Pre-finishing the sides

There are varying opinions on what to use to finish and protect your plywood boat and I was confused but in the end decided I wanted a stronger and as a result a little heavier boat so choose to fiberglass both the inside and outside of all sides of the boat. With that said it is also much easier to finish a plywood panel when it is lying flat as opposed to on edge, especially the inside of the boat. Remember this boat will be initially built upside down on a temporary strongback. With a 48" bottom (actually 49 1/2") this boat is possible to pre-finish both sides of the side panels before they are mounted on the strongback, you'll need help mounting it on the strongback especially when you need to bring the bow together and screw the edges to the stem but I felt this would be easier to bend the panels with a helper than finish the sides on their edge. After taking this approach I certain it was the correct decision however had I selected the Hunky Dory model boat that is the same length but with a 56" bottom I would never have been able to bend then enough if both sides were pre-finished so on a wider boat just pre-finish the inside of the panels.

I choose 6mm fiberglass cloth for my sides and ordered a 50" by 33' roll to be cut length to cover both sides. I sure wish I had not done that it worked but was a real pain in the you know what, with only an inch to spare on each side at 50" that becomes a 1/2 inch on each side once it's cut lengthwise and is quite hard to get laid out properly. My recommendation is spend the extra money and get a 60" wide cloth and you'll miss out on a significant amount of headaches. I've read and viewed a lot of recommendations on how to fiberglass the wood for the hull and I learned what I think is easiest way to get the best results. The key is to not put on the epoxy to thick, in fact I would say that in fact the key is to use as little epoxy as possible with each coat. First since this was my first time using fiberglass and epoxy I didn't try and do both panels at the same time, probably the smartest thing I did so far in this project. After laying down an extremely thin base of epoxy by pouring it out on the panel and spreading it with a rubber scraper I then had my wife help me stretch the fabric before we laid in on top, key to have a helper here you definitely need the tension on the fabric. After the fabric was laid down I worked out any wrinkles with my gloved hands (you'll need a couple boxes of 50 vinyl gloves to get the side and bottom glassed) once the wrinkles are gone you're ready to start the wetting out process which will also get rid of any small leftover wrinkles. I used West Systems 105 resin and 205 (fast) hardener and found that I could mix 6 pumps of each at once and have time to spread it before it go too thick. The best tool I found by trial and error to spread the epoxy was a 6" plastic putty knife/scraper (I think I paid 95 cents each for them at Menard's) I much preferred this over the rubber West Systems scrapers because they had a handle with was a big benefit it keeps my hands out of the epoxy. Start in the middle and work to the edges just like all the tips tell you and put down just enough epoxy to wet out the fabic and make it transparent don't leave any excess scrape it all out to the edges or fabric that is not yet wetted out, don't leave any puddles. Once the glass cloth on the whole panel was wetted out I used a resin roller, (the one I used had a 7" wide aluminum roller with grooves cut every 1/8 inch or so) at Andy's recommendation he said "it's the difference between a professional job and an amateur job" and rolled the entire surface pressing fairly hard to ensure the resin fully penetrated the fabric. This really made sure the resin was well worked in and even. I should mention this was a pretty warm Saturday morning I got started about 10:00am and since the garage temp was in the 70's the resin kicked fairly quickly and I was able to apply the second coat and subsequent coats about every 3 hours. You can use an 1/8" thick 7" wide foam roller to apply the second coat but I would not recommend it I found that the thicker layer it left while even didn't dry near as nicely and even had troubles with bubbles showing up a couple hours after I spread. After dealing with the bubbles and slower dry times and results I was not real happy with I went back to plastic putty knife, spread it thin and did more coats and got great results and even though it takes a little longer as you need at least 4 coats to get the resin thick to fill the fabric mesh the results are well worth the effort and it's easy to do.

A couple notes; if the temp is colder it takes the epoxy way longer to get and get to the not sticky point where you can add the next coat I had it take 6+ hours when my garage was in the 50's. That led to a time when I could not get the fabric fully coated in one day and as a result I needed to prep the surface for the next coat when I got back to it a few days later. After reading lots of methods that seemed like a lot of work and some good online debates on many blogs and made the call to Andy at Midwest Boat Appeal (he makes his living building and restoring wooden boats) and he said all I really needed to do was scrub down the surface with warm water and a scotch brite pad and that I could also give it a light sanding after that with my orbital sander and 150 grit sandpaper. Pretty quick and easy and the results were Identical to the results where I was able to put down all the coats of epoxy in the same day.

Here are some photos of the process.

Fiberglass fabric with a base coat and then 4 top coats of epoxy, now ready for sanding.

Catching up on my posts - Making the sides and assembling them on the strongback

I have not been as diligent about keeping this blog up and I'm determined to do better in the future but here is what I've accomplished.  I made a makeshift 16' work table by placing 2 16' 2x4's across 3 sawhorses then laid 2 4x8 foot sheets of CDC on top of them. After scarfing the edges of the sheets of plywood I coated each scarfed edge with unthickened epoxy then added thickened epoxy to the facing up edged. I used a 48" steel ruler as a straight edge to align the sheets prior to adding the epoxy and used a small finishing nail about a 1/4" in from each edge to nail thru the lined up sheets then pull off the top sheet and replaced the nail from the bottom up on the bottom sheet then once I added the thickened epoxy all I needed to do to get the two sheets aligned was put the top sheet back with the nails going thru the two holes on the edges.  Once that was done I placed a 2x4 on edge right across the middle of the scarf joint and clamped it down to the table. (Oh yeah don't forget to put down some plastic or wax paper under the joint the last thing you want is your expensive marine plywood epoxied to the CDC table top!)

Once the scarf joints had dried for 24 hours I could then make the side panels pretty easy here measure 22" down on one of the 48" edges of my 6mm 48"x16' panel and 22" up on the opposite end and snap a chalk line then cut along that line the entire length of the panel what you end up with is 2 panels 22" on end and 26" on the other 16" long, the 26" or tall end becomes the bow the 22" end is the stern. I lost a few pics somewhere between but below is a pic of the two sides once they cut and the angles added for the transom and stern.

Initial decisions and getting started

After many months of looking at and inspecting many plans from a half a dozen sites I selected the Montana Riverboats Beavertail Model, (http://www.montana-riverboats.com/). There are many great options and my decision came down to the size of the boat I was looking for and also a gut feeling that this one was not to difficult for me to tackle, I'm not an accomplished woodworker by any means so this was a big part of my selection. One of the big decisions what type of plywood to use, marine grade plywood is tough to find in Minnesota so that was the first problem to solve because shipping on a sheet of plywood is around $100/ea. Luckily if found Midwest Boat Appeal in St Bonifacius and met the owner Andy, a great resource, after visiting with Andy I select BS1088 Okume plywood, 9 mil for the bottom and 6 mil for the sides.

After that decision was made I the had to figure out out to scarf together the two sheets (you need 4' x 16' sheets to make the boat). After looking at every video I could find on youtube I decided that the method of scarfing the plywood that would work best for me was to purchase a West Systems scarfing jig and mount it on my circular saw.

And as you can see by the next photo after a few practice runs on some scrap luan plywood it did a fine job.

How it all started

15 years ago I took a business trip to Montana, I was going to be traveling through a good part of the state east to west. As a long time avid fisherman I had recently caught the fly fishing bug on a trip to Sun Valley Idaho so the idea of nearly a week in Montana, new country to me, was pretty inviting. My trip called for me to be in Billings for work on Monday morning so I chose to save the company a good deal of money by flying out on Saturday evening to take advantage of the cheaper airfares and located a guide to take me down the Big Horn River on Sunday.

My guide was a great older gentleman who had moved from Nebraska to Montana for the specific purpose of helping the Montana DNR build a tail race fishery below the dam on the Big Horn, great coincidence! He had a 1930's generation mahogany drift boat that was the envoy of every Hyde and ClackaCraft owner we saw on the river that day. Drifting the Big Horn that day, catching several nice browns and rainbows really cemented my new found love for fly fishing and I'll never forget my drift boat trip, what a great way to fish but not many places to use one when you live in Omaha as I did at the time.

Moving to Minnesota in 2000 changed my fishing opportunities greatly and over the past several years I've had some of my best fishing adventures fishing from a canoe or more recently a kayak on the Mississippi, St Croix, Canon and Zumbro Rivers. The Mississippi and St Croix are my favorites and are perfect for a drift boat approach. That in combination with an article I accidentally found on the web about Paul Butler's stitch and glue plywood drift boat, the Mini Mac, started fueling my desire to build a drift boat. So here I am today getting ready to start the project this weekend. The attached photo is a completed version of the boat I'm starting, if it comes out half this nice I'll be very happy with it. The plans come from Montana Riverboats, it's the beaver tail model and is 15 feet long with a 66" beam, should comfortably fish 3 people, I expect those extra 2 seats to be in high demand so get your requests in early (LOL).