Wee Lassie II
While building kayaks is my preference, I've started a canoe so the dog can
come along for a change. I chose a double paddle canoe so the experience wouldn't be
too different from kayaking. The Wee Lassie II is a couple feet longer than the Wee
Lassie and should provide enough carrying capacity for a paddler and canine passenger.
Hull
I setup the strongback that I had constructed for use in
building the Panache. Actually, I used about 2/3 of the strongback since the Wee
Lassie II is only about 13.5 feet long. The hull stripping
went considerably quickly (about 21 hours) because there was very little fitting
involved. The majority of the strips were left running wild off the end of the inner
stem to be trimmed later. The inner stems were a new experience for me, and
fortunately, in this case 'inner' was synonymous with 'hidden'.
Outer Stems
I wanted the color of the outer stems to contrast against the color of the wood, so I chose to use Ash from the seemingly endless supply of veneer I had left over from my Panache materials. One sad day I'll run out, but I had plenty to construct laminated outer stems for the Wee Lassie II.
Exterior Fairing
After the hull has been stripped and the outer stems attached,
the entire outside of the hull must be smoothed prior to glassing. This involves
planing, filling cracks, sanding, and in my case, scraping. On the Wee Lassie II, I
had some difficulty fairing some strips with some horizontal
grain patterns, but a cabinet scraper was the perfect solution.
Exterior Glassing
Having made it through the tedium of fairing, it was now time for the big payoff of applying the glass and epoxy resin. I used a lower viscosity epoxy on this boat, and so to avoid any potential problems of epoxy starvation in the cloth, I applied a seal coat first. Following that, I used a single layer of 6 oz. plain weave cloth plus a 3" reinforcement strip along the keel from stem to stem.
Interior Fairing
Now that the exterior has been glassed and sanded, it's time
to remove the hull from the forms and begin work on the interior.
I also used this opportunity to verify that I could get the canoe up the stairs and
out of the basement workshop. Luckily, it went out with no trouble.
Interior Glassing
After all the hand sanding on the interior, I was glad to finally get to laying the interior glass. I made a fillet in the sharp keel line near both of the stems, laid a single layer of 6 oz. cloth, and applied the epoxy. I skipped the seal coat on the interior.
Gunwales
Working on the interior of the hull was no picnic, so to break
up the monotony, I simultaneously began preparation of the rails for the gunwales. I chose walnut for the rails, and lacewood for the
deck and scupper spacers.
Bulkheads
I created two bulkhead templates to fit tightly to the hull, made two stripped panels for the bulkheads from leftover redwood, and glassed each with 6oz cloth. The bulkheads will later be fitted with plastic Beckson screw-in deck plates.
Decks
Lacewood has such interesting grain patterns, and I thought it would make a
nice looking deck. I had never worked with it before, so I
took this opportunity give it a try. I used 3 triangular wedges, each separated by
an 1/8" Walnut accent stripe. The center wedge came from a different piece of
wood, and it provided a nice color variation. The wedges started as 3/4" thick
material which I then sliced in half yielding approximately 5/16" thick material
enough for both decks.
Thwart
I laminated some Walnut and Lacewood for the thwart, and attached it to the underside of each inwale by installing a nut-insert in a spacer block. If I had thought ahead, I would have installed the nut-insert prior to attaching the inwales. Instead, I had to drill down through the top of the inwales to install the nut-insert. I used a flush-cut Walnut bung to cover the hole.
Seat
I went with the seat described in the plans in
Featherweight Boatbuilding. I used 3/4" x 1-1/2" Walnut to match the
gunwales and thwart.
Finishing
It's taken about 170 hours to get to this point. It's finally time to do the finishing work of the final sanding and varnishing. Although the varnish gives the boat a nice, shiny finish, it also accentuates all the little surface imperfections on the hull. At this point, I was just happy that the project was nearing completion. I didn't spend much time sweating over earlier mistakes.