Finished migrating the website to my own domain now… Freewebs/atomicshrimp is no more - it’s just atomicshrimp.com now.
Anyway, I made the bow and stern posts last night and will fit them tonight if time permits. Meanwhile, I found this - which is an interesting potential future modification (not building that for the maiden voyage though). The strong central rib in my boat will permit things like that to be bolted on as options (and removed) later on.
Well, here it is, I found some gray paint laying around and put on decorative embellishments. It’s on the right side of the picture, didn’t get centered too well…
Ok, not really.
I strongly suspect that I am reacting negatively to the polyester resin I’m using. Even in my well ventilated shop, each time I do any serious work I feel quite ill a few hours later - wobbly legs and nauseous. I don’t enjoy the sensation and am looking forward to being done with this part. I’m not ready to drop $30 on a half-face APR which would require shaving to achieve a proper seal, so I’m going to continue poisoning myself for another couple of days.
I like the paddlewheel idea, got myself plenty of spare bicycles but maybe I’ll hold off on that until I see if this thing will float.
Emailed the Hannu guy and promised him a picture on the water if I ever get it wet.
Polyester resin is nasty smelly stuff - I’m not surprised you’re suffering with the fumes. I thought there were some adhesion issues with polyester and timber also.
Epoxy is almost completely odourless, but of course far more expensive.
I glued the stern and bow posts in this evening, but I’ve got a series of stupid little fiddly jopbs stacked ahead of me - tomorrow I have to turn it over and sort out the ends of the panels, after that, I have a bit more glassing to do on the inside, then I can start on the gunwale.
I have a bit of a problem with bending the gunwale - the laths I ripped are nice and bendy across their short dimension, but (of course) not so flexible across their wider one, but I have a tight curve to turn where the extra panels merge with the rest of the boat. I plan to rip the lath into fingers along half of its length (notably to include the bit that must go around the corner) - this should permit it to bend in either direction. I’ll cut out some of the fingers - different ones on each lath, so that the two sections interlock at the middle.
Also, I thought I had enough clamps (a dozen or so), but I think I’m going to have to splash out on a few more - when I glue the gunwales on, I want to do it on both sides simultaneously to avoid introducing a twist in the structure.
Yarrr, if she’s broad through the gunwales you’ll have many happy berths!
Congrats. That’s a nice feat.
Thanks.
It looks like Bob might get his on the water before me, if his rate of progress so far is anything to go by. As long as he hasn’t succumbed to styrene fumes or something.
I feel like I’m stalled at the moment - I’m not though, it just feels like it - nearly all of the current workload is just filling, sealing and reinforcing, which means every picture I take looks a lot like the previous one. I might start additional work on the paddle tonight, just to have something interesting to show for my efforts
<cough> Haven’t really started the filling or sanding or reinforcing <gag> yet, I don’t know how I’m going to propel this thing, I’m <bbbrb> out of glass, my mix ratios were off so I have very little hardener and a have a gallon of resin… half a gall… half a… have fumes.
Over-generous use of hardener might account for the intensity of the fumes. Can you buy hardener separately?
Update: Still making good progress, although the wet weather looks set to hamper some of the stages I’d prefer to complete out of doors. How about you, Bob?
Lovely thread. Great work.
I’ve been of a mind to build Hannu’s Portuguese-Style Dinghy for a while now. Once I finish this darn chair, I’ll track down local sources for materials…
So where did you get advance warning of the biblical floods, Mangetout? 
Aha, see that’s the thing. Unfortunately I only have room on board for breeding pairs of very small animals. Woodlice and earwigs, probably, plus seven of every clean insect.
My paint just arrived and …grrr… bloody hell. It’s a big tin of army surplus paint I bought on eBay. What the seller completely failed to tell me is:
-It’s five years past its expiry date
-It’s based on Lead Chromate and is highly toxic/carcinogenic etc.
Bugger. There’s no way I’m painting my boat with that shit, and now I have to find a way to dispose of the stuff.
I get offers daily by email.
Leave the earwigs, but save the woodlice.
That is a dirty rotten trick, and yet one that I might have to try next time I have small quantities of hazardous substances and don’t wish to pay disposal fees.
“You are bidding on -
1 half gallon Polychlorinated Biphenyls!
Rare!
No longer produced in the US! Act now! No reserve!”
Yeah, I’m really kicking myself over it. I can’t send the stuff back, because no carrier will take it (the seller just didn’t declare the contents) - I got onto eBay’s live help, who suggested filing a Significantly Not As Described dispute, but I pointed out that I would not be able to return the item without paying a specialist courier lots of money; they said maybe I could talk to the seller and maybe he would just give me a refund anyway. Yeah, because I already know he’s capable of great honesty and integrity.
Looks like I just have to suck this one up, but it’s a pain. I should have just bought the paint from the boat store, but of course this looked like a better deal.
Any news, Bob? I’m getting quite close to completion now, and managed to infect a friend with the boat building bug last night…
Mangetout, are you keeping close track of costs? I’d be interested in knowing whether the costs came in as expected, or whether you wound up spending more than anticipated.
I’m still interested in giving this a shot someday, but can it be done in a basement that has an average staircase and average doorways? The shallowness of the boats in the photos I’ve seen makes me think it just might be possible. I really have nowhere to work outdoors (or at least, nowhere to keep stuff dry and stored outside, unless I first build a sizeable new garden shed). But I’m probably dreaming – the doorways and staircase are probably too tight. And the fumes sound as though they’d be … unwelcome in the home.
Would you consider a folding kayak?
http://www.folbot.com/anatomy.html
Costs have risen somewhat above my expectations, for several reasons:
-I needed more epoxy than I originally thought, and it isn’t cheap
-Paint cost is almost never mentioned in any build log - and I wasted thirty quid on some paint I can’t use.
-I had to buy lots and lots of clamps - I haven’t added this into the official costing though, because a) they’re now part of my permanent toolkit and b)I bought them with some money I was given for my birthday.
So far it has cost me approximately £140, but I don’t think there’s very much more to buy now.
my boat will pass through an ordinary doorway and could be moved up and down a staircase fairly easily. I can lift it with one hand, but I think you’d need two people to move it through a door or up stairs without damaging something or injuring yourself. Turning a corner in a passageway might be tricky, but maybe still possible - it’s only about 11 feet long, so it could be partially stood upright to gain a tighter turning circle.
I have lots of ideas for a possible ‘next boat’ - I was thinking a coracle might be fun, but I also came across a design for an ‘umbrella canoe’ - consisting of flexible ribs fitted to a frame with waterproofed canvas stretched over it - I think that might be quite fun and I have an idea for waterproofing fabric by rubbing flexible sealant into it.
Mine hasn’t produced any. Epoxy resin is virtually odourless (the unmixed catalyst part smells of ammonia a bit, but it’s not overpowering unless you stick your nose in the bottle, and the smell goes away completely when the glue cures. The polyurethane (Gorilla) glue I’ve used for some other parts is also virtually odourless.
Two-part polyester resins produce fumes while they cure - that’s actually one of several reasons not to use them on a small wooden boat.
Painting will be a bit smelly, but no more so than gloss painting during a household decorating job.
That’s certainly cool, and I’d love to have one, but it’s not quite the same thing as building your own. I’m interested in the building as much as the using.
