Image

About the only other stuff going on is me blending in the chines and the stem to smooth that all out. Still a ways to go there and the pics don't really look like anything.

Off to the cabin on the island for a bit; may not be any updates for a little while. First trip there since my kid learned to walk; should be interesting. I will have to figure out a way to keep him away from the wood stove.

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"I dont always square my Chines. But when I do, I use poster board and drink Dos Equis!"

Looking good, per usual. Enjoy the new year on the island!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2020 11:25 pm
by cracked_ribs
Funnily enough I was introduced at a work training event a couple of years ago as "the world's most interesting man" but I think they oversold me.

Enjoy your New year's as well!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2020 7:52 am
by Jeff
Happy New Year CR!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2020 11:38 am
by Dan_Smullen
Nice work on the chines and the rest of it. I believe the chines make the boat! Are you going to glass over them? With Reid's counsel, glassed over mine with 10oz woven. Good blend of workability and protection.

I regret not shaping the end of my skeg as you did. Small details like that, and not so subtle additions like the stem create a unique style.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2020 3:23 pm
by cracked_ribs
I was thinking u might throw a layer of woven tape on them, yeah...I was actually thinking last night that maybe I should rebate the edge and put in a wear strip of PVC or uhmw or something, but you know how it is, at some point you just want to move on.

I do think the overkill stem will help split head seas, at least.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2021 11:09 pm
by cracked_ribs
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.

I spent a bit of time up at my cabin, just unwinding. The kid, who's about to turn one, was pretty into the whole experience. I think this is the first time he's really grasped that we were in a house, that's different than our usual house. Previously he got really blown away by the forest but now he's starting to get used to it.

Anyway one handy gadget I was very excited to get and try out was this pair of bluetooth-enabled ear pro.

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I'm a frequent listener of podcasts and now I can lean on a sander while listening to something interesting...really relieves the boredom of power tool usage.

Other than that it's just pictures of incremental sanding progress:

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Chines are squared up, couple of voids to fill but nothing too dire.

Oh, test fitting rub rails:

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The side lighting makes all the surfaces look really rough, but they aren't, particularly. Better get a skim coat of filler on there so I don't look like I'm making a mess of it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2021 10:55 am
by Jeff
Good progress!!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 12:29 am
by Fuzz
Really enjoying watching this one come together.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 2:18 am
by cracked_ribs
I'm really glad, guys. It's a fun build. I have surprises in store! I need to spend more time fairing; today I just had an hour or so, so I got the putty on the worst spots and filled most of the chine step voids. But I'm running out of ways to avoid the heavy fairing work so this week it should kick off for real.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 9:14 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 2:18 am "I need to spend more time fairing"
Every boat-builder, ever

"I want to spend more time fairing"

No boat-builder, ever

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 11:01 am
by cracked_ribs
Nailed it!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 12:17 pm
by TomW1
Good deal Cracked_Ribs, I have two Johnson's a 5 and a 25 that my father in law bought in the 50's that run like a clock. There is nothing that runs better than an old two stroke. Well have fun with your 2 stroke it should last a life time.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2021 3:12 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thank you, I hope to get some good years out of her yet; it's going to be noisier and messier than anything current but it's at least 20 pounds lighter than the 9.9 I use as a kicker on my other boat, which is just wild.

I might get a little mini Suzuki or something as a trolling motor, just in case the reliability isn't there with the stroker, but I think once I get her running regularly for a bit it'll be fine.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2021 11:19 pm
by 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.

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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.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2021 1:57 pm
by 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.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2021 2:21 pm
by 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.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 11:22 pm
by 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.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 11:49 pm
by Fuzz
I have to admit I am still not sure what I think of the bow but it is starting to grow on me :D

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:32 am
by 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...

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 7:50 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 11:09 pm 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!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:04 pm
by 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.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2021 11:26 pm
by 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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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

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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.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:01 am
by Jeff
Good deal on the motor!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:47 pm
by Fuzz
Loved the old outboard videos! Good on you for getting them back up and running.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 4:02 pm
by 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.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:59 pm
by Jeff
Good stuff CR!!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 7:38 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:04 pm 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!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:43 pm
by 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:

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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

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 1:06 am
by 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.

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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.

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Now I'm happy with it.

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

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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.

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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.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2021 4:55 pm
by VT_Jeff
Looking good CR, keep it up and you'll be right-side up in no time.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2021 12:58 pm
by 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!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:01 pm
by 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:51 am
by Fuzz
Boat is looking better and better. But dang that heater looks almost brand new!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:23 am
by cape man
I know that 1.2 Gamefisher well! We ran one on a canoe for years when I was in high school until one day when my brother did not tighten down the clamps and it sank in a deep, muddy canal.
I have a neighbor who would get along splendidly with yours! Neither would ever get anything done, but they would enjoy telling each other why.

Oh yeah...the boat is looking good...

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 9:58 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, it's funny how little effort that required. In total, maybe two hours, tops. I spread some brasso polish on the trim and that ate the worst of the tarnishing, then I wiped it off, and hit the whole thing with a buffer in an angle grinder, and a little buffing wheel on a Dremel for hard to reach spots.

Super easy. Now it makes me wish I could find one every weekend, I could probably sell it to an antique shop and pay for the week's boat expenses.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 2:19 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Jan 25, 2021 1:06 am I scrape it occasionally with a cheap metal spreader, then wire brush it, and it's lasting forever.
That's a great tip, I need to start doing that on my coarse sandpaper to get more life out of it.

Definitely seems like there is a method within your fire-breathing madness. Really looking forward to seeing how she looks painted up and finished, keep on keepin' on!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:00 pm
by cracked_ribs
cape man wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:23 am I know that 1.2 Gamefisher well! We ran one on a canoe for years when I was in high school until one day when my brother did not tighten down the clamps and it sank in a deep, muddy canal.
I have a neighbor who would get along splendidly with yours! Neither would ever get anything done, but they would enjoy telling each other why.

Oh yeah...the boat is looking good...
I was just about to say "no kidding, they must have been way more widely distributed than I would ever have guessed to turn up in South Africa" and then I remembered that this is a misconception of mine I discovered only the other day: a good friend of mine is from Capetown, or I guess more properly the veldt outside Capetown, and I always think you are called cape man because you're from Capetown. In fact it wasn't until I went against my better judgement and read a couple of threads in the bilge and thought "man, this Afrikaner has some pretty detailed ideas about what's up in the US" that I actually reset my head and checked your location.

I should probably not be so hard on the guy; he's a million years old and I'm sure he means well. Unfortunately I'm just a pretty harsh type A personality and I get twitchy when people start telling me "how it is."

On the other hand, all the other neighbours are amazing. I was out in the garage a couple of days ago, when a different neighbour drops by.

"What are you burning in your stove?"

"Shit, is it smoking?"

"No, I just wondered if you want some firewood. I have six cords of dry fir from when my buddy cleared a bit of land he bought."

A cord, if you don't do firewood, is a unit of volume, 4*4*8 feet.

"Wow, thanks," I said. "But I don't want to tap into your supply. Six cords, you could burn that in a year or two."

"It doesn't matter, I have a couple of truckloads still at his place."

"Still, though," I said. "Even if you max out the truck, what is that, another couple of cords? I mean yeah, I'd love some, but I don't want to use a whole truckload of your firewood or something."

As I'm saying this he's looking at me like I started speaking Swahili. when I finish, he's just quiet for a moment. Then he blinks and it's like he suddenly heard a translation of what I just said.

"Oh," he says. "No, I mean I have a couple of LOGGING truck loads."

I am receiving some dry fir for the winter.

VT_Jeff wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 2:19 pm
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Jan 25, 2021 1:06 am I scrape it occasionally with a cheap metal spreader, then wire brush it, and it's lasting forever.
That's a great tip, I need to start doing that on my coarse sandpaper to get more life out of it.

Definitely seems like there is a method within your fire-breathing madness. Really looking forward to seeing how she looks painted up and finished, keep on keepin' on!
You know for ages I used to just wire brush the hell out of the belts and pads and so on and it half-worked but I'd end up with bloody knuckles, and sweating like crazy after scrubbing like a madman for twenty minutes.

A switch flipped for me at some point when I realized that the reason the wire brush was so slow, was that the larger chunks of loaded up half-cured epoxy were really strongly adhered to themselves. I was scrubbing away and then I just stopped, started shaking my head, picked up a scraper, and knew exactly how well it would work. Cleans them right off, thirty seconds tops.

Thematically connected to the prior comment as well, I guess... I don't know if you know the joke about the old Swede who gets talked into buying a chainsaw?

He takes home his shiny new Husky 394xp, assured by the salesman he'll quadruple his output over the old bow saw he's been cutting firewood with by hand for the last fifty years. But a week later the Swede is back in the chainsaw dealership.

"Ja, you says it cut so much faster, but I been bucking firs all week and I only has two trucks full, ja? But the bow saw, I do six trucks in that time."

The salesman can't believe it. He takes it back to the mechanic, who assures him there's not a thing wrong with it. He carries it back up to the old Swede.

"It's not possible," says the salesman. "Come out back, I'll show you how fast it cuts. Bring your bow saw, we'll have a little race."

They set up a couple of logs and the salesman gives the Swede the first crack. His saw cuts the wood like butter and the tough old viking lays his back into every stroke and the salesman is genuinely impressed.

"I have to hand it to you," he says, "I've never seen a bow saw wielded so skilfully, or with such strength. But I'm sorry, even you can't possibly keep up with the Husqvarna."

The salesman steps up to his log and hauls on the starter cord, and the motor catches instantly. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the Swede waving his arms. He turns to face him.

"Vat's dat noise, ja?"


Anyway, the moment I put down the wire brush and picked up the cheap metal scraper, that's about how I felt.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2021 5:06 am
by cape man
Cape Sable, the southern tip of Florida, is my go to place. My OD 18 was built to take us there.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2021 10:58 pm
by cracked_ribs
Photos in this stage are pretty dull, it's just fairing and sanding.

I have been really busy taking down a couple of big trees and processing the resulting wood, so I only had a few hours to work on the boat this weekend. But at least the tree issues are finished and I got them down without sending a major limb into my neighbour's kitchen, which was what I always worried about in every windstorm. There was a big cherry tree that was old and beginning to rot from the inside, that was the one I worried about most. It was pretty fiddly to section down each piece in a controlled fall but I have a big forested property and do that stuff pretty regularly so I have the gear. Anyway that's dealt with and the wood is now curing for next year.

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There's not really much to show, just incrementally smoother, more fair surfaces.

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I'm down to spot-fixing stuff, but there were still big spots to fix. This round should get it down to details, I hope. The join of the hull to the stem still needs a bit of work. There are a few little areas that might need more filler but it's rapidly approaching the minor applications of Quickfair stage.

The only other bit of news is that I picked up some Pettit epoxy primer. I plan to use it as the very last product before going to topcoat. Before it goes on I'll probably roller on some cheap primer, figuring that it'll get sanded right back off for the first couple of rounds. But I'm thinking the Pettit Protect will seal everything up nice and tight before the topcoat.

I also plan to flip it before painting the hull, since it's a relatively small boat and I can flip it back to paint if I want. The epoxy primer should make for a pretty durable finish during the interior construction phase. Won't be long and I'll be building a cradle to flip her on to.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:34 am
by Cowbro
Keep up the awesome work! I can't wait to see this beast in the water.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 12:11 pm
by Jeff
Agree with Cowbro!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 1:46 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys - I'm really hoping to get her flipped within a month, say. Once the hull is glassed inside and the stringers and stations are in, I'll probably splash her just to get the transom exactly the right height for the oddball motor. That'll be a nice diversion from the long slow fairing tasks! Although I don't intend to spend much time fairing the interior at all; my usage is too hard on interior surfaces to justify any kind of showy interior. Climbing in and out off of sandy beaches and oyster beds all the time, dropping downrigger balls, wrestling halibut...

Well, I hope to not have to wrestle any halibut. But I saw my dad do it once, after he dragged one in that he thought was done. It woke up in our little 15' hourston and started freaking out and when I was little everyone said a halibut could smash a hole in your boat and sink you, so rather than take the chance, he just grabbed it and started stabbing it with the old Mora that was always on his belt. It beat him up about as badly as it beat up the deck of our Hourston. Anyway, no point in giving a show boat to people like that, we'll just wreck it.

And I have a bunch of Kiwigrip left over from my big boat so that hides a lot of sins. Once she's flipped I hope to move along fairly quickly. I'm better at the building phases than the completion ones.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 3:08 pm
by Fuzz
I fished commercial halibut for a number of years. I have had them gutted, gilled and iced in the hold and still go nuts. When pulling gear we kept a 32 inch baseball bat by the rail. Shorter than the bat they went back overboard and longer they got the bat between the eyes. The little ones, 40-100 pounds, were the worst. The 200-300 pounders rarely went crazy on deck thank goodness.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 5:36 pm
by cracked_ribs
Hey, that's a good trick. We used to tail rope them and drag them, mostly, or sometimes big ones you'd shoot with a shotgun, but that was fairly rare. Interesting you've seen them go nuts at pretty much every stage before "on the plate next to chips." They always seem like prehistoric monster fish to me, but I haven't fished them that much since I was young - I live on the wrong side of Vancouver Island for that and it's a bit of a haul to go after them on the other side from where I used to live in Vancouver, so I don't have a lot of recent experience. But I could see them being the type to wake up and just start slamming away, long after they ought to have given up. The one I saw go really nuts had been dragged for a while and we were pretty damn sure it was dead, but...not so much.

The length-sized bat, though...that's a good idea. Two birds. The one my dad was trying to control was around a ninety pounder and I've thought of it a million times since then - I was pretty young, maybe six or seven, and he was trying to hang on to the thing and stab it without sticking himself...blood and fish slime everywhere, deck slippery as hell, dad soaked in blood and fighting crazily with a fish bigger than me...I remember looking and thinking, "man, this is really getting heavy."

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:47 pm
by Fuzz
A very good buddy of mine was bat man on a trip once. He did not like swinging the bat so being a carpentier by trade the next trip he brought a framing hammer. One good smack with the hammer seemed to settle them down quite nicely also. He was with me on one opener, just the two of us, and we deck loaded the boat. I do not think there was one fish under #200. Damn things about crippled both of us.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:23 pm
by cracked_ribs
I could believe a hammer, all right...I use one of these on ling cod and salmon:

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A Foster midget...six oz of lead in the business end, hits like a small hammer. Instant off switch for any fish up to about 50 lbs. Fits in my pocket and significantly outperforms most standard bonkers.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:46 pm
by Fuzz
You have lead an "interesting" life if you have a used one of those :roll:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2021 3:06 pm
by Jeff
I agree Fuzz, I have not seen one of those in years & years!!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:39 pm
by cracked_ribs
Been a wild ride all right... that particular one was a gift.

A good friend who used to do a lot of undercover work for a large agency thought I might enjoy it. Which I do, very much. He's quite expert at employing them and occasionally teaches sap and jack courses for agencies that still allow them. I have helped him on unrelated courses, so it's a nice bit of gear to get use out of.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2021 8:09 pm
by cracked_ribs
Little snowy this week, and harder to keep the garage warm enough to work with epoxy, but I'm doing what I can.

Drinks are nice and cold, at least, with a walk-out refrigerator:

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Fairing is coming along; there are a couple of spots with notations like this:

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But mostly it's just fine-tuning areas around fiberglass overlaps. I am overdoing it for a boat that'll be used hard, but that's just how I do stuff.

I found a nice tool for shaping the inside radius of the hull-stem fillet:

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And other than that it's just spot-fixing minor stuff with fairing mix.

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Oh, and more coats of epoxy on the rubrails etc.

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Couple of spots at the bow still need a bit of tuning, but it's very close to primer stage. If it weren't below freezing all the time, it'd already be primed. But the epoxy is curing very slowly, so it's hard to sand.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:54 pm
by Fuzz
Boat appears to be coming along nicely. It is pretty handy you found another use for that green bottle :D

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:20 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah I tried to use it in its factory condition but it kept getting condensation all over stuff and I was forced to empty it for the sake of my work.

Emptying out the contents seemed to work as far as making it a more efficient tool, but in the interests of science I emptied several more just to be sure that I'd really found the solution. I think I did but my memory of the entire incident is strangely fuzzy.

Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:08 am
by Jeff
Nice progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:19 am
by lelandtampa
I don't always use a Mexican beer bottle for fairing but when I do, it's dos equis

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:16 pm
by VT_Jeff
lelandtampa wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:19 am I don't always use a Mexican beer bottle for fairing but when I do, it's dos equis
Beat me to it!

Anyone else wondering what he uses for larger diameter sanding tools? I'm guessing Glen Livet?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:20 pm
by Jeff
Nice CR!!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:36 pm
by cracked_ribs
LOL - thanks guys, I can use the encouragement, particularly at this stage. Like everyone I find fairing to be a monotonous process; unlike some people I can't seem to stop at "good enough" which is dumb since this is basically a work boat for me. But I keep finding very minor flaws that I want to sort out, and then it's cold so I have to wait a couple of days to sand, and it just drags on.

Anyway I'm just about at the point where I'll be putting on primer. For the first round I'll probably just hit it with Kilz, since it sands easily and builds quickly and it's cheap. And I'll probably sand 95% of it right back off, anyway. But I think it'll be next weekend before I actually get paint on the boat.

Difficult to make fairing pictures interesting but anyway here's what you get:

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If I didn't want to put a nice high gloss finish on her at then end I could have primered here back around Christmas, which is a bit ridiculous when you think about it. Six weeks to build, two months to get her ready for primer.

Oh here's another thing that at least has some faint trace of interest: someone mentioned to me early on that I should have lots of light in the shop. I forgot I had these lights, a friend grabbed them for me out of a lot of stuff that got auctioned off for peanuts after some movie set closed down:

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They give a pretty natural colour temperature and they're plenty bright. Those are rare earth magnets on the back. They hold really well to anything ferrous, even sheet metal. Here's one I stuck to a machete I happened to have handy. I had to yank it off, it really stuck.

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So those are kind of handy and have 25' cables, much better than any halogen work lamp I have. Total cost: I helped the guy move some stuff one time. Actually in exchange for that he helped me haul my last boat out of my apartment so if anything, I owe him.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:26 am
by Jeff
Your bike is going to need a good cleaning!!! Nice progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 9:15 am
by pee wee
Jeff wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:26 am Your bike is going to need a good cleaning!!! Nice progress!!! Jeff
LoL, it looks like one of those "barn finds" you see stories about! The boat is looking great, looking forward to seeing it with some primer.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:40 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:36 pm Six weeks to build, two months to get her ready for primer.
:lol:

My breakdown:

1. Spend a day or two cutting out shapes from plywood and glue them together.

2. Spend a day or two covering them inside and out with 300lbs of epoxy and fiberglass.

3. Spend 18 months sanding away anything that doesn't look like a boat.

:doh:

I like everything about the Kilz idea except the smell. Maybe once I move to the garage.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:13 pm
by cracked_ribs
That poor bike puts up with so much from me. I'm an extreme one-track-mind kind of person. If I'm on boat tasks, I literally don't see the bike. If I'm on bike stuff, I'll forget I own a boat. I have no excuses, I just don't multi-task, at all.

Kilz works pretty well just because it's got an incredible amount of solids and I read somewhere a long time ago that that is half the battle with primers...as long as they adhere and cure correctly, you just want lots of solids building up a heavy layer. I have used it on other projects but this would be the largest so far; I would hesitate but I have a gallon of that two part Pettit epoxy primer that I can roll a few thin coats on afterwards and seal everything right up. It's supposed to be really tough to sand, but also to be really strong primer, so I'm hoping that I can basicaly get everything smoothed right out, roll on thin coats of the Pettit fairly evenly so I'm not adding a ton of extra work for myself to smooth it out, let that cure good and hard, then paint over a really solid surface when it's time for the topcoat.

But to be honest I'm a little nervous about that Pettit primer, just because I hear it is very difficult to sand. So if it goes on unevenly...could be a big job to get it smooth enough to topcoat.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:48 pm
by Dan_Smullen
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:36 pm
Difficult to make fairing pictures interesting but anyway here's what you get:

...But a machete helps. :lol:

Slick lights for sure. I love a unique tool that works well.

Rather than Kilz, you might want to try Alexseal Super Build 302. It sands easily, builds quickly, but is not cheap. A converter is required, mixed 1:1 which contributes to the cost, but dang, is it nice.

Cmon. Live a little. Life is short. Buy the primer...

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:25 pm
by cracked_ribs
I have actually been going back and forth on it a bit.

It's true, it's not cheap. But then I wouldn't need the Pettit stuff, I could return that and not buy kilz or zinsser and just go with the premium stuff, the cost would be similar.

What's the coverage like? Could a gallon do a couple of passes on an FS 17, do you figure?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:07 am
by Dan_Smullen
I used Total Boat brand high build because I could buy quarts rather than gallons. Less outlay of capital, but more expensive product by volume. Very similar product I think.

2 quarts barely covered the bottom of my C19 which I think is about 90 sqft. A gallon of material is a gallon of converter would do it, I bet.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 9:42 am
by cracked_ribs
Hmm.

That'd be around $450, plus finish primer, figure another $200.

$650 for primer on a work skiff built to fit a free motor is probably more than I'd spend, I think.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 10:05 am
by fallguy1000
A new trend in boat building has been started.

Machette boat fairing.

Fairing the cabin insides now. Super tedious. Ugh, whatever it looks like Feb 28 is the last day of sanding.

Going to sand now. Good luck.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2021 11:44 pm
by cracked_ribs
I always keep a machete on hand for boat building...you can't do a hack job without the right tools, after all.

Today's update is pretty simple: the graphite is on the bottom.

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I ran it a little further up the chines than dead level, just because I figure they're likely to catch more rocks when I pull in at our beach.

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I didn't go to the trouble of really trying to get a mirror finish on it because it'll just get covered with antifouling anyway. I just heated it up and rolled it on.

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Probably get primer on this week.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 3:03 am
by Fuzz
Bottom looks good! Looking forward to seeing the rest in primer.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 7:51 am
by Jeff
Nice CR!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 10:01 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 11:44 pm I didn't go to the trouble of really trying to get a mirror finish on it because it'll just get covered with antifouling anyway. I just heated it up and rolled it on.
That's what I like to hear!

Looks great nonetheless, and it's done!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 10:26 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, very much looking forward to seeing her in primer now.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:16 am
by cracked_ribs
Well, first coat's on:

Image

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I found one section with about eight pinholes, and a couple more little flaws on the other side.

Image

But it's pretty good. I'll sand it down today and see how it looks but I'll be painting soon, I think.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:16 am
by Cowbro
Awesome! Do you have a color picked out?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 10:19 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, I thought I'd do it it a traditional royal blue and leave the trim bright. That's a pretty classic color scheme that always works for me.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:46 pm
by cracked_ribs
Second coat of primer. Wasn't much to fix after the first; might have used two oz of Quikfair. It's funny, I bought a 1.5 pint pack three boats ago, then, before my previous boat, bought a second 1.5 pint pack because I figured the next boat would require more than I had left.

I think it's possible I'll finish this boat without ever opening the second pack. I really try to have things fair at the glassing stage and I guess this is the result.

Anyway here's the boat in primer. Oh, I also glued down a wear strip since this thing will get beached constantly. I live on a big island and then my summer home is on a really small island with no docks or anything, so for loading stuff on and off you either drive onto shore, or you row everything in on a dinghy. I'm sick of rowing everything in from my big deep-draft boat so I am building this little low power skiff to use as a runabout, and I put the wear strip on the keel or skeg or however you want to think of it so I can beat it up on the oysters and barnacles and when it gets wrecked I can replace it for about 30 ice pesos ($20 USD).
​​​​​​​
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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:16 pm
by Fuzz
Your glass work must be outstanding to use so little Quickfair.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 07, 2021 11:33 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well, I did fill the weave with wood flour, then do several weeks of epoxy/filler mix. I only use QF after I prime. The big work is all out of the way before I put a coat of paint on.

If you added up all the epoxy filler mix I slathered on it would probably be more like 40 oz or something. I try to get everything to lay flat but sharpening the chines alone probably took six ounces, I'm no miracle worker or anything. It's more just that I really don't like to prime until I don't think it'll need much work afterwards. In theory, I'd like to prime, sand to 320 or so, then paint, with no filler at all.

In practise...even after I've gotten it pretty good and primed it, I still find a few flaws to fix. I'll sand this round tomorrow or the next day, probably find an ounce of screw ups to fix, QF them, then sand, prime, sand, and hopefully start the top coat next weekend.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 10:41 pm
by cracked_ribs
Finally something worth photographing: rather than just layer after layer of primer as I prep for paint (I used 3/4 of a gallon of kilz to get it where I wanted it, so however many coats that is, maybe a billion?) I was finally satisfied with the surface and rolled on some blue. It's not done, I'm doing thin coats of a single stage enamel so bear with me as it evens out.

Here's one coat:

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And here's two:

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I'm blocking it with 320 between coats. It's sitting nice and flat. I just wanted to get a couple of coats on her to seal up the primer nicely, and then I can roll it out of the garage for an afternoon to get everthing vaccuumed out. I don't really care that there's dust in the first coat or two, A) because they're getting sanded between coats, and B) I'll probably put another five on top of these two. At this stage I'm not even tipping the paint, I'm just rolling it on and walking away.

Still, you can see it's sitting pretty flat after a couple of go-arounds:

Image

I mean yeah, there's orange peel to deal with, but it doesn't take much to buff it down with 320. A couple more coats and it'll really start to get smooth, I think

So far I've used about one pint of paint. I have a gallon, so no shortage here. Actually, I might have 5 quarts, I'll have to look. I forgot I had this paint, but it was the colour I wanted to this boat anyway, so I figured I'd use it up.

Bit of "mahogany" (presumably sapele) trim, now that it's nicely saturated in epoxy. I loaded on a pretty thick coat and heated it with a paint gun until it was 90% absorbed into the wood. Should pop pretty nicely once the paint is done and the stem is all varnished up etc.

Image

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 12:30 am
by Cowbro
That is going to be beautiful. The mahogany and blue are perfect. 8)

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 2:19 am
by TomW1
I love it! It is gorgeous.... :D :D :D :D

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 4:16 am
by Fuzz
Nice!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:17 am
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys! It's a work in progress, of course, but I'm happy with how it's starting to look.

Looks like decent weather today so pretty good chance she'll see some sunlight for once.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 12:46 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 10:41 pm I don't really care that there's dust in the first coat or two
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 10:41 pm At this stage I'm not even tipping the paint, I'm just rolling it on and walking away.
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 10:41 pm I mean yeah, there's orange peel to deal with, but it doesn't take much to buff it down with 320.
Man, I need to work with this kind of confidence! All makes perfect sense but it's the kind of stuff that I wouldn't consider on my own. Painting takes me eons because I treat every coat like it's the final coat, I need to adjust my thinking.

Looking great.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:18 pm
by cracked_ribs
I think the trick is to do it drunk once or twice and discover afterwards that it still worked out fine. After that it's always "well hey, I did this drunk at Ross' barbecue one year and the boat looked fine afterwards, this has to be better than that."

Ross being a friend of mine (also the lead guitar in two bands with me over the years and the cousin of the bassist who recruited me to play in his metal band last year - more on this at the end of the post) who built an FS17 and, knowing Ross, was drunk the entire way through. We painted it at a barbecue at his place after twelve or fourteen beers and woke up expecting disaster, but actually it looked great, and I decided that a big part of success for me going forward was going to involve a lot of shrugging and just doing stuff.


Today all I did was haul the boat out of the garage and clean everything up so I could take a step without choking on primer dust. There was probably an eighth of an inch of dust on the floor, no joke. I swept everything down, moved everything, vaccuumed everything. That doesn't make for great pics but you know what does? Having the boat in the alley for a bit.

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Note that the child has grown slightly since the beginning of the thread but is still very small, ergo I am not that far behind schedule.

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Of course the downside is that in good light you can see I need three more coats of paint to even up that surface but I found all the paint and I do indeed have about 4.5 quarts left so I can layer it on for as long as I want, really.

Oh, here's the garage, post-clean. I realize it doesn't look very clean but if there was a good before picture, well, it's a big improvement.

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Okay, back to gratuitous boat pics:

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And finally I had to stuff her back in the car hole.

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Oh, I did also decide to treat the boat to what I call "the Australian Flip."

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Now we can picture her right side up!




Finally, only because I said I would...the bassist finally sent me a rough mix of a song from last summer's session. It hasn't been mastered and I think he had the plan to bring up the highs in the guitars a little more but anyway you probably wouldn't notice a huge difference off a youtube video anyway, I think the sound is pretty compressed.

I can't honestly say this is music I'd write if left to my own devices but as I think I said somewhere earlier in the thread, I'll do pretty much whatever if I can do it at max volume and working hard enough on stage to sweat off a few pounds. This isn't super demanding guitar work or anything but I sure worked my throat getting these vocal tracks down and by the time we're doing it live, I'll probably have shoehorned in some high-speed guitar work somewhere.

What I think I will probably do for this project is build a case for whatever guitar head I use, and put a few travelling voltage arcs inside it with just enough gaps in the case that you can see it arcing through the mesh front in an unpredictable way. I always like to play bizarre gear on stage that other musicians can't identify, and that non-musicians are a bit mesmerized by. I used to use a big stack of rack gear that had been completely blacked out, and I'd always switch it on and off on stage while wearing big electrical gauntlets, and it had a huge grounding cable that ran from the head to a big metal plate on the bottom cab, which did nothing, but of course nobody knew that but me. I'd open my guitar case, take out the lineman's gauntlets, hook up this giant ground cable to a bolt on the fake ground plate, plug my guitar into the rack, switch on about ten switches and power the whole thing up, then remove the gauntlets and put them back in my guitar case. I always figured people who come to a show, come to be entertained. I want the whole experience to be rock theatre.

At any rate here's one of the tracks we laid down last summer. If it strikes you as unlistenable, well, you were warned.

https://youtu.be/D1fkcSXAq08

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 7:00 am
by cape man
You did warn me... not my genre, but you enjoyed making it....I hope. :lol:

The wife came by as I was listening and asked "what the hell are you listening to? " I told her it was Canadian boat building music.

I was really into brewing when I built the OD18, and over the year and a half it took discovered a strong ratio of 5 gallons of Boat Building Beer for every gallon of epoxy used. The boat took 22 gallons of epoxy.

Noticed the can of Tail Spin a few posts back. Local? Never seen that one.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 7:02 am
by cape man
Oh yeah, the boat looks good.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:58 am
by VT_Jeff
CR,

PM me your physical address, I'm sending over a Priest and a throat surgeon.

After spending some time on your "Sex, Violence and Rabbits" feed, and reading about the fire-breathing on stage etc, I was fairly prepared for the track. At least I knew it wasn't going to sound like the bump music from "All Things Considered". Did not disappoint.

I love the stage props too. You should put a roadie in a faraday suit to help you power up your rig. Flipping hilarious!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:09 am
by Jeff
Nice!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:06 am
by Jaysen
Mrs was all “really, Norwegian metal this early?” (It was 6a at the time).

I was all “this is ok though... it’s Canadian.”

She replied “leave it to you to find the one angry Canadian.”

I don’t think she gets it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:30 pm
by cracked_ribs
cape man wrote: Tue Mar 23, 2021 7:00 am You did warn me... not my genre, but you enjoyed making it....I hope. :lol:

The wife came by as I was listening and asked "what the hell are you listening to? " I told her it was Canadian boat building music.

I was really into brewing when I built the OD18, and over the year and a half it took discovered a strong ratio of 5 gallons of Boat Building Beer for every gallon of epoxy used. The boat took 22 gallons of epoxy.

Noticed the can of Tail Spin a few posts back. Local? Never seen that one.
Canadian boat building music! I'll have to tell the bassist, I think he was going for something much darker, which I interfered with to the best of my ability...recording it was fun but I admit it was also punctuated by these arguments in which the bassist kept wanting it to be more "bleak" and I was like "...but...I'm happy. Can't we just focus on an adjective like "thunderous?" Does it have to be "bleak?" That doesn't sound like something I would voluntarily listen to." Also, being a total metal guy, he was really all-in on buzzwordy metal lyrics and I had to fight to change them into something a little more creative. But every line was a battle. I did eventually sneakily turn them all into a weird narrative concept about some sort of post-apocalyptic tribal existence in the ruins of a giant modern city filled with decaying technology beyond the understanding of the people living there...but it was a lot of work to get consensus on even little things like "how about I don't just scream 'hail to the bloody contagion' here, and I agree to reuse the words 'hail,' 'bloody,' and 'contagion' in some context elsewhere in the same song?"

Jeez, metal primadonnas and their fetish for gruesome lyrics. I want to write a song about going to the beach.

Tail Spin is, I think, local, but also it's gin-based, which I admit is a little girly, but my excuse is that an old Rhodesian friend of mine turned me on to it one summer on the grounds that all forms of gin are acceptable, and he's the least girly guy I think I know and the only person I've ever met who could wear a pith helmet and not seem ridiculous.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:32 pm
by cracked_ribs
VT_Jeff wrote: Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:58 am CR,

PM me your physical address, I'm sending over a Priest and a throat surgeon.

After spending some time on your "Sex, Violence and Rabbits" feed, and reading about the fire-breathing on stage etc, I was fairly prepared for the track. At least I knew it wasn't going to sound like the bump music from "All Things Considered". Did not disappoint.

I love the stage props too. You should put a roadie in a faraday suit to help you power up your rig. Flipping hilarious!
I'll bet a day is coming where I'll need both on staff around here.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:33 pm
by cracked_ribs
Jaysen wrote: Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:06 am Mrs was all “really, Norwegian metal this early?” (It was 6a at the time).

I was all “this is ok though... it’s Canadian.”

She replied “leave it to you to find the one angry Canadian.”

I don’t think she gets it.
LOL...there are a handful of similarly defective folks up here but I admit that I do not mesh well with classical Canadianism as perceived by the world!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 2:16 pm
by TomW1
cracked_ribs I seem to be a super dummy. I can't seem to find the CR16 study plans in any of the building plans sections could you point them out to me. I would sure like to know what your building so I can follow along. I have looked in Power Boats under 16', Specialty Boats, and others. :doh:

Thanks, Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 2:49 pm
by Cowbro
TomW1 wrote: Tue Mar 23, 2021 2:16 pm cracked_ribs I seem to be a super dummy. I can't seem to find the CR16 study plans in any of the building plans sections could you point them out to me. I would sure like to know what your building so I can follow along. I have looked in Power Boats under 16', Specialty Boats, and others. :doh:

Thanks, Tom
It is his own design, not a BBC design. I think there are details in the first page.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:08 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yes, I'm afraid that this is purely the product of my own irresponsible mind. There's no map, no key, and not even much of an explanation for most of it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:23 pm
by Jaysen
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:08 pm ... not even much of an explanation for most of it.
I think that you've provided enough evidence of your uniqueness that we get it. We really do. And for the most part we want to encourage you to do it your way. Heck, I've got a beer and a nice seat!

Just stay clear of my daughter ;)

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 3:37 pm
by cracked_ribs
LOL... I've been chased away from enough daughters and still managed to get this far in life without having to dig #8 bird shot out of my skin; I'm well past pushing my luck on any dads I encounter these days!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:48 pm
by TomW1
Dang it all CR I forgot that it was your own design. I went back and looked and I was the first one to respond to you after you put up your first post. :lol:
Guess I am just getting to old at 68. :lol:

Well keep on with the build can't wait till it's finished and like I said above I love that Blue.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:28 pm
by cracked_ribs
You know I noticed that but wasn't going to say anything - too many boat builds to keep track of them all, I can barely stay current on this build let alone anyone else's!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 10:44 pm
by cracked_ribs
Not much to update beyond saying that I keep layering on blue. I might do a couple more coats, but I plan to stop painting this week, and then leave it alone over easter weekend to cure. It's just an alkyd enamel that I'm using, although I have been cutting in a bit of Valspar hardener that chemically crosslinks the paint so it should be pretty tough in the end. I've used the same stuff on other boats to good effect.



I am getting pretty happy with the overall appearance. The first pic is two coats ago, the other two are this afternoon. It's very uniform in tone now, and starting to pick up a bit of depth. Once I start smoothing out the surface I think it'll have a lot of shine to it.



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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:17 pm
by Fuzz
Very nice! Maybe even a little too shiny for a boat that will be used hard :wink:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:28 pm
by cracked_ribs
Hey yeah...at the beginning of this thread wasn't I saying something about no more art boats?

God damn it, I'm having a relapse.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 10:52 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well, I'm off to my cabin for a bit so there won't be any progress for a week or so, but here's the current state of things: I think I'm happy with the paint, I just need to wet sand it to get it nice and glossy.



Colour is nice and even and I think I have enough on there that I won't lose anything by hitting it with 1000/1500/2000 to clean it up. If I do start to see through the topcoat, I'll throw some more blue on, but I think it'll be fine.



Then I have a little bit of transom work to do, and a few miscellaneous little tasks, but I expect to flip her pretty quick now.



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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 5:28 am
by cape man
Looks awesome!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 8:34 am
by Jeff
Nice job!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:15 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys - I'm under a hundred bucks for the whole paint job, from the primer to the consumables to the topcoat, so all things considered I'm pretty happy with it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:00 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:15 pm Thanks guys - I'm under a hundred bucks for the whole paint job, from the primer to the consumables to the topcoat, so all things considered I'm pretty happy with it.
I'll give you $100 to finish painting my boat, anytime!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:02 pm
by cracked_ribs
VT_Jeff wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:00 pm
I'll give you $100 to finish painting my boat, anytime!
That'd still probably be the best hourly rate I've ever gotten for anything boat related!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:19 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:02 pm
VT_Jeff wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 2:00 pm
I'll give you $100 to finish painting my boat, anytime!
That'd still probably be the best hourly rate I've ever gotten for anything boat related!
Right: at least it would be positive! My rates tend to start with "-"

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:18 pm
by cracked_ribs
I've been off the boat for a bit, between spending time on the water in my other boat, time at my cabin, time hiking in the hills around here, and time on getting the garden prepped for this year's growing season. We bought our house here about 18 months ago and it needs a fair bit of work to get the yard under control, and I'm not very interested in that so progress is slow.

But today I finally got back to work on the boat, wet sanding one side. Needs buffing but it's just about there. Until the first time I dock it, of course.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:26 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:18 pm I've been off the boat for a bit, between spending time on the water in my other boat, time at my cabin, time hiking in the hills around here, and time on getting the garden prepped for this year's growing season. We bought our house here about 18 months ago and it needs a fair bit of work to get the yard under control, and I'm not very interested in that so progress is slow.

But today I finally got back to work on the boat, wet sanding one side. Needs buffing but it's just about there. Until the first time I dock it, of course.

Image

Mirrors dont lie, great work!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:53 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks man, might see about flipping her this weekend. Looking forward to doing something new.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:46 pm
by TomW1
Good for you CR. We need to see some progress. :lol: Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:57 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yeah about time I got this show on the road!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:10 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:53 pm Looking forward to doing something new.
Speaking of which, what's the plan for the interior? benches/tiller or something else?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:38 am
by cracked_ribs
Tiller, splash well, forward bench/casting deck, anchor locker at the nose, and wide open otherwise.

I have a couple of the rotomolded coolers that are popular these days, and might order one or two more. I'll just put dense foam on top for seating.

My feeling is that for crabbing, fishing and hauling gear, I want maximum flexibility and the larger open deck I can get. I'd rather have coolers I can haul on and off for seating than commit to a specific layout. I think often when building boats guys have a bunch of cool ideas about what could go in them and they end up building a ton of fiddly hatches and compartments. In my experience I don't use those much and they often eat a lot of space.

So I'll have a bit at the splash well, a bit at the bow, rod holders under the gunwales, and that's about it.

I'm not sure if "dance floor" is a universal term...up here we talk about a boat with a big dance floor being better for fishing, and I tend to agree. My current boat is very enclosed which was great for running in weather much worse than anyone else wants to go out in, but it has hardly any dance floor.

This boat will be the opposite: all dance floor all the time!

Plus good for hauling gear to the cabin. Could almost be a landing craft-grade hauler; with ramps you could drive a quad on and off. Loads of lumber, furniture, anything.

In fact now I want to put a couch on it just to sit in because it would be funny.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:59 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 9:38 am Tiller, splash well, forward bench/casting deck, anchor locker at the nose, and wide open otherwise.

I have a couple of the rotomolded coolers that are popular these days, and might order one or two more. I'll just put dense foam on top for seating.

My feeling is that for crabbing, fishing and hauling gear, I want maximum flexibility and the larger open deck I can get. I'd rather have coolers I can haul on and off for seating than commit to a specific layout. I think often when building boats guys have a bunch of cool ideas about what could go in them and they end up building a ton of fiddly hatches and compartments. In my experience I don't use those much and they often eat a lot of space.

So I'll have a bit at the splash well, a bit at the bow, rod holders under the gunwales, and that's about it.

I'm not sure if "dance floor" is a universal term...up here we talk about a boat with a big dance floor being better for fishing, and I tend to agree. My current boat is very enclosed which was great for running in weather much worse than anyone else wants to go out in, but it has hardly any dance floor.

This boat will be the opposite: all dance floor all the time!

Plus good for hauling gear to the cabin. Could almost be a landing craft-grade hauler; with ramps you could drive a quad on and off. Loads of lumber, furniture, anything.

In fact now I want to put a couch on it just to sit in because it would be funny.
Gotcha. My Orion coolers have pretty solid tie down points for cam-straps. I epoxied D-rings to the floor of my drift boat to hold them down and will be doing the same on my skiff for the drivers seat-cooler. They also come with foam-tops and you can get back rests, all for just under $10,000 US/each.

When I was at skook we were camping at a marina in Egmont(Backeddy, great spot!). I recall seeing people loading up their landing craft and heading out to their island for the weekend. Cars, kids, stuff etc. I definitely had toy-envy! Not weather-envy.

Big dance floor is nice, for sure. Great for the dog, sleeping platform, gear-hauling etc. I'm looking to build a glued-lapstrake row/sail boat next and one thing that bugs me are all the seats and crap that clog up the interior and make it hard for a dog to walk around. Something I need to work out.

Is your other boat a Stamas? Looks a lot like a number of the personal/pro fishing boats out the marina at Lake Ontario.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:48 am
by cracked_ribs
Not a stamas but similar in a lot of ways... it's a Double Eagle which is a small local company that builds famously tough boats. I'm sure the design predates a good understanding of engineering composites efficiently, so they built hulls that were 5/8 or 3/4 thick. My 20 footer weighs over 4000 pounds, and the transom deadrise is over 20 degrees. It's nice in rough weather but pretty inefficient where I live now. I used to have to cross some rougher water to get to my cabin so it was valuable at that time but now it's absurd overkill and fueling it is a bit ridiculous. I think I used to spend $3-5,000 annually on gas for it. It's less now but still... that's a lot of fuel. I remember doing the math at one point and realizing I could build and then set fire to a C17 every few years for what I was spending on gas.

A low speed planing skiff like this, I'll probably get home with more gas than I left with.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 11:15 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:48 am I could build and then set fire to a C17 every few years for what I was spending on gas.
Now THAT would be a sick way to celebrate the impermanence of our existance! Show those chalk artists a thing or two!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:03 pm
by cracked_ribs
"So do you have any hobbies?"

"Yeah, I build boats."

"Really? I've never seen a boat at your house."

"How can I put this...how familiar are you with Burning Man?"

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:28 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:03 pm "So do you have any hobbies?"

"Yeah, I build boats."

"Really? I've never seen a boat at your house."

"How can I put this...how familiar are you with Burning Man?"
LMAO!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:15 pm
by Matt Gent
A friend of mine does just that!
Image

We use the "dance floor" term as well. That thing is gonna be awesome wide open. I've found the rubber feet on the roto-coolers hold them in place really well if they have a little load in them, no straps or anything.

I took the flip/flop seat out of an old skiff (that left with my ex-wife, thank goodness) and it was the best move for that boat, made it twice as big.

You'll also have plenty of room for a...uh....tall spinning mast for displays of acrobatic prowess.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:04 pm
by cracked_ribs
Interesting! I've never built anything for burning man but I have been a few times. It has two things I'm really fascinated by, both in huge quantities: large, dramatic installation art, and half naked chicks on drugs.

Oh, also the Thunderdome.

I'm glad to hear the rubber feet and bit of weight have been basically adequate; that was my hope but I wasn't sure. I figure that rubber feet on kiwigrip should be pretty sticky, though.

You know...I actually have a plan for a mast-like structure, now that you mention it. I'm not saying it's for anything special, but at the same time... well, I'll put it this way. My wife asked me to drop off a package in the mail, a pair of shorts she was returning because she tried them on and decided they were too big.

Being Canadian, nothing is made here so returning stuff requires international mail. I took the package to the post office and filled out the customs form and handed it to the woman behind the counter who started typing everything into the system. Then she got to the company name.

"Does this say...am I getting this... what does this say?"

"Pole Junkie."

"Uh..."

"It's for pole dancers."

"Oh."

"Don't let the beard and the busted nose fool you, I'm very sensual."

"Uh..."

"It's a form of creative expression."

Pretty sure I gave her PTSD.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:37 pm
by VT_Jeff
As my boss likes to say: A lot to unpack here.
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:04 pm half naked chicks on drugs.
You can be sure the only article of clothing they'll be wearing this year is a mask! I've not been but a good friend from Reno drives an art car there. The stories are......Interesting.....

cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:04 pm "Pole Junkie."
I think you just found your next boat name

cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:04 pm "Don't let the beard and the busted nose fool you, I'm very sensual."
I think that really comes through the fire-breathing scream!


Most entertaining thread CR, nicely done!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:39 pm
by cracked_ribs
Fairly certain that the handful of places that tolerate my presence do so purely because I can be counted on to provide entertainment.

Sometimes in the form of accomplishment. More often in a fail gif kind of way.

At any rate I tried buffing the paint a little today in one spot, just to see what would happen.

Image

I figure if the fine print on a beer can is pretty clear, it's probably about good enough. I have a few miscellaneous tasks to do but I might try to flip her this weekend.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:04 am
by Fuzz
Very nice!
And I am not even going to razz you for building a "yacht"

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:08 am
by cracked_ribs
In exchange I will notify you of the exact location, time, and quantity of years I shed the first time I slam a stainless crab pot into the side.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:07 pm
by cracked_ribs
Big update today!

Let's start with the rear view.  If you're one of the people who's gone and had a look at my instagram feed, which is also partly run by my wife because neither one of us is individually interested enough to sustain it on our own, you will already have gathered that I'm of the opinion that if it doesn't look good from behind, I'm not interested.  Boats are no exception to this rule, so let's get to work.

Image

I think it was Wednesday that the courier showed up with my order of boards.  I figured I'd get onto that right away, but circumstances intervened as I unexpectedly had to take my wife to the hospital because she had a heart arrhythmia that generated a crazy fluttering heart rate that didn't pump enough blood to her brain and she went into shock and I had to physically carry her into the emergency room.  We happened to be walking about a block from the local trauma centre so I had her in one hand and the stroller in the other and it was quite a scene.  But not too long after arriving, her heart re-set and she was perfectly normal again.

And then taking my kid to the hospital two days later because he managed to tip over his stroller into a brick retaining wall, splitting his forehead right open and dumping blood everywhere which probably wasn't all that easy on my wife's heart either.  I have a lot of training that's good for emergency medicine so if you need someone to slam a tourniquet on your thigh and dump quickclot in your holes while everything around you explodes, I'm totally your guy.  But if you need to figure out whether a kid has a small depressed skull fracture, I have no idea.  I checked his pupils (nothing concerning there) and stopped the bleeding but a hit to the head is a hit to the head, so I took him in.  But no TBI, so they cleaned him up, glued his forehead shut, and gave him back.
At any rate I didn't get much done for a few days there.  But once everyone was home and fine, I went back to it.

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This looks about right:

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So I mixed up around 15 oz of fairly wet peanut butter, put two thirds of it on the transom and the remaining third on one side of the boards, and on they went.

Some flooring off-cuts that were left in the basement by the previous owner of the house made a useful clamping array:

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I put a few C-clamps on the keel and ran strings from the tops of the boards to the clamps, with a waco hitch to snug them down good and hard.

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I figured that was about enough for one day, so we made plans to head to the beach to enjoy the spectacular weather we're currently having.  I was working on the transom so I told my wife to come get me when she was about ready to leave.  She dropped in on the boat and was suitably impressed by the one section I test-buffed.

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And then it was off to the beach for the rest of the day.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:24 pm
by cracked_ribs
But wait, there's more! We got up this morning and headed down for coffee at our favourite local place, took the kid to the amazing local park that overlooks the beach, and got home around 11 am. I grabbed about fifty feet of rope from the basement and got to work.

First things first, let's remove yesterday's crazy complicated transom clamping stuff.

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Little tiny bits of epoxy oozed out at the seams but it's so minor. The surface is very uniform. It'll get sanded, saturated in epoxy, and varnished to hell and back. The rear view will indeed be memorable.

Then I started setting up to suspend the boat from the rafters. I initially began to tie a bunch of waco hitches - I have no idea if this is a common name but that's what we called then when I was a kid - which are basically simple rope pulleys.

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They work really well, but then when I was taking this picture I realized that hanging on the wall are a bunch of sheaves that came off a commercial salmon troller. Why am I screwing around with improvised pulleys? I hung three sheaves, tensioned up the rope cradle, and started disassembling the framing under the boat.

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I spent a little bit of time cranking up the ropes one at a time, but it was pretty easy. Around an hour of work, and over she went. Wife stopped by just in time to see the flip.

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"I'll get a picture of you with it," she said. "Smile, like you're celebrating."

"One barbarian celebration, coming up."

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With the rolling cradle out of the way, it was easy to bolt a couple of spare trailer bunks to it, so I popped those on, rolled it back into the garage, and lowered the boat down onto the bunks.

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Most of the rest of the afternoon was just sitting in the boat making motor sounds.

Kid extremely wary of the newly inverted boat...

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But I am ready to start the next phase.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:35 pm
by Fuzz
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 :wink: :roll:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:40 pm
by VT_Jeff
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!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:43 pm
by cape man
Ditto on the wife and kid. Love the transom!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:19 pm
by cracked_ribs
It was indeed more excitement than I felt I needed, but everyone seems to have recovered; I myself have taken enough facial cuts that I'm used to the amount of blood they generate and wasn't too shocked but of course my wife was very unnerved. But it was all fine and basically cosmetic, so everyone has calmed back down and I'm able to focus on the boat again (presumably not what my employers want me to be focused on all the time, but as I often tell my boss, "you're not the boss of me." Which he is, but no point indulging him.

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!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:16 am
by 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?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:41 am
by OneWayTraffic
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:19 pm

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.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2021 11:13 am
by cracked_ribs
Cowbro wrote: Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:16 am 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!

OneWayTraffic wrote: Mon Apr 19, 2021 1:41 am 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?"

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2021 11:25 am
by cracked_ribs
Fuzz wrote: Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:35 pm 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 :wink: :roll:
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.
VT_Jeff wrote: Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:40 pm 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.
cape man wrote: Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:43 pm Ditto on the wife and kid. Love the transom!
Thanks guys, yeah, also glad to see them running around like normal!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 11:55 am
by 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And this is about 6pm the same day.

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

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:15 pm
by 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

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:18 pm
by cape man
Going to be a tank!!! Lots of hard work there sir!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:22 pm
by 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 :help:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:45 pm
by 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!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:50 pm
by cracked_ribs
Fuzz wrote: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:22 pm One heck of a two day glass session. Good thing you are young. Us old guys could never do a glass marathon like that :help:
I don't feel too young today, I'll tell you that!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 2:54 pm
by TomW1
Great job CR. Glad your young and not my age with my bionic metallic joints. :D Beautiful shot of the beach and family. Thank you for sharing. :D

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:07 pm
by cracked_ribs
OlivierP wrote: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:15 pm 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
I don't dilute epoxy but the other stuff works fairly well for small jobs.

You have to mix a couple of gallons in a day, it gets increasingly inconvenient to use hot water; you spread it on a large surface that's 8 degrees C, it immediately slows down anyway.

Heat gunning it lets me control the flow very precisely, even on large areas.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun May 02, 2021 11:48 pm
by cracked_ribs
Not much of an update - after last weekend's insanity, I took a couple of days off, and then had to devote a lot of time to household stuff as my wife did last year's taxes for us. And then the weekend was really nice again, so back to family enjoyment time:

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That park is just amazing. There's so much stuff for kids to do, and the whole thing is set right on the ocean so you can go down and walk on the beach...really one of the best parks I've ever seen in my life.

About all I got done on the boat was a quick grind of the interior glass so it'll be ready for framing etc:

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And then it was laying out the stringers. I forgot that originally I'd had the idea of putting in a ballast tank so I drew the stringers further outboard than normal. But then I decided against the ballast so the stringers can be relocated to a more conventional spot which will make some other stuff easier...but now the curve I drew on the stringers I cut a few months back is wrong, so I'm just templating them straight off the hull. Oh, I also spent a ton of time making sure the hull was actually true. For some reason I got super paranoid about this - I think it was putting in the stringers and not being happy with the fit, and then I just went on a rampage of tuning the cradle and jacking it up here and there and blocking this and that and anyway, that took about five hours before I was satisfied.

Anyway now it's absolutely definitely true and fair and so I'm patterning the stringers straight off the hull.

Using, of course, a deck of cards, as pioneered by Jeff in Vermont.

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The dimensional lumber is just some spacing stuff to keep everything upright and in place while I get the stringers dialed in. I am hoping to get the egg crating pretty far along over the next seven days. Then I guess it'll be cleats, bulkheads and hatches for a solid month, probably two. Somewhere in there I'll template the sole and get it temporarily placed while I make some decisions about a strange piece of hardware I don't think anyone will be expecting to see.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon May 03, 2021 10:10 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 11:48 pm Oh, I also spent a ton of time making sure the hull was actually true. For some reason I got super paranoid about this - I think it was putting in the stringers and not being happy with the fit, and then I just went on a rampage of tuning the cradle and jacking it up here and there and blocking this and that and anyway, that took about five hours before I was satisfied.

Anyway now it's absolutely definitely true and fair and so I'm patterning the stringers straight off the hull.
Yes, I know that tune, though I think I spent 5 hours in just staring alone!
cracked_ribs wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 11:48 pm
Using, of course, a deck of cards, as pioneered by Jeff in Vermont.
Awesome, finally some royalty checks coming in! Like Gregg Allman, I'll keep them all stacked up on the TV for the rest of the band to admire when they come to visit. If I were going to do it again, I would bevel the bottom of my stringers to match the slope of the hull. I know this is debated as hotly as Khloe's paternity but I feel like it would have made things simpler, used less goo and left me with a better connection.

Here's my submission on the "strange hardware" lottery:
Capture.PNG

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon May 03, 2021 11:34 am
by cracked_ribs
You know...I am also of the "bevel the stringers" persuasion just because I have never perfectly nailed the curve on the cut. So I figure the easiest thing is make them a little oversized, and plane them to fit. And if you already have the plane out, it's two minutes to bevel the whole length, and then it's just that much easier to avoid hot spots because you have a uniform shape. You can lay down a millimetre-thick ribbon of epoxy and it'll still bond everything pretty evenly.

To be fair to anyone who finds it difficult, though, I'll say that much like scarfing, I have the advantage of having spent many, many, many hours hand-sharpening knives and I suspect as a result of this, I'm really good at holding a particular angle with my hands. I don't know that they're connected but I think they are. If I want to sharpen a knife to a particular profile by hand I can get super close by feel, and I keep a stone on my boat for touching up between fish and am not really affected by sea state while doing it, my hands have just done that exact thing a thousand times and they do the work and I just stand there trying to look picturesque and salty.

I think that this translates fairly smoothly into being able to feel angle on a plane well, and feel the cut as it happens and know what it's doing. So probably if I had not spent so much time sharpening knives, I would find planing a bevel into stringers a lot more challenging, and it would be worth it to me to just burn a few extra ounces of epoxy so I didn't have to screw around with it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed May 05, 2021 12:59 am
by cracked_ribs
I've pretty much been doing one update a week but I'm sitting around for a bit here so why not a bit of news?

I laminated the stringers last night; always impressive how a couple of thin bits of 1/4" ply stiffen right up when stuck together. I dropped them into their approximate locations but haven't started gluing them down yet or anything.

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I also bought a seat...65 or thereabouts litre/quart rotomold from Costco. I have a couple of rotomolds from different companies already but the big fancy one lives at my island place and the other is a little portable one. I can really appreciate a good cooler and have built a couple but they've all been pretty unweildy. This is more portable. It'll be good for the boat. I sat on it and made vroom vroom noises for a bit, but then got back to work.

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Transom is starting to shine up a bit...

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And last but not least I got unexpected, unexplained mail today. That's pretty normal for me; I have a lot of friends in different places and I get a fair number of surprises. Plus at one time my previous address got accidentally circulated when I was working for a magazine and I got a lot of stuff sent to me for a while from companies that were trying to promote their stuff. So I'm not totally shocked when something shows up unheralded, and knowing some of my friends it's entirely likely they won't want to put a return address on the box. For example, one time I got a crate of Mk 262, just showed up one day, no explanation, nobody admitted to being the source. Who knows? Could have been one of the companies trying to promote something, hard to say. FN used to be pretty generous. But they also used to want the credit for their generosity. Anyway I get a letter mailer in the box today, bring it home, and shake it a bit because I'm paranoid and I saw that one episode of CSI Miami where a guy got mailed a sheet of C4 rigged to blow when he opened the mailer. But no, this really sounds like paper. I unzip the thing.

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It was this magazine, and a note saying "hope this was a better week - M." It was a friend in Montana, a (wildly more accomplished) guitarist and (somewhat less accomplished) fellow traveler in arcane worlds of armament and conflict.

Ironically I had just been joking around with a former business partner about setting up a business in the Seychelles doing sportfishing charters as a cover for anti-piracy work in the gulf of Aden but now I feel conflicted. Just based on what I gathered from the magazine today, pirates seem like a lot of fun. So maybe that business is off the table, at least until I get a couple more issues.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon May 17, 2021 12:19 pm
by cracked_ribs
A bit of time has gone by since my last update - this was primarily on account of Mother's Day but secondarily on account of the weather, which has been beautiful again and generated a lot of beach trips.

But since the arrival of Pirates magazine, which is pretty surreal and I can't quite tell if it's supposed to be serious or not, I've managed to chip away at a few tasks, and at least my distractions have been very pleasant. Here's the family at one of our local beaches - my kid was extremely serious about this small piece of waterlogged bark. Way off in the back there you can see my wife in this new bikini she's currently obsessed with that looks like an oily marble, if you recall those. Kind of a metallic colour-shift fabric. Anyway life is good but boatbuilding is probably a little slower than usual.

Got the fillets in on the stringers...

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Glassed them down...as usual, probably overkill for the loads this low-speed machine is going to see but what the heck, I have plenty of tape. 2x 12oz, staggered. The stringers are 3" tall so I didn't go crazy on the stagger - more than half the tape is on the hull already. Anyway, they're not going anywhere.

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I don't think anyone here will find this funny but I do...this is what happens when you go from tac'd out gunfight bro to suburban boatbuilder dad. Your high-speed deadbird faceshooting gear gets repurposed for kneeling on rough fiberglass surfaces.

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Oh, then I took a couple of days off to play with this. You know how I was saying I just never know what will show up in the mail? Well, here's another totally unexpected arrival:

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Dynaco PAT-5 preamp and Stereo 410 power amp. I had never heard of this, but by some weird coincidence I had a couple of 200w, 8 ohm speakers lying around doing nothing. The 410 requires exactly this, so I wired it all up. Holy cow, what smooth sound! I put a bluetooth receiver on it so my wife could connect her phone and just put on music whenever. It's got crushing, huge sound...I made her take the kid into the back yard so I could test it out and it's lethal. Totally awesome. I know nothing about vintage amps at all but I do have a friend who collects that stuff so I sent him pics and asked a couple of questions. He couldn't believe somebody just gave it to me and was furious. I'm very fortunate in how my friend selection process has panned out, I'll certainly say that.

Here's more humour: this is what happens when you ask your somewhat barbie-doll-esque wife to grab cheap playing cards from the dollar store if she's in the area so you can do more templating.

"But look, bunnies and hearts!"

"Well, I guess there's no specific disadvantage to that."

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Here's something I should have thought of months ago: I'm always making improvised lists of the day's tasks on scraps of cardboard and stuff. Why didn't I do this earlier? I just staplegunned about 50 sheets of paper to the garage wall. Instant no-losing-it tear off pad. I can't believe I didn't do this ages ago.

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Here I'm just trying to sort out the forward bulkhead and splashwell. The splashwell I left tall to give it some crown.

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There's the splashwell bulkhead laid out. I wasn't thinking when I laid out the V - I measured to the wrong spot and now have to "infill" an inch or so at the bottom, but no big deal. Just late in the day measuring and cutting without a sanity check first. Anyway annoying but not much of an issue.

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Derp - that's too much V as should have been obvious.

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At any rate I'll see if I can get the transverse frames glassed down today, and then it'll be cutting up the splashwell and forward bulkhead. I'm going away this weekend for a bit, so could continue to be slow going, but that's all right: I'm enjoying life.

Finally I don't even know if this is a bridge too far so I'll just post the link instead of including the photo. This is my wife dropping off drinks so I can keep working, and finding ways to make me want to take a break. I can't believe we've been together for over 20 years now. She's still a lot of fun to have around.

https://imgur.com/7Fcfk0S

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon May 17, 2021 7:35 pm
by Dan_Smullen
This proves it once again. Beautiful women are attracted to both Pirates, and members of rock bands. Build on, sir. Build on.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon May 17, 2021 7:55 pm
by VT_Jeff
And Cr continues to be unchallenged for most entertaining build thread. Hope you're planning another boat.

The beach photo got lost in the ether. Please resubmit for completeness.

Glass one of those hearts/bunnies cards inside the boat somewhere.

Keep up the great work and the great updates!

Vj

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue May 18, 2021 12:48 am
by Fuzz
I seem to recall from another forum your wife has a thing for rabbits :D I also think one of those cards should be part of the build. It sure must be nice to have a wife who supports your habits :wink:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue May 18, 2021 9:55 am
by cracked_ribs
Whoops!

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I like the idea of glassing a card into the boat...I can picture explaining this to some of my friends.

"You know Ace of Spades by Motorhead?"

"Oh man yeah, rock anthem! One of the best songs ever."

"Well, I glassed a card into the boat I'm building."

"And you used the ace of spades, of course, because of Motorhead."

"Um...almost."




I did manage to glass down the transverse frames yesterday after work, that was a bit of a chore. But now it's motorwell bulkhead, and then I can put down at least a temporary sole to have a flat surface to walk on again.

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I don't know why I only took a picture of the first 3 but anyway, they're all in.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed May 26, 2021 11:23 pm
by narfi
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 9:55 am
I like the idea of glassing a card into the boat...I can picture explaining this to some of my friends.

My son made a time capsule in a peanut butter jar I buried in the foam under my sole.
It's got a copy of the boat plans a note from him and one from me, a couple photos of us building the boat, and a few legoes and random items he felt should go in a time capsule.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu May 27, 2021 2:28 am
by cracked_ribs
I'd guess that for the first four decades of my life I'd have shrugged that off as quirky but irrelevant to me.

Now that I'm a dad, I'd scrap the whole boat before I'd give up that peanut butter jar.

Funny how much your life can change over the course of about nine months.

Now that you've described that, it makes me want to embed something from my son, although he's so young that for the moment he wouldn't understand it.

Although by the time I finish, maybe he will. Anyway it's a beautiful idea. I'm sure that's very precious to you. If it were me, I'd get emotional every time I thought about it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu May 27, 2021 7:14 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Thu May 27, 2021 2:28 am I'd guess that for the first four decades of my life I'd have shrugged that off as quirky but irrelevant to me.

Now that I'm a dad, I'd scrap the whole boat before I'd give up that peanut butter jar.

Funny how much your life can change over the course of about nine months.

Now that you've described that, it makes me want to embed something from my son, although he's so young that for the moment he wouldn't understand it.

Although by the time I finish, maybe he will. Anyway it's a beautiful idea. I'm sure that's very precious to you. If it were me, I'd get emotional every time I thought about it.
I put some of my departed dogs' toys loose under my aft sole to rattle around over the years and make my wife bawl while she fights a reel-screamer. Nothing I cant easily remove with a few hours of grinding and re-glassing.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:58 am
by cracked_ribs
Jeez I missed a whole update somehow - I came looking to post some minor stuff and thought hang on...way more stuff has happened since this last update, this can't be right.

Well, holidays continue to happen so of course I'm behind schedule again, or I would be, if I was workinng to any kind of schedule.

Victoria Day weekend, which my wife has finally stopped calling "May 2-4" after having left Ontario more than twenty years ago,took us over to the cabin. The kid always zonks right out on the boat.

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I have been really enjoying this combo, an Ugly Stik tiger lite m/h with a Baitrunner 6000. At one time I would have thought the 6000 was too small but it seems to have plenty of drag and of course now that we all use braid it holds tons of line, so I guess a reel that fits in your hand is kind of nice. I also thought the tiger lite would feel weird to me because it's short - I grew up using 8-9' rods for everything. But I just couldn't find one with the action I wanted, and the setup I like, at the same time. I like spread-bore guides, because I like spinning reels for jigging and casting both. But every rod with the guides I like, is either a pool cue like a Saguaro, or a noodle, like a steelhead rod. I have this weird fishing style that evolved on the BC coast in the 70s where I like to drift and cast and you need kind of a generalist setup with a spinning reel to do it, or at least that's what I need to do it. Anyway the 7' Tiger Lite works pretty well and I can cast it better than I thought I'd be able to so I'll probably get a couple more. Of course I forgot to get fish pics but I hauled up a 12 pound lingcod and that's about exactly what I like to find.

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After that it was all just chainsaw maintenance, beach wandering and deadfall clearing.

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Okay, back to work.

Motorwell bulkhead:

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Cut in a bit of crown on that...

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Roughed out the notch and cut the motorwell sides:

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There it is all mocked up...

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Before I glued it into place, I wanted to hack out a spot for a transducer, so I cut about a 3x6" rectangle out of the bilge core and filled it with cabosil, milled fibres and epoxy, and glassed back overtop.

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With that done, I glued in the motorwell bulkhead:

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Cleaned up the transom notch:

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Gave the motor a quick test hang to make sure everything seemed to work all right - still might put a jackplate on for maximum tune-ability though.

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And now I'm knocking the front bench together.

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So there you have it, we're all caught up to today, when I was going to post an update for the last week or so, which I guess I'll write now.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 12:24 pm
by Jeff
Great update!! Always like seeing the family photos!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:26 pm
by cape man
Living the dream! Keep the posts coming!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:01 pm
by cracked_ribs
You know, I never thought anyone would find any of the side stuff interesting but it often turns out to be the stuff most people ask me about later.

Maybe this is a related concept: I was always really anti-selfie, photo-wise I mean, because it seems so egocentric. But then one day I realized that if a friend of mine had a picture of a place they went on vacation that was kind of interesting, but if they were IN the picture, it seemed so much more significant, because there's an emotional anchor there instead of just a photograph of a beach.

I don't know if this is universal, but I think back to when I was in the journalism game and you could tell anyone the statistical probability of something happening, like a car accident at a particular intersection, and it was like you were explaining the varieties of white paint. But you say, "here's the story of a single mom whose car was totaled at Main and 1st" and it was gripping. I guess we're just wired that way. Even for me, I scroll down the page and see random stuff about my family, that's what I go back and look at. In other threads as well, I look for specific details in a build thread if I'm doing that one thing, and I want to see how someone else did it. But in general, it's the off-topic stuff that keeps me reading.


Bearing that in mind, I guess I better lead with this: back to the beach. The kid got totally scuffed up on barnacles from the knees down, but didn't care. Mom cared a LOT. But he didn't even stop running into the ocean.

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Still snow on those mountains which personally, I like to see. If this was an episode of CSI you could zoom in just up off the end of that first point and see my house. The town is built on a steep hill, which is nice, because I have a great view of the ocean as a result.

Getting that motorwell knocked together, that's all glassed in now...

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Clearing out the hull so I can get onto the cleats, nice to see it empty.

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Big pile of pine getting chopped up for cleating everything...

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Oh, then I took a detour to go buy a trailer from some guy on FB marketplace:

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The bunks are kind of rough but I don't care because I have spares.

Getting the cleats all fully leveled out took a couple of hours and I wasn't as careful as a should have been doing the side frames so I have to have taller cleats to level that out. But that's sorted. I'm using 1x2 anywhere I really need the joint to hold a lot of weight, and 1x1 where it's just gluing surface as the sole will pass overtop of the frame or stringer, say.

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And finally here's a big pile of cleats for the edges of everything cut to various sizes for various reasons...I sanded them all on a disc sander so the surfaces are nice and fresh, and today I'll probably start coating them with epoxy to seal them up for installation during the week. I hope to have the cleating finished within a week or so. I was worried about it because it can be fiddly and I could see the side frames were too short at the outside edge, but lining everything up was actually pretty simple.

Really can't wait to get the sole cut in, that'll make it feel half done.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:04 am
by VT_Jeff
Looks like it's all really coming together nicely, nice score on the trailer, those things are getting in short supply!

Out of everything, the carabiner on the binky is my favorite. That is outstanding! I have a feeling that when you were that age(probably roughly the same time I was), you were not on a leash(though you may be now from time to time), wearing ear protection on your dads boat or wearing shoes on the beach. The times they are a changin. Not neccessarily a bad thing, just a stark contrast. My dog has a safety harness/seatbelt for the car. When I was a kid, KIDS didn't wear seatbelts, and now dogs do. At least my dog does.

I started using one of these to sharpen my saw and really like it. A little pricey but easy and consistent:

https://www.shforestrysupplies.com/905- ... gIVz_D_BwE

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:47 am
by cracked_ribs
I definitely never got any protective equipment as a kid and I struggled a bit with the whole dilemma of helicoptering vs learning risk...but this particular kid is so gung-ho that it's either slow him down a little, or see some serious damage, I think. But it's a constant dilemma and I think about this every day.

At that age I was apparently similar and took injuries I can't remember, but were probably worse than necessary for the purposes of instruction... I know at about the age he is now, I put my top teeth right through my bottom lip from the inside, all four fronts, and they had to stitch my lower lip back together because I briefly had two mouths as a result, for instance. I don't know, it's hard to say. A lot of the places we go are inherently pretty dangerous and a bad fall could be TBI territory, that's my big worry. But at the same time I'm a proponent of risk exposure so he learns to manage it. That beach is pretty rocky and he's right on the edge of "can he navigate it without falling" so I don't like to see him over-protected, but at least with the backpack leash, you can follow along and he doesn't know he's got a safety tether, so my hope is that he'll get the risk exposure benefits, but we can still catch him before he falls six feet onto rock or whatever.

The hearing protection I'm a bit nutty about but I actually wear electronic muffs myself in the boat, because I spent so long playing in rock bands and riding motorcycles recreationally, and shooting professionally, that most conversations for me now are like this:

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEor not?EEEEEEEEEE"
"Sorry, were you talking to me?"
"EEEEEEEEEEElast time before you will everEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
"Can we start this conversation over? I think I missed something important."
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEget arrestedEEEEEEEEE."

So I'm really paranoid about hearing loss and I make him muff up. That's a loud boat, though, with a 302 right behind us roaring away. Ironically my wife is fully deaf on one side but hears perfectly on the other, so we're like Tweedledum and Tweedledee with our hearing. For me, everything is one volume and I have to be able to see your mouth to understand anything you see (the last year or so has been extremely confusing and involved a lot of blank smiling and slow nods) but directionally, I'm totally fine, and when I'm looking for a weird engine noise or something I do pretty well, because the clicks and ticks and sharp sounds like that, feel almost as loud as the main engine hum. But organic noise, I'm really bad with it and have no idea what I'm hearing.

My wife has high fidelity...but no ability to determine the direction any sound came from, because everything is in mono, so she hears everything but is always wrong about where it's coming from. So we end up fumbling along together whenever there's a weird sound in the house like the dryer failing or something, her describing the sound so I can try to pick it out, but then always walking away in completely the wrong direction, me swinging my head back and forth with my mouth hanging open trying to isolate it from the clutter even though for anyone else it would be obvious, and take us to where it's coming from.

Truly, the deaf leading the deaf.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:09 pm
by cracked_ribs
Just watched the video on that sharpener - man, that's slick. That'd be faster than what I have, which works well and all, but can be a bit awkward in the field unless you want to haul a stump vise around with you, which I never end up doing. It looks like you could set it up once for one side, roll the whole chain through, then once for the other side, and roll the chain around, and be done.

Can you set the raker height with it? That's the only thing I can do with that Pferd sharpener that is kind of a standout feature, IMO. It makes for a very evenly sharpened chain.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:23 pm
by VT_Jeff
Hilarious on the impaired hearing chronicles. My wife and I both hear ok, but we both tend to "YIP" dishes and glasses into shards with growing regularity. As long as you're looking for balance, you're winning.

Rakers need to be flat filed per usual. But you're right, with a new chain or one you've trained, it's super quick to run both sides through for a quick hone between refuels. Much easier on the wrists and hands than a round file.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:48 pm
by cracked_ribs
Work continues and the immediate goal of floating to mark the waterline is starting to feel really close.

Here's a shot of some of the last framing to go in under the deck. I wanted a 2x3 centerline support that would give me a good gluing surface as well as plenty of rigidity for the sole, which is only 3/8" (although it is marine fir which is pretty stiff).

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Strap hangers for the 2x3s...

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I went inside for lunch on Saturday where I found my mischievous kid only willing to consume peanut butter when not being monitored, for some reason. My wife had to look away for him to eat it. I found it really funny and took this picture.

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After lunch, she brought him out to the garage and it was like somehow he grasped what I'd been doing all of a sudden. Recently he's been pointing at pictures of boats in books but I hadn't thought anything of it, I think he just hears me use the word "boat" a lot and he's on our big boat all the time but for whatever reason this day she brought him out to the garage and first he was just kind of shocked looking, but then he got really excited and wanted to get in. Which, since I'd placed the sole, was possible for the very first time. It's hard to express how excited he was, and I doubt he get that I'm building something, exactly...but I swear you could see this sort of light bulb in his head and he was just overjoyed about it. It was really wild.

He's also teething again which is ridicuous. He has everything but the second set of molars, and has since right around when he turned one, which is something like six months ahead of schedule. And now the second molars are coming in, also six months or more early. Absurd.

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Anyway the sole is fitted but I still need to put cleats around the outside edges.

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Now I'm going to go try to start doing that.



Oh, one more thing, which I mentioned a couple of months back:

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Now why would I need that, do you figure, for an outboard-powered boat with a portable gas tank?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 12:46 pm
by cracked_ribs
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Hatch size mockup so I can for sure get the kicker in and out! My plan is to build a bracket that drops into place on some locator pins etc and screws down with Scotty downrigger bolts (because they're hand-tightened and very common here). If I need or want to use the kicker, I can pop it on the bracket inside the boat, then drop the bracket in place and go.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 12:49 pm
by Jeff
Good planning!!! I like it!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 12:56 pm
by Fuzz
Is the diesel fill for fuel for a heater?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:19 pm
by cape man
Is the diesel fill for fuel for a heater?
X2

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 1:48 pm
by VT_Jeff
Possible that you're going to transport diesel with that boat?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:00 pm
by cracked_ribs
All excellent guesses but not even close, I'm afraid!

There is a heater, but the tank will be a standalone unit. And several years of working underground around big diesel equipment left me with a chemical sensitivity to diesel that makes me puke if I smell it too strongly so as god is my witness, I will not volunteer to transport it for anyone.

But there is a reason!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 5:41 pm
by cape man
Because Reddik is your favorite action hero? Van _____.

By the way...that face on your son is priceless! Hope he loves boats that much when he's sporting a graying beard like you.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 9:15 am
by VT_Jeff
Let's put what we know up on the corkboard:

1. An unexpected piece of hardware(UPH) is going on the boat
2. related to the UPH is a diesel flll plate
3. we'll assume that the fill plate is legit and implies an on-board diesel tank of some size, hence...
4. The UPH runs on diesel
5. The UPH is not a heater and is not the primary locomotive force on the boat, which is a gas outboard, the gas outboard that the boat is basically being built around.

6. If it's not a heater, it is probably an engine
7. If it's an engine, it's probaby a generator

Does his island place not have electricity? Is the plan to run an extension cord down to the boat to power the cottage? Is there some reason he doesn't want to just leave a generator on the island?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 1:12 pm
by JCW1982
I've been following this build on the "other" site which is where I saw the tease.

I can't help but feel we're being bamboozled....but in the depths of my soul, I want to believe that we are witnessing a change of plans from a small O/B to a diesel I/O.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 1:17 pm
by Fuzz
He said he hates anything to do with diesel so I am going to go a different tack. I am guessing a place to step a mast through?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 2:13 pm
by cracked_ribs
Fuzz wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 1:17 pm He said he hates anything to do with diesel so I am going to go a different tack. I am guessing a place to step a mast through?
Oh now that's getting pretty close!

To be fair to diesel...if I could afford a big sportfish, I'd deal with the fumes. No disrespect intended to the mighty Cumminses and Caterpillars of the world.


This weekend I should be able to figure out where that deck fill is going. Then it'll all become clear! In fact this weekend should involve some big action, I think. Fingers crossed but I hope to splash the hull in a few days. The interior is not really any further than the last post shows, I'm just saturating all the bare wood to protect against indavertent rain or spray. But I would like to know where the waterline is going to be for bottom paint purposes. So Saturday she leaves the shed, I think, and hopefully gets dragged onto the trailer. Assuming I can still get the motor to run, I'll TRY to do a test run on Sunday.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 2:39 pm
by VT_Jeff
Ok, om going back to my original guess if a gatling, it hits all the marks.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2021 3:03 pm
by cracked_ribs
lol...would be right up my alley, no doubt about it

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2021 12:42 am
by cracked_ribs
Image

http://imgur.com/a/bblBnJG

Apparently I can't Imgur on mobile.

Probably no time for a real update until mittwoch but for a half-finished boat she's doing all right.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:36 am
by cracked_ribs
Okay, busy as usual but let me try to burn through a quick outline of the last week.
Carb somehow ended up being out of adjustment – throttle plates too closed at idle. This took me a really long time to figure out. I chased all kinds of stuff for about a day before realizing the gas was pooling in the carb at startup, so it would get nothing until some critical mass was hit, then it would dump in and flood. Anyway I got that figured out eventually and now the engine is running. These old motors are crank HP, not shaft, so this thing only puts out around 16-17 hp. I wasn’t sure if it would even plane the skiff on whatever prop it’s got, but anyway I wanted to mark the waterline with a simulated standard complete empty state, so I dragged her out of the shop, put a couple hundred pounds of plates in her, hung the motor, and took her to the ramp.

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Hmm…probably have to change that trim pin position! But at least she floats.

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And sits on her lines as designed, that’s nice.

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So naturally I duct taped a jiffy marker to a piece of scrap plywood, because what else would you do?

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I floated the plywood around the boat and marked the waterline. I didn’t get any photos of that but it just looked like a combination of the plywood pic and any of the other above pics so just use your imagination.

Here’s a bigger question though: will a 17 foot skiff plane with 16ish HP? And if so at what speed? And will the prop be at roughly the right height? I cut the transom to 20” but these old Johnsons are a bit random – this one has something like an 18” leg.

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Answer: yes indeed! Transom is fully dry at 6 knots. Goofy trim and random prop and 16ish HP got 9 knots – I should be able to increase that a fair bit. Particularly if my friend who’s been promising to send me the god damn intake and carb from a 30 for the last 7 months actually puts that stuff in the mail. Otherwise I’m flying to Ontario and strangling him in front of his dog.
There’s no transition at all on the way to planing. It just increases in speed and then the transom gets dry.

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Plenty stable. Traces of wasted, miscreant youth still visible on middle aged gut.

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I took the above pic while sitting on the gunwale right at the forward bulkhead. You can see it hardly lists even with my 220 pounds way out on the rail, well forward of the shallow planing surface. A few people warned me it would be really unstable with off-centre weight towards the bow because the entry is so sharp and carries back a fair way. No, it’s fine.

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So I relaxed for a while, then came home and took the family to the beach for Father’s Day.

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Finally I cleaned out the garage which took hours, and measured the boat on the trailer about five times before attempting this:

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And that about does it for Father’s Day weekend.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:50 am
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:36 am Carb somehow ended up being out of adjustment – throttle plates too closed at idle.
I know on my small outboard there is a separate idle circuit which frequently gets clogged. The throttle plate will be closed at idle and the fuel will flow through this other, b-string sized hole.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:59 am
by VT_Jeff
How the be-geepers were you able to mark that waterline in a working waterway, did you just get lucky and there was no traffic or is the waterline a little wavy? I guess wavy would not be an issue as you can just shoot your line through the centers of any waves. Or maybe it doesn't matter because the boat and your marker both rise and fall together? Nice work, in any case. Great fit in the garage, I have a similar squeeze with my RV, where the door presses gently on the front license plate when it's closed. Total luck.

Boats looking great, what's your target "Done or Done-with-it" date?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 12:06 pm
by Jeff
Great stuff and congrats cracked_ribs!!! Really well done!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 1:02 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys - I'll check on the idle circuit but I THINK this carb is low speed-high speed only, with the jets for both ahead of the throttle plate. It's pretty primitive.

That boat launch is about the calmest, easiest launch I have ever seen. I just slid off to the outside of the north ramp which is unusable at low tide, and the pier blocked the small wakes from local traffic.

But the bottom paint will come up an inch past the mark so I wasn't super concerned, anyway. I'd have taken it somewhere calmer if I had to nail it. But it's pretty close.

I've been so busy I haven't really been following any other builds so I see your FS is in need of a reg number...here we see the fundamental irresponsibility of my approach to life on display.

No reg number? No problem. I actually ran into the DFO inspector on the way out but she just said "oh, new boat!" And I just waved and gave the thumbs up.

https://youtu.be/L397TWLwrUU

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:35 pm
by cracked_ribs
Oh, and completion date...well, REALLY done will probably not be until next spring. There's a whole other layer of complication coming: a removable cabin, which I'll do in extra-light foam sandwich over the winter.

But I figure it'll be done enough to use regularly...maybe a month? I'd like to get the sole glassed down and the side decks in, and the forward hatch/seat finished. But it's all just little stuff now. It'll stiffen up as I keep adding components but I don't see gentle use being an issue at all. I just have nowhere to mount downriggers or put rodholders for the time being. And in theory I guess the transom is vulnerable to a boarding wave until the splashwell is done, but the thing is a cork. It's not likely to take much over the transom.

I'll slow down the pace over the summer, I think. I get really task-fixated and it's hard to stop doing stuff. Yesterday I started my work day at 5 so I could be done by 1:30, then I cleaned the garage from 2-6, had dinner, then worked on the boat again from 7 until 9. I get like that if I don't watch it and then I realize I've hardly seen my kid all day. It's not how I want to spend the summer. So I've been in race mode to get her in the water a bit, but now I have to force myself to slow down. Being able to take her out will help. I might start going fishing on her in the evening a couple of times a week or something.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2021 7:13 pm
by Dan_Smullen
The transom and the whole boat look great. Congrats on the successful launch! I’m dumbfounded by the speed at which you progress!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:58 am
by cracked_ribs
Well, it helps when you accept mediocre quality and rough work.

I have a bit of a "rough it in now, dial it in later" approach. I like to do stuff that way because then I can spend the winter dicking around with fiddly stuff when I don't want to be out on the boat, but in the summer I can put work on hold and go play.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 12:53 pm
by cracked_ribs
Okay, quick update, not a ton of time to write as I have been taking a lot of time off work to enjoy the summer, and am now way behind on everything, of course.

Bilge painted in preparation for gluing down the sole:

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Mystery block all laminated up:

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And glued into place:

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Naturally, like an idiot, I got fixated on the painting process and forgot to leave a spot open for the mystery block. You can't glue to paint for reasons that I assume are obvious to everyone - or, you can, I guess, if you're happy with a bond no stronger than whatever the paint has. That's not very useful so of course I had to sand back to glass in this spot to glue down the mystery block.

Here's the sole gluing down:

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Getting taped into place:

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Man, wetting out glass in the summer is dead easy! That 12oz tape just soaks it up and turns invisible on the spot.

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Quick buzz of the deck to take down a couple of minor highs and give the epoxy something to grab, with a rolled up sheet of 6oz about 12x5' at the ready:

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And all wetted out:

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I figure if you can get this intersection nice and flat you've done adequate prep on the stringers and frames:

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Inset for the mystery block:

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Looks like a decent fit:

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And now I'm working on sorting out the framing for the seat hatch. I really like covers that lift right out so that's what I'm working on here. They still need drain troughs routed in, none of this is glued up or anything. It's all just me dry-fitting things together.

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Oh, I should give a quick update on the other fun stuff too...family life and cabin time:

My wife continutes to find ways to make being the mom of a toddler look glamourous, by somehow matching her outfit to her surroundings all the time.

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Of course she does have to bring spare shoes for the playground. The kid is spectacularly adventurous:

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Being totally fed up with the view from our city place, we traded this in:

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Via the old boat:

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For the cabin, which ended up being really crowded. These two yahoos were constantly leering in the window at us:

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And then a bunch of these guys just all over everything:

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We checked in at the town hall/trading post/fire department/medical transfer station to see if anything could be done but apparently not.

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All we could do to calm down was go swim in the ocean:

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But eventually we'd just had it with the terrible conditions and went home. Now if you zoom in really far you'll notice this obnoxious family that was trying to harass us on the commute home:

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Single mom with two kids. Sad, the state of society these days. Where is the father? Nowhere to be seen. But that's the world we brought this kid into. He turned 18 months old:

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And we celebrated our 21st anniversary at a local restaurant where somehow my wife managed to find something to match with her outfit. So I guess SOME families stay together. Take a hint, whales.

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Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 12:56 pm
by cracked_ribs
Ah, I see that one video didn't come through, here's the permalink:

https://imgur.com/RlMvvNu

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 2:32 pm
by VT_Jeff
Awesome, per usual! Those owls look serious!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 2:49 pm
by Jeff
Beautiful location and I love the owls!! Always nice to see a family out in the wild!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:09 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, we're pretty fortunate to have so much interesting wildlife in the area. The island our cabin is on has few natural predators or humans, so it's kind of an accidental migratory bird sanctuary. Any species passing through stops there, because it's pretty safe and pretty unspoilt.

So at times we see a ton of hummingbirds, or redwinged blackbirds, or whatever seems to be traveling past. They're there for a week or so and then gone. Pretty cool to see.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:49 pm
by Dan_Smullen
Awesome update, CR. Keep doing what your doin'!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2021 5:33 pm
by cracked_ribs
That's pretty much the plan - although maybe a minor detour into engine work will begin today, as all my parts and gaskets have arrived!

I suspect I'll be able to just about double the output of that old Johnson. Prop HP on it is around 17-18. I think I'll be over 30 when I'm done.

Of course there's about three props for these so I may not gain much. I have a 9.25x11 on there now. For sure I've seen a 12, but I don't think I've ever seen a 13 or more in that old 13 spline OMC pattern.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 10:00 am
by cape man
When you dial it in, a good prop shop may be able to adjust whatever prop you have quite a bit if getting the right one with the 13 spline OMC pattern isn't possible. I had a stainless 13" pitch adjusted to an 11" when I first launched the OD18 and just did it because I was broke (half the price of a new prop).

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 11:53 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, it may end up that way - I had a really good prop guy where I used to live but so far, here, I don't have anyone (although I'm sure there are several shops that could handle it). I was thinking about it last night while heading to bed, though, and it shouldn't actually be too difficult to dial this one in. I haven't really gone through and checked these numbers but they should be close:

I can probably rev it to 5800, which I can verify with a cheap tach that's accurate enough for this kind of thing...gear case on these I think was a 2.15, so whatever that is, about 2700 turns at the shaft. 11/12 of 2700, minutes to hours over 5280 and something like 20% slip...that'd be around 22mph, just ballparking it. That's probably about what this thing is good for. So maybe an 11" wheel would be about right, anyway.

There's a dealership in the next town over that does OMC stuff; I'll have her out this weekend and see what I can do with the new bits on, then chat them up and see if I can try a couple of props. But I won't be surprised if an 11 is actually what I want, in the end. If the slip is too severe maybe I'll back it down - I never planned to run more than about 20 knots full tilt, if that. Probably more like upper teens.

In fact speaking of the new bits, the last of which arrived yesterday so of course after dinner I was out swapping them all in...

New intake is about double the volume of the old:

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Here you can see I've cut the gasket back to the size of the new intake, and then laid it on the old one so you can see just how much bigger it is all the way around:

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But here's the real money shot. The 20s didn't just come with a smaller intake and carb, they also had a restrictor plate to downtune them even further.

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I'm about to go from an 18mm throttle body diameter, to a 38mm diameter. What's that in area? ~250mm vs around 1100mm? The motor has enough compression you can hurt yourself trying to start it - in fact my neighbour did just that when we were goofing around with the original carb a couple of weeks back. But it's been breathing through a straw.

I'd say things are about to get real in Oyster Harbour.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2021 11:05 pm
by TomW1
Hey CR give me the make, HP and year of your motor and I can look it up in my resources to get the gear ratio for you. That way you will know for sure if it is a 2.15 final drive. It's funny I grew up learning to drive a 25HP Johnson 14' aluminum V-hull boat. Take care and have a good summer.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:19 am
by cracked_ribs
Why thank you - it's a 1979 Johnson 20. The 20s are hard to look up and I find most people haven't heard of them, but the gearing should be the same as a 25.

I think they were all 2.15s at that point, and later ones definitely were...but off the top of my head I couldn't swear to it.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 6:09 pm
by TomW1
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:19 am Why thank you - it's a 1979 Johnson 20. The 20s are hard to look up and I find most people haven't heard of them, but the gearing should be the same as a 25.

I think they were all 2.15s at that point, and later ones definitely were...but off the top of my head I couldn't swear to it.
CR I have spent the last 3 hours trying to find the Johnson 20 79 gear ratio. It appears not to be listed any where. The 25HP is 2.15 so I would go with that since the 20 is a down sized 25 and not an upsized 15. From what I found. I even found some for sale but they did not list the gear ratio.

Well again enjoy the summer.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 6:44 pm
by VT_Jeff
My dumb idea: Remove the lower unit, spin the shaft and see how many turns it takes to spin the prop exactly 1 revolution. Maybe can do without removing lower unit.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:16 pm
by cracked_ribs
TomW1 wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 6:09 pm
cracked_ribs wrote: Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:19 am Why thank you - it's a 1979 Johnson 20. The 20s are hard to look up and I find most people haven't heard of them, but the gearing should be the same as a 25.

I think they were all 2.15s at that point, and later ones definitely were...but off the top of my head I couldn't swear to it.
CR I have spent the last 3 hours trying to find the Johnson 20 79 gear ratio. It appears not to be listed any where. The 25HP is 2.15 so I would go with that since the 20 is a down sized 25 and not an upsized 15. From what I found. I even found some for sale but they did not list the gear ratio.

Well again enjoy the summer.

Tom
Well I sure appreciate the effort on my behalf - I'm pretty confident they used the 2.15 as well but no doubt about it, the 20s are hard to get rock solid info on!

Jeff for sure if it come down to it I can crank it around - the flywheel is easy to access so I could always pull the prop, mark one spline and one tooth, and see just how close to 2.15 it is.

But I just can't see them using a different gearing when the only other change from the 25 was a restrictor plate in the carb. It'll be a 2.15 lower, I'm pretty sure of it.

I'll throw her back in the water this weekend and see what the new intake feels like - right now I'm just screwing around with the gutters on the forward hatch and maybe I'll get some of that framing glued up tonight. If I can get the hatch and seat sorted by Friday that'd be nice for any passengers daring enough to withstand the mighty power of the 22 cubic inch twin.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 10:57 am
by cracked_ribs
A minor update since I'm kind of goofing off with the build right now...

Got the framing and gutters under the forward hatch sorted and just tabbed them in place by clamping them to the seat and putting a thick mix in at the hull, then went back afterwards and popped the seat off so I could do nice fillets around the surfaces I otherwise wouldn't have been able to see. This worked pretty well.

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Finally the purpose of the deck fill: it supports my grab rail, which is all the console I think this little skiff needs.

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I don't know why I did this this way, this was so dumb. I had previously cut out those hatches, and I thought I'd glass that whole bulkhead so I gently put the cutouts back in with a bit of masking tape as a spacer, then glassed both sides, and cut them back out. It worked, it was just a pointlessly hard approach to save about half a yard of fabric.

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Then I glued down the seat:

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And glassed it in, kicker still fits in and out nicely...

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And then I was like ah, screw building, let's just go get back on the water.

I think this is the only shot of the sheerline of the completed hull.

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The clipboard is for prop math (which of course being me I still just ballpark rather than take seriously, even when I bring a pencil and paper specifically to do the math.

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Every time I do this, I don't know why. You can see my liberal use of ~ which I use to mean "about." I'm pretty good at mental arithmetic but not very interested in actually doing math, so what I always end up doing is doing the math for a given step about 3/4 of the way until I think I have it within some reasonable margin, writing down the approximate value, and moving on. Partly I do this because I work with a bunch of engineers that are really persnickety and it drives them INSANE, although the thing is, I always calculate the values to within a useful degree of accuracy. They just hate that I casually dismiss the need to finish the equation. But I just keep an eye on my rounding and end up with values that are close enough and I find it really funny to treat math so roughly.

Oh, and I need to take a closer look at that tach. I hope I wasn't actually running at 6500! But it was sure howling at WOT.

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Anyway I didn't go back and look carefully so it's possible this napkin math done while running the boat isn't perfectly accurate. But clearly the prop that's on the boat is slipping like crazy. That's fine, I'll fix that. Actually I'll fab up a jack plate to tune the prop height, it's a tiny bit high with the amount of setback I have and between the height and the old behind-the-prop water pickup on this motor, at speed it starts to lose water. I didn't notice it at first because it's not obvious until you're really moving, but then I ran it for about five minutes at about 16 knots to get well ahead of a tug with a load of salvage logs and I realized it was getting way too hot! I shut it down for a bit, popped the kicker on just to be sure I could easily do so, and chugged around on my little 3hp Evinrude a bit before firing the Johnson back up and cruising slowly around.

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I brought some fishing gear along but once I realized I couldn't run at speed without drying out the motor, I just cruised around to look at some spots I'd been past, but never explored before. Once I get the bracket fabbed up it'll be more useable. Also, the beat up old prop probably isn't helping matters, it's churning the hell out of the water back there. I'll drop on a new one with less pitch and get the motor set back a little, dropped a tiny bit, and we should be in business.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 12:31 pm
by Jeff
Looking good cracked_ribs!! Beautiful area to boat!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 1:03 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks man - yeah, it's a beautiful spot. I sacrificed a lot to move my family here, and for about eight hours a day monday to friday, it doesn't feel like it was worth it.

Then I get off work, take my kid to the playground at the bottom of our street where he can run and climb until he's bored, then swim in the ocean and watch eagles pull fish out of the water and I'm like...oh, yeah, there was really a point to this.

I can't wait to get the engine dialed in and reliability established so I can take him along. He has a little fishing rod with a reel and a little plastic fish instead of a lure with a hook and he constantly runs around the house doing these crazy awkward flinging casts and he's seen me fishing on the big boat enough that I know he gets that's what I'm doing and sort of why, as well. He knows it goes with the boat, anyway. I just can't even overstate how much I'm looking forward to teaching my kid to fish on a boat I built myself. I actually get choked up thinking about it. Which, of course, totally ruins my credentials on the "heavily tattooed ex-arms-industry-shooter bearded bad man" front. But it's honestly a pretty magical combination, if you think about it. Truly a unique pleasure that life could offer: to build a boat with your own hands, and use it to teach your child about boats and fishing and the sea.

I mean honestly...that's life experience lottery win stuff right there, in my opinion.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 1:21 pm
by Jeff
Really great stuff cracked_ribs!!! Teaching your kids to do anything is a great experience but I personally feel getting kids outside to do stuff is the best. Too many spend way too much time on computers and phones and never get to experience real nature!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 1:25 pm
by cape man
Nice posts you old softy.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 2:09 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yes, I'm truly the pacific oyster of the boat building world. Very rugged exterior, and might just cut you for no reason.

Then, a very small amount of prying later, you discover the inside is actually quite mushy.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:18 pm
by TomTom
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I love the sheer line of your boat - a real beauty. Can’t say how impressed I am with your build.

Fascinating thread.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 9:57 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well thanks very much, I will certainly take that as a compliment coming from you - you are one of the forum's experts on creating a beautiful sheerline, after all. Not to mention the C19 stretch project which makes you a legitimate judge of interesting undertakings!

How is that coming, anyway? I'm so busy these days I rarely look past whatever the most recent three or four threads to pop up happen to be. Are you back on the water yet?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 10:05 am
by cracked_ribs
Chipping away on fiddly little bits when not doing family stuff. Have to admit that much of the time when I'm out in the garage building, I'd rather be taking the family to the beach, so I'm striking a balance. It's slowing down the progress, but I don't really care.

Roughing in the side deck supports:

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They're only dry fit, none of this is gluing up yet:

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I want to be able to take 8 rods under the gunwale. The shortest rods I ever use are about 7 feet long, although maybe sometime I'll spring for a Trevala and I think they're 6'6. The longest rods are 10'6 mooching rods. I wanted to make sure I could store at least two of each maximum and minimum length, and not have reels banging into rods, or rod tips whacking the hull, so I mocked up some stuff to be sure that would all work about how I want.

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Then I went to work on a bracket. Man, not much left of that cutoff wheel! I can't remember if I said this here or not; over Canada Day long weekend I got a piece of wood rammed into my eyeball (outside the field of vision, nothing disastrous) and had to take the boat back over to the big island and head up to the urgent care to get it dug out. Luckily it didn't seem to punch through into the middle so they just pulled it out and put drops in it and gave me a tetanus booster and off I went back to the cabin to live as Odin, having traded one eye for wisdom. In this case, that wisdom paid off and I was wearing safety glasses when that cutoff wheel started to disintegrate on me, so that was good.

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Something along these lines should work fine:

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Nobody panic about the scuffs on the transom, it has lots of sanding and varnish left to go.

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Up next: I thought I would take this nice little slab of maple and turn it into a pad for that outboard to hang on. The old Johnson doesn't have a convenient option for handling a 1/4" plate transom, so it needs a bit of a spacer.

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Having gotten the bracket and side deck supports in hand, I took my kid to the other local park that's really amazing, where he continues to focus on climbing everything:

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And settled into the hot tub for a nice view of the moon over the bay before facing the grim reality of impending Monday.

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I was going to try to take the boat to the cabin next weekend but I'd be rushing and cutting corners to do it, I think, so I won't. I don't want to leave the exposed epoxy in much UV so I really want the interior painted with a couple of coats of primer, at least, before it sits on the hook for a week. That means glassing in the side deck supports and getting paint on the deck in the next three days, plus going around and injecting a few little spots under the sole glass at the edges where there are air bubbles...I don't know. It's probably possible, but the paint would be pushing it and I'd rather just take it as it comes.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:34 am
by TomTom
cracked_ribs wrote: Thu Jul 22, 2021 9:57 pm Well thanks very much, I will certainly take that as a compliment coming from you - you are one of the forum's experts on creating a beautiful sheerline, after all. Not to mention the C19 stretch project which makes you a legitimate judge of interesting undertakings!

How is that coming, anyway? I'm so busy these days I rarely look past whatever the most recent three or four threads to pop up happen to be. Are you back on the water yet?

We are close - it’s just I am stuck in the UK and my boat is in Kenya - and due to all the covid travel restrictions we are basing our selves here for now.

But basically she just needs the top coat on the inside and some anti skid and then the woodwork needs clear coating.

Have sent the engine injectors off for a clean - our fuel is terrible and they have sat unused a long time.

Out of interest what are you finishing your wood work with?

I imported the Gurit SP 115 UV epoxy for the wood; and then will clear coat with one a 2 pac clear coat car paints.

I have also found that Fiebens alcohol leather dye seemed to work ok at touching up epoxy blemishes - I have used it on wooden bows in the past and it’s worked nicely there. (I have a few places where the epoxy joint lines look very white because of the microfibres) ...

That’s my plan - sort of - curious how you were dealing with it?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 11:38 am
by TomW1
Dang TomTom sorry to hear your stuck away from home. Covid is interrupting every ones lives. Well hope you get back home soon. Take care and get the shots if you can.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:34 pm
by TomTom
Well - I think many people’s lives have been disrupted - so we are not alone! It’s mainly the 10 days of hotel quarantine coming into UK that is keeping us from going anywhere.

We are very lucky to be able to stay in touch so well with what’s app - my brother is in Curacao, my wife, daughter and I are in the UK, our parents are in Africa - but the ability to stay in touch the way we can nowadays really helps.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:18 pm
by cracked_ribs
TomTom wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 10:34 am

We are close - it’s just I am stuck in the UK and my boat is in Kenya - and due to all the covid travel restrictions we are basing our selves here for now.

But basically she just needs the top coat on the inside and some anti skid and then the woodwork needs clear coating.

Have sent the engine injectors off for a clean - our fuel is terrible and they have sat unused a long time.

Out of interest what are you finishing your wood work with?

I imported the Gurit SP 115 UV epoxy for the wood; and then will clear coat with one a 2 pac clear coat car paints.

I have also found that Fiebens alcohol leather dye seemed to work ok at touching up epoxy blemishes - I have used it on wooden bows in the past and it’s worked nicely there. (I have a few places where the epoxy joint lines look very white because of the microfibres) ...

That’s my plan - sort of - curious how you were dealing with it?
[/quote]

All the brightwork is just getting the treatment my caveman brain came up with: 3 coats of regular old BBC MarinEpoxy, followed by as many coats of Epifanes varnish as I can stand. Apparently the Epifanes does pretty well over epoxy but I have no personal experience to back that up. That's what I hear, though.

I will say that on my last all-bright dinghy, I used System 3 WR-LPU clear over MarinEpoxy, and that boat's been in the sun for three years now, and held up pretty well. Really well, considering it sat on the mooring for three straight summers, actually. Pretty brutal treatment for an art project. But it really didn't yellow.

Strangely this epoxy, which is exactly the same, seems to be prone to yellowing much more quickly. I have had the boat out a few times and can see it. My last boat spent a month on the deck in the middle of summer, and didn't really yellow perceptibly at all. No idea what the difference there is. But I can tell on the interior of the boat, for sure, it yellowed a little bit. On the other hand, I had it out in 40C in direct sun, so I'm calling it "post-cured" a la Fallguy. Well, again, my neanderthal rendition of post-curing.

Now I'm curious about the Fiebens - that's really interesting. I have a few spots I think I might try that on.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:11 pm
by TomTom
It has to be Fiebens - and alcohol based - but it’s the only dye that I have found that penetrates the waxy cuticle on bamboo and it has done pretty well at hiding epoxy blemishes - so worth a shot for sure.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 7:32 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well, I'll have to track that down, thank you!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2021 4:06 am
by TomTom
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This is a thin bamboo strip glued over a wood called Ipe using epoxy. There is a tapered wedge between the bamboo and the Ipe around the handle section. The handle is then glued on afterwards. So at the handle there are 3 glue lines. The Ipe is a very dark wood. The bamboo is light. I feel like the Fiebins dye did a pretty good job of blending everything...

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:05 pm
by cracked_ribs
Wow, that looks terrific. I've seen ipe used for wear properties - I was actually hunting for some locally at one time for some project, I forget what, but I wanted to try it because I heard it's really tough.

But I didn't know it was springy. Is it used in traditional bows in the part of Africa your family is in? Like is that a fairly faithful reproduction of a local traditional bow, just with modern adhesives etc?

Here, to my knowledge at least, the only indigenous bows were made of cedar and while it's a bit springy, it's nothing to write home about, so archery didn't take off as a technology on a huge level.

Anyway the colour blending does look quite good.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:29 pm
by TomTom
This is a whole different rabbit hole you are sending me down!

I would say that bamboo backed bows are very much a “modern concept” - you can pull shape into the bow in the same way you would with gluing up fiberglass bows. Also, something strange happens from an engineering point of view when you use a bamboo back and you pull a belly into reflex. For some reason a bow stores energy much more efficiently. An American called Dan Perry who holds several flight bow records popularised the technique of “Perry reflexing”... I’ve tried to understand the physics but don’t but suffice to say it works!

Ipe is amazing stuff - sinks in water. Very oily and hard to glue.

One side of a bow must be good in tension and the other in compression. Ipe is very good in compression and bamboo is great in tension - so you can essentially create the perfect “bow wood”... and you can “Perry reflex” and you can glue a bow up in multiple shapes with this combination - so it’s very common and popular technique. It also lets you use imperfect “bow wood” from a lumber yard. A traditional “self bow” must have its back (the part in tension facing away from the archer) as one single unviolated growth ring running tip to tip - because if you violate a ring it will break there. So you basically have to start with a whole log and split it and follow it’s natural contours to achieve this. Bamboo backing lets you cut some corners....

It’s like sticking fiberglass and epoxy over wood and calling it a wooded boat! The purists scoff at you in both cases!!

From your part of the world I would say Pacific yew and Osage are the out and out winners premium bow woods; though hickory will make a bullet proof bow but it’s very susceptible to moisture fluctuations so must be sealed well.

Other decent North American bow woods include maple, red oak, black locust and ash.

One of the cedars is much better than the other - cant remember which. But they were/ are often backed with sinew as they are tension weak woods...

Many North American traditional bow designs were shaped by the areas that people lived and the woods available to them. I think sinew backed bows really came into their own as a way to make much shorter bows from brittle/ tension weak woods that could be used on horses... so I think bow design basically changed drastically after the arrival of the Spanish and horses ...

It’s a whole addiction in its own right...

African bows come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes depending on where one is talking about. From our part of the world, Kamba or Waliangulu people are probably the best known for their bows.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:09 pm
by cracked_ribs
That's really interesting - sorry, away at my cabin for a bit there and although I get intermittent reception it's hard to give serious thought to anything I read on a phone, somehow.

It makes sense to use a tension wood and a compression wood; I don't know anything about archery but obviously you look at what a bow does and...yeah, that's a beam that will only ever go one way (well, I once saw a guy pull back and release an empty one and it flipped inside out or whatever you'd call it but I got the sense that that was very, very bad and everyone who knew anything looked like they instantly got an ice cream headache that would take a Texas gas station gallon-sized slurpee drink to generate).

I need another hobby like I need another hole in my head but my wife is always half-seriously talking about taking up archery. We have the space and it would be a lot more polite than shooting unsupressed rifles at the cabin, that's for sure.

And actually over the weekend someone gave me a beater sit-on-top kayak. That's only important because this fall I was going to take a break from the main boat, and build a strictly one-man kayak-ish dinghy out of foam so I could easily hoist it one handed into the boat, and stop using my sailing dinghy as a tender. With this boat I'll be able to offload people and cargo straight onto the shore, which is a huge pain with the two-ton glass tank, so I really just need to get myself to shore afterwards, and a little rotomolded SOT seems perfect for popping 100 feet to shore.

ANYWAY, as a result I suddenly don't need to build that. But I will have some spare epoxy lying around. And there's a specialty wood store right up the road. So anyway, there's a rabbit hole I'm fairly prepared to get sucked down.

Although I recently realized, as I sat in my hot tub, triggering heat shock proteins and cellular autophagy after my fourth set of neutral grip pull-ups, listening to Lex Fridman discuss psychedelics with Rick Doblin, while wondering if I should go back to BJJ, that I've essentially become a total caricature of a podcast bro.

So taking up bowhunting might just make me a freaking cartoon. There are risks to be managed here.


Perry reflexing, you say...

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2021 12:23 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well, I have a pretty small update.

I took a week off to go to my cabin, and then another week off because, to my enormous surprise, I got sick. Don't get your hopes up: it was nothing serious. I had been speculating that with things starting to open up and my kid going to these mommy-hook-ups/sort-of-semi-daycare-hangouts that we might actually have an avenue by which we could get sick and that turned out to be shockingly prophetic. I work from home, my wife doesn't work, and covid is really rare where I am so until very recently I felt like the odds of catching anything at all were exceptionally remote...and the only real change to that was the local mom meet-up, so I had processed this kind of theoretical change to our family's risk of infection, which in a normal year wouldn't be a thing I'd think about but you know, covid etc, so this was just a thing I was thinking about.

Anyway then my kid got his first cold, which I also got. I was so surprised that there was anything circulating at all that initially I just assumed it must be covid, but I got tested, and apparently not. But I was super beat for about a week, and also had lingering concerns about a false negative so I didn't want to go grind fiberglass, even in a dust mask, and just give my lungs some whole other problem to deal with on the off chance it was indeed covid. Which, as far as I know, it wasn't, and it's been a week and I feel pretty much fine, so I got back to work on the boat on Saturday for the first time in a while.


In rough chronological order here...I started by bailing out to the cabin, so I'll cover that first.

That Costco Lifetime cooler I bought for the boat, I used for the first time because there was yet another heatwave on, so I wanted all the coolers I could get for a week at the cabin. When I bought that thing I had slight misgivings, because at whatever, I think around $160 CAD, I thought there's some obvious downsides: you're supporting junk chinese manufacturing etc. But I'm pretty tapped out at the moment, and bought it, anyway.

So then I open the thing before we head to the cabin and check this out:

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It's made in the freaking USA. If I knew this, I definitely forgot. I was totally stoked. I'm not American, so I'm not patriotic for made-in-the-USA stuff per se, but would I rather support manufacturing in an ally country instead of a country I won't comment on further because not everyone wants to drink my personal brand of political kool-aid? Hell yes, I would rather my money go to America and American workers. Very happy about this.

The cooler appropriately packed, we headed off to the cabin where this familiar beach continued to enthrall my kid:

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I thought this might be kind of interesting, too. This is the sound of a beach here at low tide. If you turn it up you'll hear all the tiny little animals making their weird little squeaks and creaks and clicks as they open and close shells and filter mud and crawl around. It struck me that a sand beach is really nice to walk on, but often a bit of a desert, but our beaches are the opposite: murder on the feet, but teeming with life. And our little island is so quiet, you can hear it all happening. Anyway I just thought it was kind of cool.

https://youtu.be/afMqEtV5Fq8

There are other beaches there, though. We got the kid a little floaty thing, like an inner tube but with a center floor with leg holes, so he could float around in the ocean. He's really into beaches and the ocean in general. I have to say I think he's pretty lucky to get this constant exposure to these marine environments. I'm really happy about the general experience of life he's getting so far. He has just suddenly grasped the significance of berry bushes and we have been gorging him on wild salal, blueberries, and blackberries. He's crazy about it all. It's pretty neat.

Okay, last non-boat pic:

Five days, >30c (~90f) all day every day, still 5 lbs of ice in there. That's yeti performance for coleman money.


Okay, back to work:


Just throwing a bit of light cloth on the side supports here to prevent checking etc; that's marine fir so it needs a bit of extra help in that department:

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Cleaning up a little slab of maple for the outboard pad on the bracket:

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Filleting in side supports:

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Test fitting the...I don't even know what to call these. Full-length coaming cleats. If this was german, maybe inwalesheerclampcoamingcleat. I honestly don't know. They're going to give me a gluing surface to connect the side decks to what I would call coaming but could be considered an inwale? I have them for the top and bottom of the coaming surface, the top to give gluing surface and the bottom just to stiffen the bottom of the coaming edge.

Then I ripped a 2x3 into quarters. This will go under the side decks, in the middle, as a longitudinal stiffener. I only have 1/4" ply on hand and I think it'd be floppy between the side supports without a bit of help. I scarfed these together last night.

Image

And finally, I went around the side supports where they interface with the sole to make really fat fillets, and stuck cleats all over the relevant surfaces of the side supports where the decks and coaming need gluing surface.

I'm going to pull a really thin coat of fairing compound over the interior, I think. I spent about an hour Saturday afternoon running over it with a sander and it's decent, but I think a skim coat could make it look noticeably better under paint, so I guess I'll do that.

Really looking forward to getting paint on the interior: once the surfaces are protected from UV I can be less careful about keeping it indoors, so I can use it more easily when I want as I finish up.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2021 2:25 am
by Fuzz
Looks like you are getting close to laying a little paint on it. Nice work on those hull side stiffeners.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:30 am
by cracked_ribs
Yeah, I'm hoping by the end of this weekend she'll be in a state where I can stop worrying about UV and just take her out. What's today, tuesday?

I figure...

spot fixes around the sole-hull seam; nothing structural, just the odd small bubble to fill, maybe try to get that handled today.
skim coat the interior wednesday?
fair it back down thursday
might get some paint inside her over the weekend.

Although at some point this week I'll be taking an afternoon to replace the whole exhaust on my old 4runner...over the long weekend at the ramp, somebody rolled through (presumably from the somewhat notoriously crime-ridden industrial town a ways north of here) and cut everybody's catalytic converter out.

Mine was cheap to replace but the whole exhaust system was dying, after 25 years and god knows how many salt baths, so I ordered all new stuff and now I have to deal with that. Nasty work, exhaust. Anyway, that'll put a dent in the week but I'll get it handled one way or another. Pretty decent chance of interior paint this weekend I think.

Meanwhile:

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Fiddly bits for the side decks taking shape



And:

Image

A triumph of careful planning dumb luck. 4 rods per side, lowest rods 7" off the deck so hopefully out of boot range. No reels banging on rods, no rod tips banging on the hull. Collapsed lengths 36-68" accomodated so everything from 6'6 jigging rods to 10'6 mooching noodles. Pictured are a 7' casting-jigging rod, a 10'6 moocher (taking up two spaces, but only to illustrate the setup, you could get one in each space) and a 9' spinning rod. That basically covers the gear I use on a regular basis. Everything slides into and out of place, so no cuts through the inward edge of the stiffener. Might throw a narrow strip of glass on that edge for a bit of extra resistance to dings and bangs. Just need to seal the inside of the holes up nicely, then I'll stick in a little strip of neoprene tape to protect the rods. It'll get rod holders at the transom too, of course...but more rod storage is always better. 8 rods under the gunwales should be plenty for any trip this thing does.

Pretty pleased I got away with holes over notches. Notches are way easier to use, of course, but retaining that inner edge for structural reasons is kind of a score.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2021 4:18 pm
by TomW1
Looks good CR. Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2021 11:54 am
by cracked_ribs
Thanks man! One step at a time. Definitely making progress.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2021 12:01 pm
by Jeff
Good progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 12:25 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks Jeff - gotta put all that BBC epoxy to work somehow!

Small update:

Like an idiot I started fairing the interior. So that ate some time. It's not perfect and I'm not trying to make it perfect because it'll get beaten on loading stuff on and off the island all the time. But apparently I just can't leave well enough alone.

Image

Oh and I got that bracket mounted up, has quite a bit of travel so gives me a bit of flexibility to move the current motor around, and then if I ever decide to get a nice new 4 stroke, I am a bit less constrained by available leg lengths - could jack it up and put a 25 on there if I had to, I think. The hunk of maple there is really just a spacer, it's not structural. The bolts are just holding it in the correct location; once I get the chance to drop the motor on I'll figure out where I want a few countersunk machine screws to keep it in place when the motor is off. [Anyway not important, the main thing is the bracket is mounted and I can start playing with engine height.

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May end up putting a couple of backing plates on here, that's why I ran the bolts so long. Also, I had measured them and knew 2 1/2" was plenty...and then was at the store and went through my typical "yeah but what if I somehow measured wrong and I have to drive all the way back" thing so I got 3" bolts which is pointless but I can always grind them down. Anyway 4x 1/2" bolts...uh, should handle a 100lb, 30 hp motor. But as I have so often said in regards to my stupid and factually unjustified love of the 10mm Auto: yes, it's overkill. But the alternative to overkill could be underkill, and threats that are underkilled are underdead, and underdead threats are still dangerous, and the way to deal with dangerous threats is overkill. Therefore, I overkilled these bolts. Science.

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Finally, I cut the anchor locker bulkhead for the very front, cut in the crown for the breasthook that'll sit on it, marked out the hatch and glassed it up so I can get that glued in later today and start working on the side decks. But I forgot to take a picture of that so instead, here's the state of the interior:

Image

Just a little bit longer, and I'll be out on the water and not worrying about UV degradation of the epoxy. Want to get non-skid on the deck, and another coat of paint on the interior. And of course I'll continue with the side decks which can go together pretty quickly now. But once I can leave it outside for a weekend without stressing about UV, I'll be pretty happy.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:10 pm
by cape man
yes, it's overkill. But the alternative to overkill could be underkill, and threats that are underkilled are underdead, and underdead threats are still dangerous, and the way to deal with dangerous threats is overkill. Therefore, I overkilled these bolts. Science.
You should definitely get your band to write some music around this. Make it the chorus, if choruses exist in that genre of music. Call the diddy Underdead Science.

Boat is coming along nicely. Don't disappoint and get too far away from the Spartan idea you started with.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2021 2:29 pm
by cracked_ribs
Funny, the bassist guy who dragged me into the last project just messaged me about how he was drunkenly writing lyrics and has finally admitted to himself that he can't write. So he's in a vulnerable state and I could definitely swoop in with something.

Not too much danger of this thing getting overcomplicated - once those side decks get placed, along with the breasthook and transom/splashwell enclosure...she's about done until I start the cabin, which will be a pretty minimalist enclosure that pops on and off with latches. I just want somewhere the wife and kid can stay dry on winter crossings. Did I mention that here? I can't remember. It was intended as a bit of a surprise twist.

This is the original concept drawing from back in November:

Image

I figure I'm hewing close enough to the sketch. Kind of wild that little scribble was only ten months ago.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2021 3:14 pm
by VT_Jeff
1. I've got motor-adjustment-envy
2. That cabin looks DAMN shippy!
3. Interior fairing is more logical than exterior, you can see the interior while you use the boat.
4. Sucks about the CC. Exhaust work is over my personal line: I can't weld and don't like rusty metal flakes in my eyes.

Great progress per usual!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2021 1:14 am
by TomW1
Looking good CR, you just keep plugging away. :D

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 11:38 am
by cracked_ribs
Progress is continuing at typical summer pace: lots of time off to go play at the beach etc. But I continue to chip away here and there.

Here's the current state of things:

Back when I cut the side panels, I also cut the outwales or rubrails or however you want to look at that, because of course I could easily follow the curve of the hull panel that way. But I also cut 4 extra 1 1/2" strips following that curve, then split them longitudinally, and now I have 8x 3/4" strips that mirror the sheerline. I glued them to the inside of the hull stiffeners, to give me bands to attach the coaming to. Once I'd laminated them in place, they were pretty stiff and pretty hard to push out of their lam'd-in curvature. You can see here I've already glued on the first round, and now I'm laminating on the second one.

Image

Then I was roughing in side decks and coaming and stuff...

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Kind of a nice look but the wood isn't in good enough shape to do bright...thank god, or I would end up doing that.

Image

Then it was coats of epoxy on everything to seal it up:

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Coaming going on:

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This is total paranoia but after two coats of epoxy I still paint surfaces if I won't be able to see them easily. Extra moisture protection.

Image

And finally, I have the coaming in, and I'm placing foam blocks in the gunwales now. The gunwales alone should give about 240lb of positive floatation so this thing should be hard to flip when swamped. Under the breasthook there'll be a little more, although I haven't done the math on exactly how much - not enough to have a huge impact though.

At the transom, right below the decking on the side boxes and under the splash well, there'll be about another 240lb. The boat itself floats, of course, but I wanted enough lift in there to keep it level if swamped, and hold the motor up, even if I put a 4-stroke 40 on it one day or something. Basically I have a ring around the top edge of the boat, about 6"x6" of 2lb/cu.ft. foam, plus bonus space at the transom. I like the idea of keeping the foam high up on this thing because although my area is full of logs in the water, this boat won't be a speed demon and I'm not worried about staving in the hull on a big hemlock, really, so I can keep the foam up where water will naturally want to drain away from it instead of collect, plus it'll resist turtling on the off chance I ever need it to.

Other important news: soap bubbles are AMAZING

Image

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 11:43 am
by cracked_ribs
Also pictured in kitchen: emergency curtain because there was yet another heatwave and we don't usually have a curtain there but it was like a convection oven at the sink otherwise; general messiness because only one parent does a damn thing to keep the house organized while the other builds boats; my wife's window-ledge avocado tree nursery.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:31 pm
by Jeff
Another great photo of the future boat builder!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:01 pm
by cape man
Like how you are doing the gunwales and inwales. Those should be rock solid and wide enough to walk on.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:10 pm
by Fuzz
Nice update, boat is looking good :wink:
I am becoming a convert to putting the foam up high like you are doing it. That is if the hull does not need it in the bottom for stiffness.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:56 pm
by cracked_ribs
Jeff wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:31 pm Another great photo of the future boat builder!!! Jeff
Yeah not sure how that virus is transmitted but for sure he has high levels of exposure.

He points out every boat we go past, from canoes on roof racks in the neighbourhood to container ships floating in the harbour. If we walk up the back alley he'll excitedly point out every boat in a yard, and then run to the garage door where my boat is. It's pretty adorable.
cape man wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:01 pm Like how you are doing the gunwales and inwales. Those should be rock solid and wide enough to walk on.
Thanks - they're about 7" wide, little more towards the bow so I think walkable, and just inboard enough of the hull to brace your shins against near the motorwell bulkhead. The wide bearing surface should be relatively comfortable to push against for balance.

They are for sure going to be pretty sturdy! This morning I was pulling clamps and it's crazy to think back to how wobbly it was even after the sole was glued down, and of course that was so much stiffer than when I flipped her.

But now you can grab it at the rubrail and give her a hard shake and it's like a solid object. Once the decks are glued down I think it'll feel very solid to stand on.
Fuzz wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:10 pm Nice update, boat is looking good :wink:
I am becoming a convert to putting the foam up high like you are doing it. That is if the hull does not need it in the bottom for stiffness.
It's my first time doing it like this but it just seemed like a good way to go. The hull was probably overglassed anyway, the stringers and bulkheads pretty tightly spaced and the unsupported areas were small, so I thought in the end on this particular boat it was a good choice.

I thought about putting blocks under the sole as well and just gluing them to the sole with a big space underneath. The only reason I didn't was that I recently had a foam headache on a production boat and I was so sick of cutting up floors to fix stuff that I thought screw it, I'll only put it where I can check it easily.

I might put drain plugs in the limbers at the motorwell bulkhead; that's something I've been thinking over. That'd keep the space airtight if I thought I might need it to be; if it got really rough I could pop them in and not worry about water sneaking in from the bilge as I got sloshed around. But that's getting pretty obscure. This boat is rarely going to be more than five miles from land and there's a point where you're past belt and suspenders, and just gluing your pants to you legs.

OTOH as boat builders, probably a lot of us have glued our pants to our legs, so many I'll put those drain plugs in after all.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 5:26 pm
by narfi
The extra wide gunwales are probably my wife's favorite feature on the boat we built. It just makes for an all around better experience, it feels stouter, looks stouter, is easy to sit on, makes getting in and out of the boat easier, esp for older or less nimble people, etc.... we love em.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:26 pm
by Dan_Smullen
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:56 pm

They are for sure going to be pretty sturdy! This morning I was pulling clamps and it's crazy to think back to how wobbly it was even after the sole was glued down, and of course that was so much stiffer than when I flipped her.

But now you can grab it at the rubrail and give her a hard shake and it's like a solid object. Once the decks are glued down I think it'll feel very solid to stand on.

Oh yeah! I smile when I feel the rigidity increase as parts are glued in place.

Gunwales and shear look great. I've always felt like inwales hitting just above the knee is the right height.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:42 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys - it really is feeling less like a project I started, and more like a boat that I'm tweaking.

Tonight I need to try to start getting those decks glued down; yesterday I was just neat-coating stuff prior to assembly for a couple of hours and tuning little fiddly things. REALLY looking forwart to getting all that decking in place for good, and then running a router over the inside and out so I can get a bit of glass on there to lock it down.

At that point it's just breast hook and motorwell stuff. And the breast hook is cut, so really...motorwell, few little things. I should be using it more than I am but it doesn't fit in the garage with the motor on.

Actually...that garage door is trashed anyway. I should just cut a hole for the tongue, and make things easier on myself.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:21 pm
by cracked_ribs
No time for a proper update just this minute but I'm happy to see things looking like this:

Image

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 1:03 pm
by Jeff
Looking good!!! I bet your son is happy with the boat progress!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 4:00 pm
by Dan_Smullen
cracked_ribs wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 12:21 pm No time for a proper update just this minute but I'm happy to see things looking like this:

Image
As you should be! Get it done!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 11:30 am
by cracked_ribs
Okay, bit more detailed update although in a sense not too much that can't be inferred from the above photo.

Decks are on all the way around. I put a bit of simple framing into the tops of the transom boxes just so I could use the leftover 1/4" meranti plywood without it flexing all over the place once there's downriggers mounted there. And also there's a bit of camber to the tops, so I needed some structure to support the curve. It's subtle but I think necessary to fit with the rest of the boat's lines.

Image

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So that led to this picture, which was the most satisfying one in quite a while:

Image

But glory is fleeting. I went around and marked all the spots that needed a bit of fill between the decking and the rubrail. I did this by using a bit of masking tape so I could see everything really easily and pull the tape as I finished each spot, which is a handy way to keep track of stuff, think.

Image

Having fixed the decking gaps, it was time to do a bit of routering:

Image

That ought to hold a bit of rope.

Running out of stuff to build at this point, but might as well get some glass on the decks and coaming:

Image

Image

Image

Image


I guess today I'll go trim that all up, fix anything that needs to be fixed, and get the second set of outboard mount holes filled in and drilled.

What's left? I haven't put in the motorwell deck, I guess I could get that organized. That's probably the last item of any significant size. I'll do that this week and get her back on the water for more testing; I haven't gotten her wet since I did the outboard bracket and I'm looking forward to playing with motor height.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:54 pm
by VT_Jeff
Great progress CR!

I just learned that Katy from LetterKenny is originally from LadySmith. If you see her around, tell her "hello" from me! 8)

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 1:00 pm
by Jeff
Yes, nice progress CR!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:52 pm
by cracked_ribs
VT_Jeff wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:54 pm Great progress CR!

I just learned that Katy from LetterKenny is originally from LadySmith. If you see her around, tell her "hello" from me! 8)
Oh that's funny - a friend of mine (actually the now somewhat legendary Craig Douglas, who travels the world teaching people to do exciting things) often tells people that Wayne is based on me, which is completely untrue but strangely plausible.

I heard the actress who plays Katy was previously a BC Lions cheerleader, which, if true, makes the BC Lions apparently the primary conduit of Ladysmith actresses to the big time. Pamela Anderson is from here - actually she lives just down the street from me, in a much nicer house right on the water, of course - and was discovered in the stands by a cameraman at a Lions game in '89. You see her around once in a while; she's super friendly. I haven't seen Robyn Mylett (Katy) around but then I didn't expect to see her, so I might just not have noticed. One thing about this place...it's so relaxed that it's not that uncommon for celebrities to come here precisely because they don't attract much attention.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 4:14 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:52 pm
...Wayne is based on me...
Let's take about 10-20% off of her there, ok buddy? :lol:

cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:52 pm Pamela Anderson is from here - actually she lives just down the street from me
Perfect, you can tell her "Hello" also. 8) 8) 8)
cracked_ribs wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:52 pm ...so I might just not have noticed.
Somehow I suspect you would have noticed! If she doesn't standout in a crowd there, I may be moving there! Just need to clear it with the wife, somehow.......

Great stuff!


Edit; just remembered it's a stones-throw from Skook, Elaine will be fully down!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:10 pm
by cracked_ribs
I apologize for the lack of updates and poor quality ones when they happen - been extremely busy here. And most of what I've been doing doesn't photograph well: finishing the parts for the motorwell and transom boxes, for example. "Here's another coat of epoxy on this plywood square" isn't very captivating.

I've also been playing with the boat a little, and spending more time with the kid, which slows the build down. But I'm just about finished the actual construction, I expect to be screwing around with cosmetics for a long time.

Anyway here's the latest.

Hasn't given up much in the way of stability, at least.

Image

Finally got around to finishing the coaming at the bow

Image

And prepped for non-skid

Image

and laid on the non-skid

Image

at both ends

Image

and ran a 5' 1/3 strand of 1" manila through the stem, wrapping it back on itself as I went, to give me something to hook onto

Image

and spent more time running around. Getting the motor dialed in but so far everyone who's sent me a prop, sent the wrong one, which has been really annoying. Two different companies, both sent the one for the through-prop exhaust. Anyway I'm getting pretty close.

Image


No cheating, anyone who knows me from outside a build thread...soon I will be asking for bets on the following question:

How much does she weigh, and how fast does she go?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:11 pm
by cape man
700 lbs (hull only) and she'll get up to 27 mph.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:38 pm
by cracked_ribs
I admire your optimism!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:03 pm
by Jeff
Nice!!! How does your son like the boat?? Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 3:10 pm
by cracked_ribs
He's super excited. His first word wasn't "boat" but it was in the first ten and he gets what boats are. We have freighters out in the bay and he points at them and says boat, and he points at small sportfishing boats that go by when we're at the beach and says boat, but also, if we're walking around and he sees one on a trailer, he says it. He gets the concept: a boat is a thing that goes on water, but you can pull them out of water sometimes too, and things shaped like this are boats.

And if I'm not around and he didn't see me go upstairs to my office to work, he'll point out the back door at the garage and say Dad dad dad boat boat boat. And then he wants to go to the garage. He gets what's happening, for sure, it's kind of wild.

A couple of days ago I had him out there and I said "can you see what's different?" and he looked around on the boat saw that little piece of coaming I just added. I said, "that's right, I did that. I made that. That's what I did when I was here last night." And then I held up a scrap of the same wood, and a saw, and held the wood against that spot, and then cut a piece off it with the saw, and held it back up.

"I make things," I say. "I build things." I use the words "make" and "build" a lot when we play with blocks.

"Make."

"That's right. Dad makes boats."

"Make. Boat."

"That's right. I made this."

And he got super excited and just started yelling DADADADADADAD! and I'm sure it was because he understood what I'd been explaining.

It's unnerving how much he understands sometimes. That's part of the reason I've cut back a bit on my building hours: I think he's reaching a point where he really discerns my absence and there's a risk there for me because I'm a bit prone to task fixation, so it's very normal for me to work a typical 8-9 hour day, then work on whatever I have on the go for couple of hours, have dinner, then go work for a couple more hours. I used to work two jobs where my main job was out in the field but I had a writing job as well where I worked from home and I'd just go, all the time. And I do get really antsy if I don't have a big project or a major task on the go, my skin just crawls. So I really want to be getting stuff done.

But as a father it makes me reflect a bit. I was never close with my family and even though I lived with him, actually barely knew my dad before I became an adult, and I swore I would never be that way. Ironically, he loves boats and fishing as well, and is quite handy at piloting them in rough weather and pretty good at salmon jigging too, but he doesn't care for human contact at all so I didn't really get to learn that stuff from him, and spent more time just shore casting by myself as a kid and was on other people's boats more than his. Thankfully I did grow up in a very fishy, boaty area so I did get to do a lot of that stuff and obviously that became a lifelong passion, I just never got to do it with my dad, and that's not at all how I want my kid to grow up.

Anyway that's why now that I believe my kid really grasps my absence when I'm not there, I try not to work on the boat much until after he goes to bed which itself is painfully cute, as he usually sleeps hugging one of the many stuffed bunnies my rabbit-obsessed wife has put in every corner of the house.

Image

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 3:32 pm
by Jeff
Good stuff!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:40 pm
by narfi
838 finished with engine and bling

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 8:53 pm
by TomW1
CR remind us again what is the HP of your motor? Thanks. Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 8:54 pm
by TomW1
CR remind us again what is the HP of your motor? Thanks. Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:04 pm
by cracked_ribs
It'd be something close to 30hp by current standards.

It was billed as a 20, but that was in the days when they rated it at the crank. Today it would be sold as a 15.

That block was used on motors called 35s in the 70s which were changed to 30s around 1984 or so when they started rating motors at the prop.

This one has the intake and carb off a 30/35 but not the head which was a little higher compression IIRC.

But it probably puts out something close to 30 HP, I'd guess.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:54 pm
by TomTom
Wow - looks awesome. Going with 1000 lbs and 20 kts!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2021 5:18 pm
by VT_Jeff
cracked_ribs wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 3:10 pm ...that's not at all how I want my kid to grow up.
Some times it takes a few iterations/generations to get it right, look at Archie Manning! Good on ya for having your priorities straight CR, and recognizing what's truly important. Boats will come and go(esp if you keep burning them upon completion), your kids childhood is a one-off.

Boats looking great. On the weight, 750 hull only, top speed 17mph.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 10:20 am
by pee wee
I'm going with 625 and 21 m.p.h.

Got a name for the boat yet?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 4:21 pm
by TomW1
Okay now that I know more about the motor, hull only 550lbs, top speed 24mph with you alone.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:29 am
by cracked_ribs
TomW1 is about as close as you can realistically get on the weight, although I don't have final numbers on speed yet - but that will probably be close too. I think I can get another knot or two over the current max - I'm still using the original prop which is 40 years old and looks it. And I think I can raise the engine one hole, although that may not help. But at present, it's good for 22.8 knots, or 26.2 mph. I bet I can hit 25 knots before I'm done, though.

More useful: at 4500 RPM, it has a nice relaxed 18 knot cruise, only 3/4 of the way to redline.

My personal guess on weight which I didn't post because I didn't want to influence anyone was 300kg for the boat and motor. I don't usually think in kilos but that's what the local scale reads in and for whatever reason it just made me think, whatever I see with the empty trailer, I'll probably see 300 more with the boat on.

Today I weighed my 4runner, me, my empty trailer and whatever junk in addition to me is in the 4runner at 2245 kilos,

Then I went home, loaded the boat, and motor, and at the last minute tossed in a 6gal/25l fast tank up and went back. I hadn't planned to include fuel but then thought... someone's going to complain it doesn't run without a gas tank so it's not complete. The tank was a little over half full so it's a pretty traditional crib weight component anyway. Anyway say 3/5 a 6 gallon tank so figure I've got around 30lb of fuel, tank, fuel line, straps holding the boat down, and so on. Probably within a couple of pounds, I'd guess 30 is reasonable for fuel and ancillaries.

Reading on the scale: 2560.

315kg difference or 695 lb wet.

I'd guessed 300kg/661lb dry and think I was pretty dead on but I built it so that's cheating.

Those motors weigh about 105lb so hull alone, 556.

I'll call these numbers "exceeds builder expectations."

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 2:49 am
by TomW1
CR now that you have the boat weight we can run it through my motor and and prop calculators. We have the weight of the boat so need to add all the stuff you normally carry on her when you
Once I have that and if I need any thing else I will let you know. Do leave the dock. First off make sure we agree that you are sure HP at the prop bearing is 30 +/-, if it is not let me know what it is. That is where HP is now measured according to the ABYC, and The Outboard Motor Council or what ever they are called :lol:
,
I am going to get serious now, we have the weight of the boat. add weight of motor, add of half tank gas, 6lbs/gal. add 250lbs for various fixtures, anchors, chain, lines, fuel lines cleats, etc. Adjust this if you feel this is to much, small boats don't have have this much. Add normal people weight, two adults, or 3 or kids, remember they grow fast. :D And finally an amount for cooler for ice food, drinks and to keep your catch in. Eliminate anything you don't use. But to calculate speed and a prop for you motor I need you to be as accurate as possible. I also need your prop shaft 2 1/4', 2 1/8" etc, so when I go looking for props I know it will fit your motor.

Once I have that in as much detail as you can provide I will let yo u know if I need anything else. Do you prefer a SS or aluminum prop. I prefer to recommend SS do to there performance, strength but there are a couple of aluminum that are about 80% of a SS performance. But we will have to look and see what is available and see if you want to stay local.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:43 pm
by Matt Gent
I'm working the same balance with a young son and my garage fun. And willfully passing on the addiction, which is on at least it's fourth generation now.

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I try to do as much as I can while he's sleeping, and include him in simple tasks so he feels invested. And we play with them as much as we can when finished.

It's a blast, enjoy it! Gets better every year. I heard they turn snotty in the teenage years so I'll take as much now as I can get.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2021 3:46 pm
by Jeff
Great photos!!!! He will love the sidecar!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 1:56 pm
by cracked_ribs
I think I owe everyone a pretty good update here so let me start by giving this post a title:

“And Then This Happened”

I’ll get into Tom’s calculations soon and possibly today; I’d like to start with a narrative update and go from there.

I love the sidecar pics; obviously I have become highly susceptible to father-son bonding hijinks so I’m an easy mark in that regard. Still, as a motorcyclist myself, that checks a TON of boxes for me. Very cool.

I booked a week and a day off of my job – September 30 which was Thursday was the first annual memorial day of a new type in Canada, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation between indigenous people and, I guess, everyone else. Yesterday was Thanksgiving here, so I took Friday and the intervening week off and resolved not to touch a laptop until they paid me to do so again so the only updates anyone has gotten would be if they follow me on some platform that’s really easy to update by mobile. That’s the reason for the lengthy silence, anyway.

And now…on with our story.

First some build detail stuff:
How did I guess the hull weight as accurately as I did? Simple: cheating. Here I am weighing it by hand a couple of weeks ago:
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So I had a pretty idea what half of it weighed, anyway. I knew it was light.

Here was a good “I’m not a rocket scientist” move: I’ve never had a motor with hand cranks before, to snug it down. So I didn’t think about that when I made the little bracket.

How did I think they were going to turn and flop and turn? There’s not enough room! Duhhhokay, well, we mount the motor to the plate, then mount the assembly to the boat, I guess. Unless there’s another solution, which I immediately discovered:
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Just tighten it down really hard, and you can shear the handles right off and punch your hand into the aluminum bracket and now a 3/8” wrench lets you turn them with ease. Another problem solved with brute force.

Here’s a quick bit of detail for you on my weird personal take on open spaces under decks…I wanted the ability to prevent water from getting in and weighing me down in the improbable event of taking a ton of water on board. I bought a pack of kayak bungs for about $20 and employed two on the actual kayak where I needed them, and 5 on this boat.
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Here’s three stopping water from leaving the bilge and moving forward. Easily removed, no chance of excess air pressure like sealed bilges, but almost impossible for water to gain entry except by catastrophic hull failure. Very simple. That picture is a few weeks old, the bilge is a bit cleaner since then. But that’s the only pic I have that shows the bungs.
I also use them like this:
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If the hatch lid isn’t jammed at all, they make good handles. If it is, they just pop out and you can get a finger in there and give it a yank. But it keeps most of the rain and spray out.
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I can’t remember if I mentioned this but the boat fits in the garage with the motor on, which is great!
Well, it mostly fits.
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Close enough!

Then it was just some little detail stuff like the motorwell (which now has a drain and is fully glassed but didn’t/isn’t in this pic)
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Get the grab rail all fancy
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Kid all excited…
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And onto the water!
October 1: burning fuel, having fun, hunting lingcod in the reefs around my place.
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October 2, same basic plan…
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“And Then This Happened”
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Heck.

Submerged log, maybe 6” down below the surface. Hit it around 15 knots, I think. Was just moving between reefs fishing them and had left the lock on, which is flimsy…looking. But apparently very sturdy. I highly recommend the old OMC locking system, it’s apparently very, very strong.

I also recommend the motors, though, because apparently they’re unkillable.
I roped it back onto the transom by running the fender lines through those rod holder holes, got the engine running, and drove it home six miles like this.
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I had dinner and possibly some kind of beverage to improve my state of mind, and got to work in the alley behind my house.
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Probably need a new one of these:
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And some other bits
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Hmm…what to do. The same guy who got me the intake and carb offered to send anything I needed but he took months to send that stuff. He told me to send him a list of parts, so I did, but then he said he’d been sick and hadn’t been into the shop in a few days and I could immediately see that turning into weeks of chasing him around so I hit up a couple of local contacts as well as FB marketplace.
Well, that turned up paydirt pretty quick…I blew a whopping 150 ice pesos and some gas money and launched my latest charity: the Cracked Ribs Home for Wayward Outboards.
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Note the inverted Evinrude 25 just visible through the doorway. It was probably the best of the three but came with a driveshaft which was seized in the cam, so cost very little. I picked up the ’76-ish Evinrude 20 Tuesday morning and began stripping it down, and the ’84 Tuesday evening. I yanked the lower off the ’84, tipped up upside down started soaking the driveshaft in penetrant that night.
Wednesday morning it was still plenty stuck. I was a little worried and began thinking about whether I could assemble an entire waterpump etc back on from underneath. I also noticed when I slid the driveshaft out of the lower that there was a little needle bearing that had popped loose down in the gearcase. Okay, that’s coming apart. Heck and double heck. I continued disassembling motors until about noon. I didn’t even stop long enough to turn on a podcast or something, I just went at max speed, heating nuts, pouring penetrant, whacking stuff with hammers, drilling out frozen studs, dremeling broken-off screw extractors (2) and also engaged in periodic fits of swearing but not as much as you’d guess. I just felt like I had zero time to waste because I wanted a running motor and each frustrating thing that happened, like shearing off a stud, was more time, and getting angry was just going to slow me down more.

I really wanted that driveshaft out on the Evinrude but HATE the idea of putting vice grips on and hammering them. I just hate it. But I couldn’t come up with a better solution, so I just kept working on the other two motors to see if I could make headway there instead.
I wasn’t sure which was going to be the fastest route, repairing the Johnson, or starting the ’84 Evinrude. There were a lot of frozen bolts and screws (seriously OMC WHY SCREWS ON A MACHINE THAT WILL SIT IN SALT WATER – you have to see the problems coming, it’s two different metals and anyway, screws, f’ing screws, god damn it) on everything and every inch was a battle. I worked on the midsection of the old Evinrude to try to get all the parts I could, and at the same time, thought about the stuck driveshaft on the ’84.

Around noon I remembered this really old flaring tool I had that I got at a garage sale for a couple of bucks at least 20 years ago. It’s very sturdily built because it’s decades old, big blocks of steel that bolt together and has all different sizes of holes with chamfers that I thought might interface well with the driveshaft bosses. That was the moment I thought I would start to win the battle.
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I put the flaring tool over the driveshaft and it did indeed fit nicely against the step on the shaft. Dimensional lumber spacers, old bunk hardware bridges, and C-clamps against the flaring tool. I’d work on the Johnson and the old Evinrude for half an hour, come out, give the C-clamps a couple of whacks with a ball pein hammer, crank the clamps a quarter turn, then go back to drilling out bolts, tapping new threads, hitting stuff with a torch, soaking things in penetrant…it was a hard day. I started around 8 am and promised my wife I wouldn’t overdo it. I came in bruised, burned, and dirty around 10pm. The driveshaft was still seized. The other two motors were mostly apart but I hadn’t quite gotten far enough to start building anything. Wednesday was a hard day. It rained all day and was miserable in the garage and out. I wasn’t sure if I could get a working motor without ordering parts from somewhere. If the driveshaft didn’t come loose, I figured it’d be another two weeks before I could realistically get anywhere. The old motors just needed too much persuasion.
Thursday I woke up and went back to it. It was a sunny day again, which always improves the experience. The first thing I did was give the driveshaft a few whacks, and a couple of good hard cranks on the clamps.


BY THE POWER OF SHADETREE…
I HAVE THE POWER!!!!
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Now I kicked into high gear. I already had enough of the other two apart to get the upgraded intake side of the Johnson, and the lower which was surprisingly intact after the log strike. Tthe hull was totally untouched. I had actually forgotten to remove the protective film from the PVC wear strip on the keel which is dumb because it could have blocked the water intake but anyway, even that was clearly untouched and that was the lowest point on the boat so I can’t have hit the log at all. And the tiller was already off, so I used that. The carb linkage took a bit of messing around and of course I had to put in a new water pump because it was wrecked when the lower was pulled off the seized shaft, but things rapidly started to improve.
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Note water shooting out of the running engine! Victory!
Getting the engine built took until late Thursday, and tuning the thing to run well enough to trust and then mounted back on the boat took a big part of Friday, plus by that point I had barely left the garage in two days so I spent some time with my kid, and didn’t really get things wrapped up until Friday night.

Saturday morning it was a bit stormy, not much above freezing with a light rain and blowing a cold steady 15 knots after a windy night, and still gusting up to around 25 from our least-protected southeast tack.

So rough water testing it is!

Looked decent at the ramp
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Pushed me out through a bit of chop in the harbour
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And off I went!
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It was really only about a 1-2 bay chop with some big wakes off the timber tugs around here but the boat feels great in the chop; much better than I felt I had any right to expect. I could run 15-16 knots straight into the waves in complete comfort – that deep bow really softens the impact if you keep the nose down a bit, and there’s so much freeboard up there you really lose nothing by staying pretty flat on the water. Downwind 20 knots on the chop was no problem at all. Felt great, to be honest. I was really surprised by how smooth it rode because I’m used to a big heavy deep V and honestly…I thought this would be a huge step down in comfort but it’s really not. I think it’s the ability to keep the hull in the water; it never really has the space to come down and slam. There’s no transition to plane really at all; maybe around 6 knots you get a bit of it but it’s so minor, it’s barely noticeable so then you can cruise at 12 if it’s quite rough (by small open boat standards) and it just skims along. The big Double Eagle has, like any deep V, two speeds: slug and fly. But I find that it’s often rough enough on plane that unless I’m alone, I don’t really like going full tilt. Everyone is tossed everywhere and you’re constantly airborne.
In this boat, I have the full range of speeds on tap from zero to max, and it works fine the whole way. So in waters like that dark choppy mess Saturday morning, I could actually make better time than I often would in the big boat, because I could do 14-15 knots in comfort, whereas in the Double Eagle, I’d do 20 knots if alone…but with the wife and kid, no way. I’d be chugging along at 8-10.
Sunday I had agreed to drive down to Victoria for Thanksgiving lunch…so I had to get up early. Much nicer weather.
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And it was great…except I was launching her off some big wakes from a big tug…and spun the prop.

But that’s okay because the prop was due for replacement already and was 40 years old and it was bound to happen. I’ll order a new one today to a local dealer and be back on the water very soon.

So there you go – sorry if the update is at times confusing or repetitive, it’s so long I can’t remember what information was already known and to whom so I just hammered the whole thing out.

Oh also those motors seem to like running lower than I would have guessed. New engine is a long leg mounted higher on the jack plate but still lower than what I would have thought. Current top speed: 23.8 knots, or 27.4mph. Pretty good IMO!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 2:02 pm
by Jeff
Wow, that is some experience!! Glad it all worked out!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 2:50 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yeah the cockeyed motor was a bit of a shocker when it happened. I was set up to radio for help vut when I was able to jury rig the motor, I didn't bother.

Quite a crack when it happened, though. I am not used to having to lock and unlock a motor, so yeah...fishing will require an extra step when moving spot to spot now!

As far as weight goes...I think a realistic rigged empty weight would be under 850 lb and probably closer to 800. I won't be carrying an anchor; it'll get moored on an existing float. 50 lbs of tackle is probably all it'll ever have. The kicker is pretty light. The cooler is pretty light, or ends up that way at least. There's really not much getting added. I think most fishing days will be around 1000-1050 pounds.

But hauling to the cabin...could be 400lbs of humans and 200 pounds of supplies, easily. More, if it seems like she'll take it. Max weight could easily go to 1500 lbs if it feels safe.

There's only a handful of props that will fit this thing so not many options out there...

https://outboard-boat-motor-repair.com/ ... 0Propeller

That's what's on the Johnson from the factory and I think it'll turn out to be very close to what I need. A bit less pitch for cabin hauls would probably be warranted, but for fishing the speed is sure nice. Michigan Wheel makes a similar prop in a few pitches from 9-12, I believe. Solas has one as well. But it's been a pain to chase down the part numbers - thankfully the new Evinrude at least has a model number that online calculators recognize:

E25RDRC

Nothing even recognized the old 20hp Johnson which led to a lot of annoyance on my part. The same prop as the Evinrude, though, last year of the "through-cav-plate" exhaust.

I'm on the fence about going down to a 10" prop for cabin days. Might end up running two separate props, now that I think about it. I have a 9x9 that would fit this...that'd move heavy loads.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:52 pm
by TomW1
Hey CR been looking at your numbers and like you cannot find any info on a 20HP Johnson. There should be a metal plate in the cowling or on the motor that gives you the basic information of the motor or even a serial number. I have found a 20HP 15" shaft but no specs. It will include HP, maybe gear ratio, year of build and 4 or 5 other things. See if you can find it and let me know. I am working on another boat also now and will finish it tomorrow. So will be able to concentrate on you after noon tomorrow. There a couple other vendors I use not in your list. But probably stick with Michigan. They are very good.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 10:40 pm
by Matt Gent
If you’re ever around Victoria and see a very out of place carbon/Kevlar Egret flats boat wave to my friend Martin who relocated from South FL. Had plans to visit out there (and a booked desolation sound charter) squashed by COVID. Maybe next year…

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 11:18 pm
by cracked_ribs
Yeah the 20s are real oddballs. The model number is 20CR79R but it's never in any databases. Even Canadian dealers can't find it, and it was a Canada-only model.

The Evinrude E25RCRD is probably the best set of numbers to use, only figure something close to 30hp at the shaft. I'll probably use more of that motor than anything else.

Gear ratio should be 2.15:1.

Info on the id plate is pretty slim on these! Model and serial, that's it. But from that I get Evinrude, 25 HP, rope start tiler,1984.

I believe that Evinrude changed to prop shaft ratings in 83 or 84; I know the regulation was '83 but I'm less confident about the actual change. Just looking at Evinrude and Johnson models it looks like'84 they're all prop rated. Anyway this one has the previous year's 35 carb and a later 30 intake so can reasonably be treated as a prop rated 30.

Shaft length is 2 1/2" on these but it's such an old motor I don't know if you'll find normal variety.

What I see is 13 splines, exhaust through Cav plate (what I have), 13 spline exhaust through prop (85 onwards) or pin drive..pre '78 I think.

Anyway hopefully that's enough to go on; curious to hear what you find. Appreciate the recommendation for Michigan Wheel; never seen one myself but I know you know your props!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 9:40 pm
by TomW1
CR I think I have everything I need. I will use 1050 for your fishing weight we always guess low. :lol: and 1500 for your cabin trip. That is only 450 lbs and should be covered by your PPI lowering your draft by less than 2" just equalize the weight. You will probably be fine with the same prop, but I will check.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 10:35 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well I'm certainly very interested to hear what you advise - thanks for the direction not just for me but for the countless forumites you've crunched these numbers for!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2021 7:42 pm
by TomW1
CR finished the other members numbers and will work on yours tomorrow. What is your current prop size? Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Oct 14, 2021 8:28 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks man!

Current prop is a factory 9.25x11 identical to this guy:

https://www.boatpropellerwarehouse.com/ ... ler-763584

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:17 pm
by TomW1
CR just finished the calcs for your prop. They spit out a little larger prop than you have on now. The options are 10.25 x 12 or 9.75 x13. Your top speed will be in the low 30's. Of course this all depends on your weight of 1050lbs being accurate. For going to the cabin the 10.25 x 12 would be the better choice, iit will push you along fine with just a lower top end but right in the middle of the rpm range. Both will give you a pretty good hole shot at 1050lbs. Let me know if you have any questions.

Love the pictures of your kid, keep them coming.

Regards, Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:26 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks very much! That's a big prop!

These motors won't fit anything over 9.25" diameter to the best of my knowledge; I'm not sure if anyone makes anything larger for this hub - is there a particular prop you know of built for it that matches the numbers you describe? I don't think I've run across anything like that but you probably have more knowledge of who makes what prop than I do.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 1:05 pm
by cracked_ribs
This is a 9" diameter backup prop I have on the bottom end from the wrecked Johnson...centreline to cav plate is around 4 7/8", I believe. Could be a full five but hard to tell as it sits just at the moment. But much over a 9.25" prop would get sketchy in a hurry, I think.

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I know I could go up in pitch in theory...but is there enough area on the little prop to grip the water? That I'm really not sure about. I've seen 9.25x12s out there, but I wasn't sure if I'd have issues with the prop slipping from lack of contact with the water if I tried to get any more aggressive than 11 pitch.

Really makes me wish there was a 4-blade for these in 9.25x12. Again no numbers run on my end, I'm working purely on intuition from messing around with stuff. But I think that'd be a pretty good rig, if it existed.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:15 pm
by TomW1
Let me look around a 9.5 looks like the max. Would not want to go over that for sure. These older motors are harder to prop than the newer ones. They did not give as much space for the prop and I forgot that.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:21 pm
by cracked_ribs
No worries! Thanks for the effort you're putting in on my behalf here - this thing has been fairly difficult to source parts for accurately. The Evinrude 25 at least shows up in parts catalogues. But even so, very few prop varieties as far as I have seen.

Thanks though, it's really interesting to see the numbers you're generating.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 9:10 pm
by TomW1
CR found two with a 9.25 and a larger 12" pitch. First is a Michigan Match Prop #012030. The second is a Johnson Prop #703590. These will do you fine and give you a better top end and a better mid-range. To me the Michigan Match is the better prop, but I have a prejudice against factory props. They just want to sell you a prop and do not do the research and development to make a good prop. Especially in aluminum. If you want a 4 blade prop I can get you one in SS, this is from the same company I recommend to all my other people that I work up their numbers for. With the PowerTech 4 blade I would recommend a 9.25 x 11 SWA 4 See here https://www.ptprop.com/a-class-propellers1.html They ship world wide and may have a dealer in Vancouver. They do near in Port Coquitlam, Poco Marine Ltd. phone # 604-464-8773 I have no idea what a small SS would cost but the larger ones are over $300. I highly recommend SS 4 blade they last longer help in steering and help in rougher water steering. You will need to check the number of splines as it doesn't say in the information I gave you.

Well hope this helps you. Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2021 10:05 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks a ton - if you figure that Michigan Match would hook up, I'll order one, but I'll give Powertech a shout as well and see what they say.

I looked at the 9.25*12 Michigan originally but my concern was whether it would have too little surface area to grip the water under load. Also being unfamiliar with the brand I wasn't sure about the quality, but if you have found them to be a good prop maker that's a good enough recommendation for me. So if you figure a 9.25*12 would hold, I'll go that route, and look into Powertech as a possible upgrade.

Thanks for the local info about the PT source as well; I have friends within a mile or so of Port Coquitlam so I can easily have something picked up if they don't want to ship.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 12:10 am
by TomW1
Yep CR as long as the weight you gave me is correct you should be fine. Weight is the most critical factor in the calculation.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 12:49 am
by cracked_ribs
Cool, well, I really appreciate the advice. I emailed Powertech to see if they still build for old split-case Evinrudes, but I'll order up a Michigan 12 pitch and then we'll see just how fast I can go!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 7:20 am
by cape man
Another option may be to find a good propeller repair shop and have them put new blades on your old hub. I've sheared the blades down to the hub twice on a boat we owned decades ago, and they gave it back to me like new. They can also adjust the pitch when they do it.

The first prop I had on my Dory was a stainless and a guy who did props for racing took a full 1" out of the pitch just by bending the blades. Was less than half the price of a new prop and really helped the performance.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 12:01 pm
by cracked_ribs
cape man wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 7:20 am Another option may be to find a good propeller repair shop and have them put new blades on your old hub. I've sheared the blades down to the hub twice on a boat we owned decades ago, and they gave it back to me like new. They can also adjust the pitch when they do it.

The first prop I had on my Dory was a stainless and a guy who did props for racing took a full 1" out of the pitch just by bending the blades. Was less than half the price of a new prop and really helped the performance.
Yeah I don't know why I have an aversion to getting small props fixed - I had a volvo prop repaired about three times and each time I couldn't believe how cheap and effective it was and I still have that prop on a boat. For some reason I always think little props are disposable but there's about three prop shops within half an hour of me here...I should really give one a call.

I spoke to Powertech and they tell me the only options they know of for that motor are indeed the Solas and Michigan Wheel 9.25s so I will order up a Michigan 9.25x12 and run with it - thanks for the input; I would definitely not have gone to the 12 pitch without hearing those numbers. I'm still surprised there's enough blade to drive a 12 without slipping badly but I'm not a prop expert or anything, just a guy who messes around with boats. At any rate, I'm super excited to see just how fast the 12 will push me. I never expected the boat to move this fast. I no longer think I radically overdid the tabbing of stringers and bulkheads, now I think it's probably lucky I overkill everything and double taped so much of this. It's going to be a much faster boat than I expected.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 3:22 pm
by cape man
I just went back through my build thread to find the details of what I did on the prop - 11 years ago. 8O That was a fun trip down memory lane, especially reading the posts where I first started conversing with some guys who became life friends. The guy I took the stainless prop to was able to take a full 2.5" out of the pitch and shaved some of the edges off the trailing edges of the bottom of the blades to make it turn faster. I picked up over 500rpms on a Yamaha 40hp four stroke outboard, with no slippage. I didn't report here what it cost, but if I remember right it was right around $100. Even if you are buying a new prop, you may still want to take the old one in and have them make new blades to the pitch you need. Always a good idea to have a spare on board! I'd wait until you have tried out the new one and see where it runs.

I also discovered in my thread that where I have been claiming that my OD18 weighs 900 lbs., it was actually 990 lbs! A little bit more than the 610 lbs. as designed... :help: :help:

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:07 pm
by cracked_ribs
That really is a good idea. I have a 9.25x12 michigan on the way, but I'll call the local prop shops and see if anyone wants to take a look at the old 11 pitch.

The guy I had when I lived on the mainland could do incredible stuff for a hundred-hundred fifty bucks. I was always shocked at the results for the amount I was spending. I wouldn't be half surprised if someone like that would be interested in building up a new 4-blade or something, lifting the geometry off a similar through-hub and just compensating for the conventional hub shape.

Well, now I'm curious. I'll have to make some calls.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:27 pm
by TomW1
That would be cool if you could get one made a 9,25 x 10 4 blade would be what you should look at depending on how much rake and cup is put in it. I would wait till you get the Michigan to see how it performs and then go for the 4 blade.

Tom

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 6:07 pm
by cracked_ribs
Okay, well, that's what I'll run with then...the Michigan is probably ten days out. I have some oil seals and a bearing that are maybe 15-20 days out; they will let me rebuild a complete spare lower and that'll go on the main and the current lower will go back to the backup.

I'll see how that x12 feels and think about whether chatting up a local prop wizard over Coho steaks and Lucky lager might buy me some creative interest in developing a 9.25x10 4 blade on an old Johnson hub.

Speed numbers as soon as I have them!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2021 3:22 pm
by Fuzz
How are you making out with all the extreme flooding in your area?

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 12:07 pm
by cracked_ribs
Well, personally, I've been extremely lucky, thank you for asking - it has been a little crazy with thousands of people evacuated and every major road from the rest of Canada down to the southwest coast washed out, some needing months to repair. They've instituted gas rationing in this part of the country because the supply chain is so disrupted: you can't buy more than about 8 gallons at a time. It's pretty wild. Vancouver, a city the size of Seattle, is essentially cut off from the whole rest of the country, except by air. The road and rail links to it are gone.

I can't really personally complain, living in what my mom calls "the castle on the hill." That's a wild exaggeration, it's an old house from 1908 but it's not particularly nice or fancy, and I'm in a normal residential neighbourhood, it's just the biggest house in the neighbourhood and on the highest point for a few hundred feet - it's extremely lucky, in a way, because my entire town is built on a pretty steep hillside, and we're on one spot where the ground projects a little bit in a minor foothill, so everything mostly slopes down away from us on all sides, so not prone to flooding on our particular lot. And I work from home, so I don't need to commute, so I can basically be a spectator to the whole thing.

This whole town did not too badly - many flooded basements but no catastrophic flooding. But twenty miles north or south, a different story: massive sinkholes that closed the main highway, properties under several feet of water, roads open only to essential travel, all kinds of strangeness.

It's funny, I casually commented on another thread here right before it started that we were expecting 150-175mm of rain that day, which is 6-7 inches. But although that's what they predicted, I thought we'd probably be on the low end. We got 185mm, a little over 7 inches...but we were on the low end compared to the regions around us. Some areas got a lot more. The range I used to do most of my shooting at is under six feet of water now, and the suburban area closest to it is basically wiped out.

These are main highways:

Image

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And those are just single spots, they're like that all over. Major repairs necessary and more storms coming now, so when it all gets fixed...man, no idea. It's fairly spectacular damage.

The sun came out the next day, so I took the boat out and gingerly picked my way through the debris field out there - there were logs everywhere, you could only run on plane in short sections and had to watch the water like a hawk. The ocean was green with mud and silt, although it doesn't look it here:

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But you can see logs distributed everywhere on the surface.

Outside the protected bay, conditions were a little sporty for a small boat...lots of wind in the prior 24 hours. But manageable. I didn't get any good pictures of it because I was a bit focused on not hitting any more logs. But it was quite beautiful out there. I didn't come in until sunset.

I also popped over to my cabin on the weekend - first trip there on the new boat. I just went for an afternoon to start putting up some netting to keep the kid safe this summer. Nice to be able to round-trip it on about 3 gallons of gas, instead of whatever it used to take, about 12, I guess. Particularly if we can only buy 8 at a time now.

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You know, it's a funny thing...when I bought that cabin, one of the factors in choosing its location was that I always thought that conceivably, Vancouver and the surrounding area would be hit with a natural disaster (I assumed earthquake) that would cut it off from the rest of the province because every route in is over a bunch of bridges.

And then I'd be in the middle of a giant city, with no road or rail to supply it, an airport that's on the oceanfront and relies on dikes to prevent it from flooding on a good day, and a shipping port with no reliable means of distributing whatever goods are sent there, and all that stuff will arrive at ocean-shipping speed.

And I thought you know, I'd like to be able to leave that situation, because that sounds like it would suck. So I bought a place I could get to by boat, and when I lived in Vancouver I kept the boat fueled up and ready to leave, and I had the ability to launch it without power, so if I couldn't get my truck to it, we could still just walk over, crank it out with the tirfor, and go. I tried it to make sure it could be done. It took about an hour to launch without a vehicle but wasn't too hard.

And I stocked the cabin up because I wanted to be able to just check out of the city if it really got crazy. I always wondered how bad things would get if we were relying on the military to distribute water or food...considering they're based out of CFB Shilo (Winnipeg) and would probably be about as likely to get here quickly as Santa Claus. And probably equally well equipped and funded.

I don't live there anymore, I live in a little town of around 8000 people, which is used as the set for Resident Alien, as it happens: a show set in an absurdly picturesque, friendly little caricature of a town. That's where I actually live. I don't worry too much about dealing with panicked crowds - around here the most severe social unrest I have seen was when they announced that due to covid, the annual Christmas lights festival would be cancelled: in a fit of rage, a man threw his hat on the ground, and I could see dozens of other people nodding. It was touch and go for a minute there but cooler heads prevailed. I thought we might have an incident of yelling, but no, thankfully, everyone calmed down and the chaos was reduced to angry murmurs. Here, I really don't worry much about having to cut and run.

But it's very interesting to me that I am getting a little preview of the exact situation I had thought about, only it isn't from some apocalyptic earthquake, but from...lots of rain. I would never have guessed that in a million years. It's really fascinating to me, in fact, because Recoil magazine had actually asked me to do a piece on why and how to set up a property to be a dual-purpose family vacation spot and survival shelter, in a manner that makes your family actually want to be there. But then I was busy moving and everything and I just never got around to it.

But now it seems extremely relevant again, so maybe I'll give them a call and see if they want it still, with an angle related to the flooding and the proof of concept that provided.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 12:58 pm
by Jeff
Wow CR, glad you did ok!!!! Jeff

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 2:02 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks very much - I can't remember if I've said this before but I used to get annoyed whenever people said to me "you're so lucky you have X" because generally speaking, they have no idea what I went through to get it, and so often, the thing they were commenting on was some material item that I only had because I took huge risks and worked eighty hour weeks to pay for it.

But ever since my son was born, it's struck me that everything I value, really does have a huge luck component.

My kid was born healthy. He's a happy, good-natured little boy. I didn't get that through hard work, it just happened to me. I can't take any credit at all. That was a real tipping point for me in terms of how I perceive the role of luck in my life.

The flood situation is exactly the same: we have so far been unscathed, but not because I work hard or do this or that, but because I happened to like a particular town and I thought this one house would be a good choice and okay, technically yes, I did think about drainage because my dad is a retired geological engineer who is totally obsessed with adequate drainage and as a kid I spent countless hours digging trenches and placing sand and gravel and perforated pipe...but even that is pure luck, I didn't choose to have a geological engineer for a father. And I treated the drainage here the way I treated the boat design process: I eyeballed it, did a thumbnail on the back of a napkin, and said yeah, should be fine.

So we fared well, but I can't take any credit. We were just lucky.

I was talking to my mom this morning and I remembered something related: their house used to flood, when they first bought it. My dad started digging test holes in the back yard, working out percolation rates and stuff, sampling the dirt, and then he drew up a site plan and assigned me to trench digging detail. I dug down until I hit glacial till, which is this super densely packed, almost rocklike clay, and I cut a couple of feet down into it and cut a trench in it through the back yard, wrapping around the house, on the slope he spec'd and backfilled the cut with rock, then gravel, then sand, and then filled the trench back in with the dirt I'd dug out initially.

Man, their basement is like the freaking Atacama now. And I remember when I was doing the digging, I thought my dad was completely nuts and what he'd designed was absurd overkill and just his own bizarre fixation. Is the backbreaking work down in this trench really worth it to avoid the occasional wet floor in heavy rain?

But I bet he's having the last laugh now, because I guarantee that is the only house on the block with a dry basement. Lots of people all around him with a foot of water to deal with. He's probably downstairs now with a moisture meter reading zero, and writing down the names of everyone who thought he was being crazy so he doesn't forget anyone when he emails pictures.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 3:25 pm
by Dan_Smullen
Not much to comment on, You have about said it all. I will add though, our parents somehow instill luck upon us, by teaching us how to impart our own "luck". Instructing you on how to dig a proper ditch was likely a part of this.

Its' our job to do the same for our kids. It sounds like you're exactly where you need to be in that great cycle.

Take care, dry out, and enjoy your family and your boat.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 3:38 pm
by jonnymac
wow, I’ve been detoxing from the news and missed this disaster. Glad you are doing ok.

I’m with your dad on house issues, solve them once move on with life. All those people laughing probably spend more time dealing with their wet basements AND complaining about the wetness than you ever did making your family’s not wet ever again.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:26 pm
by Fuzz
I am just amazed how little our media, all of them, has given to this disaster. Our closest neighbours third largest city is almost totally cut off and it is not news :doh: I guess pushing some political agenda is more important than the welfare of millions. Sad to say that.

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 5:36 am
by cape man
The skiff looks awesome!

Re: At last a build thread: CR16 skiff

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 12:19 pm
by cracked_ribs
Thanks guys - I have definitely tried to apply the various things I've learned, I'll say that.

I am really happy with how the skiff turned out - the thing I find really shocking about it is that I can keep it on plane in conditions I probably wouldn't run my big deep V glass tank into. I guess this shouldn't surprise me exactly because the whole point was low power, low weight, low speed planing, so I could stay in contact with the water and not get airborne and slam back into the surface.

But I can plane and stay in contact at much higher speeds that I predicted: we had a solid 2' washing machine of steep chop the other day and I thought okay, this is the stuff I figured "at least I'll be able to do 10-12 knots not burning much fuel, instead of either 6 knots at idle, or 12 knots at full plow burning fuel like crazy."

But I could run at 15-18 knots in it with no problem at all, it didn't feel like anything. The hull stays glued to the surface, and it just feels like you're on a big surfboard, cruising along over waves and not really interacting with them, whereas the two tons of glass would slug through waves @20kt, but it was like it wanted to physically crush everything, and it was intense to run like that. I would do it by myself, but not with the family on board.

This just feels like...drama-free zip. Very satisfying.
Fuzz wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 9:26 pm I am just amazed how little our media, all of them, has given to this disaster. Our closest neighbours third largest city is almost totally cut off and it is not news :doh: I guess pushing some political agenda is more important than the welfare of millions. Sad to say that.
Man, the news media is so messed up these days, it's surreal. Ordinarily, I don't expect people in the US to be very aware of Canadian issues. Some Canadians are really huffy about this but I don't find it realistic. What I'll often say to them is, "yeah imagine being right next to a country that, okay, it's a tenth the population, and proportionally speaking in terms of world influence much smaller than that...but come on, it's physically huge, right on your border, and you don't even know the basics, like who the leaders are?"

And when they excitedly agree, I say, "okay, so tell me what you know about Greenland...do they have a prime minister? Are they ruled by a council in Denmark? Just give me the basics. You're an informed citizen of the world, who's in charge there?"

And of course no Canadian has a freaking clue what happens in Greenland.

So I don't expect Americans to pay attention to what happens here, but at the same time I think you are bang on in your assessment of what the news media covers or doesn't. Flooding and chaos just over the border? Well, sure...but how does this spin up our most argumentative, irate consumers of outrage culture? Is the flood orange? Could we blame it on a kid from Covington or Kenosha? No? Okay, page 27, here's three column inches, knock yourself out.

I mean I think all media does this, not just the media I personally find least relatable. Presumably there's someone at a different news agency going "okay but does this look like purple-haired, clearly couch-bound ivy league students losing their marbles because they discovered a placque dedicating a park bench to a white guy? No? okay, page 27."

But man - and this is dangerous because the coffee is really starting to hit this morning and I'm on the verge of a 2500 word rant that shouldn't be here - something broke, so badly, in the news system, when big tech made it possible to do targeted ads on a really granular basis. All of a sudden, you can track with extreme precision exactly who is watching or reading, and for how long, and what links they click, and all you have to do to ensure maximum eyeballs on ads is to tune your product to captivate people...and the science to make it work is all right there for you, provided for a fee by the richest and most powerful companies on the planet, who, in their spare time, do nothing but use their absolutely terrifying amount of machine-learning power to figure out ways to do this even more efficiently. And it turns out that the most efficient attention-holder is outrage, so...does the flood outrage you? No? Then bury it. Here's a clip of some idiot you already hate, stumbling over a random word mid-sentence. That'll get you going. Revenue!

Anyway I think it's pretty sad that news agencies have completely walked away from actually being respectable providers of information and decided to become outrage-driven click farms and I think that's a big part of what's destroying western civilization.

But the floods are helping too, around here anyway.