Sheeting the hull

The hull was turned over and placed on a base for work on the interior.

Planking is now done. The hull has to come off the mold. Once all the screws had been removed from the hull it lifted off the mold without problems.

Here you can see progress. Two more planks to go!

The mold was covered in packing tape to make sure that the planks did not get glued to the frames and stringers. The planks were added sequentially on either side.

The plywood under the screw head can be seen here as the plank is fitted.

The next plank was fastened to the frame by driving screws through the plank and the plank below and into the stringer on the frame. Each screw had a plywood square (3/4 x 3/4) under its head so as to spread the load.

The chamfered edge of the plank was epoxied with un-thickened epoxy as was the mating edge of the next plank. Before attaching the next plank the chamfered edge was covered with a thin coating of thickened epoxy (just thick enough not to drip). This coating would fill any uneven parts of the joint and would squeeze out.

Once the epoxy was set, the glass was trimmed to the edge of the plank and the glass on the chamfer was sanded to accept the epoxy that would glue the next plank.

I wanted the bottom panel to be glassed so that it would take the bumps and scrapes that would happen as the hull gets dragged up the shore. The butt joint along the centerline of the hull was glassed with a strip of biaxial ply tape. Then 8 oz cloth was laid on top and over the chamfer that had been cut on the edge of the plank.

The plywood panel is marked with a line 3/4 of an inch in from the cut edge.

The spokeshave is then used to carve the wood from the plywood panel down to the line.

This gives a 3/4 inch wide gluing area along the hull with the chamfer properly cut and varying along its length according to where the next panel will sit.

The next panel is glued to the chamfer and is clamped to the lower stringer.

Screws are used to pull the glue joint tight to the upper stringer.

I added a block of hard wood to each handle of a spokeshave so that the block would ride on an adjacent stringer while the blade cut the wood from the panel edge.

A bit about making the chamfers on the panel edges.

Each panel edge has to be chamfered to accept the panel below (upside down - above if you are the right way up) and this edge has to be done fairly accurately and the angle changes as you go down the length of the hull. How to do this?

I did it this way and used the stringers to identify the angle of the chamfer.

The bottom planks are fitted to the shape of the first stringer.

They are butted together at the keel and cut to fit just over the stringer.

The clamps holding them in position can be seen.