Its all one piece

Add another 10 hours to the project, the kayak is all one piece now. Some serious progress has been made but i still have a long way to go. The ice on the lake is turning a deep blue color, so it wont be long before open water starts calling me.

 So i found some plastic tubing to use as conduit for the electrical wires and i hot melt glued them to the underside of the deck. i think i got enough glue on them to keep them from ever coming loose.

A neat trick i found is to use a water proof container to house the switches and connections. I have three circuits  one for the nav lights, one for the lights in the cockpits and one for the clearance/docking lights on the middle outside of the hull.

 Funny story, i have been using big syringes for putting epoxy in the gaps between panels through the whole project. well yesterday the temp finally reached 70 degrees outside and everything was warming up nicely. then the syringe in my hand started getting hot, really hot! i tried to hurry but then it went off and turned solid.

 So here is where i am now, next step is to fill cracks, sand and get ready to fiberglass the top of the deck.

80 hours thus far?

Hull is complete

The Hull is now complete. The final fiberglass has been put in and a fill coat of epoxy applied. I now have 70 hours invested in this project and am feeling pretty good about it. I am still having issues with drying time of the epoxy, yes i know i live in the great white north and that epoxy  cure time is based on a low humidity and 80 degrees. It is now time to clean up the inside of the hull and deck, strap the deck onto the hull and glue it together. Pretty exciting to reach this major milestone. On a side note, i suppose this would also be a good idea to install some conduit or tubing to run wires for the navigation lights.

Wetting out the hull glass with my trusty library card.

Progress update

The deck is now glued together and I did manage to fill the gaps without making a huge mess out of it. I am waiting for a delivery of fiberglass tape to reinforce the under deck supports (this week?).

The inner temporary supports have been removed and fillets of epoxy have been applied to the but blocks and I have applied a sealer coat of epoxy to the inside. I think I am ready for fiberglass on the inside the hull.

I do need to go shopping for a few more items; navigation lights, battery charger, and various rigging things..

Twisting wires

Just a quick update,
the hull wires are twisted tight and the deck is taped to the hull and is now ready for some glue. 2 more hours spent.

Action Photos

So here we are again on monday morning. The past weekend was very productive, although I still seem to be having trouble with the epoxy drying fast enough. I did borrow a neighbor's Knipko heater, that thing will bring the shop up from 50 to 90 degrees in about 10 min. Because I hate to pay for something that I can make myself so I used a plan out of the "Strip Built Kayak" book to build my own rudder.

Action Photo!

So now the hull is in pretty good shape and ready for final sanding. The deck is now stitched together and draped over the hull. There is still a lot of tweaking to do before the edges are glued together.
Now we are looking like a kayak.

Hours thus far... 60

Fill coat

I put the first fill coat on the hull last night. After checking it this morning it is still a bit sticky. I didn't see a lot of sags or runs but I will check it out in more detail tonight. I am pretty sure I will need to put on another fill coat to make sure the fiber glass is totally protected and give me something to sand against. I am hoping that I can get this thing flipped over and work on the deck this weekend.

Funny thing I noticed, while working with epoxy you need to have a respirator and gloves for safety. Murphy's law clearly states that while you hands are full of sticky mess and your face is covered with a breathing apparatus  you are going to need to sneeze, and you nose will start to dribble  and then your cell phone will ring....

50 hours spent this far.

Ghost Ship?

Finally reached a major milestone and laid out the fiberglass on the outside of the hull. I used about 40 oz of epoxy to wet out the glass, the process went fairly well and took about 2 hours. The temperature is slowly rising and it is easier to maintain 70 degrees in the shop. I did switch from 3:1 epoxy to 4:1 epoxy because of the faster cure time. With a cold shop, cure time is critical.

No pressure on this build but the South Dakota Kayak Challenge is only 52 days away!

time spent thus far, 49 hours...

First Sanding

The first sanding always sets the tone for the rest of the build. Questions like, how do the joints look? Are the curves fair? Will I need to chop off the stems and replace with solid wood?

After the sanding process i did stain the hull with some Early American stain by Minwax to see if it would blend in with the epoxy mess that you can see on the joints. It did turn out blotchy, so we are still on for a paint job. The hull is now ready for fiberglass and I hope to get that done sometime this week.

4 more hours added to the project. That brings us up to 47.