Last month, I installed cleats along the side of the hull for the bench seats to sit on and then removed the screw clamps that held the cleats, after the epoxy glue had cured.
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The SCAMP Builders Manual tells you to fill any screw holes with toothpicks, dipped in epoxy.
That's another one of those things that builders seem to be able to do that sound easy enough . . . . . until you go to do them. >:(
THEN, you find that one toothpick is wayyy too loose and three won't taper into the screw hole good enough and one keeps sliding back out from some kind of hellish epoxy Brownian Motion, but two toothpicks wobble too much to trust that they will hold and the whole exercise quickly gets very frustrating. >:(
Until I found THESE!! ;D
Bamboo skewers.
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Sharp at one end and tapered.
(Sorry for the out-of-focus shot.) :-\
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These worked GREAT! ;D
The taper on the point exactly matches the taper of the screw used for clamping and just feels more sturdy.
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Used them everywhere I had used clamping screws.
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And also ran into my first problem: Amine Blush. :'(
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I had checked after the first coat of epoxy and had no issues, unsurprising, since it was hot and dry when I did that coat.
On the second coat I was not so fortunate, as an unexpected rainstorm came in a few hours after I had finished, but before the epoxy had set up and the temp drop and sudden moisture, caused the Amine Blush.
Besides the blush, I was concerned that the epoxy would cure more slowly, so I did not immediately wash away the blush.
Instead, I turned to gluing on the last third of my rudder blade assembly.
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And put a second coat of epoxy on my shelf.
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And did some more sanding.
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The backing blocks for the bow chock were glued and clamped.
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And before I applied the third coat of epoxy, I wanted to get a whole-transom doubler installed.
I will be mounting motor mounts (which requires a doubler) and a ladder (which requires a doubler) and there was already a doubler needed for the rudder.
Instead of doing all that cutting and gluing and fitting and filleting, all to save myself 2½ pounds of un-doubled real estate, I decided to just double the whole thing from outside.
This will make me the biggest boat in the SCAMP Fleet: 11 feet, 11 and 3/8-inches! 8)
So, HAH!! ;D
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This is the doubler I had previously cut out, by clamping it onto the transom and tracing around the hull and then cutting it out.
Marked it so I didn't do anything dumb, when it came time to coat and glue. :P
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After epoxy primer coat, to keep the glue from absorbing into the wood and becoming "glue-starved". Did the transom too, but forgot to get a pic.
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Getting ready to glue the doubler by pre-placing the clamps and screw-clamps, since the clock is really running when you're trying to glue with epoxy in Florida, in August. :o
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The pay-off for all the prep-work.
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And the skewer trick, re-visited.
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Looks like: Nautical Acupuncture.
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Back when I was first working on the rudder blade, I got a little aggressive on one side when shaping it and took off too much material on one side. :P
Turns out, that thickness is needed to have enough "meat" to hold the up-haul line.
So I planed it down even more, so I could glue on a small block to re-shape it, when the glue set up.
The packing tape is where I added some glue to fill in some gaps in the edge. The tape helps keep the leading edge curvature consistent with the filler.
Hey! Anything to minimize grinding, after the glue sets up! :)
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A closer view of the filler block.
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I also sanded the center board where the glue oozed out, after glue-up.
When I get the rudder blade re-shaped on that one side and sanded down again, I'm going to fiberglass both of them, now that my epoxy work table is not full of various random pieces/parts.
This will occur after I get the Amine Blush washed out of the ENTIRE FREAKIN' INSIDE OF THE WHOLE HULL!! >:(
"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it." --- Comedian Steven Wright.
I feel exactly the same way.
I'm becoming impatient to get that 3rd coat of epoxy on and three coats of white EZ-Poxy in the storage compartments, so I can flip the hull over and start glassing the bottom.
Charles Brennan
Hey thanks for the bamboo skewer idea. I keep a little bin full of various items that can fill holes that become wallowed out and need to be repaired to reinstall screws. Wooden golf tees, match sticks, toothpicks, all sizes of dowels, and I've got plug cutters for about six sizes.
Nice work on the Scamp.
I used battens to keep my planking fair. It does leave tiny screws holes. I filled the holes with tooth picks. Worked out fine.
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