At the hardware store.
What can you never have enough of if you're a woodworker?
Clamps.
Guess what I needed more of and where I went to get them. :-) Yep, another Home Depot run after I foolishly thought I'd never need more than nine clamps. Uh huh, right.
Anyways, the goal for today was to get the chines connected to the hull. Renn suggests using a slot cutting bit in a router to cut slots in the hull and the chines, then cutting strips of wood to fit in those slots and then gluing the whole mess (literally) together with epoxy. I don't have and couldn't buy the bit and couldn't buy the strips of wood so after asking the folks on the support board what they did, came up with my own solution.
I decided to stitch and glue my chines to the hull.
I stacked the chines on top of each other and measuring straight from the tip, at one foot intervals back to where they straighten out I drilled holes 1/2" from the edge. Next I did the same on the hull, hooked the tape on the point of the bow and measured straight back, marked and drilled holes.
I then laid the left chine in the hull and starting at the tip, stitched the chine to the hull snug, but not tight. Leaving the chine in the hull gave it support while each additional stitch moved it out towards the edge and eventually onto the hull mold support. Repeated this with the right chine.
Clamping was next. I clamped the left side chine to a 2x4 where the straight transitions to the curve, then went around to the other side, pushed and pulled things tight and clamped it down. Repeated this process at every other stitch headed up towards the bow which slowly leveled out the chines, then worked my way back down tightening up the stitches which really pulled everything together. On the straight part of the chines I clamped the chines to the hull molds and then to 2x4s spaced in between.
This was as far as I was going to go, but it was only eight o'clock so I made some thickened wet epoxy and filled the gap between the chine and the hull. I have no illusions that this will do anything for strength, it's simply to keep the epoxy for the glass from running out the bottom creating voids and bubbles.
I'll put down the fiberglass strips tomorrow, removing one clamp at a time to get the glass underneath and then reclamp to maintain the integrity. Saturday I'll glass the bottom and if the schedule holds I'll probably flip the bottom Sunday night.
4.5 Hours