Wacko Ways to Build a Boat

Big step today... was able to get the hull bottom fiberglassed. It's always a bit magical watching the white cloth turn to crystal clear as you spread on the epoxy. I start in the middle and work toward one end, and then go back and work to the other end. The Pygmy manual does a good job of describing how to fiberglass the hull. Read it and you should be fine. Cut a piece of cloth to fit. Make sure you don't cut it toooo close. Leave at least two inches all around. Then use your hands and smooth the cloth all over the hull to help it conform to the hull shape. The only area where you will need to cut the cloth is the stern. The bow though should pretty easily conform to the shape without cutting.  I was working by myself for the most part, so I used small batches. Two pumps resin & hardener at a time. Thoroughly mix and pour on. I don't use the rollers. Instead, I just use a yellow plastic spreader and gently spread it over an area. I spread the epoxy on ...

Here is another step that I do out-of-order from the official Pygmy manual. I lay the heavy fiberglass tape on the keel now, before I fiberglass the entire hull. The manual says to do it afterwards. However it looks much cleaner if you do it beforehand. Structurally there shouldn't be too much difference either way. In the future, if the keel ever needs to be re-taped, you just do what you would do otherwise... sand it a bit to rough it up and then lay down some more tape. No big deal. On the ends you will have better luck if you cut a few tucks in the edges of the tape. See below.  Try to make the tape as straight as you can. By putting it underneath the main fiberglassing it will be much less noticeable, but you'll still probably see it. The excess was simply squeegeed onto the bare wood which is fine and pre-saturates those areas. There is a huge debate on whether you should pre-saturate the panels or if you should just wet out the fiberglass cloth and hav...

I sanded the bare-wood hull today. For the most part I used my random orbital sander with 120 grit paper.... but fair warning.... it can take off a LOT of material VERY quickly. So unless you're fairly practiced with a random orbital sander, I would suggest you hand sand or use no more than 220 paper on the ROS until you get used to how it works! Here's how it looks now. Yes, the stern didn't match up as well as I had hoped. Deal with it. The large gap got filled and will be fine, but doesn't look that great. When I helped my friend build his last year, he had the same issue. Starting to wonder if it's a design thing and if they should add a few millimeters to that panel. Weird, huh?  Notice that you can still see plenty of epoxy smears. They will all disappear under the fiberglass in the near future. Don't try to sand them all off!  The ends were pretty easy to round over and clean up. Be VERY cautious when rounding over the ...

I rarely do this, but I really have to say how much I like the 3M sanding block and sticky paper! What a great sanding system they have. Unlike traditional, cheap rubber sanding blocks that are not usually flat and that ALWAYS develop a hump in the middle which defeats the purpose of the block, this plastic block stays flat. It has a foamy base with just the right amount of give, although it's pretty firm. The handle fits my hand very well and is ergo-dynamically designed for comfort. The paper comes in rolls and is sticky backed. You simply tear off the proper length and stick it on. When done it easily peels off without ripping. The rolls come in an assortment of grits. The downside... the block is about $30 for the small one and over $60 for the long one. They're plastic! The paper is even more ridiculous at about $80 per roll! Gawd. But it's worth the investment. Cheers!

Today I removed all the pins and tape. Then I filled the remaining seams that had been covered by the tape with slightly thickened epoxy from a syringe. I let that sit for a couple hours and then came back again with very thickened epoxy and a Popsicle stick and smeared it into the seams that needed to be filled more. This was mostly on the seam between panels #3 and #4. The epoxy was thickened to about the "peanut butter" stage and could easily be smeared on and the excess scraped off with the stick. Here's a closeup of the #3 and #4 seam. Tomorrow it will be sanded flush. Another step at this stage is to use thickened epoxy to fill and shape the ends. The idea is that fiberglass cloth sits better on curved surfaces than on sharp angles. In addition, the seams at the ends look pretty bad and must be filled to look better. It adds a nice touch to the ends. The manual says to use wood flour, and that's what I've always done, but I wanted to experiment ...

Phew! I spent four days taping together the panels on the Pygmy Pinguino 145 and yesterday was finally able to get the panels epoxied. ( NOTE : By " spent four days " I really mean I tinkered on it for four evenings... probably took about 3-4 hours or so in total to tape the hull together. Compare that to how long it would take to "stitch and glue" with wires. It would take you three hours just to drill the holes, another hour to cut the wires, another 3-4 to get the panels lined up and stitched, and then afterwards another 3-4 to remove the wires! Add to that how much blood you'll lose poking yourself with the wires... the "taping method" is sooooo much better!! And your boat looks sooooo much better!) Whether you're doing the taping method or the stone-age "stitch and glue" wire sewing method, your hull won't look pretty at this point. You'll have epoxy smears, maybe a few drips and runs that you missed, etc... Not every sea...

The #4 panels were taped onto the temporary frames today, and I spent some time starting to get the panels all aligned. Remember... if you are following the Pygmy manual, you will not be doing this. Instead you will be building your kayak right-side-up and sewing it together with dozens of wires through dozens of holes that you drill through your panels. That is the old "stitch and glue" method. Instead, I am using strapping tape and Gorilla Tape to hold the panels onto the frames. Also remember that to build your boat this way that you need to have accurately cut "spacers" that you carefully mount onto your temporary frames. See my earlier posts. This hull will NOT have hundreds of holes! It's a muuuuuch cleaner look. It's also, in my opinion, much easier. I'm truly stumped as to why Pygmy hasn't switched over to this method years ago. ATTENTION : The taping method is NOT in the Pygmy manuals! IF you do the taping method you are on your own. ...

Big steps today... I finished the Pinguino panels by beveling the edges of panels #4 & #5 where the hull/deck joint meets. In the past I've used a router table to bevel the edges, but today I didn't have the energy to set it up so I used a new rasp I bought from Pygmy's East coast competitor Chesapeake Light Craft. It's called a "Shinto" and is made in Japan. It's made up of a number of saw blades and is pretty ingenious. You can find it on Amazon too. After that I put the panels aside and set up the temporary frames using the spacers I cut on the table saw last week. Remember that when you use the "taping method" instead of sewing the hull together with wires, that you build the boat upside down over the temporary frames. The official Pygmy manual that comes with your boat gives exact measurements for lines that you mark on the #1 panels (and #4 panels). You will need to also mark those same #1 lines on the table. Before marking...

Today I finished gluing all the Pinguino panels. I decided to use the first four hull panels that I glued yesterday as guides for the corresponding panels today. First I sanded both sides of the epoxy on the panels I glued yesterday, and then flipped them so that the sticker side was facing down. Then the corresponding panels were laid on top with the stickers facing up. I put plastic between the panels so they wouldn't stick. Epoxy was added to the edges of the butt joints and then I carefully aligned and clamped down all the panels so that they perfectly lined up on top of the previous ones. I then finished the epoxy and taping job as normal and now the panels are curing. In the picture below, it looks like only individual panels, but if you click the image and zoom in you should be able to see the corresponding panels underneath.  My thought is that if I have accidentally introduced any sort of error into the first panel, that that error will also be in the corre...

Got four more panels glued this morning. I decided to glue the first four panels on the right side, just like the manual says. I normally don't do them in that order, but I'd like to try something different on this boat. Tomorrow when these panels are cured, I'll use them to exactly line up their counterparts so that even if I didn't perfectly line up each half of each panel, the corresponding panel will have the same inaccuracy built into it so that the hull will be straighter. We'll see if it's worth the effort. NOTE: One thing to be aware of while gluing your panels together is that I noticed on my #4 panels that there is a small nub remaining from the CNC cutter. It shouldn't be there and must be sanded flat so that the two panels have as small of a gap as possible. See the picture below. That small nub would make the two panels have a large gap if not sanded out. Both #4 panels had that small nub. Check the fit of all your panels before epoxy...

Got the two #5 panels glued this morning. One side sat down perfectly, but the other side needed some persuasion. Notice just clamps on one side and a stack of bricks on the other. You just have to do whatever you need to make sure the panels are flat to each other. Tomorrow I hope to do at least two or three panels. Instead of doing both sides at the same time, I'll just do one side for a few panels and then the next day use those panels as guides to make sure the corresponding panel is as close as possible. I probably should have been doing this all along, but my #6 panels lined up almost perfectly when I laid them on top of each other this morning. Fingers crossed that the two #5's will match up too. Peace!

The System Three epoxy that comes with the Pygmy kayak kits is great stuff. They include a set of measuring pumps that dole out the appropriate amount of resin and hardener in the required 2:1 ratio. The only problem though is that many times you don't need the large amount of epoxy that the pumps put out. The pumps are great for medium and large applications. You'll want that much when you go to wet-out some fiberglass cloth for instance. However, if you're just gluing a couple of seams or doing a number of other jobs that require small amounts, you'll end up wasting a terrific amount of epoxy before you're through. I get around that using a trick that I gained from making RC sailboats . You can easily adapt this trick for kayaks too. -------------------------------------------- First, get yourself two plastic syringes that are commonly used in epoxy work. You can find them at West Marine , Fisheries Supply , and other places. Look online too. Cut the tips...

I guess I'm committed now! Just glued the first two Pygmy Pinguino 145 panels. I'm deviating a slight bit at this point from the manual by gluing the panels in a different order. I'm starting with both panel #6's, both left and right, and then I'll work my way down through the panel #1's. That way the panels I will actually use first are on top of my stack and the ones that I won't use until later are on the bottom. It reduces the number of times that you have to move the fragile panel joints. These two panels met up really nicely so there was no need to weigh them down. I simply used spring clamps on the edges of the table. IF they hadn't met well then I'd have used bricks to keep them down. I also will only use fiberglass tape on the underside (the side with the stickers). If you're careful enough moving the panels then you really don't need tape on the outsides. No matter how hard you try, you will always see that outside tape. On...

Today I built the table for the new Pygmy Pinguino 145 that I'm building for a family friend. It's just two sawhorses with short pieces between the legs. On top of that are two 2" x 6" x 8' studs that I selected for being especially flat on edge. If I had a jointer I'd run them both through it to make sure the edges are flat... but I don't have a jointer. Then I laid a 2' x 8' x 3/4" sheet of MDF on top of the studs and screwed them down. I got lucky because to my eye the table appears to be pretty flat which the one thing you must have. It doesn't matter too much if it's not level, but it must be flat across the entire surface. Then I opened the main box and sorted out the panels. The manual says to start gluing the panels together starting with panel 1 and working to panel 6. It also says to do one side at a time. However, that isn't helpful with the steps that come later and you'll end up moving the panels ar...