New Year's Eve

Well, here we are again at the end of another year. I hope yours has been good.

I'm wrapping up 2018 by looking ahead to next year's boating season, and getting Perseverance ready for the water. Over the last couple of days, I've been sanding and encapsulating the new battery tray.

The main battery tray. This will be mounted underneath the rear thwart. The "door" is removable, allowing the battery to slide out from under the seat.

Here's the removable "door" with its first layer of epoxy curing.

The overall tray, with the latches removed for finishing.

Looking back over the year, 2018 has been a big year for the Zip. A year ago, Frame #4 wasn't even assembled yet. Now, it's all on the construction form and we're in the fairing process even while we're still adding the remaining longitudinals. There's a long way to go, and who knows what the coming year will bring.

Here's to a safe and prosperous 2019.

Limbers in the battens

A year ago today, I questioned how I'd managed to live this long without a router.

Today, I got the router out again and used it to cut the athwartship limbers in the bottom of the floor battens. This will allow water to pass under the floor battens toward a central draining point in the hull. Not having this feature on the Utility (because I forgot) has been a real pain.

I wanted to get it right this time. Dewalt compact router to the rescue.

I clamped an old ruler to the battens to use as a guide for the router. The bit is a Bosch 3/8" x 3/4" dome-shaped "surface shaping" bit. (I've found that I prefer the Bosch router bits in general.) I cut to a depth of approximately 1/4". Worked like a charm.

Ooops... I did it again.

Remember this mess?

(If you missed the original story, you can read about the mess here, and the fix here and here.)

Well, I did it again. This time, it was in the stem for the Zip.

I had decided to go ahead and drill for the bow eye. Since the stem is still fully exposed, it's easy to get to all the way around. I thought I might as well go ahead and drill it. I went about it a little differently than last time, drilling from the back forward, rather than the other way around.

The reason is because I had already drilled a pilot hole for attaching a chine block that I never used. The hole was in about the right position, so I thought it would be simple enough to drill it on through.

So it would seem, anyway.

The initial hole was actually great. Very close to center. I couldn't complain.

The problem came when I started widening the hole with progressively larger bits, now following the hole by drilling front-to-back. Somehow, I got my long 1/4" bit out of alignment, and wound up with this:

Fortunately, I'd "been there, done that," so the fix was pretty easy. I had a 1/4" bung cutter, and I used it to cut a few bungs from scrap mahogany.

They turned out to be the perfect size. Rather than try to measure and mix a tiny amount of Silvertip epoxy, I opted to just buy one of the two-part syringe kits of marine epoxy from Bass Pro Shops.

It's all curing up now. Hopefully there won't be any more complications when I trim the bung and continue widening the hole.

Time to take a break for Christmas

It's time to take a little break from working on the sleigh. I think I need to step away from it for a little while and give my brain some rest.

The fairing is going well, if slowly. However, I'm a bit perplexed. The fitting on the starboard side from the transom forward to Frame #4 is "not bad." That's the good part. The perplexing part is that, even though the fitting looks decent so far, the floor battens are anything but flat. Granted, they're not horribly off. The deviation between high spots and low spots is less than 1/16 inch on average.

Fitting at transom

1 foot forward of transom

2 feet forward of transom

3 feet forward of transom

Fitting at Frame #2

1 foot forward of Frame #2

2 feet forward of Frame #2

3 feet forward of Frame #2

Fitting at Frame #4

Approximately 8 inches forward of Frame #4.

The high & low spots are noticeable when I measure the battens linearly with a level. However, they're hardly apparent at all with the test plywood. 

Time to take a break.

Go slowly, measure often.

Do you know why the traditional Christmas carol only refers to three ships, and not a fourth ship that came sailing in.... on Christmas day in the morning?

The builder of the fourth ship was still fairing the damn thing.

That's precisely what I'm still doing. So, let's talk about those starboard floor battens.

This is where we left off. The 3-section shim was epoxied into place, and clamped up nice and tight. Why 3 sections? Because I had a relatively short scrap that was cut off of one of these battens. So, the width was just right, but it wasn't long enough to do what I needed. So, I ripped it into 3 pieces & glued them end-to-end.

When I pulled all the clamps off, I found I had glued about half of the yellow pads from the Irwin clamps to the wood. It was relatively easy to pull those off, using my scraper for leverage.

After a good bit of planing and sanding, the shim looked like this:

Referring back to the title of this post, the way I try to approach fairing is to go slowly and measure often. It's a slow, laborious, and boring job. Because of that, it's easy to be tempted to rush things. Unfortunately, if you rush things, it will probably result in more mistakes that you'll have to fix.

Easier said than done, trust me.

Here are some photos with my test piece of plywood. I checked the fairing at 1-foot intervals between Frame #4 and Frame #2. The "dip" that I was filling with the shim is pretty much filled. However, there are still some gaps. Apparently, this is a result of high spots on the middle batten and on the chine. I've learned the hard way that whatever you "fix" in one place only creates a problem somewhere else. Go slowly, measure often.

Fairing at Frame #4. Not bad.

About 1 foot aft of Frame #4, we start to see a gap between the test plywood and the outer batten.

A closer look at the gap mentioned above.

Approximately 2 feet aft of Frame #4, we see the gap getting a bit larger.

Notice how this gap is deeper toward the outside (left) than the inside. I believe the chine is more the culprit here. The rate of rise on the chine from Frame #4 to Frame #2 is not the same as this outer batten.

At 3 feet aft of Frame #4, we see gaps opening up on both the outer batten, and the middle batten as well.

Gap on the outer batten.

Gap on the middle batten.

Fairing at Frame #2. Not bad.

Although I believe high points on the chine are partly responsible for these gaps, I also know the middle floor batten is also a bit high between these two frames. This becomes pretty obvious when I place a 4-foot level on the batten:

You guessed it: "Go slowly, measure often."

O Shim, All Ye Faithful

December. Christmastime. Boatbuilding. An unusual combination, perhaps... but not to me.

Christmas 2011. Glen L. Witt's book "Boatbuilding With Plywood," and plans for a Glen-L Squirt.

After all, it was during Christmastime that I started on my very first boatbuilding project several years ago... my unfortunately failed attempt at building a Glen-L Squirt. Looking back, it was an odd decision that I made to buy Squirt plans when what I really wanted was the Zip. Oddly, now that I'm building a Zip, I often wish I had simply finished a Squirt. Even though it's minuscule, I believe that line-for-line, the Squirt is one of the most elegant and beautiful boats that Glen L. Witt ever designed.

So, enough reminiscing. The previous post left off with the low spot in the outer starboard floor batten, and the plan to shim it. Come, let us behold shim:

  
Here it is, clamped into place & the epoxy curing.

Now, on to Christmastime sentimentality:

Sometimes I feel like the Grinch incarnate, because I just can't seem to get into the "Christmas Spirit" anymore. Part of it, without doubt is the sickening over-commercialization of the holiday. It has turned into pure madness. Lately, I've tried to give my Christmas spirit a boost by listening to Christmas songs on the radio... but it just feels so empty. I love all the classics like Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, and certainly Tchaikovsky. But, the other day I noticed that the other classics have virtually disappeared from the airwaves. O Come, All Ye Faithful. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. Silent Night. What happened to those classics?

O come, all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem

Come, and behold him
Born the King of Angels

O come, let us adore him
O come, let us adore him
O come, let us adore him

Christ, The Lord.

Big dip in the outer starboard batten

Once again, the title pretty much says it all. There's a significant low spot in the starboard outer floor batten, and it needs to be filled. 

Want more details? Read on...

Here's an updated graphic to help explain some of this stuff. The problem area is located on the starboard outer batten, in "Zone 2" between Frame #2 and Frame #4. The board is a little warped, to put it simply. This warp is creating a low spot on the batten.

Here's my piece of test plywood stretched across Frame#4:

Not bad. Now, here's the test plywood stretched across Frame #2:

Again, not bad. But, now let's take a look at the midway point between Frame #2 and Frame #4:

Yikes. Look closer:

Granted, the fairing isn't done yet. However, if you look at the angle of the batten in the middle of the dip, you'll see this clearly is not acceptable:

The only option is to fill in this low spot. I have the shim pieces cut. Now, I just need to laminate them onto the batten.