In early October, I placed my order for 5 sheets of 1/4” BS 1088 Meranti Hydtrotek with Homestead Hardwoods in Ohio. I received my well-packaged crate of plywood just a few days later. Right off, I was more impressed with the Hydrotek than the Douglas Fir marine plywood I’d been using up to this point. The Meranti has a more attractive appearance, and a much smoother surface. It is also a 5-ply structure, rather than 3-ply like the Fir, so the outer and center plies are considerably thinner. I’m looking forward to using it to plank the boat, although I’ve read that Meranti splinters considerably when it is cut... we’ll see.
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| My crate of Meranti Hydrotek, fresh off the truck. |
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| BS 1088 Meranti Hydrotek |
Originally, I had cut 1” deep notches in the frames to receive the chine logs. However, the “1-inch” board I bought for the chines was in reality only 3/4” thick. This turned out to not be a problem, everywhere except frame #1. At frame #1, the chines ended up being recessed too deeply into the frame notches, leaving 1/4” of the frame extending past the chines on the sides of the boat.
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| 1/4" of frame #1 extends past chine log. |
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| 1/4" of frame #1 extends past chine log. |
Originally, my plan was to simply fair the frames inward to meet the chines. I changed my mind, however, and decided to laminate on a little extra material to this section of the chines, much like I did up forward.
I cut two strips of 1-3/4” x 4’ Southern Yellow Pine from the most vertical-grained board I could find at Lowes. I planed these by hand down to roughly 3/8” thickness, and attached them with thickened epoxy , centering them with the 2’ mark in the middle of the frame. The next step is to fair these strips down to shape so that they form a fair curve along the length of the chine. Hopefully I can begin to plank the boat not long after that.
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| Dry fitting the 1-3/4" x 4' strips into place. |
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| The port side strip clamped on while the epoxy cures. |
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| Next step is to fair it down. |
One of the things I've come to realize about building these wonderful craft out of wood is that very often areas that we first think are disasters turn out to be quite fixable. I've been fretting over a too large cut out for the stem on my boat and the fix was a shim glued into position that worked just fine.
ReplyDeleteThe boat is looking good Mike. Looking forward to seeing the skin go down.
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