Under Pressure (well House bricks)

Well it was warm early evening and at least a clear run to get one side of the decking in place so with a large amount of clamps and a pile of House bricks the first side is in place. The under side of the deck coated with epoxy as was all of the faces of the stringers and ribs then with plently of hast the deck was in place.

Well no pics as yet but all ribs now fixed in place and cleaned up ready to take the deck when cut to approximate size.

Also the fitting of polystyrene through out the area to the rear of the mast step having removed all of the plastic milk containers which will help to push to the 75Kg's buoyancy each side will contain 1 X 2.4m x 50mm x 500mm less off cuts.

Well no pictures at the moment as there is not to much to show been a slow week
have managed to get the ply I want and that came from Robbins Timbers in the Bristol area

Vac pump has now also arrived so when I get back from my hols I will push on but
need most of my tools else where but cant wait to play again oh Ikea do some sheets
of poly that looks good for bagging @ around 86p a sheet its clear and a shower curtain

This bits gonna take time

Well the aft decking is and this is taking some time the main struggle of the weekend was to remove the SS screws from the track risers on each side of the hull, the first one came after a struggle so I do have a template to recreate from but the 2nd I admitted defeat with there were.

Buried screws and screws the went through the riser, the deck and almost through the inch inner frame most of these came in pairs and they just would not turn in the attempt that the glue would fail under pressure and the deck might part from the inner frame the heads were drilled off this did not help so it was destroy the riser to remove the screws with a pipe wrench.



Most of the stringers the glue has failed on so it is out with those that have failed and clean the joints off ready to epoxy them back in place the ply that was lifted off came out at 4.5mm so taking into account the ply had been treated on both sides on more on the top than the bottom I would say it was 4mm or its imperial equivalent.

Decks removed and OMG

Well the decks are off and as usual the areolite or cascamite had started to fail.

from the picture below you can see that the final section of the center spine aft of the rudder box just dropped of having been supported in place by the deck

just an example on the desk there was a section of ply that you would have thought possibly covered a hole, well it did this was possibly a quick fix for this 2 layers of ply on the casing and plenty of muck the stringer also had dropped but was not the only one i found this one was glassed back in place but also did not stick to the underside of the deck.

Having removed the deck a good number of the stringers were loose and were never fixed to the deck I am unsure if this was the intention for the deck to float between the center line and the gunwale but due to the process of treating all surfaces no addition had taken place

Ready for some Carbon

Well the seat is ready for taping up and the bull noses fitting followed by a final wrap of carbon on the top.

The idea of adding it to the out side and not the inside was that I could give take it around the bull nose as well. I must give thanks to Ian Mcpherson for his help and putting me in touch with Alex Jordan of Jordanboats.co.uk who took on the CNC cutting, Alex will be able to set you up with the cut ply ready for you to finish but has no knowlege of Canoes and would be unable to supply ply direct for other uses, thanks guys

Should you need any futher advice "Wee mcp"might be able to help or send me a mail I will try to anwser

Seat construction to date

Prior to the boat ending up in the garage I was making use of the space with the building of a new seat this is being built to a design by Steve Clark and is coming on a dream.

All of the seat came cut out and ready to be put together with a little clean up of the sections which had been left in place so as to assist transit the whole thing had been cut out on a CNC
mill this along with CNC Laser cutting is being used more and more in the building of both IC's and DC canoes.

This lends to the design being developed on a CAD program and then the ability to use the same drawings to cut out from using the CNC machinery cutting down on the amount of waste material and being able to replicate exact copies time and time again. pictures show the construction through to the point of the bottom being fitted and is now awaiting the addition of the Carbon tape on the seams at this point also with out the bullnosing having been fitted there is an all up weight of just over 5kg.

looking back on the building of the seat it might have been wiser to have created a former by taking the shape of the length wise stringers from the space frame using these as a template create thicker ones that would also stand-up and then cover this with ply.

this could be used to hold down the top of the seat whilst making it easier to construct and fix in place the space frame putting hole through the stringers you could also push dowels through to tie off to when clamping down........ just a thought

The weigh in

Well he boat is now in the garage and work is under way all be slow and an attempt is being made at removing the old main deck and dance floor.

First shock was the amount of resin that had been plastered around the side of the centre board casing on the side I am working from (deck is not off the other side yet.)

And yes she still has the full size centre board no daggers here.... one thing i did notice last season was that she would take on a few litres of water so that leak has to be found. I was also surprised at the weight of some of the bits that have been removed.

Seat - 10.7 kg
carriage - 6.4 kg
main take of point for all cleats 1.8 kg (cleats included)
bucket of fittings 2.2 kg (bucket not included)

The Start of all things to come ?????

Well around a year ago I purchased Sapele Pride and have sailed her when I could over last season. But it was time to make some changes to try and lighten the boat

She was originally built by Tony Miles builder of a number of the boats and was sailed from Stone Sailing Club on the River Blackwater in Essex UK in her early days and now being re built up river at Heybridge.

She was built as a all wood traditional Nethercott design boat.