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I started my John Welsford designed Seagull on a Friday afternoon when the plywood arrived at 4 pm. By Sunday afternoon t I had the hull completed in a single weekend of intense work.
But although she looked like a boat, she was less than 1/3 done.
Fitting the thwart tops was obviously going to be a "by guess and by golly" affair, as dimensions for these parts were not on the plans. I guess everyone's would end up slightly different.
What I did was take measurements every 100 mm (6") from the centerline thwart supports I'd epoxied in place, and transferred these measurements to the plywood seat stock. Then I cut them out 1" too large. Holding them in approximate position, I drew the actual curve by holding a pencil firmly and steadily as I drew my knuckle along the side panel. This left a pencil line on the seat top that more accurately corresponded with the contour of the side panels. I then cut this out and trimmed it to fit and fall half way across the centerline support. Viola, it was within "epoxy range", 1/4" gaps or less, except in one spot where it approached an inch for a few inches. Good enough. I flipped it and cut a mirror image for the other side. A bit of fiddling with the plane and I got them both to lay flat sharing the centerline support beam. The process was repeated for the stern thwarts.
A big mix of West was made, and all the edges and the side panels were brushed with "clear" epoxy to prevent any joint starvation. Then I thickened the mix to a peanut butter consistency with wood flour and spread it into the gaps. I'd thought I might have to roll up some paper towel to jam in the bigger gap to prevent the slop from falling through, but it held in the gap by itself.
The next morning we made up a finishing mix of epoxy thicken with micro balloons to go over these rough fillets and smooth it all out.
A breasthook was cut out of 1 by 6 pine and the skeg was cut from the same stock. Both were epoxied in place. I also cut and epoxied in a reverse transom knee to transfer and spread out some of the thrust loads of the outboard.
While we were away attending the Rend Lake Messabout Gary Sexsmith, who works with me and is a auto painter by trade, sprayed her white. It came out very well. I decided to finish her bright after admiring the bright work on the D4 and Melonseed at the Messabout.
Gary and I brushed on a coat of polyurethane spar varnish, which took forever to dry on the epoxied hull. It was still tacky after 3 day! Two more days of setting her out in the sun whenever possible finally had her dry enough to continue. Because of the long drying time, I decided to neglect a second coat at this time. I'll brush on a few more after I've rowed the wheels off for a while.
I cut oar socket blocks from red oak and epoxied them in place. Rather than cut the tricky bevel, I simply waited til the next day and brought them level with the belt sander. I bored the holes by drilling a pilot
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