OB19 in SW FL

[wadestep]

Soo, I'm finally underway. It only took about 8 months from the time I bought the kit to the time I got started. Hopefully that is't an indication of my building speed. I did have other Bateau-related project to finish up first (notice all the blended filler)




So, finally got back to the big project - OB19. Here's the arrival from storage - it's hard to imagine this is going to become something like what I'm imagining:

As you can see, lifting all the ply in and out of the truck make's you thirsty!

So, then it was on to building the strongback - I used 2x6x18' boards, with 40" clear between. This is a little wider than what the plans call for, we shall see if that's any issue.


On the strongback, I'm using 2x4s for verticals, and put plywood triangles in all 90 deg corners, to lock it in against deforming like a rhomboid. So far, so good.

[wadestep]

Then it was time to pop out the tabs ont eh pre-cut ply


about 1.5 hours with a jig-saw and all the parts were cut out! Nice.

On to laminating the stringers and transom.



yes, there's a transom under all that weighty stuff.

afterwards, I wished I'd used the trick with the tape line on the floor to align my stringer properly. They ended up about 1/4" not straight. I'm not too concerned, but next time, I'll pay closer attention to perfectly straight. I did use an 8' lumber to align the joints, but it's still not perfect.

Also, After the stringers were fully cured and I was lifting them, I wasn't fully happy with the joint. it would flex a little when the stringer was bowing sideways. So, I took the hand-planer to the butt-butt joints of the stringer, planed off a little bit, and then put a piece of 4" woven cloth across the joint. Now I'm really happy with it, looks very strong.
You can see that on the 2nd stringer back in this picture:

[wadestep]

The next step was assembling the jig. I set the height of the baseline at a level I can just barely squeeze under to get inside the boat later. Also had to take into account the bow and keep it up off the floor. I'm worried that the hull is actually going to be too tall, and make fairing more difficult - the keel is about shoulder height. We shall see, but I'm pretty sure I'll need to get under the boat during the stitching and gluing phases.

Also had a couple of minor snafus - the jig aligned very well, but the stringer notches had to be cut bigger to accomodate the MDF temporary frames. Also, the clamping board notches were too narrow for the stringers to fit into them, I only noticed that after laminating all the transom together. To fix it I used a sawz-all and chisel to enlarge them.


I also "stair-stepped" the ends of the stringers to fit into the notches in the clamping boards.

So that's about caught-up now - I was slow in starting this thread. Total elapsed time is about 5 weeks now. I promise to keep this up to date... unless , of course, the weather is too nice and I'm fishing, or I have 3-4 hours together to do some serious building, or...

[Dougster]

Looks real good to me. You're right about wanting to be able to crawl under her at times. Don't worry about the hull being a little too high for comfortale fairing. I had that issue and a couple of 2 by 6's layed across some cinder blocks or something gives a very usable little 6" scaffold to work from. You're rolling now.

Had to crawl under my build many a time Dougster

[Cracker Larry]

Good progress Wade

[wadestep]

I managed to misplace my MDF frame A. I mounted the permanent frame A thinking it was the only one, however, the bow mold expects a notch to be cut in the frame. I didn't want to cut the notch since it was not needed for the permanent structure. So, I ended up cutting the bow mold in half taking out the width of the frame A, and attatching it on either side with 1x1s.

Then, the next day, I found the temporary bow mold. Maybe I should take a day to clean and arrange my garage...

so now this thread is caught-up to present day. Yesterday I joined the bottom and sides of the hull, have the jig ready, and am ready to try this thing called "stitching"

yes, the frames are all square - it's a parallelax error in a wide-angle lens. I wasn't inebriated while assembling the strongback


for some scale - it keeps growing everytime I look - it's starting to feel like it's size, now.


Just wait until the hull planking is in place - It'll seem gigantic!!

[gstanfield]

If you think it's big now just wait until you're halfway finshed sanding. At that point even a small boat seems big when you realize that all that time, sweat, and beer and you're still only half way

[wadestep]

for those friends of mine who are not familiar with the Bateau website- here's what I'm building:
http://www.bateau.com/studyplans/OB19_s ... ?prod=OB19

[wadestep]

gstanfield - sounds like you speak from experience. I've been accumulating the time, sweat and beer so far, luckily no blood yet...
updates below:

[wadestep]

Update time -
Over the past week or so, I've been letting the epoxy fly!
in my spare time (yeah, right), I'm building a fishbox/truck box. The goal is to have an insulated large cooler that is completely waterproof, to double as dry storage in the bed of a truck and a kill box while fishing. Cheap is also a prime factor, so I got 3/8" ply from the box store, the pre-cut 4x8 sheets of 3/4" styrofoam, and 2 bottles of glue. i basically laminated a ply sheet, 2 styrofoam sheets, and another ply on top with the glue and a lot of bricks. From there, it was easy to measure and cut as if one piece of wood with a circular saw. after setting it in place here's what i had:

I then tack-welded it and am in the middle of taping it. The only thing I would do differently so far is to have made all the corners a 45/45 cut, so it would have been wood-wood. instead, some of the corners turned out like this:


after taping it should be strong enough, I hope. This project is somewhat of a primer for the boat, since the only other boat i've build is the cheap canoe.