BnzFam5

April 22, 2012 I bought foam insulation boards to use as flotation foam in the boat.  Today I cut that up and put them into the different sections of the boat. They were already scored length wise in thirds so that made it easier to cut. To get them down to size I used the my reciprocating saw with the fine tooth blade.  That cut right through them very quickly. Here is the picture with the foam in place.  I want the foam to rise up about 1/2 inch so that there will be some compression when I lay the deck board over it.  That way it will solidify the hull even further. I finished up the day with sizing and cutting the cleats that will create more surface to screw the deck plates down. TO DO LIST: -Cut and attach cleats at the top of the stringers and bulkheads -Paint Cleats with Redguard. -Purchase Plywood for the Deck (2 Sheets -- 1/2" MDO) -Make patterns to use for cutting the deck wood -Cut deck wood and screw to the stringers

April 6, 2012 Started the day out with a couple of other projects that I needed to get done. So after a nice lunch, I started cutting the CSM tape to fiberglass the stringers and bulkheads down to the boat. My plan is to do 2 layers of 1.5oz CSM up on one layup. Then whilst that is curing we will cut the 1708 Biaxual tape and fiberglass that in for the final layer. April 7, 2012 The stringers and bulkheads are now fiberglassed into the boat. We had 3 people (my wife Nina joined Jack and myself) working on this phase of the project and everything went pretty smooth and quickly. It was nice to have help! Observations CSM is horrible to work with...the glass strands get all over everyone and everything!! Nina worked on pre-saturating the glass and then handing them to me in the boat. She would spread resin on one layer of glass and then put on another layer and then saturate that one. When she was finished with that she would hand them to me in the boat where I had already...

April 1, 2012 The Stringers and Bulkheads are now glued into the boat. It has been a long day. We (my brother in law, Jack came over to help) started the day by bracing the center stringer that comes out from under the bow section. Onc e that was done we mixed up our first batch of "Peanut Butter". We started with 1 cup of resin and the right amount of hardener, then about 3 pinches of 1/4 inch Chopped Strand Mat and then Cabosil to thicken up the mixture to the consistency of "Peanut Butter". It worked out pretty well. While that was hardening we went to work on scuffing the resin that was spread on the stringers and bulkheads. We wanted to sand those before putting them into the boat. That took about an hour so then it was lunch time. We noticed that the thickened resin we made was still pretty soft so we moved the boat out into the sunlight while we ate lunch. Sure enough when we came back out the resin had kicked and was already pretty solid. We...