Boat Builder Central - Builder Forums

Ok, so I changed my mind and am going for a 16ft Chenoa instead of 2 cheap canoes.

Anyway, I just got home to see a nice big brown envelope sitting on the sofa waiting for me. Unfortunately, I've now promised my dad I'd take him to see the Superbikes on Sunday so now can't afford the wood! So another couple of weeks to wait until payday, and then maybe I can finally get on with building something. So for now I'm off to look over the plans.

Congrats!

I really enjoy my Chenoa 14, although I don't get to paddle it nearly as often as I would like.

Finally managed to get hold of a couple of sheets of ply, so get to start building tomorrow. I could only get 4mm without paying extortionate amounts so will glass the whole thing in and out rather than just taping the seams, but the glass isn't an issue for me. I also managed to find an odd bit of 6mm which I've cut down into strips ready for the rubrail.

Congrats on getting the project going. Take plenty of pics to share with us please

Progress at last!

Got the main panels marked out, cut and spliced today.

Have to say, this is the first time in nearly 4 years of doing this sort of thing that I've tried to fibreglass "blind". I've tried to cut down on waiting for epoxy to cure, as I'm doing this at work and didn't want to go in tomorrow just to glass the other side of the joints. So I've done all the splices in one go by laying down plastic, then peel ply, then glass, then laying the pieces on top, then glassing the top side. Because of this you obviously can't see the wood grain showing through the glass when it's properly sat down. I know that theoretically it should be fine because the glass was pre-wet and the wood was pre-coated with epoxy and there's plenty of weight on them, but it still leaves a slight unnerving feeling waiting till tomorrow to see if it's all ok!

Anyway, enough blabbering, here's a few pics.

Kiddies helping mark the curved lines:


Splices done:


All the pieces - there are two side panels and two bottom panels there, just stacked on top of each other:


And, yes, aparently I have a boat building dog too. Although he wasn't much help - dumb mutt spent most of the afternoon chasing seagulls or walking over the wood:



And for those of you that like your boat porn, I took some more pics for you whilst at work. See them here - http://forums.bateau2.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=27698

Well, there were a few spots that didn't quite sit down properly. Nothing major and I'm glassing everything anyway so I'll grind them out before I do. But, in the future I'll just do them one side at a time.

I've tried it both ways and never had good results trying to glass both sides at the same time. It takes twice as long but the joints always comes out better for me if I tape one side, let it cure, then flip and tape the other.

Here you can see the bad spots on the top panel, compared to the good splice on the bottom (sorry, only crappy phone pics today).


And this is going to be my yoke:


2 strips of foam epoxied together then corners planed off and finished off with "special sanding tool no.17" I was going to do it with carbon, along with the seats, but I think I'm just going to go for glass and paint. Once it's wrapped, I'll hollow out the ends a bit and fill with epoxy so there's a nice solid plug to attach it with.

Well I think my yoke should be strong enough. There is a bit of a bend, but that is a full 25kg tin of resin hanging from it!


The canoe is starting to look like a canoe now as well:


I was trying to do it with just tape to begin with in the hope that I could glass the inside today, but on my own I was getting nowhere. Once I gave in and got the cable ties and spacers out it went together reasonably well. One end is fine, but the other the top panel is about 6 or 7mm too short. Still nothing a bit of filler won't fix!



All welded up now ready for interior glassing tomorrow.


And just for the sake of another pic. here's my trusty filleting tools - we've been through quite a few repairs together!

Looking good Dave