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A blog about SCAMP (Small Craft Advisor Magazine Project) boats. Covering the build, sailing the boat and the scamp community that has formed around this little portly boat.
Showing posts with label trailer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trailer. Show all posts

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Roller end caps to protect skegs

After a few instances of damage to the skegs from the trailer roller mounts I wanted to protect the skegs. Here are some shots of the old rollers.

roller

The skeg sometimes get cut by the mounting pillars
I picked up some 3 1/2"  roller ends and new 13" x 5/8" shafts and installed those today.

Here are the shots after.
End rollers installed

Better shot of the end rollers

I also raised the center roller about as high as it would go (see the first shot). That should guide the hull up and over until the skegs get on the rollers.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

Trailer damage to the skegs

The Gig Harbor trailer has cut up my skegs a few times.

Just yesterday I scraped a skeg against the roller mount as I was pulling her onto the trailer. This has happened before.

Scraped the skeg on the trailer rollers

I've had to do more maintenance on the skegs than on any other part of the boat.

If I had to do the skegs all over again, I'd seriously consider just building the things out of 2" UHMW plastic. I have no idea how to bond UHMW to the hull though. I expect that even bedding compound won't stick to UHMW.

There are roller guide end caps that should protect the skegs. I'll do some investigation.

Friday, May 29, 2015

Bunk raising

The bow eye was too low to be aligned well with the crank, so I wanted to raise the front bunk of the trailer just a bit.

A trip to Lowe's for some vinyl lumber and some outdoor carpet and I was able to build up the bunk.
The vinyl lumber was near the moulding aisle. I was able to get a 10' 1" x 3.5" piece (yeah, like a 5/4 x 4). I had them chop it into 3x 40" pieces.
I used 2 1/2" ceramic coated deck screws to stack those together for a 3" rise, then covered them in outdoor carpet. Luckily I had some double sided carpet tape laying around to hold the carpet to the vinyl as I didn't have any stainless steel staples.

The net result is that the bow is lifted about 3". This gives a nice straight shot from the crank to the bow eye. She looks a bit more aligned with the trailer rather than having the stern up so high in the air.

New bunk
While I was messing around, I took a cue from Simeon and painted the wheel covers to match the boat. It adds a nice touch.
Painted wheel covers

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Finishing scamp camp

While we were living in our little house, I was the unofficial cook. I really enjoyed coming up with a simple menu for 3 dudes living in the woods. We ate very well; the menu included philly sandwiches, turkey reubens on sweet dark bread. Of course we did easy stuff too, a few days we just had grilled brats.

On Sunday evening, we even had salmon. I bought one big steak and a jar of honey mustard salad dressing and some grilling planks.
Salmon is required in the Pacific NW
Wednesday morning, dad ran down to Gig Harbor with my Jetta to pick up the trailer. The trailer was something I was sweating. Just one of the details I freak out over. In the end, it all worked out well and I thank Dave at GHBoatWorks for his help. I had even purchased the right size ball. I even had a trailer light tester that worked. I remember my dad messing with trailer lights for hours when I was a kid. Those testers are great.
Here is dad painting epoxy on the interior
After Wednesday's steaming then clamping, Thursday morning the carlins had the right shape. When they cooled, they stayed in the curved shape. Now they just needed to be glued in place. And we were out of glue in tubes. So we mixed up some epoxy thickened with colloidal silica (it add strength to the epoxy, but makes it really hard to sand. I think I need a primer post on working with epoxy someday) and glued in the carlins, one on the outside (gunwale) and one on the inside (inwhale). This was sticky messy work. Epoxy is always sticky and messy, but this one I thought was especially bad.
Here she is with the carlins glued in place.
This is a blurry picture, but you can see better what has been done.
closer
The deck will sit directly on top of the carlins. I may add some strengtheners under there, but I'll worry about that later.
And another shot from the stern.
The sole is in the bottom.

Once we got that done, we knew we wanted to load her on the trailer tomorrow, so we scrambled to put a coat of epoxy on the exterior, just for protection. She was going to be driven for a couple hours and we didn't want any rock chips or other unmentionables against the soft wood.

Friday morning, our only job was to get the boats loaded on the trailers. Wow, after an intense 2 weeks, we were done. I took lots of pictures here, as did everyone. I think we were all proud parents.
Our boat and Peter's boat, Silver Bars (great name)
Quincy
Loading her onto the trailer didn't take very long. 4 people could easily lift a boat with a pair of 2x4s slung underneath. The hard part was that the trailer we had was meant for a boat with skegs. We didn't have skegs yet, so we had to prop her up at the stern. But once we got that done, she was travel worthy.

I couldn't resist the star shots below. A couple years ago, I had admired a scamp sitting on the mariner star at NWMC. Now my own boat was setting there. Granted, she wasn't seaworthy yet, but there she was.
I'll have to go back and get the same shot when she is done. Whenever that might be.
NMWC star

Dad and Peter

And with that, our camp was over. It was sad. I felt like boot camp was over; these people with whom I just spent 2 weeks were going to scatter and probably not see each other again. I liked everyone at camp and it was sad to head out. It had actually been a draining morning getting her loaded and saying goodbyes.
Quincy was able to run with Howard and Melissa to Melissa's home so he got to spend some extra time with Howard and he quite enjoyed it. I was glad he was able to go.
He got back to PT just in time to meet dad and I at a japanese place for lunch.
Dad had a great time with his chopsticks.
joy and chopsticks
I have only heard from a couple people at that camp on the SCAMP message board. I was able to see Melissa and John Welsford at the Wooden Boat Festival a few weeks later, but that's another story.