got plans

[i smell smoke]

went and got the ply today .
i went in intending to get 4mm marine ply at 40 bucks a sheet , but i had a look at it and they had 2 dark sheets and 2 light coloured sheets and both were very plain looking bland no grain feature at all , and only 2 of each meant i could not get a spare or grab another matching one next week should i have a disaster ( swamp girl 12 , 2 sheet build ) .
so instead i came out with 3 sheets of 4mm exterior hardwood ply with a bit of nice grain @ $24 per sheet plus i grabbed a sheet of the same stuff in 6mm for frames and stuff like that .
yeah hardwood is a bit heavier but i figured this is only a 12 foot swamp girl and we wont be carrying the thing very far so the little bit extra weight should not matter .
best buy of the day after a bit of chasing around was a very nice drywall square wish i knew about these years ago i could of wore 2 of them out by now if i had ,very cheap too ,looking at it i thought here we go this has got to be worth 80 or 90 bucks but was only 24.90
johno

[i smell smoke]

made a mistake by getting the ply yesterday because i have other stuff i should be doing but because i have the materials i had to make a start just could not help it .
so now the paying and need to be done jobs have been pushed back down the list, for a day or 2 anyway.
got all the panels cut today ,i will cut the frames tomorrow and sand the panel edges .
just showed the wife the pile of panels and told her thats your boat she looked a tad disappointed rekons it dont look like a boat .
my epoxy has not arrived yet hope that comes tomorrow or i will have to wait until next week .

p.s.
oops i have cut 1 of each panel then sanded them down to my lines then used them to mark all the others , then i cut them all .
then i am sitting here at the computer and i remember the QA sheet and i thought oh sh#* i went up to the shed grabbed the sanded master panels and checked them with the QA sheet massive sigh of relief they are spot on bar 1 which is only 1mm out and thats only the thickness on my pencil line so atleast i will sleep well , if they had of been out it would of bugged me all night .

[i smell smoke]

day 2 in the construction .
never got a real lot done today kind of taking it a bit steady and i had other stuff to do too , i smoked a few pork shoulders for pulled pork and smoked a few boiling bacons and i always roll up the pork skin in strips and smoke them too for my dog he loves his pork skin rollups
on the swamp girl i stacked all the panels into stacks of 4 with the ( what i call the master panel ) and sanded them all down to match exactly , then i cut the frames and sanded them down to size ,all that took a lot longer than i thought it would between doing other stuff ,plus i left quite a bit to sand off on purpose to avoid the splintering from the jigsaw . also yesterday i made a trip up to the hardware shop because my orbital sanders were to slow and my big makita belt sander was to heavy , clumsy and savage to handle for any length of time on its side so i bought this smaller and lighter belt sander and it is great for the job , quick and easy to handle in any position .
my epoxy arrived today too so thats good .
i have to do a bit more quick reading and decide whether to go glass or butt blocks on the panel joints.

[David Kopera]

John,

Now you went and done it. You posted your meat on the web. Now all of us are gonna have to show up to help you take care of it!!!!


Keep it warm, we will be right over..........

[Oldsparkey]

John,

Now you went and done it. You posted your meat on the web. Now all of us are gonna have to show up to help you take care of it!!!!


Keep it warm, we will be right over..........

If that makes you hungry take a look at what else he does. Makes me want to take one of Matt's Boats and paddle over there.

http://www.southernpaddler.com/phpBB3/v ... f=7&t=8083

Sigh..."O" Well... Back to boats......

Chuck.

[Jacko]

You are so mean, fancy posting those pork pics. I'm a few hundred klm's away from you but a can smell that pork from here Mick and I might need to travel out to Texas from the Fraser Coast and see what it tastes like

[i smell smoke]

where im at , yesterday i did the panel joins with the wood flour epxoy .this morning i sanded the panels clean at the joins ,my wood flour mix was way dark ( which i expected , i have a fair bit of experience with this from when i was a floor sander filling gaps in floors we mixed up a brew and squeegeed it over the whole floor area ) anyway after sanding back the joins i still had some voids which i wanted to get rid of but didnt want to make a mess on the panels again and have to sand it all again so i masked it off and filled the joins again , now i think to myself why did i not do this when i first filled the joins could of saved a lot of sanding off of dark epoxy .

[john the pom]

Why didn't you do that the first time? Simple, if you had masked it then I, or anyone else wouldn't have been able to say: "hindsight is a wonderful thing" Hell we all had to learn about masking/hindsight. So should you
Cheers John.

[i smell smoke]

where i am up to now.
to say i had a bit of a struggle getting to this point would be playing it down a little .
my first mistake i think was using the hardwood exterior ply instead of marine its quite brittle and very stiff and wants to splinter very easy even when drilling small holes anyway i am sticking with it but have learned some thing there for future builds.
then because i wanted to keep the holes as small as possible i went the thin tie wire route also thinking that i could back them off if i had some thing to tight where as with cable ties you cant do that , i got most of the boat stitched all bar one side panel and it looked terrible and i had lost a fair bit of blood on the tie wire .
so i took the whole thing to bits and started again this time with bigger holes and cable ties and no wooden spacers cos they were giving me probs too .
so now i have all the ties pulled up tight ( only way i could get it to conform to the shape )means i have a lot of hard spots to contend with but i think if i take my time and just wood flour glue the areas that are not rubbing then let that dry and take out a few stitches and do the next area also maybe make use of the dremel idea i read about to relieve the rubbing areas .
so the problems i have had have all been my own fault , well it would be no fun if it fell together to easy would it.
this boat has some very nice lines by the way matt ,even in this rough form it is in at the moment she is developing nice lines .
i suggested today to the wife ( its her boat ) that because of the bigger holes and some splintering that it may be better painted instead of clear and what she thought of that , the answer was she wants it clear so i am going to try to get a good colour match with the wood flour , maybe grind up some pine on my big sander and add just enough darker flour to match the colour .

[jem]

When the wood doesn't want to bend all the way, what you can do is get it to a position you feel comfortable with, and then leave it alone for at least a couple hours. The ply will "relax" a little and let you finish off any tight twists.

And yes that "exterior" grade doesn't like to behave. But proceed with patience and it'll turn out nicely.