Thread: GIS beginners build in Concord, NH

Well, I was looking at the other pics you have on your blog and I really cannot see a real problem. If the plane is having a hard time for clearance, get in there carefully and slowly with a chisel. To take a nice small thickness with a chisel, flip it bevel down. The edge of the bevel will act as a jig to maintain the depth of cut. Don't get your smallest chisel. Get the biggest one you can muster.

The traditional boatbuilder's slick is a monster chisel that looks like it would be for really rough work but it is actually a very delicate instrument. The extra mass of the big chisel and long handle give you a lot of control and allow you to pare off very tiny amounts of wood with each stroke that are in line with what you take off with a plane.

Practice on a piece of scrap to get the feel of doing it that way before you attack your bulkheads.

Alternatively, just get in there with a sanding block or a file and or a rasp and worry it away.

I used a rasp and it came right off... don't know why I didn't think of this earlier...

This is one of the many areas where a small, trimmer router is a wonderful tool

Richard

Originally Posted by Daddles

This is one of the many areas where a small, trimmer router is a wonderful tool

Richard

Or a beltsander ! For me that's the most valuable electric tool. With a very course belt ( grid 40-60 ) you can make bevels, cut away wood and make round corners. You need to get some experience, but than it works very well and speeds up lots of things.......and don't be afraid of clouds of wood-dust

Bulkhead 4 should not have sidearms at this point, just the frame across the bottom (and top?). The sidearms are to be installed after the bulkhead is installed and the seat top is glued in place.

I didn't pick that up, thanks Archie. It is all still possible to do but will be more fiddly. Leaving the arms off makes it easier to fit the seat top. You could either just keep going or saw parallel to the ply then plane off the arms.

MIK

It's got the small side frame arms on the inside of the tank, not the big ones that go to the gunwale. Those are for later.

I'm just 1-2 days away from putting the boat through a dry fit, so I pulled out my plywood sides that I cut a couple of months ago. The most outer layer of ply on my starboard bow side ply along the chine has delaminated. The delam is approximately 4 inches wide at the mouth and 6 inches deep.

The ply has never gotten wet, it's been stored in my dry basement right next to where I work. It was not there/apparent when I cut the piece.

I can open the mouth by bending the ply, I'm completely OK with the idea of dropping some epoxy in there and sealing it up for good. Not to mention it will be sealed against the bottom anyway, with glass tape for re-enforcement. I'm loathe to get another piece of ply due to the $ and effort involved getting to the lumberyard.

Thoughts?

Bugger about the ply

In my case, the delamination happened after the boat was assembled
My experiences and repair are documented here
The repair has held so it could be argued that it's not a problem. The questions I ask though are: why did it delaminate and how far does the failure extend? Will it do it again? Is it worth trying to save a few dollars?

Richard

I just checked the reciprocal piece that would have been near this delam, the port stern piece, and it's solid. It doesn't seem to be a problem necessarily with the ply itself, I think this may have happened post cut. The ply does look a tad bent, I may have bent it a little too much unnecessarily just by mistake at some point. I think I'm going to dump epoxy in it and put a bunch of bricks on it and walk away and forget all about it.

EDIT: Nice repair job after everything was all glued up, by the way. I liked it. Mine will be inboard inside the forward bouyancy tank, so it will either A: never be seen by me again, B: be a real pain to fix if it bulges in the future and I do notice it.

So I just glued my side pieces together, and I was pretty good about pre-coating both the side and the bootstrap with with epoxy and then coating it with thickened epoxy thereafter, but not very much oozed out when I applied the bricks... I'm concerned I may have not put enough. Is there a good test of strength to make sure it'll hold, or will I know when I try to fit the boat together and she goes POP!?

I don't know what caused the delam but storage can contribute to problems even for the best quality material. You said the material has been kept dry in the basement which probably has a concrete floor. Don't store any wood or wood product in contact with concrete. Sheet goods can be stored on edge with sacrificial wood shims keeping the material off the floor. Same for solid wood--do not store in contact with concrete.

Well damn. How come?

Even when the humidity is low (and sometimes *because* it is low,) water will migrate through concrete to be normally evaporated into the interior atmosphere. Much like a low pressure steam bath. Wood really likes the moisture and will absorb it. You get the moisture in the wood and the wood expands. A piece of plywood with one layer expanding more than the others (the one in contact with the concrete) will pull itself apart. Thicker wood will develop weird pressures and when you cut it. it can really squirm. I had some 1/2 in plywood like this that curled like a banana peel when I cut it. It can be pretty dramatic.