Building a Chesapeake Light Craft Northeaster Dory -- Days 11, 12, and 13

Day before yesterday was a big day of work on the boat. First thing in the morning Sue and I added the fillets at the bow, the stern, and all the bulkheads as well as the joint between the bottom and the first hull panel. After lunch we carefully smoothed the fillets using denatured alcohol and used squeegees to clean up as much of the stray thickened epoxy as possible. Then we laid the fiberglass cloth inside the hull and smoothed out all the creases and bubbles. Finally, we spread on a thin coating of fiberglass to wet out the cloth and make it adhere to the hull.

I finished up at about 4:30 by gluing in the breasthook at the bow. Then I celebrated by going down to the lake for a long swim. The water temperature is still quite agreeable.

Late in the evening I came back out to the garage and used a box cutter to trim the fiberglass and peel off the blue painter's tape. There are a few minor drips and runs in this first coat of fiberglass, but on the whole it came out very well.

Yesterday was a day of relatively light work on the boat. First thing in the morning I clipped the remaining wires in the bow, stern, and bulkheads as close to the hull as possible. Inside the boat those wires are entombed in fiberglass, and the little pointy bits on the outside will soon also be covered by fiberglass.

Then I took a long bike ride before starting to shape the transom late in the day. I used a Japanese saw to trim the overhanging hull panels as close to the transom as possible. Then I shaved away the remnant with a coarse rasp. The manual says to use a sharp plane to do this, but I couldn't make that work. After rasping the panels close to the boat, I finished up with 80-grit sandpaper. I still have to hit this area again with some smoother sandpaper, but it's definitely looking much better.

Here is a closeup of the glue in one of the lap joints of the transom. As you can see, the glue penetrated all the way into the joint between the panels. This is one of the features that makes this very light-weight boat so strong. The boat is bottom-up right now, so you have to mentally flip the picture over to imagine how the glue penetrated down into the lap. Most of the other lap joints are tighter than this one, but the glue still penetrated just as deeply.

Today, was a fairly long day of work (though there was time to go kayaking on the lake in the afternoon). First thing in the morning, I cleaned up all the surplus glue on the scarfs of the rails. Next I recruited Sue to help me as we attached the first layer of rails to both sides of the hull. It takes an impressive number of PVC clamps to do this . . . and then it takes an impressive amount of diligence to clean up all the surplus glue that comes oozing out of the clamped joints.

Every day the boat looks stronger and more useful, but every day of slopping on fiberglass glue makes it seem more daunting and more difficult to turn this into the beautiful boat I'd like it to be!