Fred In Wisc CC14 Cheap Canoe at 80% Scale

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Fred in Wisc
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Fred In Wisc CC14 Cheap Canoe at 80% Scale

Post by Fred in Wisc »

This project came about from several factors- planning to go kayak camping with some friends and a bunch of kids this summer, it's still too cold to paint my other boat but I have the rest of it pretty much done, and I got some really nice lauan 2.5mm plywood from work for free. The ply was part of a packing crate for some equipment, but it was really nice looking, so I salvaged it before it went to the dumpster. Soaked a sample in water for about 3 days with no signs of delamination, so I figured a Cheap Canoe was in order. Unfortunately I didn't have big enough pieces to build it, but if I scaled down to 80%, there was just enough. Considering that my daughter weighs under 80 pounds, I think that should work just fine for her. So my little girl is going to get her first boat at age 8.

Construction may vary a bit from the ideal, trying to make it all out of leftover stuff I already have. Fortunately I have a good supply of resin and various cloth and tape.

I cut the pieces, fiberglass seamed them together with some 4oz cloth. I found a real slick way to do it- Lay up in this order- Tyvek building paper (epoxy won't stick to it), plywood, glass/epoxy, peel ply (the real stuff- you only need a little), 4 layers of paper towel, tyvek again, 3/4 plywood over it all and them some heavy stuff on top to clamp it. Almost perfect joints with no excess resin.

Really thin plywood is no fun to work with. Too floppy, wiggly, and wavy. I got it assembled, had to use a fair number of zip ties to keep it fair, the duct tape method just wasn't working. Put in some epoxy/woodflour stitches to hold it together so I can pull the ties and do the fillet/taping wet on wet. I really like this part of the process, in a few hours you have a pretty much boat shaped object!

I'll post the pics tomorrow.
Last edited by Fred in Wisc on Fri Apr 17, 2015 12:41 am, edited 2 times in total.

terrulian
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by terrulian »

Sounds interesting. Photos would be great if you have them.
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Fred in Wisc
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by Fred in Wisc »

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Tape seam. The amount of peel ply used here was minimal- about 4-5" wide. A yard of it would do the panel seams for several small boats like this and the seams come out near perfect. Super flat with no excess resin.

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Stitched together. This really thin plywood is too flexible to form nice fair sheer lines on its own. It will need some support and guidance from the rub rails. You can see that better on the other pic.

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Tacked together with little bits of epoxy and wood flour. The fillets are extra small to keep weight down and so I can make the continuous fillets right over the top of them. I tried to be careful not to leave any bumps or blobs of epoxy- don't want to sand before the next step. My other 2 boats took a long time to build because of fooling with stuff like that. Trying to be more efficient on this one.

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The assembled hull, subtracting the clamps and spacers, weighs about 7 pounds at this point. It is approx 10 1/2 feet long. In order to make it from the material on hand I had to make one side from 3 pieces rather than just 2. That's ok, I am trying to use up materials I have on hand rather than purchasing new stuff for this little build.

Fred in Wisc
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by Fred in Wisc »

Looks like I need to resize the pics from my computer. Cant find it in the phone app. Tomorrow.

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Cracker Larry
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by Cracker Larry »

Very cool Fred 8)
Completed GF12 X 2, GF16, OD18, FS18, GF5, GF18, CL6
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jacquesmm
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by jacquesmm »

It looks nice from here but put the rubrail on before doing anymore glass work.
The rubrail will fair the sides.

A boat scaled down by 20% has only half the volume of the original . . . I hope you don't plan for heavy loads.
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terrulian
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by terrulian »

Thanks for the photos. Very clean work indeed!
My other 2 boats took a long time to build because of fooling with stuff like that. Trying to be more efficient on this one.
I'm on my first boat but all the stuff I'm learning will never be used again as I've no plans to build another. So I'll move on to doing something else I don't know how to do.
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Fred in Wisc
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by Fred in Wisc »

Jacques, I will indeed install the rubrail before glassing anything. Thanks for the advice. I was going to tape first, but that would partially lock in the unfair shape, I hadn't thought of that.

This will be very lightly loaded, just making it for my daughter who is currently under 80 pounds. Even with her camping gear, total load should be under 100. In a couple years, she'll probably need a bigger one, but then this can pass along to her little brother.

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement everyone. Hoping to get this done quickly, my wife and kids are going on Easter vacation for a few days so I'll have some time to work on it next week. Not going for a real high level of finish, I know it's going to get beat up floating down the river, and my little girl wants to do the paint herself. I'm interested to see what color she picks out, her current favorites are pink and that bright safety green/yellow. Either way, I should be able to recognize her out on the river pretty easily.

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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by jacquesmm »

80 lbs is fine.
Interesting project.
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Fred in Wisc
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Re: Fred In Wisc CC14 at 80%

Post by Fred in Wisc »

Made a little more progress this weekend.

Cut the rubrail pieces from a pretty good looking pine 2x6 8' long. Ripped it into 5/16" thick strips. Those looked a little wide on the boat, so I ripped them down to 1 1/4" high. Selected the best looking ones, with the fewest knots and imperfections. Then laminated 2 layers with the joints offset several feet on to one side of the boat.

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Precut the trim before even getting the glue out. Staged a lot of clamps where they were easy to get at.

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Oscillating tool works great for trimming the ends so the angles match. I found that it works well to cut the end with the oscillating tool which leaves it about 1/32 too long, and then trim the opposite end of the board (where it's cut square and butts up to the other trim) a little on the miter saw to get an exact match at the end. This isn't a great pic, the stuff shifted. I don't have enough hands to hold it and take a pic at the same time, but it gets the idea across.


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Detail of the end joints on the rubrail.

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Holding the spreaders in place to get the right hull shape. Once the glue was applied, pieces of tyvek paper were put under these to prevent gluing them down. One clamp just behind the bar, towards the wider side of the hull to keep it from sliding, then another clamp to hold it down to the rubrail. Note the extra pieces screwed down to the top of the spreader bars to keep them level with the top of the hull.

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Precut pieces laid out and ready for epoxy. I glued this up one side at a time. With the thin plywood it's going to take a lot of clamps, the plywood is real wiggly. Also didn't know how much fiddling around it would take to get them all lined up and I didn't want the epoxy kicking when I was in the middle of the job. The other side is clamped on to the hull and will stay there to keep things symmetrical.

Next the upper edge of the boat panel and the backs of all the rubrail were coated with epoxy, a thin layer applied with a 1" chip brush. Then a little of the remaining mixed epoxy was reserved and the rest mixed with wood flour to form glue. I knew the coating on the boards would thin it a little, so I mixed slightly stiffer than normal for glue. I applied this to the coated sides of both layers of rubrail.

The first layer of rubrail was applied on one side, then the remaining straight epoxy brushed on to its exposed surface, and the second layer of rubrail applied. Then I evened up the tops , matched the ends, and put on a lot of clamps. No pictures of this, I didn't want to slow the process down or get epoxy on my phone.

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First side clamped in place. This wasn't too hard to do. Note the extra short pieces of scrap covering the butt joints to keep them fair. Used over 60 clamps, the think plywood didn't have enough stiffness to squeeze the thickened epoxy wout if the clamps were more than a 3 inches or so apart, and I didn't want the plywood all wavy and the glue joint getting thicker and thinner.

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Excess glue squeezed out on the top. With all the clamps it was really difficult to access this and scrape off the excess. The good part is it's an easy place to sand it off when the clamps are removed.

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Carefully scraped the excess glue off below the rubrail. It was accessible and it's a real bugger to sand that. I spent a lot of time sanding these on my last boat- it's a hard area to work in without damaging the plywood hull when trying to get into the corner. Way easier to do this before it hardens.

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Had a little excess glue and it was about the right consistency for fillet putty, so I filled in the bow and stern joints and the sole joints a foot or so on each end. The hull should be approximately the right shape now, so locking them in should be ok.

Left it sit about 36 hours before removing the clamps. But I forgot to take a pic of that. I'll do that tonight, my wife and kids went on a road trip for a few days so I'll have some "operating power tools late at night without waking the kids up" time the next couple of nights.

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