Saturday, May 25th - Monday May 27, 2002
This weekend was a busy boat building weekend with a few chores and one plumbing disaster thrown in. Saturday was spent prepping the bottom for installation on the stringers. I resanded the bottom at the areas where it came in contact with the stringers. I made sure to use my sander/polisher at different angles so as to ge a cross hatch pattern, giving the glue plenty of tooth to hang on to. Then I remembered that I hadn't cut out the limbers! Yikes. Did that then got all my tools laid out and mentally went through the procedure several times. I'd marked the bottom and added some blocks so it would drop into place after everything had been coated with glue. I was working alone (which I regretted) and soon was up to my ears (and hair) in epoxy.
I pre coated the edge of the transom with unthickened glue and did the same to the bottom and stringers. Next I made up a big batch of putty and glopped on a bunch at the bowstem and on the transom edge. Last but not least I coated the stringers with Cabosil thickened glue. Then I stood there and wondered how in the heck I was going to lift up the bottom and remove the spanning 2x4's by myself and drop the bottom into place. Damn. Should of had help. Errrrr. With a mighty grunt and the sound of popping gut tissue I lifted the bow with one hand and with the other shoved the 2x4 out of the way. After lowering the bow into place, I scrambled (holding my gut) to the rear where I once again lifted the bottom with one hand and used the other to knock the 2x4 out of place. I lowered the rear and then ran around checking to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. Satisfied I nailed the corners of the transom into place and then went about the business of screwing the bottom to the stringers and then nailing the bottom to the transom. About that time my wife showed up as I was cursing about a screw not going in right. She pointed out that I'd just screwed through the limber. DingDangDurnit! Last thing I remember reading was Renn saying to not screw into the limbers.
Somehow I survived putting the bottom on, although I had a couple more screws miss the stringers. So much for using a straight edge and eyeballing to lay down a screw line. Sigh, more holes to fill. By the time I got the bottom on and fastened down, the squeeze out was hard, it was getting dark and I was out of energy.
So I got up the next day and went about scraping and sanding trying to get rid of the unsightly globs of dripping putty and glue. As I was cleaning up some of my dust and epoxy shavings the HomeDepot ShopVac just up and quit. DingDangDurn it. Since it was less than four months old, off I went to HomeDepot to replace it under warranty. Got that accomplished, then started measuring things to see how well I'd done the day before. Well the bottom didn't go on perfectly. It's a tiny bit high on one side and a tiny bit to off one side, but rather than freak out about it I figure that it's pretty close and I think I can trim a little here, shove things around a little there and prop other things up to make it all reasonably fair, straight and symmetrical. No sitting in my pouting chair, back to work trimming the overhanging bottom. 
First cut was along the keel which had some very hard putty. I wanted to cut to the edge of the transom so I could have a reference mark to draw lines out to the edges, but halfway through the overhang I noticed that my lovely Japanese pull saw was suddenly missing almost two inches of teeth. Ouch! DingDangDurn it. Back to HomeDepot for a replacement blade.
Monday morning proved that all that hopping around on the bottom and lifting heavy things made me a sore feller. But I was able to muster the courage to tackle putting the second layer onto the bottom. The 
procedure was as normal, precoat the panels and bottom with heavy coats of glue, glop on some putty at the seams and screw the panels down into place. Sounds easy, huh? Well, it was back breaking hot work climbing around on the bottom and I think I ended up with almost 75 buttons screwed into each 
bottom panel. Wore me out. Then the plumbing disaster struck with the washing machine drain clogging up not once but twice. I spent the next few hours cleaning up trying to unclog it. errrrg. I hate plumbing. After this interruption I put the send layer on the other side of the bottom and called it a night.