Answering a few questions

Have received a few questions regarding this project and I figured I’d take a minute to put them up here in the hopes that it might assist someone else.

First is how big the building space is : As you might be able to tell from the pictures, we’re building diagonally across a 2-car garage. The garage measures approximately 20′ wide by 19′ deep. Not all this space is usable, however – it was a garage first and foremost. I’d say about 2-3 feet are taken up on the width from shelves on one side and a workbench on the other. Another 2.5-3 feet are taken up on the depth by another workbench (built atop the “tire bump” for those familiar with what that is). We are fortunate in that the garage has a small cove on the front side where the bow of the first float is currently tucked in, so the width at that area is a little greater.

Second is where things will get stored : a storage unit has the garage stuff that came out before the project started. There is room left to put the floats in as they become completed. All the foam we have (should be enough for the boat) is stored above the garage door on hangers from the ceiling, out of the way and we get down a few sheets as needed.

Third question is regarding the hull to keel area on the floats. This is a copy/paste of a reply I just sent to someone regarding what I’ve done here. On the first half, we tried putting the keel foam in place first and then laying a plank and sort of scribing with a pencil where the cut should be, then going back and cutting at an angle to get it close. The deck-side was cut at the very end before laminating. The problem with this (you’ll notice a “repair” at the transom bulkhead) is the foam planks want to “stick” to the keel foam and as a result it FELT like it was all the way down against the battens but, in fact, was not. This time we are doing something different. Putting the planks in place and then cutting with a jig-saw at the keel-joint line 3/8″ away from the keel batten. So far it looks like this might be going quicker, though one of the cuts will require a little more bog than I’d like to fill the gap. To give a time-frame, the first half took us around 13-14 hours to plank and bog all the foam. Right now we’re just over half-way done planking/bogging the foam and it’s taken about 4-4.5 hours. Some of that is experience doing the first, but I think this way might really be quicker. Time will tell.

Fourth question was from folks wanting to know the weight per sq.ft. of infused laminates vs. hand-layup – and I’m sorry to report that I still haven’t made the time to make up pieces for this… Each time I start to work on stuff I want to knock out another portion of the actual boat instead of a test panel 🙂 Sorry, I promise I will do it at some point, just not sure when exactly.