Weekend 1 - March 4 and 5

After about 6 weeks of preparations, I finally started building my first real boat - Bataeu's Corsair 13. First thing Saturday, we went over to the local hardware store where I picked out the best pieces of exterior plywood I could find. Most seemed to have voids so I picked those with the least and later rearranged some of the panel placements in the nesting diagrams to avoid them. After cutting each panel, I checked the edges for voids but found only a few.

Carrying the 4 - 1/4, 3 - 3/8 and 1 - 3/4 into my workshop was really tiresome. Wish I had some help doing all that heavy lifting. Working on each sheet was not so much a burden since I got to rest while drawing all the patterns to be cut on a given sheet before having to lift it again for cutting.

I could have done away with the effort of picking up the whole sheets and positioning them on my floorstanding table saw if I learn to use my portable circular saw better. At this point I prefer the standing position I take while using the table saw as compared to the "top view" you need using the portable saw. Standing straight is easier than courching over.

By 5PM Sunday, I was able to cut 7 sheets with the 3/4 sheet for the dagger board (actually specifed as 1/2 but such as not available) and some of the short parts such as the skeg and frame stiffeners remaining.

I had originally planned to be finished epoxy coating everything and butt joining the split panels on Weekend 1 so assembly would start on Weekend 2 but I only then realized that I did not have enough space the do all the work at the same time. Will need to figure the sequencing with space constraints also taken into account.

I was able to butt join the two bottom panels using my workbench as the base with the router table supporting the end of their 13' foot span. Since my workbench was not wide enough, I put each of the bottom panel halves one on top of the other separated by polypropelene (I think) grocery bags. I of course added some scrap ply sheams to make up the thickness of the butt block and provide a flat surface for the other bottom panel halves. I may have made a mistake in the epoxy mixing because the epoxy hardened more quickly than I had expected. To get the epoxy to be level out despite the higher viscosity, I used some pine 2x4 studs and bar clamps to squish the wood-epoxy-wood sandwiches. Heavy clamping is not adviced by designers and experienced builders alike as a thin but distinct layers of epoxy is actually desirable but for this case I assume this would be a exception. We'll see. Will try to get home early on Wednesday to inspect the results and see if I can't get my schedule back on track.