Stada Shipyard

The epoxy stuff arrived. Most materials for the expoy work could be ordered from one and the same company. Alltogether I'll need a lot of small but essential things. Besides the epoxy (I ordered the 'slow' variant) and the glass cloth, also things like stirring sticks, brushes, rolls, syringes, etc. They told me that the minimum temperature for the epoxy was 8 degrees bit in the package on the instructions was mentioned 12 degrees. Let's not start too early.

For some new parts of the boat I needed wood. The rudder blade and the daggerboard are 12 mm okoume plywood and the seats 18 mm. It wasn't easy to find a supplier of this wood that wanted to sell less the the common 250 x 122 cm. When the employee helped me with loading the boards in my car, the car appeared to be too small. As a service they trasnported it in their own car to my shed. Yesterday I drew the lines of the parts on the wood and sew some parts. And after emailing Chesapeak and studying the manual, I now know what to buy regarding the glassfiber cloth and the epoxy stuff. I hope to be able to buy it online tonight. To get an idea of the boat: here is a little video from YouTube.

My boat can be built with a kit. Cheasapeak Light Craft do sell them for about $1100. And if you want to sail with it, you have to spend an extra $955. I want to save some mosatisfactory to make everything by yourself. The boat will be a saling boat. You can buy a simple aluminum mast, boom and gaff, but I willl make them of wood and epoxy. It can't be that complicated. The best way to prevent them from warping is to glue two halves with epoxy. Because it is still freezing in the shed, I have to wait until it is warm enough. Today I have studied sailmaking. Sailrite in the USA soes sell kits for sewing it. The simpel little sail kit still costs $165. Sailmaking is not easy. It is not just a 2D square but it has to have a sort of curve in order to make the boat sail. I have found software that can help you to design the exact parts of the sail. It generates a CAD file whoch can be used in a sailcut machine. I hope to find a way in which I can print it scale 1:1. I expecte...

Plans have arrived. All parts in scale 1:1. I need okoume multiplex boards 250 x 122 cm. This can last very good in humid environments. For most parts three boards of 6 mm and one board of 9 mm will do. I had to email CLC because of the fact that I could only find 10 mm. They said that this can be used without any problem. The boat will only be a little bit heavier (and stronger). The boat will be glued together with epoxy. Because you need at least about 15-18  °C for hardening, the shed is not heated and it's winter now, the only thing I can do is to saw the parts out of the boards.  With the plan on the board, I punched through th epaper in the wood. Then I connected the little holes with a pencil and used a Japanese saw and a jig saw.

I have started a new project: I want to build a small boat. As a former dinghy (racing) sailor and enthousiastic follower of ocean races like the Vendee Globe, Volvo Ocean Race and the Mini Transat, I landed on webpages of some people who were building their own boats in the Mini 650 class. They used the ' stitch and glue ' method. It seemed to be not very difficult. It is done with epoxy resin and wood. I built a couple of windsurf boards in the past, with foam, glass fiber and expoxy, so I have some experience. Now I had to find the most suitable boat for me. My shed is 6.5 x 3 m and it should be made broadwise, so it should not be longer than 3 m. My first idea was the Optimist, but to get it registrated for races, it should be exactly like the plan. Not a millimeter less or more. One of the builders of a Mini 650 showed in video episode how he started with a small tender boat in order to get used to the stitch and glue method, before he would begin with building a 650-b...