JEM Watercraft

My Merrimac plans arried today and I can't waite to get started.
I have been wanting to make a canoe for a long, long time.
I will be getting plywood tomarrow. HomeDepot has Bearch ply in 1/4" that should work out ok, right?
I'll be ordering epoxy soon.

JC

G'day JC and welcome to the dark side mate. You will never regret it.

I don't know anything about the birch ply but it should be OK.

The ply I have been using is utter rubbish and it works out OK.

I would recommend you check your ply for voids and cracks and also, to go through the pile of sheets they will have to select the prettiest ones.

Good luck on the build.

Hi JC
Dont forget to take plenty of pictures of your build and keep us posted on your progress.
All the Best Zeb

I've been slow to post, but I have been working.
I bought the 5mm Luan from Lowe's', after a lot of sorting.
Then we layed out the panels and cut them out with a jig saw,
a little shaky but not bad. The panels did warp a little so I
had to add quite a bit of weight on the butt joints, to keep them flat.
Next was drilling the holes and making spacers.



The stitching assembly went ok, so far so good.





My fillet gluing was not to neat, but nothing the belt sander could not fix.
I caution anyone to take a belt sander to plywood, you better have a good
bit of experience with your sander or you can sand right through the thin plywood
or at least put in a very deep gouge. Be careful!

The bow and stern needed a little sawing to even out and a good bit of sanding to
cleanup. It was worth it, the ends came out nice.
I’ll be doing a full exterior and interior layer of fiber glass;
Hopefully I can get the exterior on this week end.

I’ll keep you posted.

-

I do have a question, fiber glassing steps, as I see it.

Do I test fit,
Epoxy coat the entire exterior; ( I have two helpers )
Lay on the fiberglass,
Top coat with epoxy?

-Dry fit the cloth
-leave the cloth in place dry. Use small pieces of masking tape to hold if needed.
-apply the epoxy from the center of the cloth out to the edges. The epoxy will wet the masking tape and let it slip right off.
-foam rollers work the easiest in this application. you could also spread with a plastic squeegee.

Your boat is coming along beautifully mate.

You will need at least three coats of epoxy to fully fill your fibre-glass weave (probably more) Don't skimp on this. If you can see or feel the fibres in the glass, you need another coat.

refer to tips and tricks here and in other builds in the builders log mate. After you roll the resin on, lightly squeegee it off again. this will minimise resin runs and a lot of sanding between coats.

I have been slow to post, but I am making progress on the canoe.

The hull has been fiber glassed inside and out. The outside was easy. The inside was a challenge, but not to bad.


Then the decks went in followed by the inner gunwales and then the outer, I'm going with clear pine.
The inwals are 3/4 x 1" wide and the outer are 3/4 x 3/4.
Giving me a total of 2 inch wide gunnels, that’ll keep her stiff.
I put in a couple screw through into the deck.


Next I'm making a yoke thwart and I have ordered canning to weave the seats.

I have joked; if I take much longer we''ll be going ice fishing.

But seriously, this canoe has taken me all summer, but that is only because of my time constraints and work method,
plan and study each step for a week or two. That's the engineer in me

JC,

Like you, I turn a 2-3 week project into a 6-8 month project. I'm pretty good at procrastination, if I can ever get started at it.

Sometimes, you just need to let the design, steps, procedures, and processes "cook" a while in our mind. When you step back up to the boat. "BOING!" the answer is there.

I do the same thing. Luckily you only have to build it once!