Sanding down the toilet seat

The cockpit coaming sanded down fairly rapidly, and when you start shaping the round-over with the sander, it's easy enough to keep everything symmetrical and smooth, because there are more plies in the coaming than flies at a picnic, and so you can really see clearly whether things are even or not. Just keep the thing looking right as you sand and in the end, it will look right.

Here are some more pictures of the sanded coaming. It's a nice mix of easy-to-do and looks-really-good, which makes it a particularly satisfying part of the project. And I have no idea why some people call this type of kayak cockpit a toilet seat.
 

Chickens suck at calculus - frustrating for all involved.

I took quite a bit of time away from this blog to see if I could teach this chicken to understand calculus. It was a waste of time. This chicken is absolutely worthless in that direction. I'll finish the blog now.

Coaming in pieces

I decided to do the glue-up of the coaming in two stages, partly to make it easier to handle, and partly so that I could clean up the outer edges of the spacers. First, I clamped them in place and marked the cockpit hole, and cut it out fairly close (+1/4 inch) to the actual size to make clamping easier. Next I slathered the spacers with thickened epoxy and clamped them in place with a layer of wax paper under them so they wouldn't stick to the deck. The result: two spacers, formed to fit the curve of the deck. The picture shows them with the outer edges sanded.

Gluing the coaming assembly to the deck was a bit fiddly. It took a lot of clamps.

I found it was easiest to start by clamping the assembly firmly at the aft centerline, adding clamps going forward. Cockpit = lamprey.

By the way, you know how it's a herd of buffalo, a murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, a shrewdness of apes (really), a pod of whales, a shiver of sharks (no, really), a parliament of owls, a troubling of goldfish (really, I'm not kidding), and so forth? I'd like to suggest a grasp of lamprey.

And when dey was no crawdads, we et sand..

I wet out the deck with as little epoxy as I could to save weight. The first coat went on with a bondo spreader, and I used just enough to wet out the cloth completely, scraping all of the excess off. The second and third coats went on with a foam roller - very thin coats, just enough to fill the weave of the cloth, with an overnight cure between first and second coats, and about 4 hours between second and third coats.

After 24 hours of curing, I began sanding the deck. I started with 100 grit and knocked the high spots off, being careful not to sand the edges along the chines of the boat. It's incredibly easy to sand right through the glass and into the wood whenever there's a sharp curve or edge. Best to sand those spots by hand or with the sander on lowest speed. After the 100 grit, I moved to 150 grit, then 220 grit. Yep, it's skipping grit, but I ain't building a piano. Also, I plan to install rubrails, which means I don't have to be overly fastidious about the round-over at the chine. I hit that enough to remove the high spots to make sure the rubrail will draw up tight.  All told, it took me no more than about an hour to sand the deck in its entirety (probably less, because whenever you're sanding, one minute feels like five). Next, coaming and hatches.

Glass on deck

It rained buckets yesterday so I decided not to glass the deck, thinking the excess humidity might fog the epoxy, which I didn't want because I'm gonna finish the deck bright. This morning, however, was blue skies. Here, I've got the glass laid on the deck (one 16 foot piece of 27" glass - 3.6 oz), and the edge cut so that there's a one inch overlap down the hulls. I also applied masking tape just below the rub-rail line, sticking only the top edge to the hull, with the bottom edge flared outward a bit. This is a surfboard glasser's trick - any epoxy resin that runs over the edge will run down the tape and drip on the ground instead of down the hull. Makes for no drips or runs, which keeps me from having to sand the runs away after the resin cures.

I used a light misting of 3M 45 spray adhesive along the edges just to keep the glass in place. I find that the adhesive makes the job a lot easier: the glass doesn't shift around or float. It just stays right where you put it. This was necessary today especially. It was very windy and the glass was getting blown around a bit.

You'll need more straps...

The aft deck went on just fine because the radius did not require a significant bend in the 4mm plywood. First I coated the underside of the deck with epoxy, then I put thickened epoxy along the sheer clamps, fastened the tip of the deck with a bronze ring nail, and then used a nylon strap placed at the bulkhead to hold it in place. I then used a marking guide to draw a line on the deck along the edge to serve as a nail guide, and predrilled holes every 4 inches along this line. I spaced the nails on the aft deck at 4" rather than the recommended 3" because I'm using nails left over from another boat and I only have 112 of them. So, 4" aft of the rear bulkhead where it's relatively flat, and 3 1/4" forward of the rear bulkhead where it's gotta hold a steeper curve, will require 110 nails, which means I can (a) bend two (b) lose two, or (c) bend one and lose one. I'd order more but I'm a cheap bastard. Also, I hate waiting.

The fore deck was a bit trickier because of the 16" radius curvature. I wound up using about 6 nylon straps (the ratcheting kind) to hold it in place while I nailed. Also, the butt blocks were hard to clamp tightly enough to ensure a smooth and level join, so I had to use a couple of drywall screws to draw them up. Once it was nailed, I flipped the boat over and filled whatever gaps there were between the deck and the chines with epoxy thickened so it would just barely run into the gaps on its own. Tomorrow, I'll glass the deck.

All hands on deck

With the sheer clamps and footbrace backs installed, the deck is next. I added a couple small deckbeams fore and aft, and installed a couple of additional bulkheads very near the bow and stern (just visible at the top of the photo at left). Not sure why. The hull was plenty stiff without them. I just wanted some clean storage compartments, really, and I was envisioning tiny little loose things rattling around and getting jammed in those tiny wedge spaces at the bow and stern, so I just closed them off. Then I gave the inside a second thin coat of epoxy. Ready for decking.