At sundown the temperature was 12 degrees and in the last hour it has dropped to 8 degrees. I expected to start fiberglassing the inside seams in the cuddy or cabin shell today.� Before fiberglassing the seams I felt I needed to bond some plywood reinforcements under the winches, halyard locks, and jib tracks. I knew "about" where these devices would be located but I realized before�cutting plywood and bonding reinforcements�I needed to get more specific about just where.

To the Carpenters Rule about "measure twice, cut once" I would add "think three times, measure twice, cut once".� I forget this�Rule often, to my peril. (As I write this, the dismal reports�about Iraq come drifting to me via Public Radio.� I wonder if�the people with power do not believe the Carpenter's Rule.� Note, this metaphor has nothing to do with "cut and run".)

The picture shows�my attempt to set up, in�my relatively warm garage, some of the rigging on the cabin top. I decided to recycle the winches that came on the Etchells.� They were made in Denmark and have permanent handles mounted on the bottom. The jib is small so you don't need much of a winch.

These winches will be used for the jib sheets, the red lines after the sails are up. The winches will be used to raise and tension the main and jib, the blue lines.� I may have to buy some halyard clutches where the little jam cleats are shown. The winches will be used for the slab reefing and the Cunningham, the white lines.

There will be changes, of course, but this is about what it will look like.

This morning the temperature was -4 deg F but the sky was clear. I did some work on the boat cabin module in the garage in the afternoon but did not consider doing anything to the boat which is outside under a polyethylene cover. The boat cover looks like a greenhouse and I wondered what would happen to the temperature under the cover on a cold sunny day.

The boat and the ambient temperature was -4 deg F at 8:00AM. By noon the ambient air was up to 24 and the boat was 40 degrees. At 3PM the ambient temperature was 29 deg F and the boat was 56 deg F!

What seems remarkable is that I could have done a small fiberglass job under the plastic cover on the boat at noon and the resin would have mostly set up by sundown!� The lesson is that I should not give up boat work, just because it is very cold. The solar heating is a distinct benefit on a day like this.

This weekend the sky was clear and temperatures were probably near 70 degrees! making use of the warm weather I got a layer of fiberglass on the cabin module, the foredeck and the afterdeck (shown in the picture).

I trimmed the curved frame around the deck to receive the cabin module, (picture). The Skil saw objected to all the angles and I had to push it very hard but it came out fine. It will be an exciting day when we see if the cabin module FITS the hole in the boat!

This morning the temperature was 14 degrees and as you see in the picture there was about 8 inches of snow on the scaffolds and steps. Notice there was a 55 degree drop in temperature in about 12 hours.

I epoxied the plywood panels together day before yesterday and when I took off the clamps yesterday morning, some of the glue joints popped open.� I had hoped they would last until I taped the joints, inside and out, with several layers of fiberglass and resin.

I cleaned the broken joints, made some temporary and some permanent screw blocks to hold it together and did it again.� This morning everything held when I removed the clamps!

I did a lot of sanding and then filled some flaws, holes, cracks and screwhead holes with epoxy and West 410 and went to lunch with Dan Spurr who thought he owed me one for helping with some fog horn tests.

When I got back I put on the first fiberglass tape on the exterior joints. I used scrap 10 oz fiberglass since there will be several layers of bigger pieces glass covering it.� It is nice to see the cabin shell looking nearer to it's final form without a bunch of clamps holding it together and I am happy with the shape.

Yesterday brought a skiff of new snow but today was partially clear and warmer. I really appreciate a warm day.

Great weather the last two day! Quite a contrast to the last week when there was snow, rain and cold temperatures. I am still working on the "cuddy" and you would think that four pieces of plywood could be connected in less than the week that I have been working on it (not full time). Today the plywood was forced together with a lot of clamps and tonight there are two lightbulbs under the cuddy to help the epoxy cure. I worked outside on the boat today as the weather was warm. I sanded and filled the foredeck trying to make it smoother.

still cold

My inspiration a couple of days ago was that I still have the original cuddy I cut out from the part of the boat I am keeping.� The original cuddy differs from the hole in my boat only by a saw cut! Because of this close fit, I think I can use the cut out part as the basis of a precision (I hope) jig which could be used to build my new cuddy, inside the garage where the weather is slightly better.

Yesterday I built legs for the jig and set it's height to correspond to the rise in the boat wrt the waterline, which is now our garage floor.� Today I mocked up the main dimensions of the cabin and this is hard for me. I had similar frustrations when mocking up the pop-top camper roofs. The "nice" dimensions are subtle so you try to set up a temporary visual aid but it is so flimsy that it keeps falling down. I will sleep on it again and maybe something will come to me.

The challenges of geometry are always waiting to prove me stupid.� Even with sheets of plywood (conic sections, right?) the intersection of�the curve of the cabin�roof�with a curve in the cabin side with a rising sheer curve of the deck gets messy.� Where do you start?

In design desperation, I moved the boats around in our (boat) yard, repositioning the Etchells so I can get a snowblower between my scaffolding and the garage wall, and moving the F-24 from the front yard to it's normal place in the side yard.� I haven't put the cover on yet as there is still snow on the boat.

There was steady rain all day yesterday and it changed to snow by evening. This morning we have 27 degrees and up to 6 inches of snow.

I bought 10 yards of 10 oz fiberglass cloth yesterday in Belgrade at the local fiberglass shop.� It cost me maybe $20 more than ordering it, but it is in hand. Another gallon of resin should arrive today thus if the weather warms up I am ready to start the final fiberglass coat on the deck. Temperatures of 50 degrees are predicted in a couple of days. In the meantime I am doing odd jobs around home, and writing emails!

I woke up at 5:30 this morning and after mourning the weather, got an exciting idea for pre-fabricating the cabin roof in the garage. Will let you know what happens. Gotta be ready to change schedule when you are blocked.

Saturday

After a bunch of grinding and filling the boat deck still looked pretty rough yesterday but I went ahead today and mopped on some fiberglass cloth and epoxy. Happy to report that today, it looks pretty good. When the paint goes on I expect that the flaws will jump out to the eye but I will hope that it is strong, if not totally beautiful. It will get another coat of cloth next week after I get more epoxy delivered from Florida, (Tuesday) and if the weather is agreeable. It is supposed to turn colder.

After two weeks of mostly wrecking stuff, cutting stainless bolts corroded into aluminum with a cold chisel, digging out rot, and carving off unwanted fiberglass with the Sawzall I am encouraged to be BUILDING up instead of wrecking. Once I get this deck in shape, I can think about fun stuff like the design of the seats and the cuddy, painting the hull, storage lockers, and the rigging.

I am thinking about putting a small outboard in a well. Boat people: Any thoughts or references on how to design a good outboard well? I think I have read about outboard wells that don't work.

Nice Weather

The Kerttu's spent last night here on their way back home from Michigan so I didn't get started until 10AM.

Yesterday I did brutal sanding of the uneven deck and spread a couple of pints of epoxy with West 410, a sanding filler. It is not a critical as a painted surface because it gets covered with two layers of fiberglass. The major high and low spots need to be eliminated at this stage.

I had planned on vigorous sanding with the possibility of getting a layer of mat on the exposed cores today. Well, the last coat of sanding sealer from yesterday afternoon was not set up so I am presently "cooking" it with some electric heat and lots of solar. This will delay me about 4 hours.

In the meantime I am building a sander strip on a flexible piece of wood to gauge the high spots. Jonathan recommended this and told me how to make one.

I also built a jig to attempt to hold a metal batten so I can score a grove marking the waterline. These boats are normally dry sailed and do not have bottom paint and waterlines molded into the hull like cruising boats. The old waterline that was painted on was way off. There is a feint boundary showing where the physical waterline was when it was moored in Canyon Ferry. I hope to identify a pretty good old waterline and then raise it 1.5 vertical inches. This will allow for extra weight of about 600 pounds of house, motor, anchor, etc. My jig is not working yet.

Some days you start slow.

Epoxy Working

I made this set-up yesterday morning. The shop is intended to keep it at a moderate and uniform temperature before mixing. The pumps seemed neat but the hardener is too viscous to pump and the resin is pretty slow. $6 wasted. I pour from each bottle into a paper cup set on the balance. I hung a washer on the beam to balance the weight of the cup, or tare. I write down the weights and batch number. Works great.

This morning the epoxy is all pretty much set up. I put a few hundred watts of electric heat during the night and that may have been good for a few degrees above the 35 deg minimum atmospheric temp. I suspect it would have done pretty good without the heat but I need anything to speed up this process.

The cups were the recipients of yesterdays mixes arranged sequentially. Should a mix be bad, I could trace it to my record of weights to figure out how I goofed.

I have epoxied another panel this morning and only one more to go! Then several days of grinding, filling, and laying glass cloth, that I do not have yet.

Boat Progress

The epoxy was delivered yesterday but the weather was cold rain and snowing. This morning was fairly clear and by 11:30 the frost had about melted off the poly cover and the scaffolds so I started sticking core into the hull. Ten malt cups of epoxy later it was 5:00PM, the temperature was down to 45deg and I was bushed. About 3/4 of the replacement core has been spread with epoxy on it's bottom, clamped, screwed and weighted. It seems to be polymerizing slowly.

I put a little heater and two big light bulbs inside the cover to provide some heat during this cold night. The pictures shows what it looks like a few minutes ago. Snow is predicted tomorrow but maybe there will be some sun and I can finish the first epoxy for the core.

The next step will be a lot of filling and grinding in preparation for two layers of glass cloth set in epoxy. I could do with 7 days of warm weather but that is not to be.

Gazing out on the graceful lines of the boat and thinking about details of my design adaptation keep me inspired, and warm, so far.

Inside Work

After waking up this morning and thinking about laminating a deck beam that was curved in two directions........ later this afternoon I started making a jig. This is the beginning.

My epoxy came today and I made the last core out of plywood, it fits right up in the point of the bow. If I can get some decent weather this week I will try to mix up some epoxy and bond in my first deck core. Some apprehension about all this, like pouring concrete, lots of ways for things to go wrong and make a mess.

Monday Morning Weather

The first rot I dug out took me about three hours to do a square foot and I was feeling glum about the messiness and magnitude of this job of rebuilding the deck. A couple of days later I was up to more than a square foot per hour. I bought the router and got up to about three square feet and hour. The rot in the photo on the port bow was cleaned out in about two hours!

I am happy to have progressed up the learning curve for removing deck core but will be content with my current expertise.

Cutting the kerf in the curved plywood usually works fine. Now and then your grip on the workpiece jiggles and there are some saw gouges maybe 1/16th inch. This doesn't matter as the kerf gets worked over with the big disc sander to fit it to the hills and dales in the fiberglass. I expect that the epoxy putty will take care of gaps so it doesn't have to be perfect.

The top of the core will be sanded to level it off before I start laying on the fiberglass and this will give a me another chance to make up for some un-even laying of the core.

We woke to 32 degree temperatures, 20 mph NE winds, overcast, and snow flurries. I drove Mom to work, today marks the downhill side of her 6-week stint. Afterwards I checked the stores for a soft rubber pad to go on my Velcro, Bosch, orbital sander. I had seen an ad for these in a magazine and it should help to sand the outside of the hull. Home Despot had some for other model sanders. I may try to manufacture one during this cloudy day.

I also woke up at 5AM thinking about how to bend and laminate some wood that spans the beam of the boat along the back edge of the cockpit, to support the Harken mainsheet traveler. It will have to curve in both the horizontal and vertical plane. If you steam or heat wood, it gets softer, like plastic, and will bend easier and hold some of it's set. It springs back a little after taking it out of the clamps or mold. Bends my mind. I suppose I can use any failures for firewood.

Boat Deck

The pictures show the rot, the cleaned out deck, and pieces of plywood that replace some of the rotten core. I bought a $99 table saw at Home Depot and it is useful. It is set up here to cut a kerf on the edges of the plywood where they meet the edge of the deck. Works great but I still have to do some vicious sculpting with the big disc sander to make them lay down against an uneven surface.

I got in a full morning work on Friday Am. In the afternoon we fetched the F-24 from Canyon Ferry. Yesterday it rained hard all day and I was discouraged by weather predictions of rain, cold and snow for the next five days. However, today we got some sun and I put in 8 hours and got MOST of the new pieces of the deck carved out! This feels good! Construction rather than destruction.The epoxy is scheduled to get here tomorrow. I am able to trace the progress of the epoxy in the UPS system on-line, a very helpful application.Clouds came over and the wind turned cold at 5:30, I thought that meant rain is coming, and I stopped what I was doing and Mom helped put the cover back on and clean up a little. Time for dinner.

Rotten Balsa Core

I am converting an old Etchells racing sloop into a daysailer. This is what I have been looking at the last few days. I am getting better at ripping off rotten and wet balsa core. Even the wet core is stuck to the fiberglass and a router, Skil saw, slick, navy paint scraper are the current wrecking tools of choice. I will be glad when the deck is done.

In the beginning

Visitors slowed down the boat work. The Smiths were here Friday and Saturday and the Kerttus Saturday. Smiths brought a standard poodle and the Kerttus had two Brittanys as usual! No dog fights.

I got going this afternoon and started opening the places with rotten balsa core. It was pretty messy and I am remembering that some boaters say "If you are looking at a boat with deck rot, reject it, and find another boat!" I will allow that I am way down on the learning curve so it will take a while.