Wednesday, January 22, 2014

I won't bore you with the small stuff, but after squaring and tabbing everything in place, it just becomes a ton of filleting and taping. I got advice from a friend that is building a 43' Dick Newick designed trimaran in Aspen, CO, and after that I started doing my fillets as follows. 1- mix and fillet several feet (I usually would try to mix up and fillet about 8-12 linear feet). 2- after filleting, start precutting your double bias tape (set aside in an order you can remember). 3- set up a piece of plastic sheathing on a flat work surface (I did mine on a 1x12 set on sawhorses). 4- Wait until fillets start to gel, and mix epoxy in small batches, wet out the precut pieces of tape on top of the plastic (I used a chip brush and squeegee), wet out then lay the tape to your fillet and squeegee in place (I found the side of my gloved finger worked well) also use your finger to gently push/slide the tape into the fillet, so that you get a good bond. doing this technique I felt I was able to work very efficiently, and created my best fillets.

Stringers: I pre marked where I wanted my stringers to sit, then cut plywood scraps to length and roughly 4" tall, I then used a technique counter top installers use, and held my stringer to my layout marks, then used a 3/4"X3/4" block/pencil to slide along my hull panel and transferring the exact hull shape to the stringer, I then cut to the mark with my skill saw, check that it fits right, now use it as a template to cut another, (if you laid your frames out correctly it should fit perfectly on the other side of the boat), repeat until all stringers are cut, then you get the fun of doing more fillets, by now it will be second nature (I put my iPod on shuffle, cranked it up, and just kept moving).

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