Swimming ?

 One thought I've had is to have a swimming ladder on the boat. Wondering about water temperatures, I found this website. https://watertemperatureforecast.com/ 

 Another website included "swimming condition" icons. It was saying anything above 65 degrees is "BRISK" and anything under 65 is too cold for swimming. I have a little pool in the back yard and swimming pool temperatures for just soaking in need to be at least in the low 80's. A mountain lake in the 80's?, that'll never happen.

 I have in the past swam in Diamond Lake and in Crescent Lake, both in the Cascade mountain range.

 

Epoxy Putty formula

 When boat building with epoxy, everyone has lots of advice.  Many people will refer you to a book, Epoxy Basics by Russell Brown, as the gold standard reference. https://www.amazon.com/dp/149284182X   But I also came across a document which included a few pages on epoxy additives.

Straight epoxy, especially the LV (low viscosity) types typically used in boat building, are very thin and runny.  To use epoxy as a glue it needs to be thickened somewhat, and to use epoxy as a putty it must be very thick (like peanut butter).

Russell Brown recommends using three or four different additives to make filleting putty.  In the Wooden Boat magazine articles of building the Redwing-18 they recommend using two additives, one of which is wood flour.

The problem with the standard additives commonly sold is that most are fine, powdery man-made materials which are not at all good to breathe into your lungs. I was at the club a couple weeks back talking to a guy about these additives when I saw a few left over containers on a shelf.  Curious to know what one actually looked like, I took it down and opened its lid. The guy literally jumped back four feet!! Certainly if you are going to measure out  an amount and stir it into your epoxy you will want to use a dust mask or maybe a respirator, but all I did was take the lid off.

Now, one of the common additives used is what's called 'wood flour'. First off this is a natural product, it is literally wood sawdust that has been ground to a fine powder. Imagine you're power sanding a block of wood with a vacuum attached to the sander. What ends up in the vacuum's bag is wood flour.

Using the man-made additives yields a putty that is smoother and easier to work with and some will also add extra strength, but I feel the extra costs and hazards are not worth it.  I will be using only wood flour on this boat.  I'm sure many people will wish to argue this point, but I've made up my mind. I like things simple and I like doing things my way. 

Using just wood flour does not make the ideal putty to work with and I've already found that trying to lay down the full sized fillet in a single pass is difficult. I've decided to do the fillets in two passes. Putting down an under-sized fillet first and after it hardens, applying the full sized radius fillet on a second pass. Note; the fillets will be covered with fiberglass cloth and more epoxy, so they don't have to be perfect or perfectly smooth.

When power sanding, I would certainly use a vacuum attachment if the sander had one, and I would use a dust mask. I would also ventilate the work shop before taking off the mask. These same precautions need to be used when measuring and mixing wood flour into epoxy. Once whetted out in the epoxy mix, a mask is no longer needed.

Since I'm mixing lots of batches of putty for the fillets, I made myself a dust-hood so I don't have to bother with masks. Here it is. I've added a red line to the picture to show the edge of the plastic sheeting on the front.

 I measure the wood flour using a kitchen weight scale and then mix the epoxy inside the hood until all the wood flour is whetted out and mixed into the epoxy.

For those curious my putty formula is 10 pumps of the MAS epoxy, about 135 grams, and 38 to 40 grams of wood flour.  That's all that my little mixing cups can handle.

UPDATE: after finishing the second MAS epoxy jugs, I found I had a significant  amount of resin leftover. Apparently the pumps aren't perfect, especially when cold. From now on I will be mixing by weight instead of counting pumps. New formula is 100g resin , 45g hardener, and 45g wood flour.

 

 

 

Costs so far...

 The epoxy filleting requires a fair amount of epoxy and I'm ordering another 1-1/2 gallon kit. This finally puts the cost of materials higher than the motor. 

Boat Storage update

 With the concrete extensions complete, I emptied out the garden shed and moved it four feet to the left. The wood pile on the end got rebuilt and a new white tarp. The whole garden shed got a good cleaning out and reorganizing.

I removed the roofing to repair some leaks. One thing led to another, and I've purchased all new fiberglass roofing panels. I included a few white pieces to give more light into the shed. 

The boat cover area will be rebuilt larger using the lumber that is currently in use on the boat building structure. In the meantime, I've shortened that outside area roof down to 8 feet.

With the garden shed emptied, I had the opportunity to throw out old useless things, to repaint the shelving, and to redo the tools.

A couple of Christmas' ago I received some garden tool storage pegs (yes, I did ask Santa for them). I finally got around to installing them in a neat and organized way. I added an additional 2x4 to place a few of them.

Now, women will shake their heads and roll their eyes, but no man can look at this and not say... "That is a thing of beauty!"

 

Stitching aide / holding the frames

 I held the center frame, #4, in place using a brace to the bottom.  I screwed a small block to the bottom panel with a single screw and then clamped a stick in place. 

The top clamp uses a small slotted piece of plywood.

The other frames were braced against this center frame using slotted blocks and sticks clamped in place. The clamps hang from below to keep the braces from tipping over. Note, the clamps do not clamp to the frames. Its only the slotted blocks which hold the frames. With the bottom of the frames stitched with tie-wraps, this was more than enough to hold the frames while fitting the sides on.

 

Filleting volume

 There are three areas of filleting to do on this boat; frame-to-bottom, frame-to-side, and bottom-to-side. The plans call for a 2 inch radius fillet on the frame-to-bottom and the frame-to-side fillets, and a 3 inch radius fillet on the bottom-to-side.

The angle that the panels meet are not perpendicular 90-degree angles. The frame-to-bottom panels vary a little with the curve of the bottom panel fore and aft (the 'rocker'), but they are fairly close to 90-degree. A 2 inch radius fillet looks like the upper-left image in this picture and the cross-section of the epoxy fillet is 0.87 square inches.

 The angle of the bottom-to-side panels is about 20 degrees and remains roughly the same fore to aft. A 3 inch radius fillet looks like the upper-right image in the picture and the cross-section of the epoxy fillet is 0.81 square inches. A larger radius, but the amount of epoxy, although slightly less, is roughly the same as the 2 inch perpendicular fillet.

The angle of the frame-to-side panels varies greatly from fore to aft. Frame #4 is roughly 90 degrees, but the others are significantly different.  Here's frame #1 near the bow, viewed from above.

Frame #1's angle is much more than 20 degrees. The lower-left image in the picture above shows the effect of 20 degrees of angle using the same 2 inch radius on both sides. A huge difference in the cross sectional area, making a huge difference in the amount of epoxy securing each side of the frame. Not just a difference is fillet volume, but also in how far from the corner the fillet extends (glue contact area on the panel).

To alleviate this issue, I will use different radii throughout the frame-to-side fillets. The lower-right image in the top picture shows fillets that are far more equal, but using different radii.

I made myself four filleting squeegees, 3-inch radius, 2-inch radius, 1-1/2 inch radius, and a 1-1/8 inch radius. I then held the squeegees in the frame-side corners and visually selected what looked right. Here is the diagram with the assigned fillet sizes.