Well, we stated gluing things together today and got all the hull panels done. We went back and forth on rather to reduce the panel thickness at each splice, but in the end I decided to go ahead and do it. Using the belt sander and 80 grit paper I took off about 1/16” by 3 ½” from each panel where the splices are making a 7” relief for the epoxy and 6” fiberglass tape. This will make the splices much fairer and should save a little frustration when it comes time to finish things up. We did this on the inner areas only as we have not decided rather to put glass tape over the exterior splices. This will be determined in the morning when we can uncover the splices and get a feel for there strength. After putting a bit of epoxy on the edge of the splice I then moved the panes to about 1/16” apart and filled the gap with thickened epoxy before pushing them tight. A generous coat of epoxy is next followed by the glass tape, covered with plastic and rolled out until the glass is clear to all edges. This technique yields a very smooth finish and if done right will require little or no filling of the glass weave. (for more information on this technique go to
http://www.pbase.com/dr_dichro/electric_boat ). After everything looks good we place concrete blocks on the splice to hold it in place while the epoxy cures overnight.
By the way, you can’t fit an 18’ boat in a 25’ garage in flat pieces; you have to leave the end sticking out the door overnight.
Another area of debate is rather to pre-coat the entire panels before assembling the parts on the frame. Some of the more respected experts say yes while a few say no. I posted the question to the Bateau forum and got an overwhelming no. Jury’s still out on that one and I think I’ll read up on it in the Gougeon Brothers book while I fall asleep. There is no doubt about pre-coating the edges but the faces are in question.
Tomorrow we should start setting up the strong back and then the frames can be set in place. We hope to get the panels on the frames by Monday evening, which will give us our first look at a semi-completed SB 18 hull
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