Buisness Time - Day 1

Ok, now it's time to build the hull itself. I bought 1000' of 1/2" by 1mm (yeah, multiple units) thick mahogany veneer from Boulter Plywood in Sommerville MA. This will ran me between $300 and $400. Now to get strenght, we're going to glue the first two layers of veneer on 45's to each other. In the Gougeon book they say to staple the first layer of veneer down to the mold using plastic tabs (plastic lids from Dunkin Doughnuts should work). I just couldn't stomach the idea of putting all those holes into the boat. It's a boat, it doesn't like holes. Anyway, I was wrong. Do what they say. What I did was as follows. We made the gunwales extra thick, with the idea that we would staple the veneer, stretch it out from one end to the other, and then staple it on the other side. There simply isn't enough force to keep the veneer in this position, and you start to get voids between the veneer, and eventually bumps.

Then we simply worked our way down the boat, stapling on each piece of veneer.

Now for the second layer, this is where the epoxy came in. Don't forget to wear a mask, this stuff is bad for you. Just like the first layer, we worked our way down the boat, only this time painting it with epoxy, and then placing a strip of veneer. Here we stapled it again to the gunwales, but I'd recommend using the plastic strips. In which case you'll have to remove each plastic strip from the first layer, before stapling the new layer down (with a plastic strip). Another reason I didn't like that method, but I think it ultimately works better.

Lastly, we decided to plastic wrap the whole boat. The idea was that we could pull tight enough to act like a vacuum pump. Good or not, it was fun, and added some silliness to the whole process.

Prepping the Mold

Great! Now we've got the mold built, the glue for the keel has dried, and we're ready to go! Today we're going to prep the mold. The glue we're going to be using is West Systems Epoxy, and it's some pretty strong stuff. One thing we need to make sure of is to keep the veneer from gluing to the mold. However, we do want it to glue to the keel. What we're going to do is to cover the mold in plastic wrap, then place the keel into its groove. It's one of those trying to put the square in the circle things, but it works eventually. Now that the keel is in place, it needs to be shaped the curve of the hull. It helps to have an apprentice in moments like this.

Materials:

Plastic Wrap

Masking Tape

Tools:

Hand Planes

It's quite satisfying to shape the wood with a plane. Don't get too carried away though, it gets really hard to add wood back on once you've taken it off.