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Pictures of Mom's new house. Closing is on Nov. 5th

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 Building the Upper Hulls

After turning over the lower hulls and both were safely placed in their cradles I moved them off of the strongback in the manner of the ancients... levers, rollers and slave labor! Now it was time for the strongback to be dismantled. I put it together with screws in anticipation of this day so it wasn't the testosterone loaded sledgefest that one might have liked. Instead it was a pretty careful disassembly. The material was stacked out of the way, the post holes were filled with dirt so no one breaks an ankle and the hulls were moved into position. That last step was repeated several more times before I had them where they needed to be. Part of the process included getting the hulls lined up so that the hulls were parallel and level to each other. They did not have to be perfect at this stage but the closer I could get it now the easier it would be when I begin work on the beam troughs. I also ended up 'sinking" the cradles in the ground in order to get them level to each other and to give me a bit more room on the deck level. As it stands now I can work on my knees when I start putting the decks on instead of crawling on my belly!

Quite a bit of work was done getting the lower hulls ready for the next steps. The over hanging plywood was trimmed down to the stringer, the support legs were removed, the outer stringer was bonded in place on the lower hulls a section at a time. This was easier than bonding the scarfs and then trying to attach the stringer in one piece, not to mention the fact that I wouldn't have had enough clamps to do it that way.  The really big job was creating the inner bilge fillets. This job is hands down the worst job so far.

 Here is how I did it (taking much advice from other builders!)

    1. Wear good strong boots because your balancing all of your weight on the narrow edge of the backbone and you will feel it later if you are in cheap flexible shoes.

    2. I poured in a relatively thin mix of epoxy and silica in order the allow it to penetrate into all of the cracks and gaps along the keel stringer.

    3. I followed this with a relatively thick mix of epoxy/silica/milled fibers. Over this I layed a strip of 6" fiberglass tape. Using a foam paint roller I rolled the glass down into the epoxy mixture and created a smooth concave fillet along the length on the compartment.

    4. Over the fiberglass tape I poured straight epoxy and again using the foam roller rolled it out to saturate the glass.

The end result was a very nice fillet. The glass was cut with a razor knife to fit around butt blocks and around the bulkhead guides. Sometimes it was easier to lean over the side of the hull, sometimes I stood on top of the backbone and reached down into the bilge below my feet, sometimes I stood on one side of the compartment and leaned over to work on the other side and sometimes I leaned over the bulkhead to work in the adjoining compartment. All in all, it's a lot of fun to create these fillets..... NOT.

After the bilge fillets were created I made the floor boards from the templates that we made before the lower hulls were planked. These were fitted  and marked for cutouts. Using a fine, thin kerf jigsaw blade I cut out the lift out panels from the middle of the floors. Hardwood supports were bonded on the bottom and everything was coated with clear epoxy and then the floors were bonded in place. Hardwood bunk bearers were also fashioned and bonded in place.

 The next head scratcher was the bow and stern fillets. I wasn't happy at all with my initial attempts to lay in a fillet here, it sagged downhill and I wasn't confident at all that I was getting a solid fillet. My solution was to place a plywood board across the top of the backbone as it ran up the bows and sterns. There are two piece, one above and one below the stringer. The upper section is sealed on the bottom by the brace that fits on the stringer. The resultant cavity was filled on both side of the backbone with thickened epoxy that was still thin enough to pour. I poured in small amounts to prevent a massive heat build up as the epoxy cured. This resulted in a very solid bow and stern. The bit of extra weight here was an acceptable trade off in my opinion.

Both the stern and the bow stems were added per the plans with one exception and one exception that should have happened. The plans call for cutting down the bow stem and them adding the upper stem section. For the life of me I couldn't understand the reason to cut off wood that you were going to put back on but I did it anyway. In hindsight I still can't figure out why they call for nor why I did it... but I did. The second exception and the one that I did take was on the top of the bow stems. The design calls for a particular shape to be cut into the stem. I have a different shape in mind for this area so I left mine longer and larger than the finished shape will be. We'll re-examine this plan at a later time....

I acquired several empty 55 gallon drums from a local printing company (free). These became the pedestals for the platforms that I made from the material that the strong back was made of. I ripped the plywood sheets in half lengthwise and screwed the resulting strips to 2x4s creating 2' x 8' platforms. These in turn were connected together with shorter 2x4 scraps and placed on the barrels. The end result was cheap scaffolding that will assist me in working on the topsides.

The upper bulkheads were lofted full size on to the plywood. As we discussed earlier I have switched at this point to using Okoume. It is lighter than the Meranti I used in the lowers hulls and that lighter weight is a treat when it comes to moving it around the shop. A few of the bulkheads are the same between the two hulls, at least the perimeter is the same; so I only needed to loft one and then use it to mark the second once it was cut out. The process is much the same as before, loft the pattern, coat the plywood with epoxy, cut out the bulkhead, sand the bulkhead and then install. One difference is that the stringer notches were not precut but the locations marked as indicated on the plans. The stringers were clamped in place and faired and then the notches were cut. In hindsight the notch placement was almost always on the locations indicated on the plans so given the difficulty of cutting the notches in this manner I think I would precut them as indicated on the plans. If the need to be moved slightly for fairing it is easy enough to patch with wood and epoxy later. Of course I plan to paint my interior so if you want a bright wood finish your approach would be different.

The lowest stringer on the uppers also needs to be faired to the outer stringer so they don't always get notched completely into the bulkhead. The picture shows this easier than I can describe it. The stringers are tapered into the stern much the same way as they were in the lower hull. The bow stems get  tapered braces that the stringers get notched into. It is through these  braces that the holes for the forestay bridle pass. I spent a bit of time calculating the proper locations of these holes and then predrilled them on the drill press to be sure that they were aligned properly. I drilled the significantly oversize and then filled them with an epoxy mix of silica and milled fibers. I then re-drilled them slightly under size and then clamped them in place on the boat. Using the pre-drilled holes I marked the location of the holes on the stem and then drilled the stem oversized. Those holes were filled with the same epoxy mix and then the braces were bonded in place with epoxy and bronzed ring-shanked nails. The nails were counter-sunk deep enough not to be in the way when the braces are planed for the hull sides.

Once the stringers were all in place the chine stringer on the outside of the lower hull was planed to be fair with the upper stringers and the bow brace was faired as  well. Then the upper hull sides were planked with plywood, again in the same fashion as the lower hull. Climbing inside the hull we got our first look at the interior of the hull. The stringer and bulkhead locations were  marked with a pencil and the chine stringer was marked with a marking guide. After marking the panels they were removed from the hull to be trimmed, the screw holes predrilled and the panels sealed with two coats of epoxy on the interior surface. Once cured the epoxy was then sanded and the panels were bonded in place with epoxy and screws.