WalknBob's Tolman Skiff project

This is how things looked at the beginning of today.

I cleaned up the edges from yesterdays taping then got a call from another friend, Steve,who said he was in the neighborhood and wanted to check out the project. So I hustled to make things ready to set the hull bottom off the jig. I forgot to take any pictures of the hull bottom before moving it. It was'nt exciting anyway so nothing missed there really. I had just filled and taped the keel and chines joints.

Now you can see the hull bottom standing on edge off to the side. I left the braces on even though Renn says it should be stiff enough on its own... Just being cautious I guess.

I then screwed a couple sheets of ply onto the jig to make a work surface and covered with visqueen. These sheets will later be used as material for web stringers etc. The visqueen keeps me from gluing pieces to the ply.

I have now glued up the shelves or gunnels. Neal's Skiffkit design makes this process pretty simple by his unique joints. They provide lots of surface area for joining and also making symetrical shelves an easy process.

One other feature of Neal's Skiffkit is that these shelves are actually glu-lams. Instead of dimensional lumber these are actually glued up layers of marine ply to create the exact thickness of straight and true material. Very nice to work with and far better than I would have produced on my own I am sure.

Once the joints are glued / epoxied I put on a 6 oz fiberglass cloth patch to increase joint strength while being handled and set aside while the next steps are completed.

I wish the garage was about twice as big. That would allow for more than one process to be going on at a time. Oh Well I feel like progress is still moving along pretty well.

On Dec 03 I just flipped the shelves over and taped the back side.