Page 1 of 1

WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2022 7:48 pm
by WouldWork
Greeting friends,

My son and I started on our D5 build on Friday. This will be a small and fun kids boat for fishing, casting and exploring. I'll be putting a 34lb thrust electric trolling motor on the transom and the boat will always be car-topped.

I will also use it as a tow-along behind our kayaks for increased cargo capacity on longer distance kayak/canoe camping expeditions. I'm building her as light as possible without skimping on anything. A true work-boat that will also look nice. It'll be painted inside and out, used on local lakes and rivers, nothing outrageous.

Some pics. (Stitching will come in a bit more, I'd left everything rather loose until I had it fully assembled.)

Received ply

Image

Marked and cut out

Image

Image

Started assembling

Image

Looking like a boat by Sunday afternoon

Image

Image

Now I'm just waiting for the resin and glass I've ordered, once that's here I'll spot weld the panels and remove the cable ties and start running some resin and glass seams.

Hope you're all well.

Cam.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:49 pm
by mhd
Looking good already! I'm looking forward to seeing your progress. Best of luck.

Mick

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2022 4:45 am
by OrangeQuest
Looking good!

With all those kids' bikes, does that mean you have a few helpers?

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2022 6:00 am
by WouldWork
Out of the 3 kids I have 1 helper. :lol:

Gotta be happy with that though, they were all too young to help build the last 2 boats.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2022 11:32 pm
by Fuzz
Well you are a lucky fellow if you get one that will in fact help. :D
Sure is fun when you go from a bunch of flat parts to a boat looking thing.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2022 12:27 am
by WouldWork
Sure is fun when you go from a bunch of flat parts to a boat looking thing.
The look of disbelief and wonder on the kid's faces when it goes from funny shaped flat bits of ply to something resembling a boat is priceless, Fuzz.

I can't wait to see their faces on launch day.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2022 1:22 am
by WouldWork
Looking good already! I'm looking forward to seeing your progress. Best of luck.
Thanks mhd, my son will keep me moving on this build, there will likely be no breaks. He wants it done by September and insists we do something on it every day (let's see if that enthusiasm lasts when we start sanding) :lol: Having said that, I'm doing little-to-no fairing on this build. I'll sand ugly bits - joins, edges, things that need it, make sure it's smooth with nice round edges all round, but I'm not doing countless hours of fairing this time as the program is for something that looks nice from 6-10 feet away and gets my kids out on the water having fun. Nothing flashy. I will use a good 2 pack paint though to add some durability.

I told him end of October. As soon as my resin and glass turns up I should have good daily progress pics for everyone.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2022 10:50 am
by jbo_c
Nice, clean work.

Jbo

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2022 8:42 pm
by WouldWork
Thanks Jbo,

She got a little tidier over the weekend. I'm still waiting on my resin and glass to turn up so I tinkered over the weekend.

Cut out 2 knees and 2 clamping boards for the electric outboard, then I pretty much disassembled the whole thing so I could trim a couple of the frames. Everything already fit together quite well but there were a couple of spots where there were half decent gaps, so to save on resin I figured I could get them a little closer and still leave adequate gaps for thickened resin to run into for strength.

Now I saw it discussed in a previous D5 build thread about leaving the topsides straight instead of the curve that's in the plan, and the last guy who suggested it was talked out of it. Well I have left my side panels straight across the top. I think it looks fine, good actually and the boat won't be rowed so I don't need those tops slightly lower as per plans to accommodate comfortable rowing. Whether this makes rubrails easier to install as well is yet to be seen, but was not my primary motivation.

I also squared off the bow transom, I want the boat to lie flat and still for storage and transport when upside down and not rock so I've made it so. The boat will only be used on lakes and dams with quite light loads and in mostly good weather so I don't see an issue with how I shaped bow and stern transoms.

Anyway I have everything looking really tight and clean and can use some matchsticks under the frames to give that little gap for resin flow to make sure everything's solid.

According to the postage tracking, my resin and glass will be here mid week so hopefully by week's end I'll have a sealed boat to show, and can start on appendages, seat tops and finer details.

Image

Image

Image

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2022 9:43 am
by pee wee
Your work looks so neat, and all your panels are fitting perfectly! :D :D

It isn't too important on a small boat like this, but you would also benefit from a bit of gap between hull panels, too. You may have planned that and not mentioned it!

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2022 6:49 pm
by WouldWork
but you would also benefit from a bit of gap between hull panels
Thanks Hank - and yep, matchsticks will be put under the panels that sit a little too flush to give a bit of gap for resin to flow into when I do the 'spot welding'. They'll come out with the zip ties when I move on to seams/glassing. Should leave me with a pretty even fillet right round when I get to that. Like you say, probably not entirely necessary on such a small boat but I rather it done right. I know Cracker Larry is watching so no skimping. :lol:

Cam.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2022 6:44 am
by WouldWork
Resin and glass turned up today so I bought some gloves and masks and got busy.

Taped up with gaff, primed with resin and tacked with thickened resin. Spent some time scraping excesses away to save on sanding. Not my neatest work ever but not too bad.

Remove the tape and zip ties in the morning, see how it kicked then re-tape tomorrow night and start some fillets and glass.

Image

Image

Image

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:47 pm
by WouldWork
As per my thread in 'Resins' section I am discontinuing this build for now.

Unfortunately the resin I ordered was seemingly mis-labelled with the Part A bottle having Part B labels and vice versa.

The resin has not cured and I am not confident that I can successfully disassemble and clean the ply to start again, so unfortunately the build is on hold until further notice. The resin cured enough that it held the panels together without the zip ties but it is not hard, not properly cured and definitely not sea-worthy. I can't pull the panels apart as it's stuck enough the be splintering the ply whilst doing so. I would literally have to saw all the panels along the seams to get them apart without damage and then commence the clean up of the resin and start again. Right now I'm not feeling it so the boat is on hold.

I'm just glad I wasn't half way through a big build.... (Glad also that I hadn't yet bought the electric motor and deep cycle battery - was going to buy them this weekend.)

Bitterly disappointed, but these things happen, sorry to the interested followers of this thread.

Thanks

Cam.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2022 10:28 pm
by OneWayTraffic
That really sucks.

Normally I'd say that scraping and planing would work, along with acetone. But it depends on how much mess there is. It might be better to start over. Alternatively if it's just the fillets holding the panels and you haven't coated all the wood you might consider just taping over. The fillets main job is to provide a nice radius for the glass to go round, they do not need to actually bond the panels 100%. So if it were mine, and the glue is just what I can see there on the last photo, I'd take off what I could then a bigger fillet on top and tape over. If you've coated all the surface then discarding might be the easier option.

Re: WouldWork's D5 Build Northern Australia

Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2022 8:06 pm
by mhd
You can't plan for that kind of mess up. You have my commiserations. What a total sickener...

Mick