Welcome, 

your note is a great way to start. 

young or old, especially when you are new, finding somebody local with some experience can really be helpful so i would check the builders club page https://www.clcboats.com/builders_club/search/  and see if there is somebody near by who has great workmanship that you want to model yourself after.

the internet videos of builds is also a great resource as is this site.  of course CLC has their phone line and the folks there are great.

patience in this hobby is helpful to get great results....i have built the shearwater and it is a really sharp boat....and if you put some attention and planning into it, the result can be fantastic (significantly lighter and great looking compared to anything you buy....plus acquiring all the skills you will acquire in building).  you can also make it weigh a ton and pretty ugly if you  don't pay attention.

like a lot of things, practice can really help.  so when i was building, to the extent it was possible to practice something, or even a part of something, i would do it to kind of sort it out without risking the bigger project....whether its just mixing a small batch of epoxy, mixing it and seeing it harden, to using my saw and a scrap peice of wood, to fibreglassing a scrap of glass to a scrap to see how wetting out works.

but most of all, just keep doing what you are doing....find, develop and create a community and there are lots of talented people who will help.

h

   Well, you know you can download the study plans for just $1, right?  That could be the way to get started in trying your hand at subscale practice parts, like getting comfy with scarfing ply and lumber and trimming, using scrap lumber or some wood from the local Home Depot.  Look for tool sales or swap meets in your area if you need to collect tools like clamps, planes, saws.  A 20 year old Stanley plane will cut just as well as a brand new one once you sharpen it up and be a lot cheaper.  And once you get a plane properly sharp and try it out on a piece of wood, you'll find it is a real kick.  It will just feel good when you get it right. Look on line for directions on plane sharpening.  

   Shearwater is a good pick puzzle joints are easy to work with and all the holes are pre drilled so you can see where all the parts go/ tools you need>  lots of clamps a good plane a small pull saw a bonsai saw (click sells those) and a "4in hand" rasp and a small foam roller (I've found spreading epoxy easier with a roller ,it keeps the fiberglass smooth  A random orbital belt sander is nice to have but I mostly use sheets of sand paper with spray adhesive on the back ,folded in half and cut to desired size giving me double sided sand paper .tape off your filets it's  easier to get a neat result. Sand puzzle joints sp they fit easily and lay smooth when you glue them.and don't start planning your next boat at least until you finish this one

   Shearwater is a good pick puzzle joints are easy to work with and all the holes are pre drilled so you can see where all the parts go/ tools you need>  lots of clamps a good plane a small pull saw a bonsai saw (click sells those) and a "4in hand" rasp and a small foam roller (I've found spreading epoxy easier with a roller ,it keeps the fiberglass smooth  A random orbital belt sander is nice to have but I mostly use sheets of sand paper with spray adhesive on the back ,folded in half and cut to desired size giving me double sided sand paper .tape off your filets it's  easier to get a neat result. Sand puzzle joints sp they fit easily and lay smooth when you glue them.and don't start planning your next boat at least until you finish this one

Young Builder,

You didn't mention what part of the country you live in. When you're building with epoxy resin, temperature is an important factor. Do you have a work area where you can maintain a temperature above 70-degrees Farenheit (ideally between 75-85F and 50% humidity)? I live in New England and built in a barn. The winter was pretty much downtime for my build.

Enjoy the build and enjoy the boat!

Cheers,

Dick

For Boatbuilder123 all I can say is have fun! That’s got to be Rule #1 with an endeavor such as you’ve chosen to take on. The building may provide a different sort of pleasure than the actual use once it’s complete but you’ll learn a lot in the doing of both that will lead to other learning as you grow.`

Oh, and ask questions! Don’t be afraid to ask questions. We all started out knowing nothing, we learn by our efforts of course but also by asking questions. (The only stupid ones are those you already know the answer to.)

For DickDowdell who suggests “…maintain a temperature above 70-degrees Fahrenheit (ideally between 75-85F and 50% humidity) I have to ask REALLY?

I’ve just this week begun to assemble a Waterlust kit I’ve had for almost three years. I live in west central Wisconsin, where we’ve seen temps 20° below seasonal averages this week.

With the rest of fall and winter yet ahead (before there’s any hope of us seeing even 60° again soon) I took it as faith that the pot life / thin film cure / full cure chart from MAS epoxy is a reliable guide before mixing my first batch last Monday!

I’d laid in a small supply of 2:1 fast hardener in anticipation of cool temps. Appears to work just fine for assembling puzzle joints! I work with the space conditioned to 55°  then keep things around 50° for 10 hours or more. I’m working in an insulated garage in which I’d installed a vented, NG-fired garage heater last fall so space heating doesn’t affect humidity as with non-vented propane-type heaters. Joints cured in this manner are well capable of resisting being dented with a fingernail; it’s fast and easy to smooth them using a cabinet scraper, which provides fine epoxy shavings rather than sticking or dragging.

I’d like to hear more from other builders who work under similar conditions. I don’t expect to be able to continue work when it’s below 0° outside but with the big stuff (hull) in the garage I hope to continue work on the ancillary parts (rudder, daggerboard trunk and board, spars, etc.) in my basement where it’s typically no colder than 55° when winter’s at it’s worst around the end of January into February.

Dunno how I managed to screw up that link in my last post (or how my post somehow doesn't bear my username as the author?) but here's what I hope will lead others to that cure times file I wanted to share.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rwqo8qoy3bu1gug/MAS_Cure_Times.pdf?dl=0

spclark,

Yes, really. That's the ideal. It's just easier to work with and incourages the best bonding and strongest cure. I know that there is no magic cutoff temperature and you work when you can. With experience, you can tinker with the hardner if it's too warm or too cold and maybe use heat lamps when it really gets cool. Probably not the best approach for a first timer.

You didn't do anything wrong with the post, your Web session had just timed out and lost your identity.

Cheers,

Dick

"With experience, you can tinker with the hardner if it's too warm or too cold and maybe use heat lamps when it really gets cool."

That's the approach I'm taking, yes. MAS offers a range of hardeners to best suit temps in conditions of use. Careful choice of which one to use based on experience and perhaps the advice of others. I've sent a query on this topic to the folks at MAS, will pass along what they reply.

"...your Web session had just timed out and lost your identity."

I'd noted prior posts sometimes not having an author, wondered how they managed that? Thanks for cluing me in!   

   I did a lot of the epoxy work on my skerry in the MD winter in an attached, but not well heated, garage.  I routinely had 45-50deg temps in the evening.  Used the standard epoxy kit, which had the slow hardener.  It just takes longer to cure.  I did what I could to get the garage warmer with an electric space heater while working, but I didn't leave it running unattended at night, so it got a bit chill.  I did keep the jugs of epoxy in the house so they'd be a bit warmer when mixing.

At least in the Mid Atlantic, you know you'll get some breaks in the cold weather so the garage could warm up and get that stuff cured a bit more.  In New England, where I am now, I don't think that will much be the case.  At least now I have enough cozy basement space for the Kaholo build.

That feedback's useful, thanks!

My biggest 'unknown' is whether a cure is affected by a pause in the process were temps to drop too low. Will it continue unaffected once temps rise again? Is that why there's a range of hardeners so that cure rate can be tailored to conditions?

MAS doesn't recommend slow hardener for extended full cures at 50° or lower so there must be something about temp/hardener relationship that inhibits a full cure under those conditions. Their medium and fast hardeners aren't flagged similarly.

Of course substrate and ambient temps ought to be high enough during actual epoxy application to keep it fluid enough to fill textures of both wood and glass. Once that's achieved lower temps oughtn't to inhibit reliable cures if a proper choice of hardener's been made.

   I expect, taken to an extreme, you might get some change in the mixed epoxy at very low rates of cure that would cause substandard polymerization (it's interlocking and building cross linked molecular structures as it cures).  I doubt my garage approached that.  That said, fast hardener in the winter time could really keep your pace up and the fears of bad cures away.  I'd think about using the fast hardener for small batches to glue scarfs or "tack welding" or small fillet batches.  I'd still want the slow for lamination of fabric and would wait until I had the temperature to do it right.  Also, when cold, the resin viscosity is higher and you can drag the cloth out of alignment as you spread it and bubbles don't release as well.  Been there.

The MAS caveat for 2:1 slow hardener 'not recommended' for full cures approaching 50°F or below I'm confident is there for the reason you suggest; proper cross-linking just isn't going to be possible.

As for laminating fabric, I again agree with you. The nature of the task puts proper application techniques in first place. Adequate temps for wetting-out and adhesion supports choosing 2:1 slow hardener. Schedule work and subsequent cure either so they occur when supplementary heating isn't necessary, or do what you must and/or feel is appropriate (both safe and affordable) to add supplemental heat as necessary to ensure a satisfactory outcome.