Never Sea Land

As I write, the Ulua project is at the 1 year and 14 day mark.  This weekend we glassed the vaka and applied two coats of epoxy.   The shot below is a teaser for the end result.  More details after the break…

In an effort to shrink the staple holes, we butchered our kettle and made a steam-squirting contraption.  A few seconds of intense steam shrinks most of the holes quite a bit, and on a test panel made them less visible than un-steamed holes.  However, after sanding and standing for a number of weeks, the holes were still very visible.  So I am not sure this effort was worth it.

Essential tools and supplies.

Outer stems.  These are sapele, first cut with the jigsaw and then shaped with a spokeshave to match the curve of the hull.  I thought sapele would be easier to get for the gunwhales, and I wanted to match.  As it turns out, the gunwhales will be African mahogany.  I am not following Gary’s procedure, as I did not like the idea of laminating the stems and using temporary screws to hold them down, the stems are pretty sharpish when done, and I admired Kent’s treatment.

Stern shaped and planed to receive outer stem.  I shaped the curves by eye and later matched the timber to them.  Took a couple of weekends about it, too.  The blue tape was a bad idea — I was trying to keep excess epoxy glue from building up, but I masked too close, embedding highly visible blue tape in the clear epoxy that soaked out of the epoxy/wood flour glue mixture. 

Crude clamping of bow stem to hull.

Gluing the stern outer stem.

Stern outer stem (both parts) in place.

Bow complete.  Shaping done with spoke shave, small block plane, and fairing board.

Stern complete.

Hull after fairing with longboard (60 grit) and RO sander (to 120 grit).

Starting to drape the 6oz glass. 

The draping went better than expected, by following the hull shape and lots of gentle whisking with a soft dust brush it lay very fair.

Ready for epoxy.

Epoxy complete.  Do NOT attempt to do a whole hull with out a helper!

View from stern, after two coats.  There are some drips, bulges, airspaces, the seam at the keel, some ragged long random fibers, and other defects to fix with sanding prior to the final expoxy coat being applied, but on the whole she looks pretty nice.