[{"content":" Find within things that I\u0026rsquo;ve built.\nThere isn\u0026rsquo;t a lot of polish in these parts, this is a pretty straight forward uninteresting-to-anybody-but-the-author build blog. I write and post things here mostly to remember some of the different steps taken and customizations added to the various projects I complete (or, in some cases, don\u0026rsquo;t complete).\n","date":"5 July 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/","section":"","summary":"Find within things that I\u0026rsquo;ve built.\nThere isn\u0026rsquo;t a lot of polish in these parts, this is a pretty straight forward uninteresting-to-anybody-but-the-author build blog. I write and post things here mostly to remember some of the different steps taken and customizations added to the various projects I complete (or, in some cases, don\u0026rsquo;t complete).","title":"","type":"page"},{"content":" I bought the kit during the pandemic. I\u0026rsquo;m going to finish in the summer, I just don\u0026rsquo;t know which year. ","date":"5 July 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/","section":"My scamp","summary":" I bought the kit during the pandemic. I\u0026rsquo;m going to finish in the summer, I just don\u0026rsquo;t know which year. ","title":"My scamp","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"5 July 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/oar-locks/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Oar Locks","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"5 July 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/spacer-blocks/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Spacer Blocks","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"5 July 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags","type":"tags"},{"content":"I started to create a punch list of all of the things I needed to do to the boat before I could prime. The weather is now warm enough to apply the primer, and with July 1st having slid by the summer boating season is here - that provides a little extra motivation to get this thing to floating.\nA lot of work has also taken place on the mast (the post on that will likely come next month), but in the mean time here are some smaller tasks that needed to be finished up.\nFixing the void in bulkhead 4 # Remember that back when I glued in the cutouts for bulkhead 4 I had a small void left at the bottom on the starboard side. I decided to fill that with just straight thickened epoxy.\nCutting forms that I can squish epoxy against to mold into the required shape A simple spring clamp provided enough pressure to hold in place A couple of scraps of plywood, coated with packing tape, provided the front and rear surface needed. With these held in place, it was just a measure of filling the void with some epoxy and then sanding smooth once it had cured. This worked really well and will disappear under paint.\nOarlocks # The next (bigger) job was to cut the oarlocks into the side rails. I bought a pair of top mount oarlocks that I intend to use, and I want to mount them flush with the side rails so that when not in use you can still sit on the rail there and not really notice them.\nWhere the oarlock will go Cutting the template # I decided the best way to do this was going to be with a router and a template, so the first step was to cut a good template in some spare plywood.\nCut out first with spade bits and then finished with a rasp Fits well I wanted the fit to be a bit loose, as after I cut these into the rail they\u0026rsquo;ll have some epoxy followed by primer and paint applied before installing the oar locks themselves, all of which will take a little room.\nTesting the template # Next I had to buy a new template routing bit (surprised I didn\u0026rsquo;t have one already honestly), and then I reached for a spare block of wood to test out the template and also test for what the right depth should be for the routed out space.\nNew router bit, borrowed tool library trim router, ready to set depth Looks perfect Drill fill drill the hole # With the template set and the right bit depth set on the router for the mitre, next was to figure out what the right size of the hole would be for the shaft of the oar locks.\n1 inch outer, 7/8ths inner For these oar locks it turns out the initial hole at 1\u0026quot; works best. With all the measurements set, it\u0026rsquo;s time to actually install them now.\nInstall # After marking where the oarlocks would be installed, first was to drill the initial oversize hole.\nUsing a drill guide to get the holes near at right angle to the face of the seat rail Pretty darn close Next up was routing in the miter.\nEasy peasy First fit went well Now it was time for the first epoxy coat and to fill the initial oversize hole.\nLay some plastic down underneath to catch any epoxy drips Tape covered pieces of wood worked well to serve as flat tops for the drill hole Filled in nicely, ready for right sized hole to be drilled Using the upturned oarlock mounts as to find center After it was filled, in order to make sure the next hole was drilled in the right spot I flipped the oarlock mounts unpside down and used a 1/2\u0026quot; drill bit (the same size as the shanks for the oarlocks themselves) to make a mark exactly in the center. From there, a 7/8\u0026quot; bit (which is the size needed for the oarlock mount itself) can be centered on that mark and driven through.\nThis was again done with a drill press, leaving a hole with a nice ring of epoxy all the way around it.\nThe goal of every drill/fill/drill scenario Fits just a bit loosely, which is perfect As it turns out I didn\u0026rsquo;t quite get the drill guide lined up at the right angle on the port side, so I drilled at just a slight angle and just barely into some bare wood at the bottom of the hole. Not enough to worry about - a coat or two of epoxy followed by primer and paint and it will be sealed well against any water rot. The starboard side turned out perfect.\nOffset mounting blocks # The next task was to build offset blocks for the cabin top cleats as well as for the keel uphaul tackle. The goal for all of this was to raise the tackle enough so that the lines the run aft from the mast can more easily be controlled given the cabin top handhold I added earlier.\nI bought a thick piece of mahogany and used that to create the blanks for both above and below the cabin top. I made the height of the blocks on top of the cabin top to be roughly the same height as the cabin top handhold itself, meaning the downhaul for example could run from the base of the mast up through a cleat and straight back and over the hand hold. Same with the halyard on the port side.\nMaking the blocks themselves was relatively straightforward - cut them to the right height and size, round over all the corners, use the actual hardware to mark where the (oversize) holes should be drilled for drill/fill/drill, etc. Perhaps the only slighly interesting part was that I needed to decide on the orientation of the blocks on the cabin top as, because the cabin top is slightly curved, that curve needed to be represented in the gluing faces. Not a big deal, just forced me to decide where to place the blocks a bit earlier then I expected to.\nDownhaul gets a cam cleat Halyard gets a regular cleat I decided to splay them out just slightly from running them straight back from either side of the mast box.\nOnce I drilled in the oversize holes on the top and bottom blocks (clamping them together to make sure all the holes lined up), I then used the top blocks as drill guides for drilling those same holes in the cabin top for the through bolts.\nDowel being used to hold position I then filled the holes with thickened epoxy and drilled out the smaller holes needed for bolt holes. I also coated all of the blocks with two coats of epoxy.\nWith that all done, it was time to glue them on.\nClamp holding everything up top As well as from below This worked out pretty well. There was squeeze out from the epoxy into the actual drill holes, so once the epoxy holding the blocks to the cabin top dried I had to redrill all the holes. Not all of them I had the drill lined up perfectly, so not some of them angled through into new wood, but given this area isn\u0026rsquo;t going to see a lot of water it should be ok, particualrly if I remember to install the bolts with a touch of sealant.\nI added fillets around all of the blocks and cleaned them up/sanded, and they\u0026rsquo;re now ready for primer and paint with the rest of the boat.\n","date":"5 July 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20260705/","section":"My scamp","summary":"The list is long but getting shorter of smaller projects that need to finish before the topsides get primed and painted","title":"Working through the punch list before paint","type":"scamp"},{"content":"The first step after scarfing the blanks for both the boom and the yard to length (and doing the yard a second time to the actual real length - sigh) was to taper them to the right thickness.\nTapering the spars # I thought a lot about how to build a good taper jig to do this for me on the table saw, but the general issue was that the length of most of the tapers was so long that it was not easily doable on my little contractor table saw.\nSo instead, I did it by hand.\nBig block plane works surprisingly well Probably because it was new and still super sharp I didn\u0026rsquo;t really expect this to work, but it did, and it worked quite well.\nRounding the Yard # After the tapers were put in (both the boom and the yard have a long one aft and a shorter one forward, with the boom having the taper only on one side so the top edge of the boom is flat against the sail while the yard I made round in the center near the fore and aft ends) I needed to start in on rounding the yard.\nThe trick with doing this is to knock corners off to get geometric polygons (in cross section) until you\u0026rsquo;re close enough to just sand to round. So starting with four sides you knock the corners off to get an octagon, then knock the corners off again to get a hexadecagon, rinse and repeat.\nFor going from a square to an octagon, in order to make sure all faces of the octagon are the same length, you have to recognize that the interior angle of an octagon between two sides is 135. Thus the complimentary angle you need to cut into the square will be 45 degrees on either side, and you\u0026rsquo;ll have a right angle isoceles triangle (with the corner you\u0026rsquo;re cutting off being the 90 degree angle). To figure out how long the two sides of the triangle should be (and thus how much you should cut off), realize that sin(45) is 0.707 - thus the ratio of the length of the sides to the length of the hypoteneuse is .7/1, or 7/10. This gives rise to the old boatbuilders rule of \u0026ldquo;7-10-7\u0026rdquo;.\nThe 7-10-7 rule # This rule states that for any surface, to mark where to cut it, you measure 7 units in one from one side and make a mark, and 7 units in from the opposite side and make a mark, leaving 10 units between the two marks.\nIt turns out that this is easiest to do with the imperial system - since an inch can be divided into 8th\u0026rsquo;s, then find 3\u0026quot; across a surface and make a mark at 7/8\u0026quot; and 1 1/8\u0026quot;.\nTools of the trade Marks made following the 7 10 7 rule Using a straightedge to connect Cut lines ready This works great if the edges are parallel and long, like the main part of the yard. When the tapers kick in you just have to measure a little more carefully (and go back to using metric, since 7/24\u0026rsquo;s of a whole number of millimeters is way easier to calculate)\nCutting the corners # I decided the first thing I\u0026rsquo;d do is actually use the tablesaw to cut the corners off the yard (at least the straight middle part ignoring the tapers). So I set my blade to 45 degrees and lined up the first cut.\nSunny day, open the garage door, spread sawdust on the driveway Leaving just a bit to plane off manually That worked really pretty well, and more importantly meant it was easier now to clamp the yard down on the strong back and take a block plane to the rest of it to keep working it down to round.\nBoth planes were useful I found my little block plane encouraged a little more tearout depending on the orientation of the grain - likely because it needs a sharpening compared to the big one.\nAt any rate, I got down far enough to mostly-round-but still with edges running the length of the yard that I then decided to hit it quickly with the random orbital sander along it\u0026rsquo;s length, always moving the sander around the curve of the yard. This worked really well to get me to a point where it looked awfully good, but you could still feel some imperfections.\nFrom there, my last step was to cut sandpaper into strips, grab an end in each hand, and sand around the yard.\nSanding away the bumps by hand Pretty round scarf joint Finishing touches # From there I hit the ends with the random orbital to round the edges off. I also pulled out a router and used a 1/4\u0026quot; roundover bit on every edge of the boom, and then used the sander to smooth out all the surfaces of the boom. Both I declared now complete.\nYard Boom Although it\u0026rsquo;s hard to see in the photos, both the yard and the boom wound up being much more straight then I originally expected they would be. Indeed the curve seems to be completely gone from the yard and is only slightly noticeable if you really look for it on the boom - careful choices about which side I took the taper out of on each paid dividends.\nNext step for these is a couple coats of epoxy followed by either paint or some kind of varnish (I haven\u0026rsquo;t decided yet how I\u0026rsquo;m going to finish them). The mast is also underway as well as several smaller projects on the boat in prep for priming/painting the topsides.\n","date":"1 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20260601/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Rounding the yard","title":"More Spar Work","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"1 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/spars/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Spars","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"1 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/yard/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Yard","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"28 May 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/boatflip/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"BoatFlip","type":"tags"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m beginning to learn that whether it\u0026rsquo;s the weather or just life, I\u0026rsquo;m not meant to work on boats in the garage from January to March. It just doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to happen.\nThis year, it was mostly because M was starting to plan for setting up her own practice, which meant that in advance of getting her own office she was acquiring furniture for said office from various online second hand marketplaces (she found some quite nice stuff) and that all went into the garage for storage. That meant no room to actually do anything.\nBut once the garage opened up, it was time to do a little more work on the boat, with the possible outside hope of launching sometime this boating season. I probably just jinxed that possibility into not happening by typing that.\nAfter spending a lot of time sanding either above my head (the bottom of the cockpit) or way out in front of me (reaching forward to sand fillets on the underside of the top of the cabin, while not putting pressure on the cabin top itself), all while sitting on the cold garage cement floor, I finally had had enough of trying to make everything smooth and decided the sanding wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to be much tougher if I had to do it from inside the boat while it was right side up, so it was time to\u0026hellip;\nFlip the Boat Again # I still had my (not-so) trusty gantry that I built to flip the boat the first time. That worked, even though it kind of scared me with how twisted the thing became under load. This time around I decided to try and fix that by getting two big huge bolts that I would put through the cross members on either side of the gantry, which should prevent wracking forward (towards the bow) or backwards (towards the stern). I hadn\u0026rsquo;t noticed any serious problems with wracking away from the boat sideways, so didn\u0026rsquo;t do anything to address that.\nBig long bolt holding the cross braces together Big foam block so I don\u0026#39;t stab myself The bolts were quite long once they were tightened down, so the big foam blocks I stuck on them on the inside next to the boat protected the boat from scrapes (the boat never touched them) and me from scrapes (they totally did their job).\nAfter that, I read on a different build blog that the ratcheting straps he used while flipping his boat over caused paint scuffs - I didn\u0026rsquo;t want that to happen, so I broke out the moving blankets as well as a few borrowed blankets to go between the hull and the straps to protect the paint.\nSame braces as before to prevent wracking from side to side Moving blankets put underneath the straps along the deck A blanket arrayed across the side of the hull where the strap will make contact once the flip starts Boat is ready to flip The flip this time went pretty well. The gantry held up much better (can\u0026rsquo;t believe I didn\u0026rsquo;t think of adding that bolt the first time), and the blankets did an excellent job of making sure no paint got rubbed or chipped off. In fact, if anything the blankets worked a little too well - they reduced friction so much that while flipping the boat over was quite easy, near the end of the manoeuvre as I was lowering the boat the stern of the boat actually slipped out of the strap (the angle of that stern is pretty steep\u0026hellip;) The stern only fell a little less then a foot to hit the ground on the skegs with a dull thud, but no harm done.\nI had laid down strips of scrap carpet for the skegs to sit on, and after the flip getting into the boat it was definitely pretty rocking on the skegs. So I decided I\u0026rsquo;d prop it up by jamming some spare Styrofoam I had under the ends of the skegs as well as under the bow up front. This worked like a charm - the boat is quite stable now when moving around inside it.\nSmall blocks at the rear of the skegs to prevent it rocking back More blocks up near the front of the skegs A bunch in the center up near the bow that made a big difference in stabilizing the boat After flipping, there were some drips around the edges that I cleaned up quickly with a rasp. In the picture you can also see the one and only place where I slipped with my roller and put some yellow paint on the deck (it\u0026rsquo;ll get primed and painted over anyway, so no harm no foul).\nDrips (you can see in the background where they hit the floor - oops) I love my shinto rasp Starting on the spars # Next up was to start building the spars - the boom, the yard (for the top edge of the square sail), and the mast itself.\nFiguring out the lumber for this was not the easiest. I considered Sitka spruce, but that was a little hard to find (and certainly impossible to find at a reasonable price). I eventually decided on clear vertical grain (cvg) fir, since that\u0026rsquo;s plentiful in these parts. I also learned, in making that choice, that all of the fir available here comes from Canada, so I got to make my contribution to making America great again by paying some exorbitant import duties (errr, no, Canada paid them, right\u0026hellip;)\nBut having made the decision to go with fir, figuring out how much to buy was not easy. I eventually came up with a very long list of how much lumber I\u0026rsquo;d need if it came in various dimensions (I wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure what I was going to find at Crosscut, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to sit there calculating how much I needed after looking, so pre-calculated everything beforehand). I figured to keep the cost down I would build the yard and the boom likely with a scarf joint, and I knew the mast staves at 16\u0026rsquo; would definitely have one. So I was looking for 2x6 or 2x8s that were roughly in the 10\u0026rsquo; range.\nEventually I bought what I needed and started ripping it down to size (no pictures of that). I must have done a pretty good job of calculating as I really didn\u0026rsquo;t have much leftover wood to speak of. That said, some of the wood I picked out definitely had some internal stresses that were relieved when I started ripping - it\u0026rsquo;s definitely noticeable with some of the mast staves but even the blanks for the boom were pretty curved in some places. Not enough to really worry about, but certainly noticeable (I figure a slightly curved boom is another cool indicator of the boat being \u0026ldquo;custom made by hand\u0026rdquo;)\nI started on the boom and yard first, so once I had the blanks cut out I needed to scarf them to full length before beginning to taper and shape. This presented a new problem - I didn\u0026rsquo;t have a flat table in my workshop that was anywhere near long enough to glue these things up. And when glueing a scarf together, the position you set the joint in will definitely be permanent.\nSo I took a slight detour into\u0026hellip;\nBuilding a strong back for the spars # Those who have built a kayak or canoe know the trick to getting a long flat straight surface - you build a strong back out of smaller pieces of plywood. I had enough scrap plywood laying around to make myself a 14\u0026rsquo; long strong back, which should be good to support all the spars plus the actual building of the mast when it comes time for that.\nOne of the pieces I cut up was actually part of the build cradle itself, so that continues to give life to this project in many different forms. The trick with building one of these is simply to set your table saw fence to the width of the sides and never move it until all sides are cut, and to make sure that you stagger the butt joints of the lengths of plywood so that you don\u0026rsquo;t have two (or more) sides of the strong back with butt joints right next to each other.\nI used pocket screws in two opposite sides to give a good joint with the top and bottom pieces Just about to attach the top I didn\u0026#39;t bother to close in the ends The completed strong back The reason I built this - a perfectly straight 14\u0026#39; long surface Now with lights! I covered the top with packing tape so epoxy wouldn\u0026rsquo;t stick to it.\nCutting the scarfs for the boom and yard # For this I decided I\u0026rsquo;d make myself a little scarfing jig for the table saw to help make some repeatable cuts.\nA scarfing jig for the spars This worked pretty well. I glued up the blanks for the boom first - applied unthickened epoxy to the two sides of the scarf joint, let it sit for at least 15 minutes, then thickened epoxy and placed them, lined up straight as I could get them, onto the strong back. I mostly clamped the two ends in place, if I put a clamp over the actual joint I made sure it was relatively loose for the epoxy.\nThe scarf joint clamped (lightly) in place Full length For the yard, it turns out it\u0026rsquo;s dimensions are just slightly thicker then 2x stock, which meant I needed to first glue up a relatively thin strip to a long blank to get to a dimension that can then be shaped down.\nSqueezeout from the glue joint Cleaning it up with the rasp Then it was time to cut in the scarf to join the blanks lengthwise.\nGetting ready to cut the scarf into the yard blank After assembling the blank for the yard, I cut it to length\u0026hellip;except I didn\u0026rsquo;t. Wouldn\u0026rsquo;t you know it, but I actually cut the damn thing too short. I\u0026rsquo;m sure I\u0026rsquo;m not the only person to make this mistake, but on reading the plans, there\u0026rsquo;s one number that\u0026rsquo;s in the center of the spar and a somewhat largish (for plans) size font, and there\u0026rsquo;s a second number, some distance away from the spar, in a smaller font. So your eye is naturally drawn to the larger number closer to the spar you\u0026rsquo;re building - but that\u0026rsquo;s the measurement for the head of the sail. The larger number, in smaller font, further away from the spar, is actually the measurement for the yard.\nNo! Don\u0026#39;t do it! Don\u0026#39;t cut there! So I wound up having to have a second scarf in the yard blank in order to get it to the right length. A silly mistake, but I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure the boat will still float.\nAt this point, it was time to start rounding the yard, and start catching up on some work in the boat itself in prep for paint.\n","date":"28 May 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20260526/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Flipping the boat back over and starting in on the spars","title":"Flipping And Spars","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"28 May 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/jigs/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Jigs","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"28 May 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/scarf/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Scarf","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"28 May 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/strongback/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Strongback","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"1 December 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/epoxy/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Epoxy","type":"tags"},{"content":"Well it took a long time, with yet a third ablation mixed in there, but I finally got paint put down on the hull.\nOne of the big decisions was to figure out what kind of paint to use. Again, the goal with this boat was to try out different things, so that I can make more informed decisions on the Big Boat(tm) I build next. One of the decisions I\u0026rsquo;d been agonizing over for a long time was whether to use regular ol\u0026rsquo; house paint vs special Marine paint.\nOn the pro side:\nThere are some small boat designers that supposedly swear by and recommend just regular house paint. It\u0026rsquo;s supposedly cheaper. It\u0026rsquo;s available in way more colours. It\u0026rsquo;s not like houses aren\u0026rsquo;t outside all the time in the rain and elements, right? One the con side:\nWell, there\u0026rsquo;s an entire industry devoted to making and selling custom marine paints. They can\u0026rsquo;t all be wrong, can they? I wavered a bit, but decided to stick with exterior house paint. So I choose exterior grade Aura paint by Benjamin Moore as my paint of choice, in semi gloss (or \u0026ldquo;soft gloss\u0026rdquo; as they call it). This is supposedly the top of the line exterior paint that Benjamin Moore makes, and a gallon of it set me back a little more then $150. That\u0026rsquo;s just a whisker cheaper then what a gallon of something like Toplac would have cost me, so the price difference isn\u0026rsquo;t really that much of a benefit tbh. It certainly did have way more colour choices though. I\u0026rsquo;m hoping it\u0026rsquo;ll stick up to abuse as well as the toplac does.\nPrepping the Rudder and Assembly # Before diving into paint, I wanted to finish prepping the rudder cheek assembly as well as the rudder itself so that they\u0026rsquo;d all be ready for paint at the same time.\nFor the rudder cheek assembly (what I\u0026rsquo;ll refer to as \u0026ldquo;the assembly\u0026rdquo; from here on) I needed to sand it smooth, then coat it in epoxy, then sand it to add a tooth to the assembly, before priming.\nSanded smooth First task was to plug up the copper pipes so that epoxy and paint didn\u0026rsquo;t drip in there and make it harder for the lines to run.\nA little bit of plumbers putty works well for this The larger openings were a bit more tricky to fully cover with the putty Epoxy coating to seal it up, especially all the exposed end grain of the plywood And sanded again. Sanding some of the drips turned out to be a challenge, just because access was hard. I finally hit upon some sandpaper rolled around a dowel for sanding the inside of the metal collars free of epoxy/primer/paint, and this worked like a charm. For sanding the inside curved edge of the rudder cheeks, I had to tape a small amount of sandpaper over the end of a thick paint stirring stick and slowly sand away the drips (this took a while).\nThis trick works really well Couldn\u0026#39;t find a trick for this spot alas You can also see that I chose to cut the bronze collars a little long and leave them extended into the center. Since the assembly is wider then is needed for the rudder, I had room to play with here and by doing this I figured I\u0026rsquo;d reduce the rotational friction of the rudder since it won\u0026rsquo;t rub against the side of the assembly. This should also prevent the rudder from \u0026ldquo;wandering\u0026rdquo; side to side within the assembly, which likely wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have hurt anything, just looked weird.\nA better view of the protruding collars Finally I primed both of them. Three coats of Pennant Primer, same as the hull. I was able to apply primer to the assembly all in one go by hanging it, but for the rudder I decided to just do one side at a time for some reason, so it took a little bit longer to get three coats on that going one side at at time.\nRudder side one Not hanging, but primed And the last step, before painting any of the hull, assembly, or rudder itself, was to sand everything to add a tooth to the primer.\nRudder primed, sanded, and ready for paint Painting # The colour I choose was \u0026ldquo;Bold Yellow\u0026rdquo; code 336 for the hull (I had always been told that in a fleet of sailboats the ones with yellow hulls always stuck out the most - I guess I\u0026rsquo;ll find out).\nI also wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure about putting a waterline on, but decided in the same vein of \u0026ldquo;this is the experimentation and learning boat\u0026rdquo; that I would, so I chose \u0026ldquo;Chrome Green\u0026rdquo; code HC-189 for the waterline.\nWhen it came to painting I ran into a common problem - putting light paint down on top of a dark(ish) primer sucks. I\u0026rsquo;m not aware they make pennant primer in white, but gee after this experience I should have done more work to find out.\nI was hoping for two to three coats being what was required. For the hull, I wound up putting five whole coats on (and contemplated a sixth). It was a journey.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t take a lot of photos of this, but below you can see the hull after I believe the second coat and the rudder after one or two. If you look closely, you can still see the yellow colour is showing a lot of the grey primer underneath.\nPrimer visible especially near the bow A closeup of the rudder showing a lot of the primer still bleeding through Eventually I got enough coats down that all you could see was the yellow. I wound up using that entire gallon of yellow spread across the hull, rudder, and assembly. I even bought an extra pint thinking I\u0026rsquo;d need some of it, but managed to get everything done (just barely) with the first gallon.\nA yellow hull The other side Marking and Painting the Waterline # I was going to use a laser level for this. I had bought one some time ago at the marine surplus store in PT, and this was going to be it\u0026rsquo;s first use. What do you know, it didn\u0026rsquo;t actually work. Projected a laser fine, but not a level one.\nAs it happens Costco had these for sale somewhat cheaper then normal at this time, so I bought one of those.\nProjecting the water level The challenge with doing this was that the boat needed to be level. I crawled underneath the boat and put my long level between the tops of the two sawhorses the boat rested on (it read level), and on each sawhorse (they both measured level), so the boat should have been level both sideways and fore to aft. That said, I could not get the laser level to shoot a level beam that matched up on the boat with where the plans say the waterline should be. It was as if the boat was pitched slightly up near the bow.\nAt any rate, I decided just to go for it. We\u0026rsquo;ll see when I put her in the water if she sits on her lines or not, but if the waterline rises too much near the bow, we\u0026rsquo;ll know the plans were right and somehow my long level and sawhorses lied to me (which might have been possible - there was foam on top of the sawhorses to cushion the boat, although I thought I accounted for that in measuring for level).\nFor the waterline itself, I actually wanted to paint about a three quarter inch waterline somewhere above the actual water line so it\u0026rsquo;d always be visible. I decided to raise the laser level about an inch above the measured waterline, tape it off, and then raise it another three quarters of an inch or so and tape that edge off. This would take the water line from the bow straight to the back corner where the transom and hull bottom meet the garboard panels.\nLaser showing the upper limit of the waterline Both sides taped and ready to go For applying the paint, during the hull painting I started out with a brush application but discovered that rolling the paint on with a slightly thicker nap (say 1/4\u0026quot; to 3/8\u0026quot;) from what a foam roller produces was the best way to get an even application. So for the waterline, I took a four inch roller and just cut it down to fit the width of the waterline, meaning I could roll it along the length of the waterline to apply. This worked pretty well.\nThe paint roller cut to the right size It took three coats (probably only needed two) of the green to mark the line. When I put down the tape (you can see I used purple tape) I went over it with a plastic paint scraper to really press the tape down for a clean line. I also started with a coat of yellow along the lines hoping that if there was going to be any bleeding the yellow would get most of it. That said, there were still a couple of spots where the green bled through. Almost all of them happened where there was a slight crease along the painted edge - I was thinking those creases wouldn\u0026rsquo;t matter since I pressed the tape down using the plastic putty knife, but live and learn.\nThis shows the most obvious spot of bleed through up near the bow This side is pretty good The rear edge is also pretty sharp Also looking good I\u0026rsquo;m not sure I\u0026rsquo;m going to touch up the bleed through to be honest - I kind of like that it signals \u0026ldquo;hey, this was hand painted\u0026rdquo;.\nI also more fully understand how some people think that waterlines get bigger near the upswept ends of the hull. The vertical distance remains the same, but because the hull ends are upswept the line itself gets a little wider because it\u0026rsquo;s at an angle. At any rate, I don\u0026rsquo;t mind it. The alternative is to mark one edge using a laser level and then mark the other edge a consistent distance away from the first edge, regardless of level. Personally if there\u0026rsquo;s anything funky here I tend to think it\u0026rsquo;s over the lip where the garboard plank meets the hull plank, but oh well.\nMore interior sanding # Other things that I\u0026rsquo;ve been working on now that I\u0026rsquo;m somewhat healthier is work underneath the boat while it\u0026rsquo;s flipped over, namely epoxying and sanding the underside of the transom cap preparing it for paint, a few fillets such as on the aft edge of bulkhead four, and filleting and sanding the joints on the roof of the cockpit cover.\nNo pictures here, but my first attempt at fillets on the cockpit roof was with epoxy with wood flour added, and I continue to find that it\u0026rsquo;s very difficult to get a neat fillet with this mixture. I\u0026rsquo;ve since gone back in and added a skim coat with SystemThree QuikFair, and at this point, based on this experience as well as what I was able to do on the hull, I\u0026rsquo;m a convert. It\u0026rsquo;s a little more expensive, but it\u0026rsquo;s quite easy to apply in a neat way, sanding it smooth is super easy - all in all it just saves a lot of time and produces a better looking result then trying to do it with straight epoxy and either wood flour or silica thickeners. Quik Fair is totally worth it (and I should still try to be neater when applying the initial structural fillet).\nAt this point I have a little more sanding to do underneath the boat, but I\u0026rsquo;m basically done there. I could apply a coat of primer while the boat is upside down to the surfaces that will be easier to do now, but the weather has turned and it\u0026rsquo;s now too cold for the primer. So I\u0026rsquo;m going to start building the spars and mast next, and I\u0026rsquo;ll have to decide whether I want to wait until warmer weather, prime some parts, and then flip the boat, or flip the boat sooner and just prime everything with it right side up, even though some bits will be awkward.\n","date":"1 December 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20251201/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Finally decided on some paint, and applied it to hull, rudder, and rudder cheeks","title":"First paint","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"1 December 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/hull/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Hull","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"1 December 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/paint/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Paint","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"1 December 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/rudder/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rudder","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"1 December 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/transom-cap/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Transom Cap","type":"tags"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m still sticking to the goal of trying to get paint on this upturned hull before the end of summer, but it\u0026rsquo;s getting close. I\u0026rsquo;ve now had to define \u0026ldquo;the end of summer\u0026rdquo; as the end of September, but I do think I\u0026rsquo;ll be able to get the hull painted by then. Topside paint after flipping the boat back over will either have to wait until next spring/summer when the weather warms or I\u0026rsquo;ll have to figure out how to heat (and keep heated) my garage. Will cross that bridge when I come to it\u0026hellip;\nBuilding the rudder cheeks # Before paint goes on there\u0026rsquo;s a note in the build manual that it\u0026rsquo;s a good idea to measure and mark out on the hull where the gudgeons will attach for the rudder, since marking up the hull is a lot easier to do before paint goes on. Luckily, I managed to read this and remember (the note comes long after the manual has finished talking about painting the hull - sigh). In order to figure out where the gudgeons go though, you really have to build the rudder cheeks first as you can\u0026rsquo;t be sure how far apart the pintles will be until you actually mount them on the cheeks.\nAdding thickness # After looking at the stack of parts that came in the kit and trying to fit my rudder between them (my rudder into which I glued copper bushings with external shoulders) I decided that I\u0026rsquo;d need a little more thickness in the stack (an issue that\u0026rsquo;s apparently not uncommon with other plans builders). So I cut out one extra set of interior pieces from a piece of plywood that was the same thickness as the other pieces.\nMarked out, including drill holes for alignment dowels All the other internal pieces are clamped together so the holes act as drill guides for the new piece As it turns out I didn\u0026rsquo;t need this much space, so I could have used a thinner piece of plywood scrap, but oh well.\nCutting paths for control lines # Thinking about the rudder control lines, the manual says to just run them up through the rudder cheek assembly and have them come out the same hole that the tiller fits into. Hoewver doing that exposes them to the elements and (more to the point) means they\u0026rsquo;ll be fraying away on your paint job on the rudder cheeks themselves. I decided to run some flexible copper tubing through the rudder cheek assembly to provide a dedicated internal pathway for these.\nTo do that:\nI had to get copper tubing large enough to support a 1/4\u0026quot; line I wanted the curve of the path followed by the line to be fair and to have the lines leaving headed in the appropriate direction on each end - forward along the tiller up top, and downward towards the rudder on the back I wanted to make sure I left enough \u0026ldquo;meat\u0026rdquo; up top between the channel for the tubing and where the tiller goes so that wood wouldn\u0026rsquo;t chip out. Eventually I decided where the entry and exit points should be and then grabbed my french curves and kind of eyeballed something that looked fair between the two points. I cut out the channel on only two pieces of plywood, as they would be thick enough to support the copper tubing sandwhiched between all the others.\nUsing the dowel holes to keep pieces properly aligned, I marked and cut out the paths on two internal pieces only The copper tubing fits well within the one thickness cut and will be glued in over it\u0026#39;s entire length The glue up # After the spacers were cut for the copper tube, next was to glue the entire assembly together.\nFirst you coat everything in epoxy, then you use thickened epoxy to glue all the pices together, using the alignment dowels to make sure everything lines up.\nAll the parts coated in epoxy The glue up in place, with excess tubing and alignment dowels extending beyond the edge to be trimmed after the epoxy cures Trimming the dowels and copper tubes flat with the surface of the assembly came after everything dried.\nOn the backside, the copper tubes direct the lines down towards the rudder These holes point forward through the transom right underneath the tiller with just enough \u0026#34;meat\u0026#34; above them Locating and cutting mortices for the pintles # Next up was figuring out where the pintles would go. I intend to mount the pintles to the cheek assembly using through bolts, so basically the only guidance here was to get the pintles as far apart as possible while still ensuring the bolts would go through the entire thickness of the assembly and they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t interfere with the copper pipe.\nOf course, by the time I actually started to locate the pintles, I had long ago thrown out the piece I used to mark the path taken by the curve, so I had to eyeball this and hope I don\u0026rsquo;t hit the copper tube!\nSince I added thickness to the whole assembly with an extra layer of plywood, I\u0026rsquo;d have to cut mortices into it to fit the pintles. This I started doing with a sharp chisel.\nMortices initially cut in The pintles fit relatively well so far You can see in that photo that I was having trouble getting the curve to be smooth at the top edge of the mortice. I only had the one good chisel, and it just wasn\u0026rsquo;t working well to cut the curve. I considered buying some gouges, but after a quick consult with neighour J decided that I should just be doing this with a router, and so I cut a router template to the right size.\nOne of the nice things about doing this on a stack of plywood - reltaively easy to judge your cut depth on each side This guide made for a much cleaner cut and edge The other benefit of redoing the cuts with a router template is that it allowed me to make the cuts a little wider and deeper while still being consistent. I was originally cutting them with the chisel to be a tight fit, but I need to remember that this piece (including the mortices) will have three coats of epoxy, primer, and paint in them before the pintle ever gets to them, and all those layers will take up space.\nMortices cut with the router template Good fit Lined up pretty well Drilling holes, filling holes # To drill the holes for the bolts, I tried to line up the pintles in the center of the mortices (since they were a bit larger then needed for all the layers of paint mentioned above) and then marked where the holes would be. I then brought the piece to the tool library and used their big drill press in order to try and drill the four bolt holes in straight through the piece.\nAs it turns out, the drill press at the tool library is a bit old and janky and (come to find out) doesn\u0026rsquo;t excel at drilling perfectly square holes, so I probably would have been just as well off using an external drill guide and a hand drill for the four holes, but nonetheless I made it work. And I didn\u0026rsquo;t hit the copper tubing, yay!\nOversize holes (1/2\u0026#34;) drilled and then filled with epoxy, to be drilled out to the proper size (1/4\u0026#34;) later Here you can see I also filled the holes created by the screws to secure the router template to the piece with epoxy and some toothpicks At this point, I did a bunch of things that I didn\u0026rsquo;t take pictures of\u0026hellip;\nI drilled out the bolt holes to 1/4\u0026quot; for the pintle bolts. They didn\u0026rsquo;t quite work (see drill press not being quite square) but they were close - using a hand drill with a 1/4\u0026quot; bit to enlarge some of the holes slightly, along with \u0026ldquo;coaxing\u0026rdquo; the bolts through the piece and the two sides of the pintle with a rubber mallet, and all four managed to get home.\nMarking where the gudgeons go # Now with the pintles mounted to the rudder cheek assembly, it was time to hold this up to the boat to figure out where the gudgeons went.\nStill without pictures (sigh), I drew the centerline on the boat and extended it down the transom. Then I held up the rudder cheek assembly (upside down, since the hull is upside down), and tried to eyeball it so that the tiller handle would go through the hole in the transom at roughly the middle of that hole, and that the middle of the two gudgeons were centered on the center line of the transom itself. An extra set of hands from M helped greatly here.\nEventually, I marked the top of where the gudgeons were landing on the transom. Then I pulled the rudder assembly away and held up the gudgeons alone, ensuring they\u0026rsquo;re perfectly centered on the transom center line and butted up against the top line mark. At this point I marked all of the holes.\nNow this isn\u0026rsquo;t perfect - ideally the holes would be drilled entirely based on where they sit while mounted on the rudder cheeks (for example, if they\u0026rsquo;re not perfectly aligned down the center of the rudder cheek assembly itself then they won\u0026rsquo;t line up when trying to mount them this way), so I decided I\u0026rsquo;d drill out only one of the gudgeon set of holes, and I\u0026rsquo;d leave the second set for when I can actually mount the rudder assembly on the boat right side up.\nDrilling the holes # So again, this was drilling 1/2\u0026quot; holes to fill them and then drill out 1/4\u0026quot; bolt holes as the gudgeons would also be mounted with through bolts.\nOversize holes drilled for the bottommost gudgeon Here you can see where the oversize holes are in relation to the outside marked edge of the gudgeon The fact that they\u0026rsquo;re slightly oversize also makes coming back and drilling the 1/4\u0026quot; holes slightly easier and ensures I\u0026rsquo;ll have a good seal of epoxy around the bolt hole.\nBoth sets drilled For the bottom set of holes (which is actually the top most set of holes when the hull is upside down) I ran into a bit of an unexpected situation. I was expecting to use bolts for both gudgeons, but in the bottom set of holes after drilling through the transom I ran into one of the solid pieces of wood glued up against the transom that make up the back edge of the lazarette, meaning my bolt hole didn\u0026rsquo;t actually go all the way through, just into the 2x4 at the back of the lazarette (actually the four holes just barely broke through the bottom surface of the 2x4 for the back edge of the lazarette framing. When I filled the holes with epoxy just a small amount bulged out there into the lazarette itself.)\nSo now, instead of using bolts for holding the bottom gudgeon, instead it will be four lag screws, with only the top gudgeon using bolts. I did still drill oversize holes and fill them with epoxy however, and will now drill pilot holes for the lag screws into these drilled/filled holes at the moment when I\u0026rsquo;m ready to mount the rudder.\nAll the holes filled Here you can see the bolt holes drilled and ready for the top gudgeon Primer # Now with the gudgeon holes located, it was time to get the hull ready for paint by priming first.\nI decided to go with Pennant Primer from System Three for the primer. I\u0026rsquo;m a big system three fan as they\u0026rsquo;re somewhat local to me and I like the fact that it\u0026rsquo;s a water based epoxy primer (fewer nasty chemicals/fumes). The instructions for Pennant primer say to use three coats, with the working time before a recoat being the same as for their epoxy, namely 72 hours. That lets me sand only once after all three coats instead of between each coat, so I\u0026rsquo;m in.\nA 3 foot, 10 foot, or 30 foot boat? # A note on the finish detail level for this boat. I was originally aiming for something around a 10 foot boat, meaning if you look at the boat from 10 feet away it looks great with no obvious missteps. This is a lower quality of build then a 3 foot boat, since obviously you can spot many more imperfections from 3 feet away then you can from 10.\nThe other competing factor with this is that this boat is also meant as a trial run for various techniques and materials before I bulid the next boat, to find out what works and what doesn\u0026rsquo;t (for me, at least). For example, the use of pennant primer was also the first time I\u0026rsquo;ve ever used a two part paint product (turns out that\u0026rsquo;s no big thing - I might use more of those in the future).\nSo when I looked at the sanded-ready-for-primer hull, I could tell it wasn\u0026rsquo;t perfect. There were some uneven bits, and my fillets in particular in certain areas looked bad. But I figured it was a 10 foot boat, this was the hull, it would be ok.\nI put three coats of primer on over the course of three days, then allowed it another three days to fully cure.\nWhile the primer is sitting there curing and you can\u0026rsquo;t do anything on the hull you\u0026rsquo;re left looking at all the imperfections, most of which are magnified quite a bit by the presence of the primer, and you start to think about maybe you could improve some things. I was also, at that point, still thinking I\u0026rsquo;d be using high gloss on the hull, and high gloss really apparently makes all the imperfections pop, so I started to reconsider what I was doing here. Maybe my 10 foot goal wasn\u0026rsquo;t being met at the moment.\nFairing # The worst offender, probably because it assaulted you as the first thing you saw right as you walked into the garage, was on the bow where the extra piece of fibreglass that acts as a rub strip was applied (and that piece was so thick it had to be 6 oz). There was a very noticeable ridge running along the length of that under the primer. In other spots along the hull there were also very noticeable bits.\nAt this point, I decided I should fix them. I also reasoned that this would give me the opportunity to try out fairing mixture, as I\u0026rsquo;d never used that before either.\nSo I sanded the hull down, marked out the areas that I thought needed some fairing compound (I wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to apply it to the entire hull but rather just to the problem areas), bought some System Three QuikFair, and started to apply it.\nSanded and ready for fairing compound and more primer Some areas marked out that needed some fairing attention Here you can see some of the spots I applied fairing compound too And one side of the bow had a lot of this smeared on Using the fairing compound itself was pretty easy. It\u0026rsquo;s super easy to mix, and when applying it goes on smooth. The trick with it that I learned is that during application you want to feather all edges of the spot to nothing - you don\u0026rsquo;t want to leave a single \u0026ldquo;high edge\u0026rdquo; from the fairing compound to the surrounding surface, as that will be the hardest part to sand smooth if you do and that edge will really stand out under primer if you don\u0026rsquo;t (don\u0026rsquo;t ask me how I know this, see if you can spot it on my finished hull from 10 feet away).\nSanding the fairing compound is also relatively easy (much easier then sanding a fillet, for example) which makes sense given it\u0026rsquo;s supposedly made with microballoons. All in all, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty easy to work with - I\u0026rsquo;ll do it again.\nHave to sand the fairing compound smooth and feather the edges into the boat...sometimes I feathered a little too hard Everything is sanded and ready for primer coat #4 now Priming coats # 4 and 5 # The instructions pretty clearly state that once sanded though it needs to be sealed before paint can go on, and one of the nice things about pennant primer is that it will seal the fairing compound, so I set about priming the boat again.\nI was going to just put one coat of primer on and then sand and get ready for paint, but I\u0026rsquo;ve decided I might as well put three more coats of primer on as I was sanding through it occasionally when I was last getting ready for paint, so three more coats to try and prevent that (and more carefully sanding next time) seem like a good idea.\nSo here\u0026rsquo;s the boat after two more coats of primer (third and last will go on tomorrow).\nStill some imperfections, but hard to see now in a photo like this... ...which was taken from three feet away. Pretty happy with how this worked out. Since I was mixing up the primer and had some left over I also primed one side of the rudder (I\u0026rsquo;ll prime the edge and the other side at some point in the future, perhaps while priming the top side of the hull)\nOne side of the rudder primed I still need to fully seal all edges of the rudder cheek assembly with epoxy before it\u0026rsquo;s ready for primer, so that too will happen before I crack open primer again.\nReally the only downside to the two part paints as far as I can tell is that you have to be careful about judging how much you\u0026rsquo;re going to use and thus measuring that out and mixing. I find it\u0026rsquo;s better to make a little more then you need since then you don\u0026rsquo;t run out during the painting operation (potentially losing your wet edge), but it also means you inevitably waste some paint each time you mix a new batch up. Oh well.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s all the progress through today. One more coat of primer on the hull tomorrow, then wait three days for it to fully cure, then (carefully) sand the hull and time to finally make a decision on the paint I\u0026rsquo;m going to use and go buy it and slap it on the hull. Should be able to get that done by the end of September\u0026hellip;should be\u0026hellip;\n","date":"17 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20250917/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Hull is primed, then faired, then primed again","title":"Hull primed","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"17 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/instructions/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Instructions","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"17 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/skegs/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Skegs","type":"tags"},{"content":"I had a second ablation in early May and that caused my health to deteriorate quite a bit - very little work got done on the boat unfortunately. It didn\u0026rsquo;t help that I was at a stage where whatever needed to be done generally involved hand sanding - something that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t easily do given my health issues, so the boat stayed mostly quiet in the garage for the past few months. Having to spend a month in Toronto helping my parents also didn\u0026rsquo;t help with the timing.\nThat said, when I did manage to spend some time in there, I was working on the skegs and on all of the various jobs that have to happen while the boat is upside down. They\u0026rsquo;re not quite done yet, but getting closer.\nFront bow protection # I decided that the front edge where the garboard planks join together needs as much protection as it can get because it\u0026rsquo;s going to get a lot of wear. So I decided to cut another strip of fibreglass and apply it to this joint specifically.\nReady for epoxy That\u0026rsquo;ll make three layers of fibreglass on this joint - two 6 oz layers from the overlapped garboard pieces and this one, which I think was also 6 oz but I can\u0026rsquo;t really remember (may have been just 4 oz).\nSkeg prep work # Cutting the skegs out was a bit awkward (these things are a good 6\u0026rsquo; long if not longer), but amazingly my little bandsaw managed to cut both of them out.\nI used my workbench for an infeed table Beginning the cut After that came the first fit, just to see how poorly I had done cutting out a fair curve that matched the curve of the hull\u0026hellip;\nWell it\u0026#39;s not horrible The gaps aren\u0026#39;t huge The centerboard slot is supposed to be outboard of the skeg, so I positioned the starboard skeg to be as close to the centerboard slot as I dared and the port skeg to be equidistant from the midline of the boat. They\u0026rsquo;re not quite as far apart as some other builders\u0026rsquo;, but they look good to me.\nYou can see that I also modified the shape of the skegs somewhat from the plans. The original skegs in the plans have a pretty steep rise at the very beginning, and I had heard reports of that causing issues sometimes when getting the boat onto a trailer or similar circumstances - easing the transition with a more gradual rise from the bottom of the boat onto the skeg seemed like a good idea to me. I tried to keep the overall amount of lateral surface area the same though, so my skegs wound up being a bit longer and extending a bit further forward then the plans to fit that forward tapered end.\nThe next step was to basically clean up the skegs, sanding them smooth, and working on the mating surface with the boat to ensure they matched up well with few gaps. A sander borrowed from the tool library worked best for this.\nFirst one is fitting better Working on the bottom curve I also managed to almost forget about the handhold that should be routed into the skegs. This I did with a router bit - I clamped the skeg to the tabletop, and then used the edge of the build cradle again to provide a guide that matched the curve of the bottom edge of the skeg itself for the router to run along and add a groove to both sides of the skeg.\nSetting up the \u0026#39;router guide\u0026#39; Starting in on the groove A close up view of how well the router worked Nice grooves baby This worked surprisingly well. After doing this, I rounded over all the outside edges with the router as well as hand sanding the edges of the grooves themselves to round themover a bit as well.\nAt this point, the skegs are ready to be glued on.\nGluing the skegs on # I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to screw through the hull bottom to attach the skegs, so for this I wanted to glue them on. I decided I\u0026rsquo;d coat both parts with epoxy, then butter them up with thickened epoxy, and then put as much weight on them as I could, spread across both skegs at the same time. I tried to use everything I could find that was reasonably heavy and portable in my garage for this to work.\nThat\u0026#39;s a mitre saw, a few tools, a gallon of paint, and a huge bucket of paint holding down the two skegs while the epoxy cures After the epoxy cured I pulled off all the weights and then added a nice thick fillet all the way around both skegs.\nThe fillet applied to the starboard skeg And to the port skeg. This pic also provides a good view of the shallow ramp of the front of the skeg Glassing the skegs # I was hemming and hawing about putting some kind of a rub strip on the skegs themselves - a lot of people apparently use a high density plastic called UHMW, but I figure the oceans don\u0026rsquo;t need even more plastic in them, especially plastic that will obviously rub off on every beach landing, so that was out. I looked at stainless steel strips, but those were pretty expensive for 1/4\u0026quot; 6 foot long pieces, and not easily attainable in Seattle (or at least not that I could find anyway).\nSo I finally decided that I\u0026rsquo;d just glass the skegs. I probably didn\u0026rsquo;t even need to do this given they\u0026rsquo;re made out of white oak, but I figured a couple layers of glass wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hurt things and would be pretty repairable down the line if they needed to be. Is using a bunch of epoxy (ie, plastic) better then just putting UHMW strips on? Hard to know.\nGlass cut out and shaped to cover the entire skeg First coat of epoxy on port skeg Wow I had trouble getting the glass to lay flat on the big curve section Cut back and sanded (somewhat) smooth. Another layer of tape will go over this I did the port skeg first and I definitely had trouble getting the glass to lay flat in one section. I didn\u0026rsquo;t worry too much about this because I figure that area won\u0026rsquo;t often be hitting rocks on the ground during beachings and I had always planned to add a second layer of glass anyway.\nWhen I went to glass in the starboard skeg I did a much better job of getting the glass to lay flat.\nFor the second layer, I just used 6oz glass tape, so whereas the first layer covered the entire skeg (including the routed out hand hold grooves) this second layer only covered the \u0026ldquo;running surface\u0026rdquo; of the skegs all the way back to the transom.\nTape started on the hull bottom and would be faired in All the way to the transom Nice smooth application of top layer A lot of hand sanding to get everything flat and fair and ready for primer (or, if needed, fairing putty) was next. Sanding the grooves on the skegs in particular can only be done by hand, so it had to wait until I was feeling much healthier.\nSo it\u0026rsquo;s the drive to paint now, since the paint has to be applied during summer when the temperatures are right. To that end, next up is:\nBuilding the rudder cheek assembly, since the pintles and gudgeons need to be located and holes drilled for them on the transom before paint goes on. Final sanding and any fairing work I want to do on the hull before primer goes on. work underneath the upturned hull. This is primarily (but not solely) trying to fair the fillets on the underside of the cabin top. ","date":"11 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20250811/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Smaller bits while waiting for my health to improve","title":"Finishing the Skegs and fiberglass work","type":"scamp"},{"content":"After the garboards and the hull bottom were glassed, next up was to sand everything smooth in prep for glassing the next two hull planks, which I intended to do with some 4 oz cloth I had hanging around.\nSanding # A lot of work with the random orbital sander The back edge that was overlapped Sanding was mostly done with my random orbital sander, a home depot \u0026ldquo;rigid\u0026rdquo; brand that I\u0026rsquo;ve used for about ten years with no problems, although this time it managed to stop spinning under load for me. After taking it apart and watching a few videos on YouTube I figured out that the main bearing was seized - taking that off, cleaning it out with some WD 40, adding new grease, and putting it all back together again had it spinning beautifully. I\u0026rsquo;m still not sure if that sander is long for this world (the motor will occasionally slow down for no apparent reason\u0026hellip;) but it\u0026rsquo;s had a good life and was sufficiently revived to get me through this last big project.\nYou can see in the second photo above that in order to truly flatten the hull I wound up sanding very closely if not just barely into the top layer of the overlapped fibreglass. I\u0026rsquo;m not worried about this, as there\u0026rsquo;s a second layer below and in order to get it super flat you either have to do this or build up on either side of the overlap quite a bit with fairing epoxy, which I prefer not to do. This is now super smooth to the touch and will disappear under paint.\nI hand sanded the inside edge of the centerboard case to remove the worst of the drips A bit better close up The inside edge of the centerboard case isn\u0026rsquo;t quite as smooth, although I don\u0026rsquo;t intend to paint that, so I figured just getting the worst of the drips off was ok. If the centerboard doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually move freely for some reason after install, while I doubt this section would have any part to play in that, I can always further sand it smooth and recoat with graphite epoxy if necessary.\nFibreglassing bottom two hull panels # Having cut out the 4 oz fibreglass for the bottom two hull panels... ...I taped them up to position them in prep for epoxying With the hull smooth, I moved to fibreglassing the bottom two hull panels. Since I ran out of 6 oz, this was done with some 4 oz I had hanging around. I cut out sections to fit each side of the boat, and then taped them in position ready for epoxy.\nFirst coat being applied to starboard side View of the bow, with second coat applied to port side Since the hull panels are vertical in some areas and even past vertical near the stern, applying the epoxy was a little difficult. I found the best method was to pour a little epoxy onto a plastic spreader (what I call a squeegee) and then quickly apply that to the hull. This produced pretty even application for the first coat while minimizing drips and such.\nYou can see in the picture above that I wrapped the fibreglass up above the joint between the garboard plank and the second hull plank, so that joint will now have two layers of fibreglass, one 6 oz and one 4 oz.\nAfter the first coat set, I cut away the excess fibreglass and then used a foam roller to apply coats two and three to fill the weave.\nSanded and almost ready to go During the sanding I noticed I had a few bubbles in the fibreglass that I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice formed during the fist coat. That\u0026rsquo;s a pain in the butt. But I just sanded them out and will fill the depression with thickened epoxy later. Minor loss in strength and abrasion protection, but really only super minor. These will disappear under paint as well.\nOne bubble on the joint between the second and third hull panels A bubble sanded out right in the middle of the plank, no idea how I missed this during initial epoxy First bubble repaired with thickened epoxy Second bubble filled, ready for sanding On to the transom and prow # Since I added fibreglass to the bottom two hull panels, you can probably guess I also wanted to add it to the transom and prow. I managed to find a scrap of 6 oz that was big enough to cover the prow and wrap on to the hull panels, but for the transom I had to use a piece of 4 oz.\nTransom taped and ready to go And the prow too This was again relatively straightforward. One other helpful hint about applying epoxy to vertical surfaces like this - I found that after you get the first swipe or two of the squeegee on, it helps to remove the tape from the edges, as if you don\u0026rsquo;t bubbles form much easier as the tape resists the movement of the fibreglass as you smooth out the epoxy.\nFirst coat on the transom First coat done on the prow too Water tank fill hole # Remember last time I just used a hand drill to create a round hole in the water tank fill hole? Well in prep for paint I decided I better go back and clean it up. I widened the hole to take all of the putty out and cut the fibreglass back to the edge.\nA larger hole I might still add just a touch more epoxy around the edges to make sure the fibreglass edge itself is not exposed and won\u0026rsquo;t catch on a rock when beaching.\nSkegs # In parallel with glassing the hull, I started to build the skegs too.\nWhat to build them out of was a big question. I looked around for single large pieces of wood, but those were really expensive and unwieldy. Then I looked at building them out of some cheap soft wood but adding then metal strips to act as runners - turns out thin metal strips are also really expensive.\nSo in the end, I had a few scraps of white oak hanging around, and I decided I\u0026rsquo;d just build up the right size by gluing together 1x2\u0026rsquo;s of white oak.\nAll my 1x2s lined out in roughly the right shape Here you can see the witness marks to ensure alignment A better view of the dry fit I used the plans to create a paper template of the shape of the skeg, and used that to arrange the 1x2s into the right position to support the overall shape.\nGluing them together happened piece by piece.\nFirst start with some of the pieces Then glue together the pieces to make the final one After the epoxy cured, I scraped off the squeeze out with a heat gun, then took my sander to it not to make it perfectly flat but at least get it closer then it was.\nUsing the paper template I created to mark the shape of the skeg to cut out was harder then I imagined, since it kept moving as I started to trace it. So instead I started by finding the aft portion of my build cradle that had the curve in it that the hull sat on while being built. The skeg should match that, right? So I used that to mark the curve, and then used the paper template to mark the full shape.\nMissing the very rear end of the skeg And a section in the middle where I didn\u0026#39;t quite have enough wood Since I was a little short I glued on two small pieces.\nThe second skeg I cut the 1x2s out using the first as a template, albeit adding a little bit of length on each to make sure I didn\u0026rsquo;t run out of room again.\nNext time I\u0026rsquo;ll be:\nfinal prepping the hull for paint. This means more sanding, and a decision on whether I want to use fairing putty or high build primer or anything like that. finishing up the skegs and getting them glued to the boat. The big question here will be if my itty bitty bandsaw will have the grunt needed to cut through 1.5\u0026quot; thick white oak. It may not. ","date":"14 April 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20250414/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Lots of coating epoxy, lots of sanding, lots of waiitng for things to cure","title":"Finishing glassing of the boat","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"6 March 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/centerboard/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Centerboard","type":"tags"},{"content":"January was way too cold to be in the garage. Most of February was also of that description, so work slowed way down for about a month and a half.\nIn the latter half of February is when the weather broke and it looked like the daily lows were going to be above 35 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the minimum curing temp of the fast system three epoxy I use.\nPrepping the hull # First step was to cut off the parts of the centerboard trunk that were extruding past the hull bottom, and sand them all flat. I don\u0026rsquo;t have any pictures of this, but it was pretty straightforward.\nIn prep for fibreglass being wrapped up into the centerboard trunk, I then had to round over the edges. This I did with a router and a 1/4\u0026quot; round over bit.\nThis worked pretty well After doing this, there were a couple of sections where the centerboard assembly didn\u0026rsquo;t quite reach the hull bottom - I needed to fill in a couple of divots which I did with thickened epoxy.\nHere you can see both the rounded over edges ready for fibreglass and the thickened epoxy in the corner making for a flat continous hull bottom Then I went over the hull and smoothed out all of the bumps and epoxy blobs with 80 grit sandpaper. I also applied fillets between all of the hull panels and between the garboard planks and the hull bottom, and then I rounded over all of the hull panels and the edges between transom/bow/planking so that fibreglass would lay down on the curves. My intention is to fibreglass the entire hull, not just the bottom hull and garboard planks.\nYou might think I did this all by hand from this picture, but you\u0026#39;d be mistaken Here you can see some of the between planking fillets and smoothed over edges and epoxy patches I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother to sand the entire hull, as that\u0026rsquo;ll come later after fibreglass has been applied.\nWith the hull smooth, there were two more details to be taken care of before fibreglassing could begin - protecting the water tank fill hole and preparing for drips in the centerboard case.\nWater tank fill hole # I wanted to plug the fill hole for the water tank so that epoxy wouldn\u0026rsquo;t drip down on to the threads and gum them up. This I did with plumbers putty, jamming it up through the hole from below the boat against a flat surface.\nWater tank fill hole, just before I jam it full of plumbers putty from below Protecting the centerboard trunk # With wrapping fibreglass over the edge and up into the trunk, I just knew there was going to be lots of epoxy drips. And I wanted to try and mitigate those so that I didn\u0026rsquo;t have drips running the length of the centerboard case where I couldn\u0026rsquo;t sand them and indeed they might play havoc with a smoothly rotating centerboard.\nSo I cut a piece of plastic a little bigger then the size of the centerboard slot itself and then proceeded to tape it into the slot about an inch or so below the edge of it. This would allow enough space for the fibreglass to be wrapped up into the slot before hitting the tape, and hopefully the inevitable epoxy drips would run over the tape and on to the plastic sheeting rather then down the inside of the centerboard slot.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll see if this worked\u0026hellip;\nFibreglassing the hull bottom # I\u0026rsquo;m using 6 oz fibreglass on the hull bottom and garboard planks.\nFirst step is to measure out fibreglass and trim it so that it drapes a little more then an inch onto the garboard planks and transom.\nDraping the cloth over the hull bottom Trimmed to fit neatly Trimmed to fit nicely With that in place, next is to start mixing epoxy.\nInitial wetting out to fill the weave Pretty good overall In general when laminating with epoxy I find that:\nyou really need three coats to fully fill the weave, which is what all the fibreglass on this boat will get before initial sanding for the initial coat, a squeegee works best for applying the epoxy, but for subsequent coats I find using a foam roller works best. Using a brush is sometimes necessary but I always seem to put on too much (which causes drips) so I try to avoid that. Water tank fill hole # Here ou can see the water tank fill hole being protected by plumbers putty while the epoxy sets I started with a hand drill to reopen the hole I\u0026#39;ll eventually clean this out completely and cut the fibreglass back to the edges of the hole but for now it looks nice and perfectly round Centerboard trunk protection # How\u0026rsquo;d I do here? Well\u0026hellip;\nThe drip protection works! You can see some drips ran down into the plastic here, saving the centerboard case. Woot! An even better closeup of how it worked Fixing a mistake # I had one section of fibreglass that floated and didn\u0026rsquo;t attach itself to the hull bottom (and that I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice in time to fix it) - a round section just aft of the centerboard slot. I didn\u0026rsquo;t take a photo of it but it\u0026rsquo;s pretty obvious when this happens, as the fibreglass solidifies with the epoxy in a very light color where it\u0026rsquo;s not attached to the underlying wood.\nThe fix is pretty simple - cut out the floating fibreglass, sand the edges to feather the remaining fibreglass, then apply a patch over top.\nHole sanded out and ready for patch Size of patch This will receive three coats of epoxy itself and blend in such that nobody will know it was ever patched.\nFibreglassing the garboard planks # With three coats of epoxy on the hull bottom, I sanded the lower edge of the bottom fibreglass that had been wrapped onto the garboard planks to smooth it out all around the boat and feather it flat in prep for putting a layer of 6 oz fibreglass on the garboard planks.\nLaying out the last of the 6 oz for the garboard planks Not quite long enough! Will have to patch the end I had seen some other builders say they were cutting it awfully close with whether they had enough fibreglass on their roll to do the entire hull and as you can see from the picture above I was short by about a foot. But no big deal, I just cut out small patches to cover the ends of the garboard planks on either side and just like with the patch above once they\u0026rsquo;re feathered in you\u0026rsquo;ll never know this is what happened.\nPatch ready to go (here on the port side stern) And wetted out I wound up wetting out both the main piece of fibreglass and then immediately putting the patch over and wetting it out as well. This will result in a little bump on the hull that I\u0026rsquo;ll sand smooth before paint.\nI used the same technique on the bow - I overlapped the fibreglass from the port side about 1.5 inches on to the starboard side, wetted it all out, and then immediately went and did the same with the starboard side, overlapping it about 1.5 inches over the bow onto the port side. This provides a double layer of fibreglass over the leading edge of the bow (and indeed I\u0026rsquo;m thinking of putting one more third layer over the top again once everything\u0026rsquo;s dry).\nBow after initial wet out of both garboard planks And this is after three coats of epoxy You can see in those last pictures that I overlapped the 6 oz fibreglass by about an inch down onto the next hull plank below on both port and starboard, so next steps will be:\nsand smooth and feather in the fibreglass on the middle planks in prep for putting 4 oz fibreglass on the bottom two hull planks on either side sand and feather the fibreglass that was wrapped on to the bow and transom for the same reason - eventually they\u0026rsquo;ll have 4 oz fibreglass applied to them as well start building the skegs ","date":"6 March 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20250306/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Getting sticky, and looking forward to sanding","title":"How to fibreglass a boat","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"6 March 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/water-tank/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Water Tank","type":"tags"},{"content":"My original plan was to basically brute force the hull over. I managed to get the boat ready for a flip right around Christmas, and I figured that\u0026rsquo;d be a difficult time to schedule a bunch of friends to come over, so instead I decided to draft my brother and his family to help. I figured between him, me, and his two kids, that\u0026rsquo;d probably be enough to muscle it around.\nUnfortunately, they kind of balked as soon as they showed up.\nWith comments complaining about the lack of hand holds and it was heavier then they expected, the boys didn\u0026rsquo;t exude confidence. My brother was also pretty iffy about it. Rather then force them into something they clearly didn\u0026rsquo;t have confidence in, I bagged it and came up with a plan B.\nPlan B # Build two gantries out of 2x4s and suspend the boat from them.\nTurns out 2x4s are cheapest Assembled and in position The gantries themselves were pretty simple - posts made up of two 2x4s screwed together (two 2x4s were cheaper then a single 4x4 - somewhat unexpected), a top beam then was also two 2x4s, some angle bracing to hold the top beam to the side beams (the top beam was not directly attached to the side beams, it was only held on via this angle bracing), and then between the two gantries on each side I screwed in two 2x4s between them on the diagonals to help prevent buckling. Everything was attached just using a couple of screws.\nHere you can see the beams attached on the diagonals between the two gantries And that was it. I set them up at roughly a third and two thirds of the hull distance from the transom, so one was maybe 3 to 4 feet in from the transom and the other was right around the mastbox, and then used two ratchet straps per gantry to raise the boat. The straps I had weren\u0026rsquo;t quite long enough so I tied a loop of rope around each gantry and then attached the straps to the rope.\nThe bow hanging Another good view of the straps hanging from the rope At this point, I lifted the boat high enough (and was happy to see that I could in fact lift it high enough without the cabin top hitting the top of my garage/gantry) to pull the build cradle out from underneath it out into the driveway.\nStern obviously hanging now Garage opened and build cradle dragged out of the way With the garage door open you can see how close I am to running out of room when the boat was raised up high enough to drag the build cradle out At this point turning the boat began. This was a little harder to do then I expected it would be - in fact, I had to get M to help me out. But the two of us had enough oomph to be able to turn it around in the cradle bit by bit.\nStarting to turn now Can you see how warped the gantries became? The one concerning aspect of this was how warped the gantries became during the process. Everything was vertical and square when we started, but nearing the end the back gantry in particular was really out of plumb and leaning quite a bit. Clearly I needed more bracing.\nFlipped over and on saw horses No more gantries in the way In order to lower the boat onto the saw horses this is where two straps per gantry came in handy. I would set one strap up loose a little bit below the boat, and then release the other strap so the boat would fall a couple of inches into the first strap, then rinse and repeat. If I did this exactly as described the gantries would moan and squeak and move every time the boat fell and I\u0026rsquo;d have a minor heart attack - I gradually figured out that I could just grab hold of the strapping before I released it and with whatever strength I had I could slow the descent enough that the entire operation became a non-issue.\nSo now the boat is flipped and sitting in a very cold garage waiting for the weather to warm up a bit before I start filling and fairing the hull in prep for fibreglassing it. Once the hull is done I\u0026rsquo;ll likely reuse my gantry setup to flip the boat back right side up for final paint.\n","date":"21 January 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20250121/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Turning the hull upside down","title":"Turning a boat upside down","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"21 December 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/cabin/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cabin","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"21 December 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/oars/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Oars","type":"tags"},{"content":"This was the drive to get ready to flip the boat, as I had folks coming over on Boxing Day to do the deed. I wanted to get the topsides basically fully constructed before that, meaning everything that needed to be glued on to the boat was glued on, epoxy had been applied, etc. Basically everything ready for paint, without actually applying the paint.\nThree main items were on my punch list:\nThe transom cap A handhold mounted on the aft edge of the cabin top Reinforcements for the oarlocks Transom cap # First up was just a dry fit with some clamps to see how this would all go together. I cut out a doubler piece from some spare plywood and initially dry fit it without the cutout in the centre aft portion of it needed to make room for the doubler glued to the inside of the transom itself.\nDoubler is a bit long but looks like it will fit ok But there are gaps like this on either side right near the transom that\u0026#39;ll need to be filled Before beveling and final fitting of the cap itself, I needed to deal with the raised cockpit side at the transom that happened because the instruction manual sucks.\nThe raised portion in question After some quality time with my grinder and random orbital sander Then a tighter fitting.\nBeveled the underside of the cap and doubler stack Dry fit looking better Wedges cut to fill the gaps on either side wound up being pretty small Pretty good fit in the front Before installation I just needed to cut a few wedges to fill the space between the deck and the transom cap. These I cut out of some spare wood I had lying around on the table saw. I don\u0026rsquo;t even think they\u0026rsquo;re the same species actually - one\u0026rsquo;s cedar and one\u0026rsquo;s a hardwood of some kind.\nLarger wedge cut to the right bevel Mark and cut off the overhang Nice tight fit The glue up was pretty straightforward, and just needed a bunch of spring clamps, nothing too difficult.\nCleaning up the squeezeout is always difficult when using spring clamps Close up of one of the corner wedges After the glue set I sanded the outside edges smooth and started to work on the front edge.\nThe wedges worked really well for smoothing out the rear corners The front edge will need a little work, plus probably a fillet to round the transition to the deck A little sanding applied Front fillet applied and you can see the wedge under the cap fully filling the space Cabin top handhold # From the forums one of the suggestions was to add a raised ridge or lip along the aft edge of the cabin top, as that provides a much easier way to grab on to something while standing in the cockpit. It does have drawbacks, in the sense that all the mount points for lines further forward on the cabin roof (cleats and pulleys and such) will have to be raised so that the line as it leaves the cleat isn\u0026rsquo;t in a position of having to go up to get over the handhold.\nBut that said, it seemed like a good idea. I wanted to make mine somewhat substantial to grab onto, as well as route in a little groove on the leading edge that my fingers could grab into.\nI had a lot of cedar left over and not a lot of hardwood at all, so while I would have preferred to build this out of hardwood, I went with cedar instead, cut out a bunch of strips, and then laminated them together on top of the cabin top to match it\u0026rsquo;s curve.\nLaminating the strips together After the epoxy cured, I cleaned off the squeezeout using the belt sander, then ran the whole thing through a planar a couple of times to get to a common front to back thickness of about an inch, with a height of about 7/8 of an inch.\nTo get the groove, I used my table router with a special bit I had to go buy. It worked ok, although the start of the groove was pretty jaggy before I got the hang of how to get the piece smoothly through the router.\nThe very start of the groove was not smooth on the router But luckily I built this longer then I wanted it - will just trim off the ends After trimming the ends off (and cutting them at such an angle that they\u0026rsquo;d be vertical when on the boat), and sanding the rest of the interior finger track, the piece was ready to glue on.\nCut down to size and finger groove sanded smooth Epoxying it down was pretty simple, just had to remember to use pads under the clamps since the wood was pretty soft.\nGlued on using pads for the clamp to protect the soft cedar Front edge with finger groove I have a 1/2\u0026quot; oval round in brass that I\u0026rsquo;ll eventually screw on top of this to help with wear from lines running over it into the cockpit.\nPreparing for oarlocks # The last step was to prepare for oarlocks. I went back and forth about what kind of oar locks I should use but eventually decided on top mount ones. Given that my cockpit coaming cap is pretty wide I figure I should be able to mount these nicely to the cap itself.\nHowever, that will need a little reinforcement, particularly since rowing will put some strain on the oarlocks. I need to add some reinforcements to help transfer some of that down to the deck and hull.\nFirst step is to figure out position wise where to mount them. The plans indicate putting them roughly 7\u0026quot; forward of bulkhead 6. Different people have mounted them in different spots though based on what felt right. Well, time to get in the boat, use some clamps to hold oar positions, and figure out what works for me.\nSeat in place, clamps to hold oars, climb in and see how it feels I eventually choose a spot about 7.5\u0026quot; forward. I\u0026rsquo;m tall and I liked the reach.\nNow for reinforcements, I need two parts:\na small piece of fir to extend the \u0026ldquo;shelf\u0026rdquo; on which the cockpit side caps sit to make it full width. This will add a little strength as well as give more material into which the oarlock can be mounted. Side gussets that will connect the cockpit side cap, the cockpit coaming, and the deck all together to help transfer the stresses from rowing down into the hull. The three pieces, rough cut, to be installed on each side Close-up of the limber holes and how the gusset will attach to all three surfaces above, below, and behind it To get a better shape to the gussets I wound up using one of the rounds I made for my portholes as a nice sized curve.\nThat\u0026#39;s a nice gradual curve I\u0026#39;m looking for Dry fit I decided that, before gluing these in, I\u0026rsquo;d coat them three times in epoxy. Figure it\u0026rsquo;s easier to do this now then after they\u0026rsquo;re installed, and means that after installing and filleting the whole assembly will basically be ready for paint right away.\nCoating in epoxy and set next to a lamp to dry Gluing them in was a matter of gluing the part underneath the cockpit cap first, then doing each side.\nClamped in place Glued in, some filleting and filling/smoothing still to come And that was it, the boat was ready to flip.\n","date":"21 December 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20241221/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Getting the final bits glued on in preparation to flip the hull","title":"The drive to flipping","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"15 November 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/bulkheads/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Bulkheads","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"15 November 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/cockpit/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cockpit","type":"tags"},{"content":"I made slow progress on the rudder over the previous few months since the projects were mostly on the boat itself leaving the workbench (mostly) free so here are all the updates wrapped into one place, as well as my efforts to undo something I did much much earlier in the build.\nRudder updates # Back when I was fibreglassing the cabin sides I also pulled out some 6 oz fibreglass and decided now was the time to start fibreglassing the rudder.\nI did it one side at a time Nicely pressed into the curve at the blade top After doing both sides individually, I then did the leading and trailing edges, again one by one, with overlap near the bottom of the rudder blade.\nLaying out the top edge Epoxied, lots of glue drips that will need cleaning up Closer view of the top edge The sides and edges were all coated in epoxy three times to fill the weave and then sanded smooth.\nIt took a while to clean and smooth this all out Sanding complete Next up was to drill some holes - the uphaul line and downhaul holes.\nA clean hole for the uphaul Drilling through the top for the downhaul I did the drill-fill-drill treatment on those, meaning I had to fill them with epoxy and then drill them a second time.\nFilled Taped up so the epoxy doesn\u0026#39;t leak out Finally, I wanted to drill-fill-drill the main pivot hole, but I also bought slightly different copper tubes for it based on my experience with the centerboard. I wound up buying ones with shoulders, which meant I needed to enlarge the pivot hole quite a bit for everything.\nDrill guide for hand drill setup and ready Filled with thickened epoxy, ready to drill again When gluing the copper bushings in, I again learned a few lessons from the centerboard:\nI wanted to insert (and leave inserted for the epoxy to set) the bolt that will be used for pivoting, to ensure the bushings are lined up I needed to figure out how to clamp the bushings inwards to make sure they didn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;float\u0026rdquo; out while the epoxy was setting up Clamp setup with plastic barrier to make sure the epoxy doesn\u0026#39;t glue the clamp into the assembly The clamp is holding down the edge of the top bushing And the edge of the bottom bushing, with the bolt inserted all the way through The bolt did wind up sticking a little bit after the epoxy had set, but I was able to bang it out with a mallet and the bushings both stayed solidly in place.\nFinally, the last step was to add a small round over for the down haul so that the line would lay down appropriately, and glass it in with three coats of epoxy to make sure it\u0026rsquo;s sealed.\nSanded in with a cylindrical rasp The first of three coats of epoxy to seal it Adding back the bulkhead 4 cutouts # I hemmed and hawed about whether to do this for a loooooooong time. I finally figured that I needed to make a decision on this before I flipped the hull, and that time was increasingly getting close. As you can see, I ultimately decided to glue the bulkhead 4 cutouts back in.\nI did this mostly for one reason - because my hatch cutouts in bulkhead 3 are so large and the lower outside edge extends closer to the side of the hull then the stock recommendation, I became a little worried that during a capsize, with the cutouts gone in bulkhead 4, the side of the boat in the water would flood and water might get past bulkhead 3 into the front of the boat, making the capsize recovery much worse. With the cutouts in place, apparently you have quite a while for the boat laying on its side before water gets high enough that it can flood past the seat and bulkhead 4 into the space between b4 and b3 - it\u0026rsquo;ll stay draw for quite a while.\nSo although I don\u0026rsquo;t really like the look of it, I added them back in for safety.\nAs it happens, I had kept the cutouts I made, and they still fit very closely, so I just butt-joined them back into bulkhead 4.\nPort side Starboard Using clamps with the two wood boards ensured the cutouts were evenly aligned front and back with the edge of the surrounding bulkhead.\nClamps removed and... ...excess epoxy sanded Notice that while the starboard cutout fits perfectly, when I was cutting out the port side I didn\u0026rsquo;t quite make the curve perfectly at the bottom of the cutout, so there\u0026rsquo;s a void there. I\u0026rsquo;ll fill that in later.\n","date":"15 November 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20241115/","section":"My scamp","summary":"A few projects done while working on the cockpit sides","title":"Some interstital projects","type":"scamp"},{"content":"The next step was to decide how I wanted to cap off the top of my cockpit edges. As you\u0026rsquo;ll see, this step was a lot of laminating that was slow going - I didn\u0026rsquo;t make a lot of progress on this over the course of September/October (it actually dragged into November but I\u0026rsquo;m writing this update a little late obviously after it was completed).\nSeat back reinforcement rail # I took inspiration (well, ok, maybe slightly more then just inspiration) from WoodnMetal guy\u0026rsquo;s site\nI basically just copied what he did there, since I liked the look of it, thought it would be pretty functional, and would provide me with enough \u0026ldquo;meat\u0026rdquo; for a cockpit rail for installing the oarlocks I want. So I bought some CVG (clear vertical grain) fir and cut out some strips for the reinforcement rails on the outside of the seat backs. I just used two strips of roughly 0.5\u0026quot; x 0.75\u0026quot; and laminated them first directly onto the curve of the seat backs before then gluing the lamination directly on to the seat back.\nPlastic in place protecting seat back while laminations glue up I thought about gluing them on to the seat back at the same time as gluing the two strips together but thought that would get too messy too quickly. The draw back of not doing that is that I had to wait for epoxy to cure before moving on to the next step - hence why this took so long.\nThere was a little spring back after the epoxy cured but not too great Close up of lamination with some witness marks for how it aligns onto hull Gluing both port and starboard reinforcement rails on to seat backs at the same time While the fir is a much harder wood when compared to something like cedar, I still needed to use blocks of woods with the clamps (especially with C clamps) to make sure no marks were left after clamping.\nThe turn in # Final step was to cut and shape the turn in piece for the forward end of both port and starboard. These were made from the excess length of the original lamination.\nStarboard side glue up Excess trimmed then rounded with a shinto rasp These turned out pretty nice but had one slight problem - I didn\u0026rsquo;t bevel the edge that glued against the cockpit seat back itself, meaning that after these were installed the tops of them were sloped down and away from the cockpit - the slope wasn\u0026rsquo;t even with the reinforcement rail on the rest of the cockpit seat. This wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be a big problem, but it would require a little more effort when putting the cap on itself.\nRounding off the aft ends Seat back caps themselves # These were made in the same way, out of roughly 0.5\u0026quot; x 0.75\u0026quot; strips of CVG fir. Preparing the strips for these, however, taught me all about grain run out in lumber and why it could be a problem.\nGrain run out # When I originally ripped my fir down to size, I ripped each strip slightly wider then I needed and then ran the resultant strips through a planar to get them down to size. This worked ok for one set of strips but for the other as I put them through the planar I kept getting these gigantic splinters that were forming on the corners of the pieces as they were coming out of the planar. Some of these were so large (think 8\u0026quot; to 10\u0026quot; long and quite thick) that when they broke off they\u0026rsquo;d leave a noticeable chunk missing from the fir strip itself.\nYou can see the grain direction here and some small splinters forming These were all formed by the grain of the wood, rather then running the length of the strip itself, exiting the strip at an angle. That\u0026rsquo;s where the sliver would start and run backwards up the strip until eventually tearing out.\nThis made cutting and laminating the seat tops in such a way to ensure a smooth surface very difficult to do. As it was I had to fill a couple of gouges with epoxy. This CVG fir was indeed clear and vertical grain, but a few pieces had some pretty significant run out that bit me - something to watch for in the future.\nLaminating the seat caps # First step was a dry fit, mostly to test the clamp strategy.\nTwo pieces clamped with downward pressure against the seat top After figuring out the clamping setup would work, I applied tape to the tops of the seat backs and along the deck underneath to catch epoxy drips, and started the lamination with the first two pieces, curved in place to match the seat top and held in place with bar clamps applying downward pressure.\nThe big wood clamps just help make sure the curve of the two pieces being laminated is correct After that setup the next two pieces were laminated to the first two (each were laminated one at a time - again, these laminations took me a long time). The bar clamps were still holding everything in position, but now smaller clamps were used to bring the new pieces into the curve and hold them tight.\nThird piece being glued up Forward end with excess shown that will be used for turn in After the lamination was done I pulled off the packing tape and was ready to glue it directly on to the seat top. I just needed to first clean up epoxy squeeze out and round over some edges first.\nDisaster strikes # Pulled the seat cap off (tape did a good job of protecting against squeeze out That\u0026#39;s a lot of squeeze out After cleaning up the squeeze out and sanding the piece smooth, next step was to put some roundovers on the top corners and a small one on the bottom outward edge. The starboard side went easily, but when I went to add the round overs to the port side the grain run out problem really bit me, hard.\nYou can see the size of splinters caused by the grain run out here Some of the huge gashes left in the edge of the wood That happened during the routing of a 1/4\u0026quot; round over. The gashes were so large no amount of epoxy was going to smooth that out.\nSo I decided to cut off two of the laminations on the bandsaw and glue new strips on and try again.\nGlued up just on the bench top this time When routing this one out I made sure to note where the grain ran out and tried to make sure the router bit didn\u0026rsquo;t go \u0026ldquo;against the grain\u0026rdquo; on these sections. That meant not routing an edge in the same direction along the length of the seat cap - I had to stop and turn it around more then once. However, with care, it worked (there was still some tear out, but not nearly as bad).\nPort side glued on Fitting the turn in piece # I cut the forward edge of the seat caps off at a sort-of 45 degree angle (I just eyeballed it). Then I had to figure out how to cut a piece that fit the space for the cap turn in.\nUsing a couple of tongue depressors and a clamp to make a template Turn in piece cut and dry fit - it looks odd, doesn\u0026#39;t it? The piece fit first go (love using templates) but it had a couple of problems - if laid flat onto the reinforcement rail it would be at the wrong angle, and it looked too small. So I first cut an angled piece to add to the front edge to fix the latter problem.\nThat looks better I also added some wedges between the reinforcement rail and the cap itself along the turn in portion in order to make sure the top was a smooth surface at the same angle the length of the seat cap.\nDry fitting the wedges in Gluing them in involved clamping them with downward force to the bottom of the seat back itself.\nClamped in Notice the outward slope to the turn in portion of the reinforcement rail - why the wedges were needed Final bits # The final bits to complete for the cap rails were:\nadd a fillet underneath the cap rail between it and the reinforcement rail three coats of epoxy over everything Filletted, rounded, epoxied, ready to go Forward edge Like I said, while I started this process in September but didn\u0026rsquo;t fully finish it until halfway through December. Doing those laminations one piece at a time really took a lot of time.\nBut I did do a few other projects in between, read on to see some of those.\n","date":"27 October 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20241027/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Installing the tops of the cockpit sides","title":"Cockpit side caps","type":"scamp"},{"content":"As it turns out, I wound up not making a lot of progress (read: any) on the boat during the month of August. I guess the summer weather was calling me instead.\nBut I was back at it (slowly) in September. Next step was to get the cockpit sides installed.\nDry fitting # First step was to just try and dry fit these things (which was somewhat difficult since they are longer then the cockpit themselves - they bow outwards to follow the curve of the hull, meaning dry fitting required bending them and really forcing their way in there) and make sure they were a tight fit.\nCockpit sides laid out for dry fitting Some shaping was required to get a snug fit up front You can see in that second photo above not only the rounded front corner but also the bevel that I put in along one edge - necessary to make room for a hardened fillet of epoxy that I previously put in on the bottom of the cabin side doublers.\nThe port cabin side doubler glued in place A closeup of the bottom edge of the doubler The front edge of the cockpit side fitted up against the cockpit side doubler Here you can start to see the problem. I referenced earlier that I wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure why there was a scribe mark on the lower edge of the cabin side doublers, so I just installed them as the instructions described. Well, turns out that the sequence of steps being described in the manual didn\u0026rsquo;t really match up with the sequence of build steps that was happening in the pictures in the manual - this happens multiple times in the manual, but turns out in this case it was important. In the pictures, they installed the cockpit sides first, then they installed the cabin side doublers. In this sequence, that scribe mark indicates where you would need to bevel the doubler so that it meets the cockpit side cleanly.\nBut of course the text describes installing the cabin side doubler first, then installed the cockpit sides, which is what I did. Doing it this way has two effects:\nthe doubler takes up roughly half the height of the cockpit carlin to which the cockpit side is glued, meaning there\u0026rsquo;s less meat for where the cockpit itself is to attach it also forces the cockpit side lower at the front (the part was obviously designed to be installed completely covering the carlin and snugged right up against the bottom edge of the cabin side itself) which means the entire cockpit side gets installed on a little bit of an angle. I gotta say, I really dislike this build manual. I\u0026rsquo;ve said this before, but it\u0026rsquo;s the worst of both worlds - it makes you think it\u0026rsquo;s detailed and error free when it\u0026rsquo;s actually not. I\u0026rsquo;d prefer either one that\u0026rsquo;s correct with lots of details, or one with far fewer details where you have to figure everything out yourself and thus never develop the expectation of mistake free.\nClamps used to hold it while glue sets Aft edge - here you can see the effect of having to install on a bit of an angle due to cabin side doubler Cockpit side return to cabin # The other effect of the above mixup is that the pieces from the kit to bring the cockpit side forward edge into the cabin really didn\u0026rsquo;t fit anymore.\nThat piece is now way too big Looks like my cockpit sides won\u0026rsquo;t be as tall above the deck as they were perhaps originally intended to be. Eh, the boat should still float.\nSo I cut and installed new ones.\nPort side Starboard side Starboard side Port side The pictures above with the small patches of fibreglass ready to install perhaps make it slightly more clear that the two returns aren\u0026rsquo;t exactly even - the one on the port side makes closer to a 90 degree angle with the cockpit and cabin sides, whereas the starboard side one is a more shallow angle. At first I was kind of annoyed I did that, but now I kind of like it - one of those \u0026ldquo;of course it\u0026rsquo;s a homebuild!\u0026rdquo; moments.\nGlass was wetted out with three coats of epoxy And applied on the inside of the transition as well Starboard side sanded... ...and ready for paint ","date":"26 September 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240926/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Installing the cockpit sides and discovering why the cabin side doublers had that scribe mark","title":"Cockpit sides installed","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I don\u0026rsquo;t really have pictures of gluing in the cabin side doublers for aft of bulkhead four, but I do have a couple of pictures afterwards.\nThe corner where doublers meet I was never really sure with these doublers how the overlap would work in the corners, but here I had the roof doubler extend a little longer. There was still a space in there that needed to be filled with epoxy but in general the side doubler didn\u0026rsquo;t reach the cabin roof.\nBulkhead 4 edge post edge cleanup. That generated a lot of epoxy dust The other thing I couldn\u0026rsquo;t quite figure out (which I eventually did figure out, but too late - yay!) was why there was an extra scribed line on the cabin side doublers. The doublers were longer then the cabin sides themselves, by about a centimeter or so, and I figured that was by design so that they could be solidly attached to the carlin as well providing extra reinforcement for that cabin side joint, but the extra scribe mark on the doubler was about two inches from the fat end - why?\nWell, I didn\u0026rsquo;t figure it out until later (foreshadowing!) so I just glued the doublers on and cleaned them up. The aft edge looks good now.\nBuilding a mastbox lip # Apparently one of the modifications for home built scamps that has been discussed is building a raised lip around the top edge of the mast box. This allows the attaching of a \u0026ldquo;boot\u0026rdquo; to the mast to prevent rain water from falling down the mast box and collecting in the cockpit. While I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen reference to this anywhere in the forums, I saw enough references to it in various build blogs (and I liked the idea enough myself) that I thought I\u0026rsquo;d go for it.\nMeasuring out the first side to cut All the pieces assembled and ready to cut This is what it will look like. Cutting the angles and curves to get everything to lay flush against everything else was a little tricky but overall it looks good. The acute angle on the forward lip of the mast box should nicely capture a strap or bungee cord around the base of a mast boot.\nGlue the sides in first I glued the sides and put a weight balanced across both to hold them while the epoxy set. Once the epoxy set I clamped and glued in the front edge.\nFront edge clamped in waiting for epoxy to set Once this setup, the fillets both around the outside edge of the mastbox as well as on the inside up the new ramp needed to be added.\nPost apply, pre sand Post everything And now the mast box lid was complete\nMain construction done Prepping the roof # Next stop was to finalize prep the roof for glass. This meant filling all the screw holes, sanding the roof flat, and sanding the four edges to soften them so that glass could easily wrap around all the corners.\nCleat is sanded smooth with screw holes filled Front edge could use a touch more cleanup Everything is sanded and ready for glass now Ready for the glass now\nGlassing time # I used 6 oz glass for the roof, and started by cutting out a piece that would cover the entire roof (plus doublers/cleats on every side) and then cutting out the hole for the mast box. My plan was to have the glass ride up each side of the mast box lip itself.\nGlass laid out Hole cut out and glass wrapped up Perhaps a better picture of how the glass wraps up The glass won\u0026rsquo;t cover around the corners of the mastbox lip, but I\u0026rsquo;m not too worried about that as at least for the mastbox proper I already did that.\nWetting out the glass is always fun, and went pretty easily with a squeegie.\nFirst coat of epoxy I wrapped the glass over the edge and down the sides I trimmed the excess glass off after the epoxy had cured.\nTrimmed pretty easily Here too In hindsight I probably should have left a little drip edge on the section aft of bulkhead 4 for the followup two coats of epoxy to fill the weave, but I trimmed the glass right to the wood edge, which just meant I have a couple of epoxy drips I\u0026rsquo;ll need to sand out.\nTo combat the drips I knew that were coming though, I did wrap the base of the cabin in plastic in a lot of places, although as it turns out I didn\u0026rsquo;t have very many drips to contend with through the two remaining coats.\nYou can see a few drips down the front edge of bulkhead 4 here Plastic taped up but no drips to catch Three coats of epoxy, ready for sanding As it turns out, the filled screw holes are quite noticeable under the glass, so I\u0026rsquo;m thinking I might now paint the cabin top. Still haven\u0026rsquo;t really decided how to finish the topsides of the boat yet.\n","date":"18 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240718/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Building the mastbox lip and glassing the roof","title":"Glassing the roof","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"18 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/mastbox/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"MastBox","type":"tags"},{"content":"Almost ready for the roof of the cabin, but before I got there I needed to finish up the cabin sides.\nGlassing the cabin sides # The plans called for taping the side to deck joint, but I decided that, because the cabin sides are made out of relatively thin plywood, and I happened to have some 4oz fibreglass on hand, I might as well just glass the entire cabin side and deck joint in one go.\nStarboard side Port side, better view of the front portion of the cabin side I started by cutting out the fibreglass and just clamping it on at the top, ensuring there was enough to drape over the side of the boat (that will get trimmed later) and wrap up slightly on to the underside of the cleat at the top of the cabin side.\nI also decided that, forward of where the cabin side meets bulkhead 2, I\u0026rsquo;d just glass the cabin side itself and not wrap the glass all the way down onto the deck.\nPort side after first coat dried but before cleanup Starboard all cleaned up Each of the cabin sides would have two fill coats (so three coats total) of epoxy applied to fill the weave.\nGetting ready for the roof # Next step was to bevel the cabin side cleats in anticipation of putting the roof on.\nGolden curlicues Cleaned up ready to go Generally the little block plane worked best for this.\nFor the roof itself, it turns out I needed to cut myself out a new part.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t take pictures of this, but the roof piece that came in the kit actually had a pretty serious delamination in it. I\u0026rsquo;ve never actually seen marine plywood delaminate quite like that piece did. I initially tried to epoxy the piece back together, and while it sort of worked, it was pretty obvious that the one side of the roof where the epoxy now was really wasn\u0026rsquo;t going to bend to the same degree that the other side was.\nSo, in order to have an even curve to the roofline, I went and bought a new piece of 6mm marine plywood and cut out a new roof piece, using the old one as a template.\nReady to cut out mast hole... ...and ready to install (I particularly like that last picture because you can see how the edges of the roof line are not in fact straight - accounting for the compound curve of the cabin side mentioned earlier)\nGluing the roof on # I was originally thinking I might finish the roof in varnish as one of the few bright finished pieces planned on this boat (despite the warnings of several other people that this might not look good), so I was trying to figure out how to use only clamps and straps to get a good amount of contact for the roof during dry fits.\nI couldn\u0026rsquo;t do it.\nStraps alone often didn\u0026rsquo;t work well, and even with the big 4x4 blocks helping to distribute the pressure they couldn\u0026rsquo;t be placed far enough outboard over the edge of each cabin side to really get great contact there.\nSo screw clamps (and the resulting screw holes I\u0026rsquo;d have to fill with epoxy) it would be.\nAll the screw clamps in place A view of the straps across the top From the second photo above you can see that the forward strap never even touched the cabin top in the middle, but I found if I used just 2x4s instead of 4x4s I didn\u0026rsquo;t get as good clamping pressure, so I stuck with the 4x4s and used screw clamps along the support beams on either side of the mast box in the centre of the roof.\nThe strap setup A quick note on the strap setup:\nI routed the straps through holes I drilled into the build cradle itself. Because the cabin roof slopes forward slightly the straps didn\u0026rsquo;t want to hold when applied perfectly vertical to the ground. In the photo above you can see that while I drilled a forward hole in the build cradle for the forward most strap, I wound up running the strap to a hole further back to keep the strap from sliding off This picture portends a mistake, but I didn\u0026#39;t catch it until after the glue setup. Can you? After everything had setup, I took off all the clamps and straps and took a look at how I did.\nFront edge attached well with few/no gaps That squeeze out I didn\u0026#39;t cleanup will make attaching the doubler a little tough though Closeup of starboard side overhang and leftover screw holes The mastbox with a little squeezeout here and there And here\u0026#39;s the mistake Overall pretty good. Turns out the one thing I had missed was that, for some reason, I had put three clamps along the port side of the mastbox to ensure the roof was held down there, but I only put two along the starboard side. And you can see that the roof flexed up slightly on that side. It\u0026rsquo;s noticeable if you know to look for it, but with a slight modification I\u0026rsquo;m going to make to the plans hopefully it becomes even less so.\nAdding the doublers # First the doublers forward of bulkhead 2. I needed to cleanup the squeezed out glue forward of bulkhead 2 that I didn\u0026rsquo;t do before (which was a pain), and I cut the doubler out of some clear vertical grain fir I had:\nAll the doublers installed and clamped on Closeup of the corner where the two doublers meet The weep hole matched up in the doubler Once the glue had dried, I cut off the overhang and cleaned up the edges.\nJigsaw worked well to cut off excess Front edge cleaned up On to the doublers aft of bulkhead 4\u0026hellip;\nClamped on Closeup of the corner where the two doublers meet Clamps off but still a lot of cleanup to do That corner looks ok, ready for the side doublers OK this post is getting too long, so I\u0026rsquo;ll cut it off here and start a new (shorter) one for the rest of the work done this past month.\n","date":"15 July 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240715/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Finishing up glassing the cabin sides and getting the roof done","title":"Getting the roof on","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Next was to install the cabin sides. Before I could do that, I had to figure out what I was going to do for portholes, as well as get the cleats installed on bulkheads 2, 3, and 4 in prep for the cabin sides.\nPortholes # I looked briefly at some nice brass portholes, but decided against them. They\u0026rsquo;re all very expensive, and they honestly seemed like overkill for a 12\u0026rsquo; boat. The scamp has pretensions towards being mighty, but it\u0026rsquo;s not mighty, that\u0026rsquo;s kind of the point. So custom portholes it would be.\nI decided to make custom portholes myself. The basic plan for these was pretty simple:\nGet some pre cut 5\u0026quot; diameter pieces of plexiglass that are 1/4\u0026quot; thick - the same thickness as the plywood of the cabin sides themselves. Cut an ever so slightly larger then 5\u0026quot; hole in each cabin side for the porthole. Goal is that after coating the interior edge of the hole with both epoxy and paint that there\u0026rsquo;s just enough room left for the plexiglass to easily fit in there. Cut two round pieces, one each for the interior and exterior of the cabin side, that will be screwed together and form a \u0026ldquo;sandwich\u0026rdquo; that holds the plexiglass in place. I went for an inside diameter here of 4.5\u0026quot; (so 0.25\u0026quot; overlap over the entire plexiglass) and a 6.5\u0026quot; outside diameter (so overlap with the cabin side of 0.75\u0026quot; on all sides) Figuring out exact radii for a given position of the center nail Cutting circles A pile of circles which will turn into portholes I used the same mechanism to cut the perfect circles as I did when cutting the hatch cover holes. You\u0026rsquo;ve just got to remember to cut the outside diameter first.\nFiguring out how to exactly space the holes around the perimeter for the screws was a nice bit of a math trick that brought me back to grade school geometry.\nThe radius of a circle divides the circumference 6 times perfectly Stacking each side and drilling Given that water could potentially get trapped between the two layers of the sandwich if the windows get splashed, I wanted to make sure that everything here is well sealed with epoxy (I could have designed in some drain holes, but decided not to for simplicity). That meant I needed to drill/fill/drill each of the holes for the portholes.\nDrill fill drill Drill *all* of them baby! Turns out, I did this at least three times.\nYou see, when I first drilled the holes, I paid attention to whether I was working on the port or starboard side sandwich halves, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t mark the two halves themselves to make sure that I had the orientation to themselves perfect. And of course since I drilled the holes by hand they weren\u0026rsquo;t perfectly aligned either. And so after doing a cycle of drill/fill/drill I found that not all the holes I drilled secondarily were exactly through the epoxy plug because I hadn\u0026rsquo;t noticed that I had rotated the halves relative to each other. Oops.\nTwo that need to be re-filled Here you can see all five holes are centered in their epoxy plugs Doing it right. Two drill bits setup to index the other four holes, and pencil marks to match orientation I should have used the index marks at least from the beginning, would have saved me some work.\nCabin sides # Now that the portholes and bolt holes were drilled in the cabin sides, it was time to install them. I decided to coat the inside of the cabin sides in three coats of epoxy before installing them, since it was going to be awkward to have to do this after installation.\nThree coats of epoxy Sanded ready for paint after installation I also needed to put some cleats up on the bulkheads to accept the cabin sides.\nNow in dry fitting this all together beforehand, there was a quite a decent sized gap between the edge of the deck (which I had trimmed flush with the edge of the carlin) and the cabin side when installed against the bulkheads. It seems that the size of the \u0026ldquo;gutter\u0026rdquo; left on the bulkheads between where the carlins are installed and where the rise for the cabin side begins was too large.\nIn thinking about how to deal with this, I decided that rather then use a gigantic fillet of some kind, I\u0026rsquo;d just install my cleats a little proud of the bulkhead near the deck and have them gradually taper to flush at the top of each bulkhead.\nHere you can see how the cleat is proud at the base and flush near the top A close up of one of the cleats How much to make them proud was a matter of dry fitting the cabin sides in place and then using clamps to put the cleats in and pushing on the cabin side to make it flush with the deck edge.\nPort side all glued up Starboard side After bevelling the cleats a little bit to match the curve of the cabin sides, installing the cabin sides themselves was relatively straightforward.\nStarboard side all glued up Port side You can see that I used a block with a screw as an extra clamp for the first cleat on both starboard and port. In fact I used two of these on the port side. I obviously pulled these after glue up and filled the screw holes.\nFront edge filletted I also choose to add in the little drainage hole. The plans do indicate this may not be necessary but I can\u0026rsquo;t imagine how, if you omit this, you don\u0026rsquo;t have standing water on your bow.\nThe cabin side top cleat # The last bit needed before moving on to the cabin rooftop is to put a cleat along the outside edge of the cabin sides that can be used to attach the roof to. This turns out to be unfortunately less then straightforward if you use the kit.\nAs many people have noted before I discovered it, the sides of the cabin are cut a little too short - they don\u0026rsquo;t extend all the way up the sides of the bulkheads. If they did, adding a cleat would be a straightforward process of cutting a solid piece of wood, carving out one of the curves, and slapping it on there.\nBut since they\u0026rsquo;re lower, when building the cleat you need something:\nthat extends out sideways from the top edge of each bulkhead, that can eventually be bevelled to match the slope of the roofline and serve as the attachment point for the roof extend down the edge of the bulkhead to the top of the cabin side, to fill in the gap that exists between the top of the cabin side and the top of the bulkhead sides notches out and down the cabin side further, overlapping the top edge of the cabin side, in order to provide more \u0026ldquo;meat\u0026rdquo; for the cleat and the cabin top to bind to. And to make all of this slightly more difficult it\u0026rsquo;s a compound curve - it curves in two planes as it goes from the front to the back of the cabin side.\nI decided to not worry about having the cleat match both curves on the bottom edge - it\u0026rsquo;s going to be flat on my boat. For the top edge, I needed measure the gap that needed to be filled in above the top of the cabin sides.\nI started down the path of using a solid piece of cedar, marking out the curve, and then removing material the thickness of the cabin side below it. This would give me a single piece that would fill the gap, sit down overlapping the cabin side below the gap, and could be bevelled on top.\nIn doing this though I couldn\u0026rsquo;t find an easy way to remove that material. I was working at it with a chisel but found I didn\u0026rsquo;t quite have the patience to really tackle this.\nSo I decided instead to build the cleat in a different fashion.\nFirst I\u0026rsquo;d plane a piece of cedar down to the same thickness as the cabin side plywood, then I\u0026rsquo;d cut out the right curve to match the cabin side top, then glue it to a thicker piece of cedar that would be the main cleat, and then glue the entire assembly on to the boat. So not a single piece of wood, but only a single epoxy glue line (which we all know is stronger then the wood itself), and much easier to make in this two piece fashion.\nFirst you\u0026#39;ve got to plane the wood down to the right thickness Here you can start to see the curve that will need to be traced and cut out The two pieces that will become one cleat I don\u0026rsquo;t have any pictures of the tracing or the cutout (done with a bandsaw), but in the below picture you can see the finished glued-up cleat ready to be installed.\nThe hook at the end corresponds to the aft edge of the cabin side itself Once the two pieces were solid as one, gluing them on to the boat itself was simple.\nPort side Starboard Once this dries I\u0026rsquo;ll need to bevel the top edge and take out a little material in the middle to match the dip of the cabin roof top, but that shouldn\u0026rsquo;t take long with a spoke shave in hand.\n","date":"9 June 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240609/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Making fake portholes so tha I can install the cabin sides","title":"Cabin sides and portholes","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"9 June 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/portholes/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Portholes","type":"tags"},{"content":"In prepping for the Great Glue Down, I first had to put three coats of epoxy on what would become the bottom of the deck, and I had to time this so that I had four days in a row to work on the boat - one coat per day, with the fourth day being the glue-it-on-the-boat day. This required a little scheduling to ensure I had Molly around to help.\nThe epoxy marathon # Gluing the deck down is no joke. It\u0026rsquo;s a lot of epoxy mixed and spread. Even though I\u0026rsquo;ve been using fast pretty consistently, for this glue up I decided to use slow, which was a good call.\nI pre fit the deck, and drilled holes for screws. I don\u0026rsquo;t really like using screws for clamps, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t think I had enough clamps for this glue up and there are some places (such as over the center ahead of bulkhead 2) where clamps can\u0026rsquo;t get, so I had resigned myself to using them. I aimed for screws roughly about every 6 inches, sometimes a bit closer, sometimes a bit further away.\nWe did the glue down in three stages. First stage was mixing all the epoxy for the bow portion back to roughly around bulkhead 3. We mixed all the glue, spread it on the carlins/gunwhales/etc, then put the deck down and screwed/clamped, trying to get it aligned as best we could.\nNext we mixed more glue and did the port side of the deck, raising it in place and propping it up so that we could again spread the glue on the gunwhale and carlin before lowering the deck back down and screwing/clamping it.\nWe finished with the port side. Three sessions, a whole lot of epoxy, and a whole lot of squeeze out.\nStarboard side glued and screwed Port side complete Center, lined up as best I could I will say that the deck didn\u0026rsquo;t fit as exactly as I might expect. While I did find the center of the forward face of bulkhead 2 and the center of the deck, I found that they didn\u0026rsquo;t line up when I put the deck down to ensure it fit side to side, so there was definitely some creative fitting going on. There also wound up being a bit of a larger gap between bulkhead 2 and the edge of the deck then I expected (anywhere from 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch), but that was taken care of with a nice fillet (done by Molly!) and the overall fit worked out - I just wound up trimming more excess off one side of the boat then the other.\nHere you can see the spacing of my screws near the transom, with a few clamps helping out Removing the screws # I didn\u0026rsquo;t do this when putting the uphaul tube in and regretted it, so I decided I\u0026rsquo;d do it this time - I removed all the screws holding the deck down once the epoxy dried and filled them in with thickened epoxy from a syringe.\nIn process All gone To remove the screws, sometimes you needed to heat them up to break the epoxy bond and holding a soldering iron to the screw head for a few seconds did the job nicely. Most of the screws broke away with just a bit of a nudge though, no heat required.\nHoles filled It turns out filling the holes wasn\u0026rsquo;t as easy as I had hoped - it\u0026rsquo;s hard to get the air bubbles out. There is a technique to this where you have to put your syringe all the way to the bottom of the hole and then continue squeezing epoxy out as you slowly pull out the syringe. If you just pull it out, an air bubble will get trapped and revealed after you sand down the epoxy \u0026ldquo;dome\u0026rdquo; leftover.\nAir bubble revealed Gotta go back and fill them again Trimming the deck # A short note to say I trimmed the deck using a cutoff bit in a router. It worked really pretty well except for a couple of situations:\ngiven the angle formed by the deck and the prow, the angle of the cutoff is a bit steep. If I had to do this again, I\u0026rsquo;d cut the front overhang off just using a japanese pull saw Where the router couldn\u0026rsquo;t get (like in close to some of the bulkheads) I wound up having to use a combination of pull saw/sander/rasp anyway. A short aside # A small rant about the drive towards cheap, shitty quality consumer products sold by Amazon. I was running low on tongue depressors, which I use as epoxy stir sticks. I had been using the same box of \u0026rsquo;em for years, so I bought a new box from Amazon.\nLook at the difference in size (and thickness) between the two. Whereas the old ones were quite sturdy and could do quite a bit of work mixing epoxy or paint stuck to sides of containers, these new ones are so flimsy.\nFor shame I\u0026rsquo;m sure somebody ran the numbers to figure out they could make 5% more money by skimping on the size of the tongue depressors, and somebody in Amazon got really excited about being able to offer cheap tongue depressors on their website. Their website is so full of cheap crap. I\u0026rsquo;m increasingly thinking I\u0026rsquo;ll give up and just go to aliexpress - at least they\u0026rsquo;re honest with what they\u0026rsquo;re selling and don\u0026rsquo;t have the \u0026ldquo;brand markup\u0026rdquo; you get on Amazon (for likely the same product made in the same factory in China).\nFinishing the painting # Last bit of work while epoxy was drying on the boat was to finish up the painting of the various bits and pieces so that I could reclaim my work table.\nBottom of the centerboard cap done, getting ready to paint the topside All done, except for the lazarette doors - they\u0026#39;ll get done later I still need to paint the topsides of the lazarette doors, they\u0026rsquo;ll get done a little later after some more construction work that requires the benchtop (like cleats for the cabin sides/top among other things).\n","date":"15 May 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240515/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Deck glued down, hatch covers painted","title":"Decked out, ready to go","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I was mentally preparing myself for a slog of sanding, priming, sanding, painting. And so a slog it was, just not as long as I originally thought.\nDeck prep # I decided after all not to paint the cockpit yet. I\u0026rsquo;ve applied three coats of epoxy and sanded it, so it\u0026rsquo;s all ready for paint, but decided that painting first meant I\u0026rsquo;d have potentially more tricky cleanup to do if epoxy dripped on to a painted surface and hardened. So I just got ready for paint, without actually getting there.\nThe cockpit fully sanded and ready for paint Even redid the footwell, which enjoys torturing me I also got all of the hatch covers, the centerboard case cover, and the lazarette doors epoxied, sanded, and ready for paint.\nA stack of things ready for primer The saga of paint # In prep for painting the hatch covers et al (I really just wanted to finish them to get them out of the way in the shop - they were taking up too much precious workbench space) I discovered that I had bought two cans of brightsides paint that was slightly different in colour - one was \u0026ldquo;Hatteras Off White\u0026rdquo; and one was \u0026ldquo;Hatteras Off White (1990)\u0026rdquo;. Even better, one was bought at Fisheries, the other online from a sale at West Marine.\nAlso, after discussion with the chief critic, it was determined that I really didn\u0026rsquo;t want either of these colours, but rather I just wanted a straight white.\nProblem: I can\u0026rsquo;t return them.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t even try to return the one I got on sale at West Marine because it\u0026rsquo;s west marine. When I tried to return the other one to Fisheries, they told me that:\nBrightsides was now discontinued, replaced by Toplac (what?!? But you\u0026rsquo;re still selling it?!?) They couldn\u0026rsquo;t take my can back because I bought it too long ago (and it was discontinued) Toplac isn\u0026rsquo;t even a polyurethane but rather an alkyd enamel. And this paint is bloody expensive stuff. And I already bought two quarts of yellow for the hull too. Shit.\nSo it\u0026rsquo;s a bit of a crappy situation. I now have two pints of polyurethane paint that will be hard to get rid of. For the white paint, rather then go with brightsides again, I decided to go with a local company and bought a satin White from Marshall\u0026rsquo;s Cove. Hopefully they\u0026rsquo;re not in the habit of cancelling product lines.\nIt is an alkyd enamel, which I\u0026rsquo;ve never used before (I\u0026rsquo;m used to polyurethanes only), but might as well give it a go and see if I like it.\nNow while I heard polyurethanes don\u0026rsquo;t need primer to stick to (sanded) epoxy, I don\u0026rsquo;t know if the same holds true for alkyd enamels. So I\u0026rsquo;m running a bit of a test.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve primed the hatch covers, the centerboard case cover, and the bottoms and sides of the lazarette doors (I also used the old primer I had, Epoxy Pre-Kote from brightsides, not the primer that Marshall\u0026rsquo;s cove supports. Geez I hate it when companies kill product lines). They\u0026rsquo;ll all get two coats of the enamel on top.\nPrimer applied and sanded smooth, ready for paint For the tops of the lazarette doors, I intend to paint directly on to the epoxy without primer - we\u0026rsquo;ll see how it performs.\nGluing up the deck # Since the hull was coming together it was time to actually glue the deck together. This required moving things around quite a bit in the garage to make enough floor space for it all. Had to wait for a dry day so things could spill out to the driveway during the shuffle.\nEpoxy applied and weights sitting on each glue joint to keep em flat These actual puzzle joints were a little tight. I didn\u0026rsquo;t pre-fit, and I\u0026rsquo;m glad I didn\u0026rsquo;t, since I doubt i would have been able to get them apart for glue. As it was, a few whacks from a rubber mallet were needed on pretty much every joint to get them inserted and aligned properly.\nGlue dried, plastic sandwhich unwrapped on each joint A lightly sanded joint All cleaned up - came out nice! The deck is now ready for a marathon glue up session.\n","date":"30 April 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240430/","section":"My scamp","summary":"More progress in April - the boat now has a deck!","title":"April showers bring boat decks to keep the rain out","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"29 March 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/cleats/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cleats","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"29 March 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/lessons/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Lessons","type":"tags"},{"content":"Next up was getting ready to put the deck on. Not actually putting the deck on, just doing all the work necessary to get ready to put the deck on.\nCenterboard uphaul line # So first up was to finally drill the hole for the centerboard uphaul line. I had been putting this off while I waited for the special turning block to arrive from Duckworks, and that wound up being back ordered for a good 8 months (sigh), but it finally arrived.\nWhen positioning the hole I needed to:\nmeasure down from the top of the inside to make sure the rope will not hit the centerboard cover. My cover has roughly a 1\u0026quot; piece of cedar that extends down into the centerboard case when installed, so the rope definitely had to come out lower then that. Also make sure that the rope enters the case at a place roughly even with the top of the centerboard when it is all the way up. This makes sure it is as easy as possible to raise the centerboard all the way. Ensure the exit hole on the front of bulkhead 4 is such that It\u0026rsquo;s the right distance away from the edge to fit the turn block correctly It\u0026rsquo;s far enough down such that once the turn block turns it around the corner the rope is below the cockpit cleats for the rowing seat All told, there was a lot going on to make sure that this was positioned correctly. Ideally I would have wanted it to slope downward as it entered the centerboard case as well so that any water would drain down back into the centerboard case, but as it happens, given my requirements above, it actually sloped the other way. Oh well, if water gets into this thing I\u0026rsquo;m probably sinking already ;)\nThe positioning and angle of my uphaul line Lined up with top of retracted centerboard And of course, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t you know it, but the perfect positioning for the hole had me lined up to drill through one of the few screws I had used to attach the centerboard case to bulkhead 4.\nHad to drill through this screw (Next boat I build when I use screws for clamps I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to remove them all and fill the holes with epoxy - otherwise they just get in the way like this, and contribute to potential problems down the road if water gets to \u0026rsquo;em)\nFor the copper tube that fit in the hole I bought a very expensive pipe flaring tool from home depot and used it to flare one end of the pipe before promptly returning it. I also needed to figure out if I needed to flare the holes themselves to accept the flared pipe or whether the act of flaring the pipe would compress the wood enough.\nOn the left, the hole is flared, on the right it\u0026#39;s not. You can see it\u0026#39;s quite proud on the right side And so I flared each end of the hole itself so that the pipe would better sit in it.\nHole flared ready for the copper tube File marks on the uphaul tube so the epoxy can hold on Add some plumbers putty so that as the tube is inserted into the hole no epoxy gets stuck inside the tube itself After trying my best to seal the inside of the hole first with unthickened epoxy (allowing the bare wood to suck up all it needed) and secondly with thickened epoxy, I put a bunch in the hole and then slid the copper tube through. At that point it was time to flare the other side.\nBolt inserted in tube ready to tighten Screw head will flare copper pipe nicely as it\u0026#39;s tightened The final result. The flares on both sides of the tube are pretty flat with the wood surface and overall look pretty good. You can see the epoxy drip down the centerboard case from the hole - shoulda put some tape below to catch that, but oh well, a little extra impact reistance for that part of the centerboard case now I guess.\nNicely flared with a drip Just nicely flared Cleat backing # Next up was adding backing plates for cleats. Figuring out where to put these was more difficult than it needed to be, and I\u0026rsquo;m still not sure I\u0026rsquo;m completely settled on this. Some scamps have two cleats for fenders, some have three, and the location of all of them is a little up in the air.\nAt any rate, I wanted these to be super strong, so I bought some quartersawn white oak 1x stock and cut out a few pieces to fit between the hull and the carlins. I cut pieces to fit between bulkheads 6 and 7, 5 and 6, and 4 and 5, but only installed the ones now between 4 and 5. The others I will potentially install after the deck goes on to make installation a little easier with just gluing directly to the underside of the deck.\nStarboard side Port side After epoxying these in I had to take a little wood off the top to shape them to fit the deck camber and found the easiest way to do that was with my grinder and a sanding disc installed - quartersawn white oak is no joke.\nEpoxy Coats # With the uphaul tube installed and the backing plates installed for at least one set of cleats, last up is to prepare the cockpit of the boat itself, since after the deck goes on access will become harder. So I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to epoxy coat/sand/prime/paint the entire thing before putting the deck on. At this point, I\u0026rsquo;ve just done the epoxy coats (three in the cockpit, three on all of the hatch covers).\nEpoxy coated cockpit, pre sanding Epoxy coated hatchcovers Next up is sanding, priming, and painting. I also just learned that even Russell Brown, he of the boat building firm and author of epoxy boat building books, believes that paint sticks just fine to sanded epoxy without primer, so I don\u0026rsquo;t really need the primer after all, but at this point I bought it so I\u0026rsquo;m going with it\u0026hellip;\n","date":"29 March 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240329/","section":"My scamp","summary":"A few updates through the month of March","title":"Marching through March with odd job progress","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Although I\u0026rsquo;ve built a spot for a motor mount into this scamp, I\u0026rsquo;m thinking I\u0026rsquo;m at least going to start out with just oars. To that end, I went and bought the 9\u0026rsquo; break down Sawyer oars that Duckworks sells specifically for the scamp.\nThe first one I cut - too big on the starboard side I can\u0026rsquo;t obviously store these in the cockpit since with my lazarette they\u0026rsquo;d stick forward into the cubby and be in the way, so instead I\u0026rsquo;m going to store them up underneath the cockpit seat coaming. In order to make that work though, a small notch needs to be cut out of bulkhead 7 on either side so that the paddle blade will fully fit under the cockpit seat coaming when installed.\nCutting these was pretty straightforward - drill a hole at the end of the length, then use a coping saw to cut edges out to the center of the boat and straighten them out/clean them up with a rasp.\nHole drilled Notch cut out The second one I cut out was a little shorter and smaller and worked perfectly for holding the edge of the paddle blade when tucked up vertical under the seat coaming and set back against the transom.\nA pretty darn fine fit. I also had some maple lying around the shop, and I wanted to create a row of cleats along the bow. I figured the outer ones would initally be helpful in capturing the carlins when they were glued in (which they were), and eventually after adding the inner ones too I\u0026rsquo;d have a large stretch of area for the deck to glue down to and for bow hardware to bite into when I get that far.\nInstalled across the front edge and planed/sanded down About 3 inches back and an inch thick provides plenty of meat for hardware ","date":"1 February 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240201/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Adding some bow cleats and chocks for the oars","title":"Bow cleats and paddle chocks","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Most of the wood in my boat, if not okoume plywood, is cedar. At the start of the build I went and bought a few big pieces of clear cedar thinking I\u0026rsquo;d need them for all sorts of parts. As it turns out, I used a lot of them for cleats, which would have been fine with good ol cheap pine 2x4s from the local home improvement store, but oh well.\nScarfing # As it was, I thought that I\u0026rsquo;d use the cedar to build the carlins and gunwales. Only problem was that it wasn\u0026rsquo;t long enough - I bought 8' boards but needed closer to 13\u0026rsquo; for the gunwales. So I set out to scarf them using a jig I built that would give me a 10:1 scarf.\nNails allow for changeable angle Nice even cut in progress It worked pretty well, and I scarfed together five different lengths of cedar to give me enough pieces to do the carlins and gunwales with one left over.\nAnd then I figured out - wait, I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to steam bend these. And epoxy doesn\u0026rsquo;t like getting steam-levels-of-hot. Crap.\nSteaming # So then I went and bought a very long, very expensive piece of clear vertical grain (cvg) fir, and ripped it down to the necessary size to support gunwales and carlins.\nI built a little steamer out of two 10\u0026rsquo; lengths of 4\u0026quot; PVC pipe capped on both ends and connected by a T (for some reason I didn\u0026rsquo;t take any photos of this at all).\nAnd then I invited over my dad, brother, and a nephew to help steaming and clamping the gunwales on to the boat. A few things learned:\nIn order to give them a \u0026ldquo;dry run\u0026rdquo;, I had them bend on one of the scarfed cedar pieces just so they could get the hang of it. Turns out while they did this, the cedar didn\u0026rsquo;t break. The steamer setup didn\u0026rsquo;t work very well. The first piece was held in steam only and it only sort of got hot (I was using a wall paper steamer as my source of heat and this wasn\u0026rsquo;t powerful enough). It had an effect on the wood, but not much. The second piece of wood was actually sitting in some water that had collected in the steamer, and when that piece came out it was super bendy and easy to put on the boat. So next time, check to see if steaming is really necessary, and if it is, consider just straight up boiling the wood as opposed to steaming it - it\u0026rsquo;ll probably work better.\nGunwales # First gunwale bent on After getting the outer gunwales bent on, I left them clamped to the boat for a couple of weeks while life (Christmas, gall bladder removal, etc) got in the way.\nWhen it was time to attach them for good, I drove a few pilot holes for screws both through the gunwales from the outside in and from the inside of the hull out through the gunwales. These kept the pieces aligned during glue up.\nIs that a pretty fair curve? Looks pretty fair to me Turns out I must not have used the right size pilot hole bit since I had the pieces start to split on me in a couple of places as I tightened the screws down, but none of them broke outright and they were all being epoxied in place along their length so I didn\u0026rsquo;t worry about the cracks much.\nCarlins # For the carlins, I decided I\u0026rsquo;d put on the carlins one at a time, gluing the first to each of the bulkheads, waiting for that to setup, then gluing the second along the entire length to the first. This worked really well and needed no screws and resulted in no split wood.\nFirst carlin clamped on I also decided to try using the cedar pieces instead of the fir. I don\u0026rsquo;t really know why I decided to try this, other then just to see if it was possible. Maybe I thought I could find another use for the spare fir strips I cut out but would have a harder time finding a use for the spare scarfed cedar strips.\nAs it turns out, I was able to bend them in without needing to steam them first just fine.\nIs that a pretty fair curve? Looks pretty fair to me Turns out that these aren\u0026#39;t that fair though... ...the scarfs don\u0026#39;t bend well! The pictures above don\u0026rsquo;t really do it justice, but the other effect (unintended in the moment but kind of obvious in hindsight) of using the scarfed cedar strips is that even though I ensured that the scarfs didn\u0026rsquo;t line up side by side in the two strips for a given carlin, the first carlin that went in wasn\u0026rsquo;t the most fair of curves becase that scarf had a hard time bending.\nSo the carlins aren\u0026rsquo;t the most fair. It\u0026rsquo;s most obvious on the port carlin up around bulkheads 2 and 3, so probably won\u0026rsquo;t be noticeable in the finished boat, but still kind of annoying. The clear fir wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have had this problem I\u0026rsquo;m sure.\nAttaching the second carlin to the first A couple of clamps were used to keep them even top to bottom as the glue set After the carlins setup, it was time to plane down the tops of both gunwales and carlins to get them to flat and matching the tops of the bulkheads. I mostly used my spokeshave and a small handplane for this.\nLots of curls as planing in progress Pretty flat ","date":"31 January 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20240131/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Cutting and attaching the gunwales and carlins","title":"Carlins and (outer) gunwales","type":"scamp"},{"content":"For Christmas for 2023 Molly and I decided that for a couple of our friends I should build some cribbage boards for them. I had previously built one and it turned out really well, so I tackled it again.\nOf course, I forgot to take pictures during the construction. So this is mostly an after-the-fact documentation.\nThe first one I made during the summer mostly as an experiment for myself. It turned out well, with a light blue epoxy piece that was nicely translucent. For a finish I used a light beeswax style finish that allowed the wood grain to show through but wasn\u0026rsquo;t a high gloss.\nFor the two boards for Christmas, I decided to try a different finish, a high gloss polyurethane (I was going to varnish them but decided to try something I\u0026rsquo;d never used before).\nSanded, ready for another coat Another coat applied As it happens, I learned that applying high gloss polyurethane well is quite difficult to get right and not leave streaks. In fact the finishing process was taking so long that in order to get one of the boards into the mail and shipped across country in time for Christmas we shipped the one I built during the summer, allowing me to work on the remaining two right up until the day before Christmas.\nI was aiming for roughly about 5 coats, but found that I couldn\u0026rsquo;t apply an overall coat at one time - putting the board down on paint triangles wound up leaving a mark at the points where the triangles held the piece up, marks that were very visible with high gloss. So that meant I needed to put five coats on the bottom, and then flip it over and apply five coats to the top and sides - double the amount of time to apply.\nAnd then, of course, I found that applying an even coat with no runs was very difficult. Most of the stuff online implied I should apply polyurethane with a high quality bristle brush, which is what I did, but I could not get this to dry smoothly. The bristle brush applied a decent amount of product, but that caused drips. If I cut down the amount applied, it would leave streaks. The answer? Apply the last coat or two with foam brushes, and it finally (finally!) turned out.\n(Almost) finished product After applying the finish the holes needed to be drilled. Even with applying a layer of masking tape directly to the surface to help with tear out I noticed what looked like tear out in some of the holes though\u0026hellip;\nIs that tear out? As it turns out, it wasn\u0026rsquo;t tear out - it was able to be picked off carefully with a fingernail. Rather then tear out, it looked like the top layer wasn\u0026rsquo;t completely detached from the drill hole, which is what you see left behind. Some was able to be carefully picked off, the rest I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure will simply fall off as the cribbage board gets used.\nFinal one, finished post Christmas I do like how they turned out. I have a better idea of how to apply the polyurethane finish, and while I think I like the high gloss a little better, it\u0026rsquo;s much more work to apply, so all in all a wash between the two.\n","date":"26 December 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/builds/cribbage-boards2023/","section":"Previous builds","summary":"A couple of cribbage boards for Christmas gifts 2023","title":"Cribbage Boards for 2023","type":"builds"},{"content":"","date":"26 December 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/finished/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Finished","type":"tags"},{"content":" Some pictures and notes of things I\u0026rsquo;ve previously built. ","date":"26 December 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/builds/","section":"Previous builds","summary":" Some pictures and notes of things I\u0026rsquo;ve previously built. ","title":"Previous builds","type":"builds"},{"content":"A few smaller jobs that have been completed in the here and there over the past month or two.\nBow eye # I\u0026rsquo;m not actually going to install this yet, since I think I\u0026rsquo;m going to fibreglass the front of the boat, which will be easier to do without the boweye installed. That said, I did want to install the backing plate and drill/fill/drill a hole for the bolt.\nDrill guide definitely comes in handy Drill bit is juuuust long enough I don\u0026rsquo;t have pictures of the process but you can see in the second picture above the small backing plate I epoxied in. Made of the same oak as the bungy hold downs, it\u0026rsquo;s probably not strictly necessary (a washer would have been fine) but I went for it anyway.\nI have a stainless steel bow eye that I picked up from Admiral ship supply for the bow eye. I actually placed an order for a bronze one with PT foundry, but even though I went in person and placed it, they lost my order/never got back to me, so oh well. Based on this occurence I\u0026rsquo;ll outfit the scamp with stainless steel hardware instead of bronze. The foundry just lost a little business, they probably don\u0026rsquo;t care.\nStorage carabiners # An idea from the forums that I liked was to add some holes in strategic places before the cabin top gets glued on that will allow you to hang items in the front cubby so they don\u0026rsquo;t move around as much as the boat moves (or capsizes). I liked this idea, so a few holes were drilled and then coated a few times in epoxy.\nFour along the cabintop carlins between B2 and B3 A couple drilled into B2 I also put one into the stem up near where the boweye comes through, although I guess I didn\u0026rsquo;t take a picture of that.\nI had to order the carabiners first to make sure the holes I drilled were big enough for them :wink:\nPainting lazarette and forward cubby # Finally as it was getting closer to time to put the deck down, the forward cubby needed to be primed and painted, and I did the lazarette at the same time (as well as the bottoms only of the hatch covers, though I don\u0026rsquo;t have any photos of that).\nEpoxy PrimeKote on the lazarette... ...and on the forward cubby I eventually wound up painting both of these with two coats of the grey bilgekote as well, though I guess no pictures of that.\n","date":"7 December 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20231207/","section":"My scamp","summary":"A few smaller jobs all complete","title":"Bits and bobs","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"7 December 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/boweye/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"BowEye","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"7 December 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/storage/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Storage","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"30 November 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/hatches/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Hatches","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"30 November 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/lazarette/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Lazarette","type":"tags"},{"content":"The top of the lazarette I decided to make out of a doubled piece of 9mm plywood. This makes the lazarette thick enough to match the thickness of the butt hinges I chose, as well as making it plenty beefy to stand up to an anchor and chain bouncing around inside of it trying to get out.\nTop in place in the down position I had to wait until now to finish the lazarette top because the motor mount needed to be completely installed first - that butted all the way down to the top edge of the aft cleat the lazarette would rest on, and once the motor mount was finished I could extend that with a firring strip all the way across the cleat so that the top of the lazarette oculd be a uniform width.\nHere you can see the firring strip back against the transom Once the dimensions were worked out, I needed to pull out my handy router template and again route notches in for the hinges, this time on the lid of the lazarette itself.\nClamped down ready to go A closer look at the bit itself After a little cleanup work with the file The hinge fits well! Pretty good fit Hinge should fit well and be nearly flush ","date":"30 November 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20231130/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Started working on the top for the lazarette","title":"Lazarette top in progress","type":"scamp"},{"content":"The hatches are going to have a small loop of cord through them to be used as pulls to open them. Those will be fed through a small hole in the hatch cover on the inboard side of the hatch.\nLocation of hole for pull toggle Drilled, still need to fill and dril a smaller hole Also, similar to when I did this for the under seat storage areas, I glued in a few more bungie attachment points, this time to hold in the covers for the bulkhead 3 hatch doors.\nTwo on the mast box, one high and one low And one glued to the hull on either side, low I\u0026rsquo;ll need to glue in one more on the inside of the cabin sides between bulkhead 3 and 2 once I get those installed.\n","date":"7 November 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20231107/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Gluing in bungie attachment points","title":"Hatch cover work","type":"scamp"},{"content":"After reading the forums for a while, I started to get nervous about how big I had made my hatch openings in bulkhead 3. Compared to even the \u0026ldquo;big\u0026rdquo; openings other poeple put on the forums, mine seem larger. I started to worry a bit about how much lateral stress the mast and mast box would put on this bulkhead.\nNow in reality, I probably had nothing to worry about here, as the holes I cut out have pretty hefty plywood backer plates, and I imagine almost all of the load is applied through bulkhead 3 to the surrounding cabin and deck which actually take the strain, so it\u0026rsquo;s probably just fine.\nBut I decided I\u0026rsquo;d retroactively add a layer of fibreglass to bulkhead 3 just in case. This would have been way easier to do before I even installed it in the boat, at the same time I cut out the access hatches in the first place, but oh well, this worked ok.\nFirst you have to tape off the backing plate surfaces Starboard side all taped Then I cut out some 6oz fibreglass to size.\nClamped in place for now Here playing with the idea of reattaching the sides (I won\u0026#39;t) And applied a coat of epoxy\nReady to trim Another view After it dried I trimmed away the extra fibreglass.\nStarting to trim away excess The tape did it\u0026#39;s job - very little excess epoxy Eventually three coats of epoxy were applied to fill the weave and sanded smooth. There were a couple of bubbles in the overall coat that got sanded through, but overall I think this was a success for adding a ton more strength to the bulkhead, and after paint it\u0026rsquo;ll look great.\n","date":"2 November 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20231102/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Deciding to add a layer of fibreglass to bulkhead 3","title":"Reinforcing bulkhead 3","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Gluing the seat tops down was a bit anti climactic. Most of the effort was in the prep of painting, cutting hatch holes, etc.\nFirst sand the underside epoxy so the cleats... ...can bond really well with the seat top Of course before the seat tops could be permanently affixed I also had to finish putting the two coats of bilgekote on.\nBilgekote applied, drying engaged That said, seeing the seat tops glued in is quite nice.\nGlued down solid The other thing finished was to glue in the final top doubler part of the motor mount that attaches to the transom above the line of seat top/lazarette in the stern.\nThe entire assembly wanted to slide upwards here from the clamping pressure That top clamp did a lot of work holding it in place ","date":"27 October 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20231027/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Finish painting seat storage areas and glue the seat tops down","title":"Gluing seat tops and finishing the motor mount","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"27 October 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/motormount/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"MotorMount","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"27 October 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/seats/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Seats","type":"tags"},{"content":"The top of the lazarette needs to be in two pieces - a single piece would be too large to swing open via hinges and still clear the tiller. I suppose I could have built a removable top, but I thought that would just get in the way when futzing with the anchor.\nIn order to have the two pieces swing open, one to either side of the boat, I found some regular butt hinges. By adding a thin layer of plywood along the seat tops I created enough height to perfectly allow the hinges to be mortised in flush. This would also give me a double-plywood thickness lazarette cover which could stand up to some anchor abuse (yes, I still overbuilt this).\nGluing on the lazarette hinge doubler for one side And for the other side In order to mortise out notches for the hinges I built a little guide for my router.\nRouter guide for a top bearing router bit Clamped into position, ready to go What the router leaves behind After some cleanup, mostly with a rasp and chisel Closeup of a cleaned up mortise The other thing I did was to cleanup the various cleats. I coated them all in epoxy and sanded them down again to get them smooth, applying fillets in a couple of places as well in prep for adding fibreglass later.\nView of lower motor mount doubler Rear port side cleat. Really shows how this should have just been a single 2x4 Top edges flat and ready for epoxy After the cleanup, some of the mortises were a little too deep, which is actually perfect because I wanted to seal the edge grain plywood with thickened epoxy (and indeed later I\u0026rsquo;ll even drill/fill/drill holes for the hinge screws to make sure they\u0026rsquo;re biting into epoxy and not edge grain plywood).\nPost epoxy seal and flattening with rasp Closeup of hinge mortise filled with thickened epoxy to correct depth The last step was to actually fibreglass the inside of the lazarette locker. Again, an anchor and chain is going to be rattling around in here, so I wanted to make sure it was extra tough to stand up to the abuse.\nFibreglass applied, along with epoxy painted on to surfaces to seal them Here you can see the filler I used in the gutters to smooth them out Note that there is still an air gap in the gutter underneath the front edge of the lazarette and the cockpit sole - water will be able to drain through here into the footwell where it will get dealt with like all the other water that gets into the boat.\n","date":"9 October 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20231009/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Finishing cleat work and cleanup, mitring in the hinges","title":"More lazarette work","type":"scamp"},{"content":"With the cleats in place for the Lazarette I could work on more getting more of the motor mount done. I had already glued in a doubler underneath the starboard side seat back here, I needed to expand the area covered by backing plates though. The back cleat for the lazarette, being built out of 2x4, was thick enough that a lag screw could be sunk into that for a motor mount if need be, but not below that cleat in the lazarette locker itself on the transom down to the sole.\nSo backer pieces were glued in there.\nMotor mount backer boards Close up view A bit more perspective showing where these are The other progress made was to start painting the under seat storage areas in prep for closing them in by gluing the seat tops down.\nFor the seat sections I primed them using prekote epoxy primer - this is a two part primer that dries rock hard and stinks\nStarboard side primed Both sides primed I only did one coat of primer before applying two coats of BilgeKote (in \u0026ldquo;battleship grey\u0026rdquo; as one person put it).\nThe other side also looks like this now ","date":"7 October 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20231007/","section":"My scamp","summary":"One more part of the motor mount complete, and painting the seat storage areas","title":"Motor Mount and More Paint","type":"scamp"},{"content":"With the sole down, I actually got into the boat for the first time, and I realized a couple of things:\nthe cockpit was very long. Very long. there was no good place to store an anchor on this boat. With tiller based boats, one of the common setups you see is some kind of storage solution strapped or buckled down underneath the swing of the tiller in the cockpit, since that space isn\u0026rsquo;t really usable otherwise. I was also thinking about where I\u0026rsquo;d store my anchor, as it would have to be back aft somewhere (no going forward on a scamp while it\u0026rsquo;s afloat).\nThe wisdom, as far as I can tell, among scamp owners is that anchors get stashed in buckets kept in the forward cubby, and lazarettes are pretty popular for under tiller storage.\nI decided I\u0026rsquo;d build myself a wet locker lazarette and keep my anchor and chain there, out of the way.\nBuy the anchor # So since I was building this freehand, first thing first was to buy the anchor and size the locker to fit.\nI settled on a Mantus galvanized hook anchor (I bought this one thinking I\u0026rsquo;d keep it taken apart, before I realized that\u0026rsquo;s not really a viable option). I\u0026rsquo;m glad I bought it before starting to size the locker.\nAnchor sitting where Lazarette will go With board clamped across top of seats, you can see anchor is slightly too tall Originally I bought a small Rocna, but the problem shown in the second picture above was much more pronounced - the Rocna just wouldn\u0026rsquo;t fit if I built the top of the lazarette at roughly the same height as the bench tops.\nBut the above will work. With a locking top (which I\u0026rsquo;d want anyway, since there\u0026rsquo;s a heavy anchor \u0026amp; chain in there - don\u0026rsquo;t want that to spill out in a capsize!) it just barely pushes the end of the anchor down, the other side pivots up, and the whole thing fits underneath the level of the seat tops. Perfect.\nThe seat back # For the forward edge of the lazarette I decided that this was going to turn into a seat back. Sitting on the bottom of the cockpit, tiller pushed to one side, leaning back against the front of the lazarette, feet in the footwell. So I had to determine what a comfortable angle for the seat back should be.\nThe floor beneath that stool is roughly the same depth as the footwell Trial and error to find a comfortable angle Once I found a comfortable angle by sitting on the stool with the back at various different angles, I then transferred that to cleats that I glued into the cockpit.\nClamping cleats in at the comfortable angle Then, when cutting the seat back out, the long edges will be cut using a bevel with this same angle to make sure they sit flat against the sole of the boat as well as the lazarette top.\nSetting the table saw bevel angle Cleats # Finally, I needed to cut some cleats to fit along the transom and on the front edge of both the port and starboard seats to support what will become the flip up top of the lazarette. These I had to cut piecemeal in order to make sure that they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t interfere with the fit of the hatch covers in each seat.\nAll the cleats glued in I made the cleats out of a 2x4 I had sitting around, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t cut it down at all (indeed I even added another cross piece made out of oak) as I figured the lazarette seat top needed to be quite strong to hold the anchor in as well as holding me out when I step on getting in \u0026amp; out of the boat. I probably overbuilt it.\nI also could have just used a single 2x4 across the entire width of the transom, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t think my entire plan through from the beginning so I started with two cleats in either corner of the lazarette, and then wound up adding the cleat between them all along the transom. Oh well!\nTook the opportunity to put in the cockpit side cleats All cleated up ","date":"15 September 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230915/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Starting to mock up and build a lazarette in the aft end of the cockpit","title":"The start of a lazarette","type":"scamp"},{"content":"When last I wrote I was still thinking about using the same style hatches I used in the seats in the cockpit sole itself. The main thing they have going for them is that they\u0026rsquo;re big - easy access.\nHowever, I started to think twice about this. One of the annoyances of the scamp design is that it\u0026rsquo;s not self bailing. Not really a fault I suppose - most boats this small aren\u0026rsquo;t. Some people have fit scuppers to help drain the boat of water while under way (indeed the main design calls for them), but from what I could tell:\nthe design calling for the scuppers came before the footwell. Now that the footwell is there, that is definitely the lowest part of the boat and where all the water will collect. from comments on the forums, the scuppers don\u0026rsquo;t work well anyway So my boat won\u0026rsquo;t have scuppers, and will have no drainage in the cockpit. I expect most of the water to collect in the footwell itself. That said, if I have leaky hatches in the sole, then instead of just having a single low point that I have to pump/bail out, I\u0026rsquo;ll have water in all three - not great.\nI also started to think about storage and what I was going to put where. the bow storage is so voluminous and easy to get to that apparently most people use it heavily (so much so that boat trim sometimes becomes a problem). I will have easy access to below my seats, so provided I keep weight balanced they\u0026rsquo;ll work well. I realized I may not need much access to the area below the sole. It might be nice for food since I will sail on the cold pacific ocean, but that\u0026rsquo;s probably it.\nSo I went back to using armstrong hatches, and I judged what size to use in each case by what would fit my dry bags - most of my dry bags are 10L or smaller and they fit well through a medium size armstrong hatch, so that\u0026rsquo;s what I went with.\nFirst came the rear part of the sole near the stern.\nMark where the bulkheads will wind up on the underside Cut underhatch supports to fit Then hatch covers in the front portion, one on each side and one for the water tank.\nHard to clamp this in such tight quarters I think I need more of the really small clamps Painting the bilge # My other boat, Loyal, uses Interlux Bilgekote in the bilge, and it works pretty well. I had to do a repair on Loyal\u0026rsquo;s transom and needed to reapply some bilgekote, and Mackenzie Devlin, who was helping me with some work at the time, told me to just apply it directly to the epoxied fibreglass. If you look on the instructions for Bilgekote it specifically tells you not to do this, but rather to use primekote first when applying on epoxy, in order to deal with any amine blush. But I only use system three epoxy, which doesn\u0026rsquo;t generate amine blushes. So what to do?\nWell, I\u0026rsquo;m going to experiment. I applied bilgekote directly without any primer underneath the sole. Underneath the seats I\u0026rsquo;ll apply the primer first and then bilgekote. I\u0026rsquo;ll see how they last.\n(In reality I don\u0026rsquo;t really need to apply bilgekote at all - I could just apply another coat of epoxy to ensure the wood is sealed and then leave it be since it\u0026rsquo;s all under deck and out of the light anyway.)\nAll of these compartments except the footwell will be painted Closeup of the forward compartments after a coat Below you can see a closeup of the stern most under deck area after two coats of bilgekote (and before I had sanded down the tops of the bulkheads to get to clean wood for gluing the sole down). You can see here that I did not put in the braces for the scuppers but rather continued the side cleats all the way to the transom, and that I was briefly exploring the possibility of putting foam back here for a little more positive floatation (I wound up not doing this).\nInteresting idea but no foam for me Cutting out the sole doubler # Now I need to cut out spaces in the sole doubler for all of the armstrong hatches. By cutting the hatches into the bottom layer of the sole only, the top of the hatch will be relatively flush with the top of the sole doubler, and I can leave a \u0026ldquo;drainage ditch\u0026rdquo; around each hatch cover that will allow water to drain to the sides of the cockpit and eventually find it\u0026rsquo;s way to the footwell.\nDoubler with cutouts made By giving each hatch a nice gutter, sometimes little \u0026ldquo;islands\u0026rdquo; are cut out and left behind. I collected those and glued them back in place.\n\u0026#34;Island\u0026#34; glued in place in the aft section of the sole Last steps before gluing everything down:\nRound over the top edges of the sole doubler with the router to take off the sharp edges Drill a few drainage holes in the doubler itself as detailed in the build manual to allow for epoxy squeeze out Drill a few alignment holes as well so that the sole and doubler would be aligned post glue up The aft section glued down, \u0026#34;island\u0026#34; in place Weights helping hold down the forward section during glue up The sole, in place ","date":"29 August 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230829/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Cutting and gluing in the cockpit sole and it\u0026rsquo;s doubler","title":"This boat now has soul","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Right around this time (but before I officially glued the cabinet sole down) I did a few other smaller jobs. Here are some of them.\nWater tank fill hole # Drill press lined up I had been thinking that I would wait until I flipped the hull over in order to drill the through hull for the water tank fill hole. I thought this might be the easiest way forward:\nI wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure if the build cradle was in the way of where the hole would appear. Drilling it after the boat was flipped would make it obvious I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hit anything. Fibreglassing the hull would be just plain easier if it was flat with no holes that I had to worry about, particularly epoxy dripping through and filling the threads in the garboard drain plug I figured I could drill a very small pilot hole while the boat was right side up, fibreglass over it on the hull, and then use that to line up the hole going the other way. In the end, I decided I was probably overthinking this. So I drilled the hole for the garboard drain plug itself, along with pilot holes for the screws used to hold the plug down (although really I just used a bunch of epoxy - that\u0026rsquo;s what\u0026rsquo;s holding it in), and attached it.\nI didn\u0026rsquo;t hit anything when drilling through the hull (and geez, if I had, that build cradle would have been poorly designed), and you can see in the image that I\u0026rsquo;ve used plumbers putty to seal the threads while epoxying it in - I\u0026rsquo;ll likely do the same once the boat is flipped over and I\u0026rsquo;m fibreglassing the hull.\nGlued in Centerboard trunk cap # With getting the seats ready to glue on, it was time to figure out the centerboard trunk cap. The plans call for \u0026ldquo;permanently\u0026rdquo; attaching this to the boat by putting long 3\u0026quot; screws through the top of the trunk to hold the cap on, but I prefer the idea of an easier-to-remove cap system. I\u0026rsquo;ve never sailed a centerboard boat (or daggerboard, for that matter) that didn\u0026rsquo;t have it get stuck in it\u0026rsquo;s trunk at some point.\nI decided I wanted a relatively tight fighting lid that was held down at both ends. By cutting the trunk opening from the seat top a little short I could get an overhang that the trunk cap fits under, and for the end up near bulkhead 4 I intend to use a small hole with a removable pin that will fit through the bulkhead and hold the front of the cap down.\nFirst step was to put the centerboard into the centerboard case fully raised so that I could make sure everything fit. Then I used some cedar to cut out a block that extends down into the case roughly an inch, and I drilled some pilot holes between the cap itself and the cedar block to make sure everything lined up when glued.\nCedar block nicely fitting in the opening Cap in place, alignment pilot holes drilled Glued together and sealed with epoxy Here you can see the fit, as well as the roughly inch overlap at the stern end that will fit underneath the seat Wrenches # Ready for epoxy The last small bit was to cut a couple of wrenches out of plywood that fit perfectly over the nuts in the garboard drain plug as well as the centerboard pin.\nThese will get sealed up with epoxy and maybe painted. They\u0026rsquo;ll become the main tool I use while on the boat to drain/fill the water tank, as well as to get to the centerboard pin should I need to do that in the field. Given they\u0026rsquo;re made out of wood and thus will float, I\u0026rsquo;ll likely store one in the water tank itself - it should be easy to find when I need it!\nOk, but now, really, it\u0026rsquo;s time to get the cockpit sole ready for installation.\n","date":"14 July 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230714/","section":"My scamp","summary":"A couple of odd jobs here and there","title":"Bits and bobs","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"14 July 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/tools/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tools","type":"tags"},{"content":"Now with the holes cut out and the \u0026ldquo;shelf\u0026rdquo; that each hatch cover would rest on glued in, it was time to tackle the hatch covers themselves, along with the bungie attachment points in the seat wells. This is all in preparation for eventually being able to glue the seat tops themselves into the boat.\nPrepare the seat tops # The first step was to deal with the glue squeeze out on the shelves holding the hatch covers. I want the hatch covers to be as tight a fit as possible, so any glue squeeze out here needs to be removed.\nGlue squeezed out sitting on shelf, hard to remvoe It\u0026#39;s gone! Removing the glue squeeze out was surprisingly hard to do. I used more then a few techniques, but this was ultimately the one that did the most work.\nI don\u0026#39;t even know what this drill bit is called... With those removed, the seat hatch covers now fit nicely in place.\nBoth seat hatches fitting nicely Close up view, notice the slightly sunken fit If you look closely, you\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that they\u0026rsquo;re sitting slightly below the level of the surrounding seat top - that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what I was aiming for by adding the spacer to the glue up of the shelves themselves. When I add in the gasket, these should sit near perfectly flush with the seat top.\nGlue up the hatch covers # For the hatch covers themselves, I decided to add a backing piece of ply for extra stiffness. This would obviously need to be sized to fit within the shelf of the hatch cutout in the seat tops, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t concerned about making this a particularly tight fit.\nI also decided I\u0026rsquo;d use screw in metal hooks on the underside of the hatch covers in order to grab the bungie cords, and for these I needed to make the hatch covers even a little thicker yet so I added in a firring strip on each side.\nEverything cut out, still need to trim the corners off the firring strip Clamping the firring strip on Et voila Install the bungie attachment points # The bungie cords will hook on to the hatch covers but from there will need to run somewhere within the seat wells. The force on the bungie cords should be mostly down (as opposed to out to the side) in order to pull the hatch cover down into the seat top securely.\nI wound up cutting up some small oak blocks through which I could drill holes and thread bungy cord through with a stopper knot.\nBlocks all cut out to (roughly) the same size All edges rounded off, ready for some sandpaper From there, figuring out where to glue them inside the boat was a bit of a balancing act between getting nice downward force on the hatch covers and also not having bungie cords taking up space by running through the center of the open space under the seats.\nBlocks on this side should keep cords mostly out of the way Cords on this side will be a bit more in the way, but hopefully not too bad Getting these installed was a touch annoying. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to (and in some cases didn\u0026rsquo;t have access to) drill through the outer plywood for a drill into the block, so I just epoxied them in place. I used some packing tape to hold them in place which\u0026hellip;worked well enough, I suppose.\nSee both sides at once I haven\u0026rsquo;t actually painted the underside of the hatch covers yet, which I\u0026rsquo;ll probably do before they\u0026rsquo;re considered done. I\u0026rsquo;ll also be installing a small fabric loop in them so that they can be opened after the bungies are installed.\nBut next it\u0026rsquo;s time to get the cockpit sole ready for installation.\n","date":"23 June 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230623/","section":"My scamp","summary":"In preparation for bungies","title":"Seat hatch covers","type":"scamp"},{"content":"After a bit of a break, I\u0026rsquo;m back to futzing on the boat a little bit every week. In thinking how to handle the larger custom hatches, I landed on a few points:\nI don\u0026rsquo;t want to try to perfectly recreate the old PT hatches, complete with routed groove for the gasket. This is a lot of work for something that will admittedly look clean but apparently not work in most cases\nI do want a clean hatch cover opening. This means hidden attachments and minimal visible crap on deck\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to go with a kayak style bungie hatch. This uses bungies to hold the hatch cover down from underneath, at the cost of taking up some space in the actual storage area for running the bungies themselves. But it does provide a nice clean topside.\nAlso, I decided to go with a basic gasket around the lip edge, just affixed with something like double sided tape. This is simple, easy to apply and replace when needed, and works pretty well from my experience with kayak hatch covers.\nHatch locations # I decided to start with building these hatches into the seat tops first, before cutting into the cabin sole. I\u0026rsquo;m a little more uncertain about putting these style of hatches into the cabin sole (there\u0026rsquo;s no really good drainage system with these style hatch covers - water is just meant to run off. That works for kayak hatches and seat tops, but in the cabin sole there\u0026rsquo;d be nowhere for the water to run), and so I wanted to build a few first (and as it is, I\u0026rsquo;m thinking I might go back to armstrong hatches for all access holes in the cabin sole itself)\nSecondly was to decide how many hatches and where to put them on the seat tops. In argument for fewer hatches cut is the fact that your boat will take longer to flood, while more hatches makes getting access to storage space much easier.\nThinking about the starboard seat top, I eventually decided to put one small access hatch between b4 and b5 (so that I could access the centerboard pin if needed) and a larger one to access the large storage area between b5 and b6 (and, through the cutout in the frame, to also be able to store things between b6 and b7 via this same hatch cover).\nI considered potentially doing something a little different on the port side, but eventually decided to just mirror the setup over there. So two hatch covers per seat top, a small one farther forward and a large one behind it.\nGasket space # Using a gasket taped down on the lip does mean that I need a bit of spacer material between the underside of the deck surface and the lip itself, in order to provide a place for the gasket to compress and still have the hatch cover be level with the surface top around it.\nI figured about an 1/8\u0026quot; thick would do it, and so after much searching I finally found a sheet of \u0026ldquo;door skin\u0026rdquo; plywood, which is basically just a single veneer of wood, thus 1/8\u0026quot; thick. This will be perfect.\nConstruction - cutting out # First off I had to size the hatch covers (I used the old PT hatch covers as a rough guide for sizing) and figure out how to round the corners (I chose the radius of a nice tin of varnish in my shop - all the better for wrapping in sandpaper and then using to sand the corner once cut out!)\nDeck hatches marked out and cutting begins The best way I found to cut them out neatly (so the cutouts can be reused as the actual hatch covers) was to use an oscillating multi tool with a very thin kerf blade for the straights and a (very) small japanese pull saw for the corners. Worked great, although the corners took a while.\nTools of the trade Nearly done Construction - gluing # With the covers cut out, next up was fitting the seat top back into the boat and then fitting the spacer (and after that the hatch cover lip) in prep for gluing.\nSeat top back in place Spacers to be fit Only two clamps needed right now for positioning Taken back off the boat and flipped over With them flipped over I added a couple of marking lines to ensure the piece is properly aligned once glue is applied.\nThen the steps were:\nMix up straight epoxy, and put a coat on the bottom of the seat top and the gluing side of the spacers\nMix up epoxy with silica thickener to a good peanut butter consistency, apply to spacers, and put back on seat top using the alignment marks made earlier\nclamp everything down making sure nothing moves as clamps are applied\nFirst coat of epoxy applied and spacers clamped down Inevitably after the epoxy dries there\u0026rsquo;s some glue squeeze out on the inside edge (that\u0026rsquo;s hard to get rid of because the clamps are in the way). A rasp to the rescue!\nNow you see it Now you don\u0026#39;t With the spacers in place, next was to glue in the hatch cover lip itself. But before doing that, I wanted to round over the top inner edge to make this a bit of a soft edge for when I\u0026rsquo;m reaching through to grab gear. A quarter inch round over bit on the router table worked great.\nJust a small round over bit since the lip itself is thin All the way around the inside upward facing edge And then finally back onto the boat, position the lips, clamp in place, off the boat for alignment markings, another coat of epoxy and then glued in place.\nBack on the boat Clamped in place, just eyeballed to get positioning right A closeup of the alignment marks Final clamp up for the lips After this I applied one more coat of epoxy across the entire bottom of the seat top, including the bottom of the lip itself. The underside of the seat top is now nicely sealed (indeed I\u0026rsquo;ll have to rough up some sections of it before gluing the seat top down onto the boat itself).\nThe starboard and port seat tops are now done, so next up is building the bungie attachment system for each of the hatch covers.\nMy small time disaster # So where was the disaster per se?\nUp above I was very specific about ensuring you fit the seat tops to the boat and then position the spacer for gluing, clamping it in place then pulling the whole assembly back off the boat to actually glue in place.\nYou see, if you don\u0026rsquo;t do this, you might accidentally glue the spacer to the top of the seat, instead of the bottom.\nYeah...that\u0026#39;s not right Trying to grind it off Once I realized my mistake I tried to sand off the spacer, but that was taking too long, so I tried to grind it off, which worked better but i was digging into the seat top itself a bit, and so I just decided to buy a sheet of marine ply and cut a new seat top, which is what I did.\nMarine ply is a lot more expensive now ($170/sheet) then it was when I started this project. An expensive lesson!\n","date":"13 June 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230613/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Designing and cutting the hatches into the benches via the seat tops, and my first \u0026ldquo;disaster\u0026rdquo;!","title":"Seat top hatches","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Next up is hatches and hatch covers. I\u0026rsquo;ve got to get these sorted before I can really start in on preparing to glue in the cockpit sole and seat tops.\nThe guidance on hatches from the scamp community, as far as I can tell, is:\nThe beckson style hatches tend to leak a little bit\nArmstrong style hatches tend to leak a little less, if at all\nThe ptwatercraft style hatches (which are no longer available) are hard to install but are watertight if you install them correctly\nIn general, the fewer hatch openings you have the more watertight your boat will be\nWhat I\u0026rsquo;ve learned from my kayaking days in regards to hatches is:\nWatertightness doesn\u0026rsquo;t really matter. Put everything in a dry bag before you put it in your hatch.\nEverything else equal, the larger the hatch opening size the easier it is to use\nHatches with no deck hardware look way better and shed water better\nAll of that said, here\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;ve decided for my hatches:\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to use one beckson style small hatch over the watertank. This is big enough to put my hand through to fill/drain the water tank, as well as get at the centerboard pin if I need it. At least for the water tank I like the idea of a clear lid so I can easily tell with a look the state of the water tank.\nFor areas that can\u0026rsquo;t take a bigger hatch opening, I\u0026rsquo;ll use a 6\u0026quot; Armstrong style hatch.\nElsewhere I\u0026rsquo;m going to make my own hatches with bungee hold down systems (often used in kayaks) to get a hardware free deck experience on the outside (at the expense of some obstructions on the inside space)\nSo first things first, it was time to cut some circles.\nThe easiest way that I know of to cut a perfect circle larger then what a hole saw can do is with a router and a template base for it. My router was a bit too big for the size of holes I needed to cut, but I was able to borrow an absolutely excellent trim router from the Southeast Seattle Tool Library. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how I stumbled on those guys originally, but talk about an amazing resource. They\u0026rsquo;re great.\nTo do this, you remove the base that comes attached to the router and put on your own. Then the distance between either the inner edge of the router bit (if you want to keep the cutout) or the outer edge (if you want to keep the empty hole) and a screw or nail put through your base at the center of your hole becomes your radius. Start cutting.\nBase on, nail at center of hole, ready to start Pivot the router around the nail and the circle is cut First set of hatches to cut was for the sealed flotation chambers on either side between b7 and the transom. I didn\u0026rsquo;t want these on the seat tops as I figured they\u0026rsquo;d be more in the way there and having them on the seat longitudinals might be better anyway in the case of a capsize. Armstrong hatches would be eaisest here, but I wasn\u0026rsquo;t sure what size would work best so\u0026hellip;\nMy first attempt at a possible hatch size - too big, next size down should do Hole cut for next size down This was a little more difficult to cut then it needed to be since I couldn\u0026rsquo;t quite sweep the router all the way around - there wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough room for it at the bottom of the cockpit. So I had to cut the last little bit out by hand, but it worked pretty well.\nNext up was the water tank. I wanted to make sure I positioned the hole exactly over the drain plug for the water tank, while also making sure I could easily reach the centerboard pin.\nHole cut, looks like I got the spacing right as the pin is right there Hole, hatch, and doubler cut out I also realized that I needed an access hatch between b6 and the false bulkhead that forms the back of the footwell, as there are limber holes in that bulkhead, meaning all the water from the aft part of the cockpit under the sole will drain into there, but no easy access to pump it out without a hatch. Another Armstrong hatch seemed like the best and easiest fit there.\nShould provide easy pump out access And of course with all of these I\u0026rsquo;m also cutting out backing rings for installation on the backside of each hole to help stiffen up the hatch access hole itself. While these are probably only necessary for beckson style hatches that screw in, I decided I\u0026rsquo;d do it for the armstrong ones as well.\nBacking ring ready for installation Before I start gluing anything though I\u0026rsquo;m going to start in on cutting my kayak style hatches into the seat tops and cockpit sole next.\n","date":"21 March 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230321/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Cutting circles, circles for days","title":"Going in circles","type":"scamp"},{"content":"A couple of smaller steps today that I needed to take care of before moving on to figuring out hatch covers.\nFirst off was figuring out a fix for the top of B5 on the centerboard side. The B5 bulkhead is bisected by the centerboard case, so it comes in two parts - the larger port piece that extends under the cockpit sole, and a smaller piece that attaches to the starboard outboard side of the centerboard piece and provides structural integrity for the hull panels and deck there.\nThe problem was that when I installed that smaller starboard piece, for some reason it wasn\u0026rsquo;t tall enough. I didn\u0026rsquo;t really notice this until after I put the hull planks on, but with the last hull plank in place the tops of all the bulkheads lined up to match the top of the last plank (and provide a gluing surface for the deck later) except for this one, which was a little less then a centimeter short.\nGiven I was building from a kit, I have no idea how this happened. It\u0026rsquo;s not like the bottom of the bulkhead was misaligned low or anything.\nAnyway, I needed to figure out how to add a small bit of height on to the top of this bulkhead so that the deck would have a surface to lay on and bond to.\nI considered just cutting a tiny shim out of plywood of the right depth, but decided it\u0026rsquo;d be easier to just use epoxy.\nSo I taped up two blocks of the right length (tape so the epoxy wouldn\u0026rsquo;t stick to them), rounded them over a bit at the end to fit snugly against the fillet between the bulkhead and the side panel, and then filled the space with thickened epoxy.\nThe two blocks forming the sides of the \u0026#34;mold\u0026#34; clamped in place Epoxy setup, one block removed It worked great. A little cleanup later and it\u0026rsquo;s exactly the height and bevel it needs to be for the deck.\nCleaned up and ready for the deck The other thing that didn\u0026rsquo;t do previously was put in cleats for the seats along the transom. I think I just forgot them previously. That\u0026rsquo;s an easy fix.\nStarboard side, port side is obviously similar I had to setup a level across the top of the other bulkheads to figure out exactly where to attach these on the transom, but overall pretty easy.\nFinally, although I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if I\u0026rsquo;m going to use one, I decided I might as well insure against the future and put in a backing block for an outboard motor mount.\nI built a small template for the size and shape using cardboard, and then used that to cut out two pieces of 9mm plywood from scrap and glue them together.\nGlued together, edges sanded smooth and rounded over, ready for installation Installing it required a little bit more of fitting but also went smoothly.\nGlued and installed, clamped using a bar against bulkhead 7 If I were to do this again, I\u0026rsquo;d do two things differently:\nWhen putting the cleat on the longitudinal (which I did to help attach the transom), I didn\u0026rsquo;t bother to cleanup the glue squeezeout as I figured it acted a little like a fillet. I\u0026rsquo;d clean it up now, since that squeezeout meant I had to compensate with this piece to get a tight fit between the two.\nI probably would have installed this before even installing the hull planking and putting the right bevel on it to match the curve between the transom and bulkheads 7/6 in order to have good contact between it and the hull plank. As it is, there\u0026rsquo;s just an air gap there now\nThe other portion of the transom reinforcement for the outboard? I\u0026rsquo;ve decided I\u0026rsquo;ll install that after the cockpit sole and seat are installed, as I think that order of operations will be easiest.\n","date":"15 March 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230315/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Some minor odds and ends fixups before I start in on the hatch covers","title":"Fixing a too-low bulkhead","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"15 March 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/kit/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Kit","type":"tags"},{"content":"One thing to note about this build - my taped fillets are all less then stellar.\nThis is essentially a problem of time. In order to get a taped fillet to look good, you really need to break it down into several steps:\nfill in the fillet, get it nice and smooth wait for it to setup (at least 12 hours, likely 24) cleanup the fillet slightly with sandpaper if there are any rough edges (you won\u0026rsquo;t really need to roughen up the fillet itself since, as long as you apply the tape within 72 hours, you\u0026rsquo;ll still get a chemical bond if you\u0026rsquo;re using system 3 resins) apply the tape on the hardened fillet and fill the weave with epoxy What I did was to lay down the fillet, and then immediately put the tape down on top of it and fill the weave with epoxy. The problem with doing that is the fillet doesn\u0026rsquo;t stay uniform and smooth as you apply the tape and wet it out. So it\u0026rsquo;ll cure kind of bumpy, and there\u0026rsquo;s no way you can fix this via sanding since if you tried you\u0026rsquo;d sand right through the tape and ruin the structural strength of the bond.\nI could fix this by applying even more epoxy on top of the cured taped fillets, but I\u0026rsquo;m not going to worry about it - so far all of my taped fillets won\u0026rsquo;t be visible without opening up a storage locker or two, and so I\u0026rsquo;m fine with that. Don\u0026rsquo;t judge a boat by the fillets hidden away in a storage locker :)\nNote that this is a cosmetic issue only - they\u0026rsquo;re all still plenty strong. Indeed adding more epoxy on top of the tape to smooth it out wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be structural at all, that\u0026rsquo;d be purely cosmetic, and given the cost of epoxy likely not worth it.\nYou can see here how bumpy those taped fillets are. Structurally sound, but not the prettiest. At least all those drips will get sanded out easily ","date":"20 February 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230220/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Fillets take a long time to get right","title":"Fillets","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Next step was to put the hull planks on. I thought a long time about whether I really wanted to do this, since it was going to be a lot harder to reach the interior of the boat for sanding and gluing when it was time to put the sole down, but eventually I decided that I\u0026rsquo;d rather do all the interior sanding in one go, which included sanding the inside of the seat compartments (made up on one side by the hull panels themselves). We\u0026rsquo;ll see if this turned out to be a good idea or not\u0026hellip;\nFirst up I loose fit the seat tops on, thinking that the cutouts for the bulkheads would help just a smidge in making sure the bulkheads are where they\u0026rsquo;re supposed to be. They can still be pushed around a little bit, but after the garboard panel gets on and filletted in, they\u0026rsquo;ll be solid in their position.\nDry fitting the first garboard with the seat top fitted Looks good from the bow I wound up deciding to wire the hull panels up, as I couldn\u0026rsquo;t really get the curves with the panels to sit correctly via clamps only. So I wired them from the stern forward, and then started filleting the joint between the panel and the hull (for the garboard) or the panel and the previous panel (for the next two hull panels).\nStarboard side wired into the bow stem Before the wires trying to use a clamp as a third hand Clamp gone, replaced with wires to a bulkhead Garboard on the port side wired up to the transom I was worried in particular about potentially pulling the bow stem out of alignment from left to right, so I made sure to wire up both port and starboard garboards, with the front bulkhead alignment jigs that come with the kit on, before I started filletting.\nNext step was to add a pretty solid fillet across each edge, and then I put 4\u0026quot; 6oz fibreglass tape across the edge fillets as well (I didn\u0026rsquo;t tape the fillets from hull panels to bulkheads, as the build manual specifically mentions this isn\u0026rsquo;t required).\nFilletted and taped in starboard rear quarter Bow section proved to be one of the most difficult. Tape is laid out ready for the port side. Port side with all the tape pre cut and laid out ready for fillets Starboard side all filletted and taped up Once the epoxy setup (including fillets between the garboard planks and each bulkhead) it\u0026rsquo;s time for the next set of hull planks.\nClamping up the next starboard hull plank. And on the port side Next set of hull planks ready for wiring and filletting A little more time waiting for epoxy to setup, and then on to the final hull plank.\nPort side wired up. Port side with a nice fair curve Trying to clamp the starboard panel into the right position Starboard side now wired up Joel came over to help - he did a lot of the wiring. Thanks Joel! All the planks are on And now begins some sanding to get all the interior parts of the boat smooth (ish) before final epoxy coats and bilgekote paint.\n","date":"18 February 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230218/","section":"My scamp","summary":"The boat starts to look like a boat once the hull planks go on","title":"Planking","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Just a quick note that I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve mentioned here yet - I changed up how the water ballast tank works. I was originally thinking I\u0026rsquo;d build a small doubler for the valve similar to what I did for the centerboard pin on either side of the centerboard case. This doubler provides enough thickness that the entire valve can sit on top of the board and not protrude down into the centerboard case itself, or in this case down below the level of the hull itself.\nBut I realized, based on a comment made on the Scamp forum, that by doing that, I\u0026rsquo;d never be able to fully empty the water ballast tank without getting in there with a sponge, since the drain hole would now be significantly above the level of the water.\nSo I changed it up. I glued a bottom doubler over the entire bottom of the water ballast tank and cut a sunken section that the valve will sit in, just at or below the level of the new \u0026ldquo;floor\u0026rdquo; for the water tank. All the water should now drain through the lowest point - the drain itself.\nI\u0026rsquo;m guessing that\u0026rsquo;s what the boards labelled as \u0026ldquo;Ballast Tank Dbl\u0026rdquo; that I found back in October that I thought might be part of the footwell. Again, these parts weren\u0026rsquo;t mentioned in the plans or the build manual, but they came in the kit. Frustrating, but at least they have a functional home now.\nHere is the sunken section where the valve will go, with the centerboard pin slot in view The outside centerboard pin slot I didn\u0026rsquo;t actually cut the hole to install the valve yet - I\u0026rsquo;m thinking I\u0026rsquo;ll do that after I\u0026rsquo;m finished glassing and maybe even painting the hull itself. Without the hole there it\u0026rsquo;ll be a lot easier to glass and epoxy the hull, and I should be able to cut it afterwards pretty easily through the hole in the sole that gives access to the drain plug.\n","date":"4 January 2023","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20230104/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Changing up how the doubler works for the bottom valve","title":"A quick note on the water ballast","type":"scamp"},{"content":"When last we left the centerboard pin, I had glued in the bushings in place to the centerboard case but I feared accidentally gluing the pin itself into the bushings, so I pulled it out before the epoxy dried. And what do you know, as I pulled it out I must have nudged one of the bushings and they were no longer in alignment. Damn.\nSo first step was that I needed to drill the glued bushings out. For that I needed a real drill bit instead of a forstner bit.\nOne of the larger drill bits I now own... There wasn\u0026rsquo;t much to it at this point aside from line it up, brace the drill so I didn\u0026rsquo;t wreck my wrists on the torque, and drill. I originally thought I\u0026rsquo;d only drill out one side and keep the other for alignment, but I decided to drill out both sides and redo them both. As it happened, both sides required drilling through roughly half the length of the bushing before the remaining broke free from the epoxy and popped out.\nInboard bushing drilled out Outboard bushing After that, I decided I needed to fill both holes in the centerboard case so I could re-drill them hopefully aligned. This turned out to be a little difficult but eventually I managed to get (my neighbour Jeff) to reach up into the centerboard case and apply backing tape on both sides to each hole so that I could stuff in some epoxy on either side.\nFilled again, soon ready for drill attempt #2 It\u0026rsquo;s getting relatively cold now in Seattle, and my garage isn\u0026rsquo;t heated, so I need to add heat every now and then to get epoxy to cure (especially when I\u0026rsquo;m still using slow hardener as I was for this - I\u0026rsquo;ve since switched to fast). My normal setup for this is to just use some shop lamps with 100 watt light bulbs in them - cheap and they work like a charm.\nInboard centerboard hole heating up I have many of these shop lamps I\u0026rsquo;m almost out of 100 watt bulbs and it\u0026rsquo;s hard to find incandescent bulbs anymore - I might have to switch to the ceramic heat bulbs soon.\nI obviously had to buy new bushings for this so this time I bought some bushings with collars on them. I figured that the collar would at least help prevent excess epoxy spillage on one end as the bushing is pressed into the hole, a point on which I was proven right.\nNew bushings, scored and ready for epoxy Next was to figure out what drill bit to use for drilling the hole. The outside diameter of these bushings was 5/8\u0026quot; of an inch, but I had some issues earlier with them fitting in the centerboard itself. So since I now had a forstner bit, a spade bit, and a regular bit, all 5/8\u0026quot;, I did an experiment.\nThe regular drill bit hole, forstner bit, and spade bit from left to right I\u0026rsquo;m glad I did the experiment. The forstner bit generated a hole that was a little too small! No wonder the bushing didn\u0026rsquo;t fit!\nThe regular drill bit required a half inch chuck in the drill and my little drill press designed for hand held drills only has a 3/8\u0026quot; chuck, so I was going to have to use my spade bit. Also, since the spade bit wasn\u0026rsquo;t long enough to drill through one side of the centerboard case and continue on and drill the far side hole in the same motion, I was going to have to use a pilot hole with a smaller extra long bit. So that\u0026rsquo;s what I did.\nAlmost lined up, ready to drill through both near and far sides of centerboard case in one go Drilled the pilot hole, then put in the spade bit and drilled from both sides using the pilot hole, then did a loose fit of the bushings in each side with the pin through both - it lined up nicely.\nGluing them up still had me concerned that as I pushed the bushings into position some epoxy would splurge out and get into the bushing itself and possibly glue the pin in place to the bushing (I was definitely going to leave the pin in this time while waiting for the epoxy to cure to ensure alignment).\nI wound up dealing with this by putting a circle of tape over the end of each bushing. I then coated the bushing and the inside of each hole in epoxy, and pushed the bushings in. When I put the pin in one side, it pushed the tape off the end of the hole in that bushing, taking any excess epoxy with it. I inserted the pin into each bushing and reached up into the centerboard case each time to remove the piece of tape from the pin without getting any epoxy onto the pin itself, and then inserted the pin through both bushings to ensure alignment.\nLoose fit success Lined up, no epoxy on the pin. Worked like a charm With the bushings glued in and lined up, last step was to put the access covers on.\nI decided a while ago that I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to go the bolt route since that seemed to leak on a lot of people and I\u0026rsquo;m not interested in that. Instead I went with ordering a stainless steel rod from McMaster Carr and putting a sea dog garboard drain and plug on each side. Why one on each side? Well to get the centerboard pin out there will be enough pressure from the weight of the centerboard that I likely won\u0026rsquo;t be able to just pull the pin out, but rather will need to push it out from one side.\nBefore I went this route I discovered that you could order what are called \u0026ldquo;dowel pins\u0026rdquo;, specifically \u0026ldquo;pull out dowel pins\u0026rdquo; from McMaster Carr that are similar but have a tapped drilled hole on one end so that you can thread in a screw or similar to get enough purchase to be able to pull it out. Using one of these might mean I\u0026rsquo;d need access to only one side of the centerboard pin to pull it out instead of both sides to push it out (meaning I could completely seal off one side of the pin). I ordered one of these (actually I ordered two), only to find that they were slightly bigger then 1/2\u0026quot;, meaning neither of them fit through the bushings whereas the stainless rod did. So I just gave up on this route.\nIf I were to do it again I might try again to go this route, perhaps with oversized bushings to make sure the pull out dowel pin fits, but in the end I\u0026rsquo;m not too worried about these garboard plugs leaking (easy enough to just put some teflon tape on them if they do), so having one on each side of the centerboard case I think will be fine.\nOf course I just looked at my receipts and noticed I bought the dowel pins as 18-8 stainless instead of a 316 - another reason not to use them. Sigh.\nPre epoxy Post epoxy When gluing the plug onto the base, some plumbers putty prevents epoxy from getting in the threads In order to actually glue these on to the centerboard, particularly on the outboard side, I needed some rather long wooden braces that would hold it with pressure and reach all the way across to my fixed work bench\u0026hellip;\nHeld tightly against the centerboard case The one on the inside of the centerboard case was easier Braced all the way to my work bench. Made walking around the boat kind of hard Centerboard itself # For the centerboard itself, I had thought to glue the bushing into the centerboard and then hang it in the case from the dowel pin so tha it could dry all installed and lined up, but decided that was going to be too hard with too much risk that epoxy might squeeze into somewhere I didn\u0026rsquo;t want it and glue bad things together.\nSo instead I just glued the bushing into the centerboard, inserted the dowel pin, and used a square to make sure the pin was coming out of the bushing perfectly straight, meaning the bushing was glued in at perfect right angles to the face of the centerboard.\nA dowel pin emerging at right angles to the face of the board For the haul up line, I decided I\u0026rsquo;d once again use the drill/fill/drill technique to put a hollow on one side of the board so that the haul up line could be threaded into it and a stopper knot tied. I started with a 1\u0026quot; forstner bit that I then filled with epoxy and drilled out again with a 7/8\u0026quot; forstner bit. Again this only goes just a bit past half way through the board.\n1 inch hole drilled Filled with epoxy Drilled out You can see in the last picture that there was a small bubble in the filled epoxy. when I drilled the guide hole from the edge of the centerboard into this and filled it, I also filled out this void and redrilled the 7/8\u0026quot; hole smooth afterwards.\nPatched and re drilled A bit of a view of the path for the haul line rasped out Through hole for the haul line to the edge of the board I\u0026rsquo;ll probably do one final coat of at least the path for the haul line with graphite epoxy. Maybe. The non black epoxy looks a little weird, but it is on the centerboard that nobody is ever going to see\u0026hellip;\n","date":"12 December 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221212/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Redrilled and got the pin inserted and aligned, also finished final details on the board itself","title":"Finishing the centerboard pin","type":"scamp"},{"content":"","date":"27 November 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/footwell/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Footwell","type":"tags"},{"content":"Lots of little things that are getting tidied up. A lot of work on the centerboard pin and some on the centerboard itself, I\u0026rsquo;ll save those details for the next post.\nThis is a short one on two topics - I\u0026rsquo;ve (almost) finished all of the cleats and I glassed the footwell.\nAt this point I\u0026rsquo;ve glued in all of the cleats except for the fore/aft cleats between bulkheads 4 and 5 that make up the water tank. I need to finish putting together the centerboard pin retention system before I glue in the final two cleats as the starboard one would inhibit access a little bit otherwise.\nThe biggest change here was figuring out what to do between bulkheads 7 and 8 (the transom). The plans call for scuppers, but reading online it seems that nobody has been able to fix venturi bailers that work particularly well, and it occurred to me the scuppers make sense only if all the water from the cockpit sole drains into them - given I installed the footwell, it\u0026rsquo;s likely that if I get water in the cockpit it\u0026rsquo;s going into my footwell.\nSo I nixed the idea of scuppers. This meant one long cleat across the transom at the back and two fore-aft cleats between bulkheads 7 and 8.\nCleats but no scuppers The annoying aspect of this is that I glued the transom doubler on before I installed the transom (don\u0026rsquo;t do that, kids), and further it slid down a little bit and I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice before the epoxy setup, so in order to slide the cockpit sole under the transom doubler I had to chisel out the bottom 1/8\u0026quot; or so. That was annoying. The cockpit sole now sits flat back to this rear cleat, but it\u0026rsquo;ll definitely need a nice strong fillet along the transom to fill the gaps back there.\nActually, another interesting note - apparently I put the rear bulkhead for my footwell forward of the line marked on the plans, whereas I should have put it aft of the line marked on the plans. The cockpit sole only extends to the aft edge of the bulkhead now, not right on top of it. I might just make a new cockpit sole from a sheet of ply I bought to size it correctly and turn the actual cockpit sole into scrap.\nThe other progress was that I glassed in the footwell. I cut a piece of glass to cover the bottom and all four sides of the footwell, with the corners cut out of the glass to allow for a clean seam when epoxied in. This, plus the doubler installed earlier, makes the footwell damn strong, stronger then the water tank honestly.\nBelow is the picture after one coat of epoxy and waiting for the epoxy to setup. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t my finest glassing result, I can tell there are lots of bubbles in the glass, but I\u0026rsquo;m not too worried about it, given that I intend to paint the boat and I don\u0026rsquo;t even think glassing the footwell was technically necessary so grinding out any bubbles and smoothing over those small issues under paint shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be a big deal at all.\nI\u0026rsquo;m gradually learning the correct way to fillet and then glass - put a fillet down, smooth it out, and then allow it to harden before glassing on top of it the next day. You get the chemical bond this way, and the glass just winds up going on much more smoothly.\nFirst coat, waiting for a trim ","date":"27 November 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221127/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Glassing the footwell, almost ready for garboards","title":"Nearing the end of cleats","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Now I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m at the point where I have a bunch of small cleanup type tasks to do before I can start putting hull panels on, which probably means I\u0026rsquo;m a month or two away from putting hull panels on. But it feels close.\nNext up is to get all the cleats on. There\u0026rsquo;s a crap ton of them - cleats for seat tops, cleats for cabin sole, cleats seemingly all over the place.\nFirst up was to put in the cabin top support beams (which are really just fancy extra long cleats). Now that the mast box was done these can finally be glued in and tie together bulkheads 2, 3 and 4.\nAll the deck support beams installed in a single shot Next is to start work on the cabin sole athwartship cleats. I wanted to include here cleats on all four sides of the footwell as I intend to build a removable cover for the footwell to allow me to sleep on cabin sole and so I need the cleats to eventually support the cover.\nAthwartship cleats on the footwell and water tank Next up was to cut out still more cleats - this included athwartship cleats for the extra footwell bulkhead as well as bulkhead 7, fore-aft cleats for both sides of every section below the cabin sole, as well as all the seat cleats on both port and starboard sides.\nAll the cleats, laid out in position For my cleats I\u0026rsquo;m using cedar that I purchased in raw 2x8\u0026rsquo;s that I\u0026rsquo;ve ripped down to 20x30mm. I usually choose the unfinished sides to glue, as I figure those give extra good surfaces for the epoxy to grab to. I also found it was a lot easier to setup the router table with a 1/2\u0026quot; roundover bit installed in order to round over the one exposed corner on these cleats, and it made quick work of all of them in one go.\nStarboard side Port side I\u0026rsquo;m still using clamps only for gluing everything up, and so at the moment I can only glue as many in one go as I have enough clamps for (well, enough reasonable clamps. Yes I have a dusty pile of C-clamps, but those are so annoying to use compared to spring clamps). The above photos see my spring clamp collection basically maxed out, and so I wait for epoxy to cure until I glue some more.\nMy list of things to do before I put the first hull panel on includes:\na few more cleats to glue in (including all of the fore-aft cleats for the cockpit sole) drill out and redo my centerboard pin install the drain plug for the water tank fillet and glass the footwell Like I said - probably a month or two. Sigh.\n","date":"13 November 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221113/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Getting cleats glued in all over the boat","title":"Cleats, cleats, and more cleats","type":"scamp"},{"content":"When gluing in the deck support beams I filletted all around the beams on the aft side of bulkhead 2 as well as on the bottom and sides of the beams on the forward side of bulkhead 2 (not the top to not interfere with the deck, as the build manual tells you).\nAt this point, I ran into yet another problem with the build manual. There\u0026rsquo;s a part (that came with the kit) that is meant to go on the forward side of bulkhead 2 athwartships underneath the cabin support beams to support the aft edge of the deck from the beams to the edge of bulkhead 2.\nThis part is never mentioned in the build manual, nor detailed in the plans or the kit inventory.\nIndeed the only reason I figured out this part existed was because I was looking relatively closely at some pictures of other scamp builds that have taken place.\nThe part in question, clamped roughly where it will be glued At ths point, I\u0026rsquo;ve realized a few things:\nThe quality of kits and instructions you get from Chesapeake Light Craft is really just astounding Having a bad quality build manual is the worst of all options. If you have a good quality build manual you\u0026rsquo;re on easy street. If you have plans only and no build manual, you\u0026rsquo;re going to learn a heck of a lot figuring things out yourself. If you have a bad quality build manual, you\u0026rsquo;re liable to get overconfident and miss things. Going forward I\u0026rsquo;ll still read the build manual, but I will no longer think of it as authoritative or complete, and rather just another build blog (and one with somewhat crappy black and white photos at that).\nSo in order to make this mystery part line up well, I had to bevel away some material to make room for the fillet on the bottom and sides of the mast support beams that I didn\u0026rsquo;t know shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be there.\nBeveled underside to fit around fillets above With those in place, I was able to glue it on. I tried using screws to clamp it but I couldn\u0026rsquo;t get a screw through the piece to sufficiently grip to bulkhead 2 and pull the piece close, it just immediately stripped and lost it\u0026rsquo;s power (another reason I hvaen\u0026rsquo;t been using the screws very much this build - I find they don\u0026rsquo;t always work). But I was able to find a couple clamps that worked well enough for this application.\nClamped on the edges and in the middle Next step was to glue the front bulkhead 1 (or prow) on. No real clamping solution for this, so I used screws and filled in the screwheads with epoxy. Worked well here.\nBulkhead 1 filled screw holes Pretty good bevel of the cabin support beams with good contact to bulkhead 0 Glassing the mastbox # The build manual suggests taping the two outside seams of the mastbox. Given this is one of the highest stress areas of the boat, I decided I wanted to do a bit better here, so I decided I\u0026rsquo;d glass the entire outside of the mastbox with 6 oz glass, wrapping it around and onto the backside of bulkhead 3 to tie it into that part of the boat structure.\nFirst up, round the outer corners of the box using a shinto rasp Sizing up the fibreglass At this point, it was time to add fillets around the vertical edges of the mastbox and then put the glass on while they were still wet to get the chemical bond.\nVertical fillets on the mast box Wetting out in progress The glass on the front of the mastbox stops at the top of the angled section Looks pretty good.\nComplete wet out Detail of the top after wet out I waited 24 hours before applying a second coat (and eventually a third coat as well) to fill the weave and clean up the edges a little bit. There are a couple of drips, which I\u0026rsquo;ll clean up with the sander after I put one or two hull panels on and the overall structure stiffens up.\n","date":"26 October 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221026/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Finish glassing the mastbox and attaching bulkheads 1 and 8","title":"Bulkhead 1 \u0026 glassing the mastbox","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Some good news and some bad news. First the bad news - as I feared, pulling the bolt out of the centerboard bushings while they were still wet resulted in some misalignment. So now they don\u0026rsquo;t line up and I can\u0026rsquo;t get a bolt through them anymore - d\u0026rsquo;oh! Had to go back to McMaster Carr to order some more bushings and a drill bit big enough to drill one of them out and try again. PITA.\nBesides that, I glued in bulkheads two and three and built the mast box in place.\nclamping the mast box assembly tight to bulkhead 3 side view of everything glued up I also had to dive into my kit scrap pile to find some parts that were actually parts but didn\u0026rsquo;t look like it - hence why they were in my scrap pile. These included:\nthe foot of the mast box. It\u0026rsquo;s just a small rectangular piece of wood, nothing distinguishing about it. This one is at least listed in the plans (sheet 7 I think), but it\u0026rsquo;s not listed in the build manual on any of the kit inventory pages, which is probably why it made it into my scrap pile to begin with.\nthe \u0026ldquo;scamp ramp\u0026rdquo;, aka the bottom part of the mast box ramp that sits up above the cabintop and to the aft of bulkhead 3. This was a real pain in the ass to find - it\u0026rsquo;s not listed anywhere in the plans or in the build manual. I kind of had to guess what it looked like. I wish at least the plans would be updated to include this piece!\nAfter finding those pieces, I removed the lip on each side on the forward piece of the mast box so that the top of the side pieces would sit flush with the top of the forward piece of the mast trunk (this lines up with the plans - I still have no idea why the lip was left there in the kit piece), and then set the mast floor underneath the sides and what do you know, everything lined up beautifully.\nThe scamp ramp, glued in After this point, with a successful build of the mast box in place (I didn\u0026rsquo;t want to do it on the bench in order to avoid another issue like I had with the centerboard assembly where I mistakenly glued it together slightly out of alignment - if you build things in place, this shouldn\u0026rsquo;t happen!), I:\ncoated the inside of the mast box with three additional coats of epoxy to make sure it was water tight (a little awkward, but not too hard to do with a foam roller)\ndid the epoxy fillets for each of the four interior corners in place (more awkward, but still not the end of the world. Can\u0026rsquo;t say my fillets are the nicest I\u0026rsquo;ve made in my life but they\u0026rsquo;ll work well)\nIndeed I\u0026rsquo;ve spent a lot of time adding fillets to a lot of different surfaces recently\u0026hellip;\nFillets all around the various joinery seams between bulkheads 2 and 3 and the mast box Easier filleting between bulkheads 3 and 4 Next up was gluing the cleats onto the stem for bulkhead 1 and fitting the deck support beams to rest on the top of those cleats while also being in line with the top of the stem and tapered to butt flat up against bulkhead 1.\nLined up nicely and clamped in place Deck support beams poking through and filleted to bulkhead 2 Everything lined up and waiting for dry glue A quick note on screws - the build manual calls for them, and before I started this build I dutifully went out and bought a whole bunch of stainless steel screws like it told me to, but I find I don\u0026rsquo;t really use them all that often.\nI get the point of why the build manual encourages their use - it allows you to have confidence that parts will be held together correctly and strongly while the epoxy glue dries, which means you can keep working on multiple steps in a row before having to pause to wait for glue to dry.\nThat said, I don\u0026rsquo;t often find myself with 8 to 10 hour blocks where I want to be working on the boat that entire time, and so if I can clamp the pieces together well and avoid the use of screws, that\u0026rsquo;s what I\u0026rsquo;m doing. I\u0026rsquo;m kind of used to building this way anyway from previous projects. So fewer screws, although I can\u0026rsquo;t string as many steps together at once as some builders might, and that\u0026rsquo;s totally ok with me.\nYou don\u0026rsquo;t need so many screws!\nGluing up the transom doubler You know what makes a great weight to hold down while gluing? Your centerboard! Next up: glue on bulkhead 1, wrap the mast box in fibreglass, and even more filleting.\n","date":"24 October 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221024/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Lots of bulkhead fillets, but very few screws to be had\u0026hellip;","title":"An endless amount of filleting","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I think I\u0026rsquo;ve managed to figure out the problems with the mast box - more to come on that in a bit. But suffice to say that the dry fit worked out pretty well (not that I have photos of that) and so it was time to disassemble everything and start gluing stuff up.\nFirst up? The footwell.\nIn the kit I was able to find what I\u0026rsquo;m pretty sure was the rear bulkhead for the footwell, and I also found two separate pieces that were labelled as \u0026ldquo;Ballast Tank Dbl\u0026rdquo;. This was a bit weird - the pieces weren\u0026rsquo;t labelled on the list of part sheets that came in the build manual (add to that list the Scamp ramp part for the mast box - also not listed in the parts list or plans anywhere) but if you laid them down side to side you\u0026rsquo;d come up with something that was roughly the size of what the footwell bottom should be, just with a seam down the middle of it where the two pieces were butt joined.\nI thought that would look ugly and require too much fussing with epoxy to hide the seam, so I just cut a new bottom doubler for the footwell out of a spare piece of marine ply I bought. Fits perfectly, glued it in. It\u0026rsquo;s hard to tell because of course the parts aren\u0026rsquo;t listed in the build manual, but I guess they were separate pieces to try and save plywood?\nThe moss on the concrete block provides extra weight Next up was the bulkhead. As it turned out, the bulkhead that came with the kit was a bit too tall. If I took a straightedge (in this case my long level) between the existing bulkheads 4/5/6/7, the tops of them were all lined up nicely. When I put in the stock footwell bulkhead, it was obviously a high spot.\nSo take a straightedge and mark a line where the top of the bulkhead should be in order to line up with bulkheads 6 and 5. Then put in the footwell bulkhead and make sure it\u0026rsquo;s vertical before you mark against the line to figure out how much you need to trim it down by.\nvertical bulkhead, and you can see how much needs to be trimmed After trimming, the bulkhead lines up nicely against the mark as well as in line with the surrounding bulkheads.\nperfect height against the mark level touching all bulkheads Looking closely at the level I did note that the top level of the bulkheads isn\u0026rsquo;t actually level. This caused me to freak out a bit and doublecheck that my build jig was level (which it is), so I\u0026rsquo;m going to ignore this as just a byproduct of how the boat sits on the jig as it\u0026rsquo;s built.\ntops of bulkheads aren\u0026#39;t level, but the jig is, so no big deal? After the footwell doubler and the footwell bulkhead are glued in, next up was to glue in the bushings on each side of the centerboard trunk. I keyed the bushings themselves with a file to provide something for the epoxy to dig into, and then lined them up with the bolt through both once they were installed in the centerboard case. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t perfect, but I hope I got them aligned. I inserted the bolt through both to make sure they were aligned, but then removing the bolt (to make sure it doesn\u0026rsquo;t get glued in there by accident) there\u0026rsquo;s alwyas a chance I might have moved them slightly out of alignment. Hopefully not the case. Ideally I would have liked to have also put the centerboard in to make sure the bolt fit nicely between both sides of the case as well as the centerboard itself, but decided that\u0026rsquo;d be too difficult. When I glue the bushing into the centerboard itself however I will try to put the whole centerboard into the trunk and put the bolt through the whole assembly to ensure everything is lined up while the last bushing is glued up.\nkeyed up and ready for glue Does this look lined up? Foreshadowing! Next up was gluing the stem itself. I had assumed I\u0026rsquo;d need a wire stitch or two, but after judicious use of some shims in appropriate spots between the hull bottom and the jig, I wound up getting really good contact between the stem and the hull bottom along it\u0026rsquo;s entire length. So no wire stitch used. Seriously, if you\u0026rsquo;re thinking about building a scamp, go buy a pack of shims for a stupidly small amount of cash at your local home improvement store.\nGood contact all along the length of the stem Nicely lined up with the top of bulkhead 4 Final set of gluing up today was to glue in the backing for the hatch covers in bulkhead 3. I had custom cut these to be as large as I was comfortable making them and still allow me to get substantial parts of my body through them in case I really needed to reach the inside of the bow of the boat for some reason. So this was lining them up to not interfere with the mast box (and yet still provide perhaps a doubled up gluing surface for the edge of the mast box) and then gluing them up and clamping them in place.\nPretty even overlap all around the opening Scribe the position on the backside before gluing up Next up will be gluing in bulkheads 1 through 3 and the mast box itself.\n","date":"16 October 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221016/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Gluing things up, hopefully in alignment","title":"Footwell, centerboard, stem, bulkhead 3 - oh my!","type":"scamp"},{"content":"After filleting a lot of the outboard seams between bulkheads, seat longitudinals, and the hull, I\u0026rsquo;m now dry fitting the stem, bulkheads 1 through 3, and the mast box or mast trunk.\nI will say, this kit does generally go together, but it can be quite finicky at times. My first attempt at putting the forward side of the mast box on and it didn\u0026rsquo;t reach all the way down into the cutouts in the hull bottom that were put there for it.\nEvery so slightly floating A better shot of the space left that shouldn\u0026#39;t be there After fiddling around I finally got it to fit well. Turns out my stem, in the center portion only, was floating slightly above the hull bottom. Adding more shims under the hull bottom between it and the nearest cross piece of the jig seemed to do the trick. Having a pack of shims around is unexpectedly surprisingly useful for this build\u0026hellip;\nNow the problem is twofold:\nThere doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be space underneath the sides of the mast box at the bottom for the mast trunk floor, at least not one made out of 9mm plywood. I\u0026rsquo;ve heard of a \u0026ldquo;mast ramp\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;scamp ramp\u0026rdquo; on the forums but have yet been able to find any good description of what exactly it is/how it works. You can see in these pictures where I\u0026rsquo;ve circled that there\u0026rsquo;s not quite enough space for the mast trunk floor, at least not if the sides of the mast trunk are meant to sit on top of the floor (which I think is correct).\nLooking forward into the mast box From between bulkheads 3 and 4 looking at the side I think the cause for this is because the grooves that are cut into the forward piece of the mast trunk don\u0026rsquo;t go all the way to the top - there\u0026rsquo;s a lip there.\nA stiff upper lip, when one is not needed I\u0026rsquo;m guessing that lip must have been left there to made the kit piece easier to cut? Anyway it looks like if I remove that everything will line up nicely.\nAs to the Scamp ramp, that I don\u0026rsquo;t have a piece for from the kit and I\u0026rsquo;m not sure what to make of it\u0026hellip;\nHere goes a piece I don\u0026#39;t have I\u0026rsquo;m going to ask a question on the forums about this and hope people still notice when there are posts there, as it seems most people built their scamps five or so years ago\u0026hellip;\n","date":"13 October 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221013/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Dry fitting stem, bulkheads 1 to 3, and puzzling on the mast trunk","title":"Mast ramp? What mast ramp?","type":"scamp"},{"content":"With the centerboard case done, it was time to tack together everything with some epoxy glue and get bulkheads 4 through 7 along with the two seat longitudinals and the centerboard case setup and ready for filleting. The boat will truly turn 3-D now!\nFirst step was to dry fit everything. This took a looong time to get everything to sit right, and involved quite a bit of finicky work. Interesting that I have never really read any other build blogs talk about this step, but it took a long time for me to get evrything to line up well without any large spaces. Steps I had to take included (but weren\u0026rsquo;t limited to):\ngetting out my chisel and squaring off all of the slots on the bottom of the boat to remove the rounded corners using a file to square off the corners on the inside cuts of each tab on the seat longitudinals as well as the bulkheads adding some shims between the hull bottom and the build jig to help push the bottom up to better match the curve of the seat longitudinals near their end at the transom using some wire stitches to hold the seat longitudinal to the hull bottom near the transom (one on each seat longitudinal) getting out my rasp to remove material in the center of bulkhead 7 Even after all this work, I still found that the centerboard case and seat longitudinal were sitting a little far forward, making the slot at the very front of the centerboard case where bulkhead 4 is supposed to fit into too small. I\u0026rsquo;m not sure why this was the case - perhaps the curve of the hull on the jig was too much, causing the horizontal length to be just a bit too small? I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t expect this type of problem with a computer cut kit\u0026hellip;\nAt any rate, I just pulled out my rasp and removed some material at the front of the centerboard cutout on the hull bottom in order to make enough room for the tab from bulkhead 4 to fit in.\nBulkhead 5, right behind the centerboard Between bulkheads 7 and 8 I managed to get everything to fit relatively well. Everything, that is, except for the damn centerboard case\u0026hellip;\nSlightly out of alignment at the top You can see here that when building it on my benchtop, apparently I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice that I glued it up such that the top of outer side wasn\u0026rsquo;t in line with the seat longitudinal itself, but rather slightly lower then it. Crap. You can really see this if you look below the hull - the centerboard case is sitting quite a bit lower then the hull bottom itself.\nMuch more noticeable misalignment on the bottom Ah well. Getting the bottom to be level will be some quick work with a rasp. Getting the top of the case to be level with the seat top might be a bit more challenging. I\u0026rsquo;ll have to think about how to maybe add material onto the centerboard cap cover to make it sit level or something.\nOther then that, in general, you can see I need a few stitches to get the hull bottom to pull closely to the seat longitudinals near the stern, I also used some shims to raise the stern of the hull bottom up a bit which worked well.\nIf a sticth in time saves nine... ...then I saved 18? I also added the cleat behind bulkhead five on the starboard side as the bulid manual calls for, as well as a cleat on the port side of the port longitudinal that I used for attaching bulkhead 4 to - that made putting bulkhead 4 in much easier, as I could screw it into both this cleat as well as the forward centerboard cleat to hold it vertical while the epoxy setup.\nStarboard side cleat for bulkhead 5 Screwed in, as you can see An added cleat to make bulkhead 4 attachment easier Next up is dry fitting the stem, bulkheads 1 through 3, and the mast box.\n","date":"8 October 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221008/","section":"My scamp","summary":"A misaligned centerboard case, now solidly attached to the boat","title":"Tacking in bulkheads and seat longitudinals","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I decided to make the centerboard case on the benchtop instead of making it on the boat directly like the instructions talk about. I gotta say, in retrospect, this wasn\u0026rsquo;t the right decision, at least not for me.\nSo the first step was to assemble bulkheads 4 through 7 with the seat longitudinals and setup the posts at the front and rear of the centerboard case. Once there, I could drill pilot holes through the seat longitudinal as well as through the outward side of the centerboard case to best locate where the posts will go when glued in (no pictures for this step).\nNext step was to take the seat longitudinal off the boat and sand away the epoxy coating where the posts would be glued on, in order to give the epoxy something to hold on to.\nRear part Front part I wound up doing this for the portion of the seat logitudinal further down where bulkhead 7 attaches to it as well since that will eventually be glued/filleted in as well and the epoxy will need a surface to attach to there as well.\nMore sanding Finally the next step was to glue in the posts, using the screw holes to make sure they were glued into the right spot. The first time I did this, it didn\u0026rsquo;t go according to plan!\nI loaded up the back post with epoxy and put it on the seat longitudinal and then added the screws carefully to make sure it was where it needed to be, only to discover that I had somehow managed to attach it in such a way that the centerboard post was overlapping pretty significantly into the slot that\u0026rsquo;s used by bulkhead 5. Significantly enough that bulkhead 5 would have never fit into the slot anymore.\nWTF? How did that happen?\nSo I wiped off all the epoxy, let the rest set, sanded it off the next day, and tried again.\nThis time, I was very careful as I put in the screws that I was pulling the centerboard post into the seat longitudinal in the exact place I was expecting it to land. Turns out that when you use pilot holes, they\u0026rsquo;re not great for perfect lining up - they\u0026rsquo;re designed to have the screw bite into the backing piece of lumber but not the front piece, rather it just pulls the front piece into the backing piece as it\u0026rsquo;s tightened. This means there can be enough room through the hole in the front piece that the alignment isn\u0026rsquo;t perfect. Lesson learned!\nNo obstruction in the slot this time This worked better the second time around, although still not perfect\u0026hellip;\n","date":"4 October 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20221004/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Don\u0026rsquo;t make it on the bench kids, make it on the boat itself","title":"Making the centerboard case","type":"scamp"},{"content":"One of the changes to the plans (and thinking) of the scamp since I originally got my kit was that the space underneath the seat tops between bulkhead 7 and the transom should be a watertight compartment to aid in floatation in the event of a capsize/turtle.\nMy kit was old enough that it came with round cutouts in bulkhead 7 triyng to save weight, so I found some scrap, cut two plugs, and glued them in.\nPretty good fit They also had little cutouts on the bottom that would allow water to flow between bulkheads - those also obviously need to be filled in order to make the areas truly watertight, so little triangle pieces were cutout and glued in to fill those as well.\nPort side notch Starboard side notch ","date":"21 September 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20220921/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Fill in holes in bulkhead 7 for watertight compartments","title":"Filling in bulkhead 7","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I took a bit of a break on the build. I didn\u0026rsquo;t think it was that long actually, but I can tell from the timestamps here that it was almost 2 years long. Well I\u0026rsquo;ll be damned.\nI did finally clean out the garage (sold the mootorcycle too!) and gave myself a crap ton more space to restart. Interestingly, I was working under the assumption that my first step on restarting would be to add coats 2 and 3 of epoxy to all the bulkheads and such. After re-reading the assembly manual again, and thinking more about the steps, I decided after the fact that this wasn\u0026rsquo;t necessary after all.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense, after all. The parts will all be glued together, I\u0026rsquo;ll have opportunities to coat them after final assembly later, and coating them all now would just result in lots more sanding. So the thing that I dreaded doing for so long? Yeah, not necessary. Sigh.\nSo I screwed the hull bottom to the building frame and loosely started to assemble the different bulkheads with the seat longitudinals.\nBulkhead 5? I think? Gap between bottom of hull and centerboard case As you can see, it didn\u0026rsquo;t fit together easily right off the bat. Lots of air gaps. Going to have to do a bunch of work to tighten these up, which is making me wonder how I tighten them up, only to undo that, apply glue, and then redo it before the epoxy sets up\u0026hellip;\nAt this point, I decided that perhaps I really wanted to build the centerboard case on the benchtop rather then in the boat. So I started in on that. First step was to glue up the centerboard case doublers (using the pivot hole to help with alignment).\nBolt in place to line up pivot holes Paint tins for weight Both sides of centerboard case being glued up Then I had to drill out the centerboard case hole (in both the case sides as well as the centerboard itself, something I never did). I got really worked up about making this as perfect as possible. My worry was warranted.\nWhat I should have done was to stack the two sides of the centerboard case directly on top of each other, line them up, and drill them straight through ensuring perfect alignment. Instead, I constructed the centerboard case first, meaning I had the big air gap between the two sides of the case where the centerboard goes, which makes drilling a straight hole a lot harder. Hindsight is 50/50 they say\u0026hellip;\nBut without hindsight yet, I figured I needed a drill press for this. This caused me to discover the Southeast Seattle Tool Library which had one I could borrow! Awesome!\nSo I drilled and then filled both the centerboard and the case sides.\nThis drill press was massive Centerboard hole drilled and filled Both holes drilled and filled Once set I then needed to drill again. I drilled both with a 5/8\u0026quot; forstner bit, and again used the drill press, making sure the work was level in both planes to make sure I was getting a hole directly through the centerboard \u0026amp; case sides at right angles.\nI almost couldn\u0026#39;t lift the drill press into my truck it was so heavy As it turns out, the holes I drilled were a little too small to fit the bushings I bought, and so this is where all my careful prep went out the window.\nI really needed something like a 21/32\u0026quot; hole, but they don\u0026rsquo;t sell those forstner bits, so I drilled with a 11/16\u0026quot; bit. That hole, of course, turned out to be too big, and the bushings are quite loose. So now gluing them up I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to figure out how to do it such that everything is perfectly aligned at glue up time (as opposed to relying on the holes themselves being perfectly perpendicular and aligned). So that\u0026rsquo;s a bit of a bummer, but oh well.\nAs I would later discover, not all 5/8\u0026quot; bits are the same. A forstner bit will drill a slightly different size hole from a spade bit which will drill a slightly different sized hole from a hole saw which will drill a slightly different sized hole from a regular drill bit. I might have been fine here if I had just tested beforehand and choose a different type of 5/8\u0026quot; bit. I didn\u0026rsquo;t know that then, although I do now\u0026hellip;\nAlso in retrospect, the drill press was overkill. I could have and should have just used a hand drill with a drill press guide attachment. I\u0026rsquo;ll likely do that when it comes time to drilling the rudder blade out for it\u0026rsquo;s bushing.\nNext step is to glue up the centerboard case itself on the bench.\n","date":"14 September 2022","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20220914/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Setting up bulkheads for the first time. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t go well.","title":"Trying to go 3 dimensional","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I also worked on ripping some stock for cleats and other bits useful during the build.\nSomewhere previously I had read somewhere that you should rip strips using a bandsaw. I don\u0026rsquo;t remember why but inevitably the reason has to do with the thin kerf of the blade - less waste of that expensive lumber. So I tried it.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t do this. The blade is so flexible that it\u0026rsquo;s hard to get a long straight cut since the blade easily wanders. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to cut with a bandsaw only to have to run it through a planar to get it flat.\nSwitch to the table saw.\nAnd for whatever reason I decided to rip to the metric dimensions in the plans as opposed to the imperial dimensions in the build manual.\nAt this point there was a bit of a pause to the build\u0026hellip;\n","date":"22 November 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20201122/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Don\u0026rsquo;t rip lumber with a bandsaw.  Just don\u0026rsquo;t.","title":"Ripping cleats","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I decided the next step was to figure out what my hatch plan was going to be for bulkhead 3. I\u0026rsquo;ve seen some people use the off-the-shelf plastic rectangular doors, but those look ugly to my eye.\nI also decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that I wanted hatch openings that were large enough that I could get my head, an arm, and my trunk through them if I had to (I\u0026rsquo;m thinking here of being able to worm my way really far forward to make it slightly easier to install things in the bow of the boat, such as backing plates for cleats or something)\nI decided to go with a system in wide use on kayaks for flush hatch covers - cut out the hatch, add a backing plate around the inside of the opening, and then add a rubber seal and have the hatch cover press against that. I haven\u0026rsquo;t decided yet whether I\u0026rsquo;m going to use bungees on the inside or plastic toggle bolts on the outside for these.\nFiguring out the size and shape of the opening was done with lots of experimentation with cardboard and whether I fit.\nNext up was to cut templates to use as a router cutting jig. I used some scrap plywood for this.\nI wanted these to be really neat and fit the bulkhead openings really closely, so rather then use the piece cut out of the bulkhead itself as the hatch cover, I bought a new sheet of marine ply and cut everything out of it, which allowed me to neaten up the edges after cutting.\nGetting ready to cut precise new covers These provide a nice \u0026ldquo;shelf\u0026rdquo; which the hatches will seal against!\nHolding it in place for now ","date":"21 November 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20201121/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Custom large hatch openings for bulkhead 3","title":"Bulkhead 3 hatches","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Well I built the jig. It really wasn\u0026rsquo;t hard to do. I was really excited about making the boat 3d, but I really should have waited to do this, because once you do it, all of your shop space is just kind of gone.\nThe problem is that I built it, but as I mentioned earlier I need to add two more coats of epoxy to various parts before I start building the centerboard box, but now I have much less space in the garage to actually do those coats - very annoying.\nAt any rate, it\u0026rsquo;s now done. Yay.\nNext up I don\u0026rsquo;t organize the garage but instead work in way too small a space to build custom hatches in bulkhead #3.\n","date":"14 October 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20201014/","section":"My scamp","summary":"I built the jig. I did it too early. I should have waited.","title":"Building the jig","type":"scamp"},{"content":"The first thing you have to do when making the boat 3d is to build to the centerboard box, which means you need to know exactly how wide your centerboard is going to be, which means you really should have a finished centerboard ready to go. So, time to build the centerboard (and rudder since the procedure is exactly the same).\nIn order to make these heavy enough to counteract their own boyancy and actually sink when you deploy them you have to add weights to both. A lot of people will custom melt lead, but the idea of that is just completely nasty - lead is an awful chemical you really don\u0026rsquo;t want to get on you. So instead, I went to nfmetals here in Seattle and had them cut me some custom lead sheet to hit target weights.\nThey had 1/2\u0026quot; lead on hand, so I had them cut me two pieces - 6\u0026quot; x 17.6\u0026quot; (for a target weight of 22lbs) and 4.75\u0026quot; x 2\u0026quot; (for a target weight of 2 lbs). That weight for the centerboard is bang on, but according to the wisdom of the forums I should have gone a little heavier on the rudder - likely 2.5 lbs would have been best. I can add this later if needed.\nThe trick here is figuring out where to locate the weight, and then how to exactly match that location in each of the two halves of the rudder or centerboard so that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the option of rattling around.\nThe approach I took was:\ngiven how thick the lead plate itself is, and assuming half of that width would be taken up in each half of the centerboard/rudder, count out how many layers of the plywood you need. You should be able to easily tell how long/forward you can position the lead and still have lots of thickness on the outside edge to hold the weight in. put the two halves of the rudder/centerboard together, and make some reference marks around the outside edge connect those reference marks using a straightedge on each half of the rudder From the outside of the centerboard/rudder, eyeball roughly where it should go based on thickness of plywood (and keeping the weight as low as possible). Draw the outline of the weight. measure offsets of the outline in relation to the reference lines. Transfer those measurements to the other half (understanding that it\u0026rsquo;s mirrored) and draw the same outline on the other half! This should be good enough to actually get you to the point where you have a box and you can route out the position. I just freehanded the router (using a spare piece of wood to set the depth correctly), it worked ok.\nReady to route How did I know it worked ok? After routing out each half of the centerboard and rudder, put the lead weight into it, put the two halves together, and see if there is any offset or whether the two halves line up easily. You could also potentially try and shake it to see if the lead moves around - both mine were pretty good!\nComplete and lined up nicely! Time to glue the two halves together. Put a bunch of glue in the routed out area specifically to hold the lead in place, and then put a bunch across the interior surface of the rudder or centerboard. Here\u0026rsquo;s the classic shot of my centerboard glued up, using some unopened epoxy bottles for weighing the center down and as many clamps as I have arrayed all around the edge.\nOh so many clamps The last step, once everything has dried, is to get rid of the various epoxy drips around the edge. And nothing, and I mean nothing, is as effective at that as the good ol\u0026rsquo; shinto rasp. Worth it\u0026rsquo;s weight in gold.\nIf you don\u0026#39;t own a shinto, buy one, now. Next up, a little garage organization followed by some jig building!\n","date":"8 October 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20201008/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Adding weight to the centerboard and rudder and gluing them together","title":"Weighing Down Centerboards and Rudders","type":"scamp"},{"content":"Turns out I found a bunch of photos from when I built the kayak, so figured I\u0026rsquo;d put them up here. The kayak was built over the winter of 2013/2014, and launched right around September 2014 (yep, I missed the summer - oh well).\nThe earliest photo I could find of this process was already quite some way through the build - the hull had been tacked together, I\u0026rsquo;m betting it\u0026rsquo;d probably already been fibreglassed by this point, and I was planing down the sheer clamps in order to get a rolling curve to match the curvature of the deck plank which was to be attached next.\nIt generated a ton of really nice pine curls. This makes for great fire starter. Boat building generates a lot of this stuff.\nNext up was to put the deck on. I built this particular kayak because I liked the look of the rounded deck as opposed to the harsh \u0026ldquo;chines\u0026rdquo;/angles of decks that are built out of multiple pieces. The one drawback of this is that it was quite the operation to get it on and glued.\nIn the below picture you can more clearly see the nails at regular intervals that were used to help clamp the deck to the sheer while the epoxy dried. These nails are the primary reason why I pushed the hull paint up around the corner and on to the deck for an inch, to hide the nail heads. Note to future builders: you don\u0026rsquo;t really need the nails at all, just use many many straps cinched around the hull \u0026amp; deck while epoxy drys.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the classic shot of a bajillion clamps being used (common for boat building), in this case holding the cockpit coaming tight while epoxy sets.\nAnd here\u0026rsquo;s the boat ready for sanding before hull paint and deck varnish.\nVarnish complete!\nThis is a detail I tried out on this boat - print a design on rice paper (you have to tape the rice paper to a regular sheet of paper to get it to feed through a printer without tearing), then put it down underneath the fibreglass before epoxying. It turned out pretty well, although you can see it moved slightly out of alignment while epoxy was being added to the fibreglass. You can\u0026rsquo;t really see the edge of the rice paper though unless you\u0026rsquo;re really looking close.\nAnd the crappy part of this build. I painted the hull first, and varnished the deck second. Well I taped off the edge of the paint, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t tape all the way down the hull. When varnishing, you have to wet sand between coats, meaning you get this gunky water with varnish crap dripping everywhere.\nWell, it dripped down and proceeded to coat the lovely blue hull paint job. I probably could have washed this off if I was a bit more persistant, but instead I sanded the entire hull and put on one more coat of blue paint. All because I didn\u0026rsquo;t tape up a plastic barrier. Ugh.\nAnd a few pics of the finished kayak. I can report she paddles nicely and has oodles of below deck storage for camping.\nBow and cockpit Stern ","date":"23 August 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/builds/clc17/","section":"Previous builds","summary":"My finished Chesapeake 17 kayak from a few years ago","title":"The Chesapeake 17","type":"builds"},{"content":"First step in new boat project: finish the previous boat project.\nThis paddle has been in various stages of completion since roughly about 2006 (I tend to have a habit of doing that - when I built my chesapeake boat, I bought the kit and proceeded to move house with the kit in tow twice before I actually built it - sigh). It\u0026rsquo;s a pretty basic unfeathered kayak paddle, following the (rough) design from the back of The Strip Built Sea Kayak.\nI think I bought the wood in roughly 2006. I glued up the paddle blanks probably right around there, and then discovered that I needed a bandsaw able to cut a pretty tall (roughly 5\u0026quot;) blank, which I didn\u0026rsquo;t have. So I kept the blanks with me for many years.\nAround 2015 I finally got the blanks cut when I discovered my friend Jim Glynn has one hell of a shop in his garage. Turn on the automatic dust collection machine, fire up the industrial grade bandsaw, and a couple of minutes later I had the blanks cut up.\nDid I finish the paddle right then and there? No, of course not! I decided instead to build two standup paddle boards (this image is of them right after I fibreglassed the tops - I don\u0026rsquo;t think I have photos of the finished products. Maybe I should take some and post them\u0026hellip;) So the cut up paddle blanks sat in my garage for a while.\nFinally, starting late in 2019, I decided it was time to finally get the thing built. Really, I decided I needed the garage space back from the project if I was going to start building a larger boat. So with the aim of finishing the paddle before my sailboat plans and kit were ready for pickup I started in.\nI almost succeeded in finishing it before I picked up the kit. Almost..\nAnyway, this is a 135cm paddle, unfeathered. I can\u0026rsquo;t remember what wood the shaft is built out of anymore, but the paddles have some purpleheart in them as well as some oak and cedar. The blades are completely encased with fiberglass (extra layer on the edge) while the shaft doesn\u0026rsquo;t have any (I wonder if the shaft won\u0026rsquo;t snap the first time I sit on it trying to get into my kayak, I guess I\u0026rsquo;ll have to be careful!) I also made the blades slightly narrower then what the book suggested, as they seemed too wide otherwise. I loosly modelled them on the shape and size of my excellent Werner Kalliste paddle.\nUsed some Petit Captain\u0026rsquo;s Spar Varnish that I had laying around, about 5 coats worth (unthinned, so it should be fine).\nHonestly I\u0026rsquo;m not sure if I\u0026rsquo;ll ever use it (I bloody love my Werner Kaliste and how light it is) but it sure is purdy!\n","date":"16 August 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/builds/finished-the-paddle/","section":"Previous builds","summary":"I finally finished my kayak paddle!","title":"Finished the Paddle!","type":"builds"},{"content":"Ok, I lied, there\u0026rsquo;s always more that needs to be coated in epoxy.\nAnd to think that I have to do two more coats on all the pieces you see here. Geez, this is a monotonous part of the build.\nThe first picture below shows a complete view of the garage workspace. Coated and dried pieces are stacked to the right, plastic is everywhere on the ground for drips or laying parts out for epoxying, and to the left I have a couple of 2x4 stringers across two sawhorses that let me hang multiple pieces at once to dry (mostly bulkheads).\nThe complete picture One coat complete and stacked Pieces drying on the rack Here you can see the roller on the floor that was used for applying the epoxy After all the epoxy was put on, I then decided to lightly sand all of the pieces. (This I\u0026rsquo;ll do again, but probably not until after I\u0026rsquo;ve put both of the remaining two coats on.) The sanding was a lot of time spent with my buddy my random orbital sander, so I setup the big tent on the driveway and dragged my work bench out there. Also helped keep the dust down in the garage itself.\nPulled the workbench out onto the driveway The gigantic tent setup for some sun protection Next up, organize the garage again and now, really, start working on the centreboard and rudder.\n","date":"15 August 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20200815/","section":"My scamp","summary":"There\u0026rsquo;s always more to coat with epoxy","title":"Wait! More Epoxying","type":"scamp"},{"content":" I\u0026rsquo;ve never done \u0026ldquo;build blogs\u0026rdquo; before, and I have no idea what other people\u0026rsquo;s motivations are for those who post them, but here are mine for trying this out:\nI want to remember the different steps here. This is a digital memory of sorts. Since I\u0026rsquo;m not on social media anymore, this provides an easy way to send photos to people if I find the need to do that. I must admit, as I was considering building a scamp, there are many many different build blogs out there, and it was pretty nice to be able to read them and see how they did things. Maybe somebody in the future might find this to be similarly useful. I started this with my Scamp build. The big challenge here for this will be twofold:\nWill I actually remember to take photos of different steps? (surprisingly yes, at least some of the time) Will I find the time to update this periodically? (well batch publish of multiple updates once a looooooong blue moon, sure) Will this be good enough to give me a sense of satisfaction if the damn boat sinks on it\u0026rsquo;s maiden voyage? (time will tell) Current project # I\u0026rsquo;ve started building a Scamp. Good links about the scamps include:\nThe scamp forum Other people\u0026rsquo;s build blogs: Christine DeMerchant Building the Argo Building Shackleton Building Hagoth - built by the same person who built Shackleton - he built two in a row! And I thought I was crazy for building two paddleboards at the same time! Interesting posts I\u0026rsquo;ve made a note of for consideration when I get to that point in my own build: hatch notes instructions from PT watercraft for their now defunct scamp hatch kit - centerboard cap cabin top hand hold footwells in scamp cabin top hand hold #2 rigging idea Past projects # These include:\nA stitch \u0026amp; glue Chesapeake LT 17 kayak (from a kit) You know, now that I think about it, maybe I built the 17, not the LT version? A skin on frame baidarka (from the excellent skinboat school) At least one, maybe two(?), aleut style kayak paddles A euro style paddle, following (but not really closely) the directions in the back of The Strip Built Sea Kayak Two standup Kaholo paddle boards (both from plans) Photos from almost all of the above are in the Builds section.\n","date":"14 August 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/","section":"","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;ve never done \u0026ldquo;build blogs\u0026rdquo; before, and I have no idea what other people\u0026rsquo;s motivations are for those who post them, but here are mine for trying this out:\nI want to remember the different steps here. This is a digital memory of sorts.","title":"About","type":"page"},{"content":"First step - glue all the puzzle joints together, and then coat (most of) the parts in epoxy. Below is a picture of one of the bulkheads that came in two pieces - the puzzle joints are pretty easy to glue together, no need to put a strip of backing fibreglass tape on the joints (though I did consider that in a couple of cases).\nAfter all the puzzle joints were together, on almost all of the parts I needed to put three coats of epoxy on each of them. I decided at the time that I only needed to put one coat on each and that I\u0026rsquo;d further coat them at a later point once they were assembled, but at least at the time I\u0026rsquo;m writing this I\u0026rsquo;ve decided that wasn\u0026rsquo;t the right decision, so before I start assembling everything I\u0026rsquo;m going to have to go back and make more room in the garage so that I can go back and coat everything a second and third time (sigh).\nparts ready for epoxy hull panels laid out drying last hull panels and completed hull bottom Next up, organize the garage a bit more and start working on the centreboard and rudder.\n","date":"3 July 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20200703/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Puzzling bits with epoxy","title":"Puzzle Joints","type":"scamp"},{"content":"I decided to build a SCAMP from the kit (I\u0026rsquo;m only aware of there being the one kit, this one). I had previously built my paddleboards from plans, and while it\u0026rsquo;s definitely doable, I realized during that build just how much time you spend drafting the parts onto pieces of wood and then cutting them out. It felt like roughly 1/3 of the total build time for those paddleboards was spent cutting the parts out. So hey, if there\u0026rsquo;s a kit available, I\u0026rsquo;d take it.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t have a lot of photos from this process, but a couple of memories:\nI went and picked it up from the folks in Pt Townsend. During delivery the warehouse guys taught me something about my truck - apparently there are moulded cutouts in the bed specifically designed to accept cross lumber supports that, with the top of the wheel wells, provide a perfectly flat area the size of the bed. Huh, that was useful to learn. They cut some 2x4s for me for my bed, and then moved the stack of flat plywood quite expertly into the bed of the truck using their forklift. It was roughly about 8 or 9 sheets of plywood thick. I attempted to strap it down as best I could, but, well, on the drive home I had to stop at least once to add more straps. I also discovered that somewhere between Pt Townsend and Seattle I lost a couple of pieces that flew out of the top piece of plywood. Ooops. I think they were part of the mast box? Going to have to fabricate them myself when I get to that part. Hope they didn\u0026rsquo;t hit any cars behind me on the road. The actual unpacking process was a bit of a mess. Back the truck up to the garage and start grabbing pieces from the top layer of plywood, set them aside, and then throw the scrap into a pile on the floor. There was a lot of scrap, and, well, a lot of pieces too.\nIn the second photo there\u0026rsquo;s a better look at the pile of all the cut pieces. I really should have figure out how to organize these before pulling them out of the truck, but I wanted to make sure they didn\u0026rsquo;t get rained on so I was unloading rather quickly.\nThese last two photos just show a slightly better organized pile of parts. The one on the left shows the main panel of the hull bottom at the very back, a few bulkheads in the middle there, and in the front is the bottom of the build jig (which is made out of very thick MDF and thus is far away the heaviest part of the entire kit). The photo on the right is most notable for the two foils on the top of the pile - the centerboard with the rudder on top. The foils are a separate purchase from the kit itself, but again I figured the time savings was worth it.\nNext up, organize the garage a bit more and start putting puzzle joints together\u0026hellip;\n","date":"25 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20200525/","section":"My scamp","summary":"Unloading the kit","title":"Unloading","type":"scamp"},{"content":"SCAMP stands for \u0026ldquo;Small Craft Advisor Magazine Project\u0026rdquo;. It was originally designed by John Welsford, which is important since I think my ultimate boat, the boat I wish to build and sail around in forever, is also a Welsford design - the penguin.\nSo the most important thing to get out of the way first is to print out the coloring pages and start thinking about different color combinations for the boat:\nCockpit focused one above, entire boat one below (click for full size).\nAs Andre Agassi taught me early on, Style Is Everything (tm).\n","date":"1 May 2020","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/scamp/20200501/","section":"My scamp","summary":"I\u0026rsquo;ve started building a SCAMP sailboat","title":"Start here","type":"scamp"}]