<-page4

Page 5...

                    

Welcome to my 5th Page of progress on my Vacationer project.

 

Ok I have been preparing the rafters and roof stringers to accept the roof pannels to be attached. I also have been preparing the ½" Merenti plywood for the roof. I decided that the merenti is a mahogany species and looks wonderful finished bright so I decided to use a router, and cove out a line the length of the sheet every 4" to look like a cove and bead planked ceiling. The router I used was a Rotozip it was smaller and easier to handle than my router (plus I didn’t have to unscrew it from the router table). I clamped a straightedge down as a guide for the router...

 Here is the boat all ready for the roof...

Well thats it for now. I did get the roof clamped down on the boat this evening, I hope to get it glued down during the week. 

 Till then...

Ok folks it has been a while since I have posted anything let me update just a bit, I am still building my boat.

 I have been doing a lot of extracurricular activities and such, lots of life, some of it just plain getting beat, but mostly taking care of business at home, work and such.

It is 4^th of July weekend as I type this snippet, and am actively back working on the boat. I have been working on the wheels today, I bug bombed the enclosure yesterday to kill the literally millions of spiders, and the few carpenter bees that may still be lingering. Nope don’t dig spiders!   I just cannot work comfortable with them lingering in my space. Here in the S.E. we have lots of poisonous spiders that have the capability of rotting the flesh right off your body. so it does tend to hamper me a bit in the summer months.

  I will continue work on the wheels tomorrow morning and hopefully, if not tomorrow, the next day get "Frankenboat" out of the dungeon, and into the light of day to finally get the roof sealed on her. Sorry I have not posted much as of late, but It hadent occured to me that folks acctually read this stuff.  

 Well expect some more photos soon, and I will be posting.

 Till then...

 

 Hello all, I have been actively working on the boat again, and have made a little progress with it. First off after making that pretty roof pannel for the cabin, I noticed that I had made a few errors in the forming of the cabin wall's at the front of the cabin.

 They were slopped downward on the sides, and the front top stringer was too low, it also had a slight bow in it. How I missed this I have no idea, after spending way too much time worrying about how to fix this, I removed the screws and cut the stringers off with a jigsaw hugging the pannels close.

 Now I will remeasure and remake a new set of stringers that will fix this problem. I also finnaly put the pannel stiffeners up in the bow section on the right side , I did however change that a bit as well, lets hope it does not rear an ugly head and bite me there too.

 What I did was to take 1"x2"'s and glue and screwed them to the hull wall's in between the pannel stiffeners, Then I measured and custom cut 1"x2"'s to the full length of the 1"x2"'s underneath and epoxy'ed and screwed these down.

 I plan on building a shelf out of biskit joined 2"x6"'s placed  up in the stem to hold the marine batteries, and to mount the 3 way battery switch to as well, to begin laying out the electrical system.

 I installed the last side pannel at the right rear of the boat I was using this as an access point till now.

 I did get the boat rolled out into the yard, out from under the carport, and it has been raining ever since lol, but I did learn that the boat is water tight as none of the hundrads of gallons(so it seemed) that leaked into the boat from a holy tarp, did not leak out of the boat and had to be pumped out.

 I did get the entire inside of the boat caulked with Dap Marine 5200 and I must say it takes that stuff forever to dry, and I still await the cockpit to dry so that I may begin building the seats.

 It snowed here a couple weeks back, I know to some of you waht I have here dont mean diddly, but here in these parts it is still a specticle, so here's a picture of snow in my front yard, and also on top of my boat...

Oh also someone had asked me to add a picture of the wheels i used on my building dolly so here it is...

 "In the times when I am trying not to think, I just sand the decks, and sand the decks, and sand the decks"....

 

  ...So Far the heavier stringers have worked quite well, I measured and cut them, stained them and glued them into place. I trimmed all serfaces up to par with my latest toy, the electric hand planer. I kinda' like it, It made everything so nice and even so easily, but it does have the potential to really make a mess of things as well.

 

I Laid the center roof pannel over the rafters and stringers, and began epoxying and screwing the pannel into place. There was still quite a bit of tension at the front of the cabin roof pannel, as it has a compound "stressed skin" bends that make it unbelieveably strong. I had use bolts, one on each side near the front, to pull the pannel down to form, the giant industrial sized wratcheting strap helped out too. The process went fairly un hindered, and the pannel laid right down.

I have since cut the stringers and pannels for the two side roof pannels. I pre'drilled and counter sunk each pannel and stringer, mixed the epoxy and put them on and they are just amazingly strong the whole thing just became solid when i got that roof on. I dont have any pictures of the whole job yet at it hasnt stopped raining since I put them on, I will post them directly...

 Hello all, I'm back! Ok since my last post I trimmed my side Pannels  flush with the bottom of the boat, using a method taught to me by Keith Mclean. Using a router with a flush trim bit, rolling the bearing along the bottom, and the blade cutting the side pannel, and it worked fantastically. In fact when I finnished with the side pannels, I continued to trim the transom, and plan on doing my final roof trim the same way.

 I removed any and all bad screws (stripped), and proceeded to trim the front of the cabin roof which I will do the final trim today.

 I also cut the stringers I will need for the seats in the cockpit, which I plan on getting in this week.

 Photos? yes I have a few here they are.

 

Notice all the holes? when I mixed up my epoxy, everything that could possably go wrong did and ate up my time, causing me to get Panicked as the epoxy was curing quickly. Iit got dark and I missed (ahem!) a "few" screw marks causing me to have to remove them. No problem though, thank's to thickened epoxy

Ok that's all for now, I will post more as I progress, I am working on installing the cockpit seats, I will let you know how this new challenge pans out.

 

 

 

 

 

Back to page 4