Getting close to paint!

I've been working on & off for the past month or so doing a bit here and there. Realized I hadn't posted any updates, though it hasn't changed that much. The bottom / exterior half is complete. Last coat of caulk is in place, and everything sanded to 80 grit. The curved bow went in ok, except it also curved 90 degrees from the planned curve as well, giving it a "smile" opening if you were to look at it from the front. Framing helped, but there was still about a 1/3" gap that needed to be filled with caulk. It shouldn't ever be under water, so should be fine. Here are some of the pics. Here is that "smile" (a couple rounds of caulk ago):

Here is some ripstop nylon to cover any gap-osis in the angles I cut as well as strengthen that seam. It has since been coated in caulk to hopefully seal any pinholes that the TBIII might have left. (Coated raw wood /w 50/50 water/TB, lay down the cloth, use a silicon basting brush /w shortened/stiff bristles to smooth & fill with full strength glue. Came back 1 hour later with another TB coat. Note, sanding the TB3 tends to just make it heat & bubble up if any amount of time is spent on 1 spot, so try to make as smooth as possible.) I am also planning on caulking all the inside joints as well.

And here is the back:

After this last round of caulk, I'll be glueing down the chine runners. Then finish sanding at higher grits, then ready for primer & paint. Chose a bright, "irish" green for the coat. Using a low gloss latex porch enamel, which should give me some good abrasion resistance.

Bulkheads

Now that temps are right for Titebond 3 to set up properly, I've started progress on the bulkheads. Accidentally used the fwd/aft panels (12") instead of the web panels (9"). I should have extra pieces of plywood, so I guess the knees will be extra sturdy.

 

And here is a close-up of the joint if anyone is curious. I used a carpenter's square & a 4' cross bar to ensure 90* in both directions.

Next up, attaching the sides and fwd/aft panels. Then I get to have the fun of flipping it!

More Hops

Was going to work some more on the boat since my lovely wife is out of town on a work trip. Noticed that another plant was ready to harvest. Had a little friend checking in on the hops.

It produced easily twice as many hops as the other plant, at 3 full and 1 partial 5 gallon buckets. Some of the cones were a full 1"x4". This is a sliding door's screen for scale. 3-4" deep. Going to need to get another screen door, as it probably won't dry quickly enough.

Sides connected via rub rail

Connected the 2 sides together today. Getting close to having something 3-dimensional. Once they are connected to the floor, it should start getting much easier visualizing how to put together the rest of the puzzle.

Also, I harvested the first hop plant this week. Got about 7 gallons worth. Dehydrating it and vacuum sealing it today.

Back to boat building

Today I built the bottom. Laying down parchment paper under all the relevant surfaces to catch any gorilla glue foaming out, I was able to do the glue up single-handed. There is a 1/16" out of alignment over 4' of 3/4 ballast plate on the forward end. I tried correcting it several times, but each time, it over-corrected in a different area. A plane should be able to knock down an excess + the glue squeeze out.

Before dropping the 3/4" plywood which you can see on the left. I took care to put excess gorilla glue in any of the knot-holes, to try to prevent any excess voids:

I had to take apart my diy squat cage to make room for the boat building. All the extra weights came in handy for clamping. The forward 4x8 was slightly raised in the center, so plenty of extra weight there to flatten it:

Catching up

Haven't posted in a while. Been busy opening the house up for summer. De-winterizing boats. Planting a garden. Building a rack for our kayaks and stand up paddle boards. Training my hop plants. Today, I picked spruce tips for a spruce-tip pale ale, with a Norwegian farm-house yeast (Hornindal Kviek). Planning on brewing tomorrow. Here's what 1 pound of tips looks like:

The tips taste very lemony, and only very faintly has a piney taste in the background. In fact, it is a natural source of vitamin C, and was used by Native Americans to treat scurvy.

Bow Nailers

Got the hull sides cut apart. Made my bow nailers. Slight confusion, as both the plans and the booklet reference 1x6, but the materials list calls for 1x8. Bought by the material list, so I had plenty of spare layout room. The 2 boards don't quite fit 8 ft on the same side of the board, so you need to lay them on opposite sides. Looked to match the curve of the cut-off pretty well.

When I went to glue it down, following Dave's suggestion to use small chunks of 1/2" plywood as spacers, the curve wasn't quite deep enough. I don't have a plane (yet), so I used a sander with 60 grit to shave a slight bit off each end. Also, you can never have enough clamps when boat building!

Here is the first glue-up done. The nails weren't nearly as soft as I feared. Not quite enough glue squeeze out as I thought I was going to have, so opened up the GluBot's nozzle a bit more. If you are still using the bottle the glue comes from, it is totally worth picking the glubot up.

Spaced the nails 1" from the edge.

 And a picture of the glubot, you can see how squeezing the very soft plastic pushes glue up the tube, meaning you don't need to shake the bottle to get glue down to the tip in a half-empty bottle. The cap is also on a lanyard connected to the cap, so you don't loose it.