Wacko Ways to Build a Boat

For the past week (yes, WEEK!) I have been working on the outwales and spacered inwales. The inwales and outwales are such an obvious part of the boat that you really want them to look as good as you can possibly make them. And doing that takes a lot of time and patience.  The spacered inwale kit is an addition to the basic wherry kit. The kit includes the OUTwales, but does not come with INwales. We like the look of the spacered inwales and find that they have some function too for securing things to the hull. They look nautical.    The spacered inwale kit comes with inwale rails, sticks you cut to make the spacers, a replacement breasthook for the bow, and replacement quarter knees for the transom.  They leave it up to you for how long to cut the spacers and how far apart to space them. The manual that comes with the kit is extensive.  I like the look of rounded spaces. No, it's not the normal look of spacers which are supposed to simulate the ribs on a wooden...

For the past few days I have been tinkering on the outwales, spacered inwales, and the seats/thwarts.  At the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival this year, I saw another Annapolis Wherry that had a lovely bow treatment along the outwales at the bow. Instead of ending the outwales near the bow, this builder brought the inwales all the way around the bow. I'm trying to do the same thing, although I think that other builder is a better woodworker than I am, based on how it looks so far!  I used screws to temporarily hold the assembly in place while the epoxy cures. They have now been removed.  The assembly is made up of cutoffs from the inwales and outwales. I screwed up on one side but luckily had enough cutoffs to make another one. The center accent strip is Alaskan yellow cedar. It will look a lot better once it has been shaped. I'll do that after all the inwales and outwales have been installed.  I've also now epoxied on the first two outwales, one on port and one o...

Today I spend time sanding the seams that I filled yesterday, as well as the rest of the bottom of the Annapolis Wherry hull.  Then I taped off the bottom planks and fiberglassed the bottom.  Read in my earlier posts about how I do the fiberglassing.  Later I used a sharp utility knife to cut along the hardened epoxy at the edge of planks #1 and pull up the tape and excess fiberglass. If you only wait 2 - 3 hours until the "Green Stage" when it's still slightly sticky, it will cut easily and still come up easily. If you let it cure, like the manual says to do, it'll be like cutting through rock! Trim the excess during the "Green Stage" when it's still slightly sticky and pliable.  Here's how it looked after the tape was pulled up.  Next I will need to work on shaping the bow around the fiberglass I just added, sanding the entire hull again, and then adding the first coast of epoxy coating.    Stay tuned for more!

All I was able to do today was fill the seams on the outside of the Annapolis Wherry hull.  I used large tongue depressor craft sticks to get the rounded seams filled with epoxy thickened with silica.  It looks pretty good. Will sand the entire bottom tomorrow and then probably get the fiberglass on the #1 planks.  Stay tuned!

The manual for the Annapolis Wherry has you drill and install the drain plugs as one of the very last steps right after finishing. Do it now instead!  First, it’s just easier to drill the 1” hole now, before you install the bow and stern seats, and before finishing. Plus, it doesn't wreck your finished surface. You can also vacuum up all the sawdust. If you wait until the seats are installed, you will always have sawdust and chips inside your tanks.  Drilling the hole will often chip out wood on the inside. Drilling them now will give you access to the inside so you can properly epoxy coat any bare wood. I used a spade bit and it chipped out wood on the inside. Always drill from the outside of the bulkhead into the tank! Here is one of my drain holes. It was drilled, sanded, vacuumed up, and epoxy coated. I'll install the actual drain plug and screws after finishing, but the messy bit is done now.  Tomorrow the hull gets turned over and I'll start on the bottom. Lots of w...

Today I sanded out the entire inside of the hull again, and epoxy-coated the entire inside, again. Phew.  Here's how it looked at the end of the day.   First I used a cabinet scraper to cut down the really big fuzz that is created when you epoxy bare wood. I used it on the entire hull because it's a great tool for finding raised epoxy bits too. Then power-sanded where my 6" sander could reach. I hand-sanded the rest using a foam block with 80-grit sticky sand paper backing. I buy the rolls of sandpaper. The sticky back works really well.  Then I used the cabinet scraper again to cut off the tall scratches that the 80-grit paper leaves. This gave a nice surface for the epoxy.  Here's a close-up of how it looked after sanding. Then I epoxy coated the entire inside again.  I mixed up about 10 pumps of epoxy and poured it along the keel in the second section (I'm not epoxy coating the fiberglass again in the bow and stern... will leave the weave rough in those areas...

Yesterday I brushed on a coat of epoxy into all the seams on the Annapolis Wherry. I then wiped the planks down to get rid of any drips but made sure to allow epoxy to settle into the seams.  Today I gently hand-sanded the seams just to rough up the epoxy so that the next coat would stick.  I then epoxy coated the entire inside of the hull. Remember that I had already sanded the fiberglass on the bottom two planks and they were ready to go.  This coat was to add a second coat to the fiberglass to start to fill the weave, and to add a first coat to the bare wood on the upper three planks on each side.  I used three tools: An epoxy spreader, and 3" roller with an Wooster Tiz epoxy roll on it, and a 2" foam brush.  The Annapolis Wherry is an easy one to epoxy coat because the boat is neatly divided into five separate sections. That way you can completely take care of one section without feeling like you have to rush to the next one.  I did one section at a tim...

Yesterday I was able to fiberglass the inside of the CLC Annapolis Wherry hull.  It went well and looks good.  I did the epoxy work and then came back a few hours later while the epoxy was still in the "green" stage and trimmed the edges of the fiberglass. Then pulled the blue tape up.    While I'm a big fan of CLC, they could do a lot more in their manuals to help the first-time fiberglasser! This is what I wrote in an earlier blog post back on September 27th, 2021 while building an Expedition Wherry. It still applies to the Annapolis Wherry manual. If you are doing fiberglass for the first time, please read some of these hints and tips. You'll end up with a much nicer, and flatter, weave... "The CLC manual does surprisingly little to walk first-time builders through any fiberglassing tips and tricks.  First, they only suggest that you use a roller to apply the epoxy. Rollers are notorious for pulling up the cloth as you roll. Skip the rollers entirely. Ther...