Triplets and Play

Here it is mid-February and I haven’t gotten caught up on shop doings in nearly two months. Bad blog boy. Apologies.

Okay, here we are preparing to put the bottom on the doryak triplets. We came up with this process a couple years ago. The traditional wooden inner chine is easier, but it is such a nuisance to fix once you break it. A fiberglass/fillet inner chine is way easier to fix, but hard to install. It would be easy enough to install it section by section between the ribs, but that wouldn’t be very strong–the true strength comes by making one continuous fillet and glass chine. So here’s the process:

Rout a 3/16” slot in the chine, 2″ up each side and 2″ out onto the bottom. Pre-measure, mark and drill the boat bottom. Pre-saturate the full-length 25oz biaxial w/matt tape–one 4″ wide, overlain by a 2′ one. Carefully work them into the slot. Squeeze a nice fillet bead along the edge. Then prepare to drop the top on. Now here’s the trick. Get Cricket to go inside the boat and massage all the biax into place.

Then fasten on the bottoms and let it kick. That’s it for the tricky part.

Get ready to grind the bottom edge to fair.

Glass the bottom (We use 25oz biax w/matt overlain by 10″ glass, and wrap it up the sides about 3″) and glue on a rubber outer chine. Then roll them up and commence decking.

Here is Cricket transferring the storyboard spiling to a piece of decking.

Boom. decked.

“Play,” said Einstein, “is the highest form of research.” Someone else, I cannot recall who, said that if you want to have a productive and happy crew, let them play. We play a lot.