I will never be in any serious white water with this boat unless I make a serious miss calculation. Because it small and light I hope to be able to access some smaller streams, as well as some larger slow moving sections of river. I will also use it to access some smaller ponds that are easily accessible but lack boat ramps. I expect a pretty simple anchoring system will meet my needs.
Boat building
- Thread starter SENC
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Gotcha. Those little prams aren't typically made for white water and I guess if that happens, setting an anchor won't be your primary concern, huh? Plus, if there's not lot of current, you don't need as heavy an anchor either. Probably a simple clete system with a coil of rope will work.
Scotty makes some pretty nice stuff for small boats and float tubes. Their anchor lock system doesn't cost much and might work for you, rated for 3 - 5lb anchors:
Scotty anchor lock
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You both need a “Skipper’s” hat and this is an amazing thread! I am going now to just fill the cast iron tub with water and going to sail one of my kid’s plastic boat…….
I got the chine faired out and ready for fiberglass tape. Fiberglass doesn't like sharp corners so it has a little radius. I block planed most of it then finished it with my random orbit, then gave it a coat of epoxy. I let the epoxy get tacky and filled all of the low spots and gaps with thickened epoxy. It will need a little hand sanding tomorrow then I can get on with finishing the bottom.
Lots of fiberglass and epoxy today. I sheathed the bottom, I cut it a little big so it lapped over the chine a couple of inches. I gave it a couple of hours to tack up a little then put 2 more layers of fiberglass tape on the chine and bow. More sanding in the morning and get things masked off to put the epoxy graphite coating on the bottom. Hopefully I will be able to flip it right side up soon and finish the gunnel and seats.
Dad and I in fall1963, built a wood fiberglass canopy for his 64 150. He added color to epoxy or whatever it was. Wouldn't that be more permanent than paint.
I'm sure it would work. Epoxy requires UV light protection, I'm not sure that adding pigment to the epoxy would do that. No matter how hard I try to make epoxy smooth it still seems to need scraping and sanding when it's cured.
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Looks great, Dave. Nice progress!
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Finished tabbing between stitches, inside and out. This is done by applying neat epoxy first, letting it tack up a bit, then applying a peanut-butter consistency epoxy, cabosil, and wood flour mix. Technically, it should probably also include small tabs of fiberglass, but I'm fairly optimistic that as the plywood bends aren't too tight, epoxy tabs inside and out should hold the panels in shape when I remove the stitches. Will give everything a couple days to cure well before testing my luck.
Thanks, I'm getting a little better at epoxy and fiberglass, or at least more comfortable with the process. I'm glad to be almost done with it. Looking at the size of your boat I think you will be a pro by duck season
Looks great, I guess you will be spreading epoxy by the gallon pretty soon. You won't have any trouble with the epoxy not holding when you remove the ties, it pretty efficient stuff.
Hopefully the last big epoxy pour, epoxy graphite bottom. It would probably benefit from another coat but I had enough epoxy for one year, I guess if the boat gets much hard use annual touch-up is necessary maintenance anyway. I know river boats don't have rowing skegs but I will probably be on lakes and ponds much of the time so my boat has one
Looking good Dave, you're moving right along. That skeg will sure help it track better
Congrats! Looks great! What’s left to do? Chuck
A pretty long punch list and then paint. I kind of enjoy the epoxy fiberglass work except for the down time. For instance I need to do both outwales, to bend the wood takes around 25 clamps and the epoxy needs 24 hours to cure. Because I don't have 50 suitable clamps I can only do one side/ day. Lots of hurry up and wait.
Question dark bottom. Painted? Looks nice.
Epoxy is sorta like plaster, it is about how much catalyst and timing. The mud/epoxy needs to set but not until you are ready. But plaster you can build up. You can start with a lathe room and with appropriate use of ag gypsum you can scratch, brown and finish ready to paint at day end. Too much gypsum and it gets hard to fast, not enough and you are sitting waiting. I think we used structure bond in jails and prisons. If it got hard too soon, it made for a long bad day. They did not use in prisons because it was easy to use. It was like creating stone.
The bottom is a mix of graphite powder and epoxy. I also added some ground fiberglass to thicken the mix, I found that the consistency of old-fashioned roofing tar worked well for me. The raka epoxy that we a using on our boats is a 2 to 1 mix, if you stray from that very much it will not cure properly.
Must of been different stuff in 60s. I remember dad and uncle playing with formula. They decided to mix way too much catalyst. A minute later we watch the paint burn off of folders paint can they were using to mix in. It was extremely hot fast. Strong fumes, I am sure it probably was not healthy work.