I made some pretty good progress since last week. I actually finished up installing all the ribs. A couple of hundred rivets single handedly was certainly growing monotonous. Sorry to say I forgot to take pictures of the laminated rib and that whole process. As mentioned above, they start with four laminations of about 1/4" each, steam them for 15 minutes, bend them in place as a stacked set and let them sit. Then take them out and add epoxy to each side.
This is what they look like when ready for gluing. I recently learned a trick of wrapping them tightly with "cling" (think industrial Saran wrap) after applying the epoxy. This acts like a clamp and squeezes the laminations together and also contains the epoxy mess nicely. That really worked nicely. After the laminations are epoxied and wrapped, the rib goes back in the boat and clamped in position so the epoxy cures with everything in the correct shape. Once cured, the rib is removed, unwrapped, cleaned up of excess epoxy and is then ready for installing. ---- Definately more time and work than regular steam bent ribs.
Here is what I resorted to when using resourcinol glue in temperatures that were not up to the required 70?F for curing
A cardboard box cut to fit the hull shape, with an electric heater inside and an old comforter on the outside. I'm glad I didn't have to do that too many times.
Once the ribs were all in it was then time to put all the large framing pieces and floors back in. You can see the floors between the ribs in these pictures, those big chunks of wood. (Ahh, ..... these are what most here call 'bulkheads'. ......... They are correctly called floors.)
Finally, ..... it was time to reinstall the platforms for the fuel tanks. I have no idea why, but two of the planks for the starboard platform were really bad off, very decayed in the core, so I had to replace them. Conveniently the dimension of the planks were 1' x 5 1/2", the same as regular house decking material. A trip to the lumberyard for a 10' piece of red cedar decking took care of that. The pictures don't look like much, but that was a pretty nice milestone to hit in this project.
I did have a residual issue caused by the decades old sister ribs that I took out. There were lots of screws that were now empty screw holes in the bottom of the boat. Easily a couple of dozen.
I ripped some pencil size strips of white cedar, put a bit of a cone shape on the end with an electric pencil sharpener and cut them off on the bandsaw.
These would then be small plugs that get driven into each screw hole. Normally plugs like this can just be set in dry and the swelling in the water will more thann ensure they stay in place. I wanted bit of assurance they wouldn't move (what with some time to go before tossing her in the water), so I mixed up some Weldwood plastic resin glue (old school, convenient waterproof glue).
Just dip the end in the glue, set it in the screw hole and tap flush.
So I guess that brings things up to date for now.
A bit of underwater seam compound just to finish off the surface and they're all set. Nothing to worry about them now.
