Day 33 - Righting the wrong

Another good day. Started off scraping all those things I put epoxy on yesterday; the shelves, stringers and transom. Then I got to work re-cutting the slot in the transom for the shelves and corner brace. I set the saw for 15 degrees and carefully set the depth. I then made three cuts, one on one side of the slot and two on the other. I needed two to get the bottom of the cut out from under the top of the cut so I could go to work with the router. I very carefully set the depth on the routers and using the long straightedge securely clamped to the sawhorses made four passes to clear out the channel in the transom.

As you can see, I got a little lucky and managed to exactly hit the seam line where I had epoxied in the old piece I had cut out of the doubler. This time the angle is right!

Next I grabbed the planer and cleaned up the left and right edges, trimming off the little bit of the Versalam sticking out and bringing all the layers to a smooth surface. Flipped the transom over (that thing is heavy!) and sanded it smooth, then set it aside.

Now it was time to work on cutting the shelves. I had left these for last as the scarf was only cut on a 45 degree angle and the epoxy had had only about 16 hours to set up which meant it was still relatively weak. I very carefully lifted the first one up on the sawhorses and cut both edges, one with the Skilsaw, the other with the jigsaw. I flipped it over (much easier without all that scrap wood), scraped the joint and then screwed a scrap piece of ply across the joint to provide some support. Then I did the other one, same process.

Last, I mixed up a batch of epoxy and painted the exposed knots on the one shelf still up on the sawhorses and started filling the screw holes in the transom (now on the floor) and painting the corners where the Versalam meets the plywood in preparation for a fillet (a concave joint made with peanut butter to strengthen the connection and provide a curved surface for the fiberglass to transition over from the vertical to the horizontal). While messing around, all of a sudden the epoxy started getting really warm! Crikey! It's cooking off! (When the chemical reaction in the epoxy really gets going it starts heating up and shortly thereafter it sets up. This happens much more quickly when in a cup versus being spread out.) I frantically started mixing in sawdust and spreading the peanut butter for the fillets. I just managed to use it all as right near the end it was getting really sticky!

That finished things for the evening as I really need to clear the floor space for fiberglassing the inside of the side panels and the inside of the transom. Plus I need to cut the 1/2" ply for the bottom of the hull to length and epoxy on the 1/4" ply.

8 Hours