Starting on the skegs.

I started on the skegs today. I picked up some mason board to use for a pattern to cut the skegs.

The offset drawing on page 88 of version 1.5 of the scamp manual seems to be correct.

I started by marking offset lines at 150mm, 300mm, 450, 600, 900 etc, then placing a sharpie mark at the offsets. I recommend printing out the page and rewriting the offset numbers because they are very small and hard to read.

Then I drove a nail just a mm farther than the point and used a flexible batten to draw the line.

bottom line drawn

 I did the top line too, except I wanted to draw the curve by hand.

Drawing the second offset line.

Long view

Curve looks good.

The Shinto rasp worked great for knocking down the high spots when the pattern was placed on the hull.
I cut outside the lines, but unfortunately, I can't cut straight lines with my jigsaw. There were a  few nicks that were further in than I was comfortable.
Even worse, I measured the GigHarbor Boatworks trailer I bought from Dave. I'm worried that the skegs are too far forward for the roller wheels at the rear of the trailer, so I marked the low spots on the first pattern and traced it back onto the mason board. I cut a second pattern with a slightly longer curve.

The old pattern in front of the new pattern.

The new pattern

The new pattern seems to be pretty good.

I probably won't get much time this week to cut the skegs. I had planned on cutting 4 pieces from 3/4" plywood and laminating them together to make a 1 1/2" skeg. However, the message board is urging me to use hardwood. I will throw the pattern in my car and see if I can't find something acceptable at the lumber store.

I'll also need to figure out how to trim them to the pattern. I don't have a bottom roller trim bit.

The weather started to get colder, so epoxying is off the table for awhile until it warms up. That's ok because I'd like to get these skegs on first. Someone suggested dowels for placement and shear strength. I like that idea. 

Sanding is nearly done

Five hours of sanding the 410 mix seems to have finished it off. It's amazing to see the nice glossy surface that you think is fair is actually fairly bumpy. The sander really knocks those bumps down and a consistent milkiness is the goal.

After the sanding, I still found some low spots, so I filled those.  

Sanding is done, low spots filled

Couple more low spots. filled.

One more sanding by hand to knock those down and she'll be ready for a coat or two of graphite epoxy.

Then I'll have a simple sanding job to get rid of the stipple on that. But since the underlying layer is smooth, that should go by fairly easy. The point is to sand the easy stuff, not the really hard stuff.

Warning. The 410 generates a lot of dust. Wear a respirator. I have a plastic tent with zipper doors set up in the garage, but the dust still escapes up over the top.
I rigged up a box fan with a furnace filter and that really cut down on the airborne dust.

box fan with furnace filter

I used a nice 5" random orbital sander for the flat areas (that I originally bought for my kayak build). The corners and sensitive areas were done either by hand or with a little mouse sander that I have. Usually by hand.
I heartily recommend Mirka Abranet fiberglass mesh sandpaper. Be sure to pick up a protective hook & loop barrier pad or the abranet will destroy the hooks on your sander.
And when you think the abranet is done or too clogged, take it off and roll it up so you can sand the fillet edges. I went through only about 4 sheets through the whole hull sanding.

L-to-R: respirator, rolled up abranet, abranet, denatured alcohol

A shop vacuum with good filters to clean out the canvas sanding dust reservoir on the sander is good too. I can hook my shop vac up to my sander, but the large 2 1/2" hose makes it awkward to use, so I generally don't. If you have a better sanding vac, maybe you could keep the dust down a bit. Although now that I think about it, buying a long smaller hose and an adapter might have made it less awkward. 

Filling the weave

The weather is indeed staying warm enough to work and I'm taking advantage of it.

This is a shot after I trimmed all the glass edges. 

glass edges trimmed.

Bow

 I filled some of the trimmed edges with 410 to make it easier to sand later.

I filled some of the trimmed edges with 410.

 I also filleted the 1st chine to cover the ragged glass edge.

Bow after fillets

 Here is how the sides looked after the fill and the fillet. On the starboard side, everything looks good.
You'll see the patch right below the filleted chine. That's because the day Scamp Camp finished, I drove the side of the boat into a pole at the Center for Wooden Boats. Yeesh. I guess I got the first bump out of the way as soon as I possibly could.

Starboard fill

 The port fill on the other hand, doesn't look as good.

Port side fill

Quincy and I have worked together to do 3 fill coats so far, one with straight epoxy, then two more with 410 mixed to about 3 tablespoons per 4-5 pumps. Enough to thicken it a bit, but not quite to ketchup yet.

The below are pictures after coat three.  You can really see that the 410 is clouding up the grain. It should be easy to sand.

I tried to clean up the stern with some very thick

Stern 

Starboard still looks good

Port looks a lot better.

bow

Tomorrow, I'd like to get some sanding done in the afternoon. If I'm really lucky (and I doubt that will happen, I may be able to put on the first coat of graphite epoxy.

In some of the shots, you can see the waterline that was so carefully scribed at scamp camp. The graphite will cover that up. So If I decide to paint at the DWL, then I'll have to re-scribe it.

Fiberglassing the hull

Quincy and I fiberglassed the hull today. We used 60" wide 6oz fabric, which covered just about the whole boat with small exceptions at the beam.

First, I needed to reinforce the stem.
I had intended to put a layer of 3" then 2" glass on the stem, but I had some scraps laying around that were more like about 5" and 3", so I used those.

Stem with 5" glass

Stem with 3" glass over

I spent quite a bit of time making sure the bottom/garboard seam was fair. The large gap there was hard to fill.
I spent a small amount of time making sure the stem was faired out so that there wouldn't be any nasty bubbles. Then I dusted really well (including vacuuming off the ground) and taped off the bow and stern transoms to make a clear trim line to cut the glass.

I also taped up a skirt to protect from drips. That was a good idea.

glass laid out but not smoothed

smoothed out.

Stern with darts and plastic skirt

Then Quincy and I worked together for about 2 hours to get everything wet out. It went well. We had to work quickly when using batches of 4-5 pumps to make sure it didn't go off.

Here, I put some 410 on the glass seams to fair them out a bit.

Stern.

I still need to trim the glass at the tape line. Then put a fillet on chine #1.
Then we start in on fill coats. I'll likely get a fill coat on later today, followed by 2 more fill coats. The last will be with 410 and 423 graphite powder.
I haven't decided what color to paint the boat. The entire family all have opinions. Someone needs to make a decision.

I'm hoping these days of 60 degree weather will last a little bit longer.

Flipped the boat!

She has been flipped.

I got the family to help and followed the plan. It went alright. One problem is that the front is so heavy it's hard to hold. And I was afraid to tie it to anything; nothing is strong enough.

Another problem is that she really does not want to flip. The bottom is heavy and wants to be down.

Attaching the rope to the boweye.

Rope is over a hook.

Rope on the bronze boweye

Sawhorses ready. These were too weak.

We easily got her on her side. But it took a lot of control to get her all the way over. This was problematic.

1/2 way and resting on a moving dolly

We rested a bit, then did the final flip.
She's all the way over!

The first time seeing the bottom. We didn't have time at camp to paint the entire bottom.

She's on horses. I had to brace under the mast box.

I don't know if I'll flip her back this way. There was a lot of stress on that bow eye. And I think she'll want to flip quickly back to her original orientation. Although it will be easier because we won't have to lift her very high. I'll decide later.

Last night, I spent some time filling the gaps between planks. Wow, it took a lot of fillet mix to fill them.

Today I'm going to do some more filleting in the hopes of putting on 3" tape on the stem. I'm going to follow Howard's directions on the forum and put 3" tape, then 2" tape on the stem. Then I'm going to use 60" wide fabric to cover the entire bottom in one go. I don't plan to fillet the garboard until after I've done the fiberglassing, that way I can trim the fiberglass at the lap and cover it will a fillet. There will likely be a small gap at the beam that I'll have to fair by hand.

I'm considering using peel ply for the last coat. Any tips or advice on using peel ply? 

Finally, a picture of the top just before she was flipped. This is painted with 410 for easy sanding.

Top before flipping.

Thoughts on flipping a scamp

I was thinking about how to flip over a scamp.
On the message boards (and Craig's site, which has good pictures), people rig up dual straps with cinches from the ceiling and it looks complicated and hard to turn. It seems to me that scamps are relatively light. A bit too much for a single person to lift and turn, but not that hard for 2-3 people if they have control.

By tying a rope to the boweye and running that up to a block (or another eye bolt) in the ceiling, one person could lift the bow quite easily.
A second person would stabilize the stern as the bow went up. Put a mover's dolly under the stern for safety.
When the bow was far enough up so that the cabin will clear the ground, the stern holder could lift and flip the boat over just with a few hand movements.

A third person on one side could help guide the boat as she turned.

Has anyone tried this method? It puts a lot of weight on that boweye, but the 3/8" bronze one that I have should handle the weight fine. (McMaster says that steel 3/8" eye bolts can hold 1300 lbs for lifting.)

If I'm wrong or if there is already a good tutorial on the message boards please send a link. I couldn't find it.

Deadlights arrived!

After not making a decision for months, a thread on the SCAMP board convinced me to just order the deadlights and interior rings from SailBoatStuff.com (Thanks Simeon and Dale). They arrived Friday. Fast shipping from SBS, thanks very much to them.

Deadlights!

Profile. They need about 15-16mm depth

I really should have ordered these sooner. It would have been much easier to cut the circles in the cabin sides on the drill press rather than with a hand drill. In fact, the instructions in the circle cutter box say not to use an electric hand drill, instead use a drill press on 500 RPM.

Before I cut the cabin sides, I wanted practice using the circle cutter.  For the first time ever, I took the top off my drill press and adjusted the speed. I couldn't find the table that shows belts to RPM, so I just used the slowest setting. It still vibrated and wanted to shake off the bench, but I successfully cut two rings from scrap plywood.

I cut these two doublers with the cutter

I made the outside of the ring about 6 3/4". I should have gone to the maximum 8" of the cutter, but these are fine and should be barely noticeable from inside because they are only slightly bigger than the brass ring size.
I cut the outside circle first, then cut the inside circle. Be sure to pay attention to which way the cutter is oriented or you'll get sloped sides and have to sand. (And be sure to flip the piece over when halfway through to do the other side.)

Against instructions, I used a battery drill on low speed to cut the cabin side circles. I didn't adjust the cutter at all so that the circles matched the rings.
This was a royal pain. The cutter would get hung up occasionally and was terribly vibraty. After much fussing, it did finally cut through.
Lesson learned: subassembly first.

Used a battery drill to cut the cabin sides.

I decided to quickly fillet the cabin top area since it would have been a pain to do after the doublers were attached. The fillet stick trick worked nicely. I didn't bother to sand the fillets or even fully finish them because I still plan to do the rest of the interior fillets when she is upside down.

Before gluing on the doublers, I filleted the upper.

I didn't get a picture, but the doublers are glued in place now. I do need to drill oversize holes and fill those so that I can run bolts though. It looks like #10 hardware is the right size. the holes are nicely countersunk, so I'll order some #10 flat head brass machine screws from McMaster. Since even the inner ring is countersunk, I could turn the bolts around and use the acorn nuts on the outside. In my head, this gives her a "steampunk" look. I'll see how it looks in real life.

Cabin top edges cleaned up and fiberglassed

Luckily, the weather is still cooperating and staying warm enough to work.

I was able to clean up and round off the corners of the cabin tops. I was nervous about this step because there are no good instructions and I didn't know how I wanted it to look, but I cut the cleats and just started using the shinto to shape the corners. It worked great and I was happy.

Using a plane, I was able to get the sides nice and straight, except for the starboard aft corner. See later.

Detail of the corner. It looks messy here. Sanding fixed it.

Again, it looks messy, but sanding cleaned it up.

overall view

The edges

port side with doubler

 Except the starboard side. The cabin sides were just a bit short on that side. WoodnMetalGuy had a similar problem. I think the seats to B4 are measured a single plywood width wrong. It's about 6-9 mm I had to fix. But it's easy to recover. I did almost exactly what WoodnMetalGuy did, just put a piece of filler in there.
He had some problems with the cabin top, but my cabin top just needed a bit of filler.
I used some masking tape to make a dam in that corner and just filled the corner with fillet mix. Later I sanded it and shaped it to match the rest of the roof. Not a problem.

Starboard side I had to add an extra filler of wood and a tape dam to fill a little bit of the roof top

 I let that glue dry and cut off the excess with a flush cut saw. It will take some extra work to get those edges smooth and fair, but it shouldn't take too long.

Inside of starboard

this corner got cleaned up

The cabin top cleaned up

Finally, late last night, I put on the fibreglass and wet it out. I trimmed and recoated this morning. This evening, I'll do another coat, this time with 410 and some white pigment.

First layer of glass