Building a SAILBOAT (My Longest Project Yet!)

today I'm building a boat well another boat this time it's a sailboat oh man that felt too easy looks pretty good it does look pretty good this is the first time however that I'll be using a kit and this is the full contents of the Lake Union Swift kit from Chesapeake light craft the sponsor of today's video I'm building this 10 foot dinghy as a gift for the Youth nonprofit sailing program at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle [Music] Google what pose does Captain Crunch make [Music] good all right enough goofing around and get to work Kids the first step here is to mix up some thickened epoxy and glue all of these finger joints together so this is a really common technique in CNC cut Stitch and glue boats for extending pieces longer than the sheets of plywood would normally allow so a really good first day step was just to make all of the pieces full-size pieces which means that we won't have that holding us up down the line and this by the way is my friend Nico he and his partner Piper helped a ton during the trailer build so you might recognize them and for this he was taking time off before starting a new job and wanted to try his hand at boat building and I for one am never going to turn down help sanding and gluing stuff so here we are and for all the pieces but especially these really big ones it was important to make sure it was like a very flat and level surface which my garage floor is not so we put down a lot of pieces of plywood first [Music] thank you it's now the next day although you'd never know it because I'm wearing the exact same clothes since yesterday what's the point in getting a whole new set dirty you know these are gonna take a good bit of sand length but yeah this is almost too easy look they're labeled two what was it two five goes with it five four goes with four where I don't know how to count so they're not in order but they're at least matched up the real friends in life are the friends that help you sand stuff Nico you're the best even though on day one you looked me in the eye and said we would be done by next Thursday six Thursdays later we'll we'll talk about it [Music] So the instructions for these thickened epoxy mixes calls for a gravy-like consistency but to be honest I am way too Asian to have any idea what gravy is supposed to look like so if this is wrong uh blame the gross public school lunches that I grew up on because that is literally my only reference point but if you need like soy sauce consistency I'm your girl so we used our gravy epoxy to glue all of the doublers onto the frames and then also the transom doubler onto the transom and it's now time to get on to the Stitch part of this Stitch and glue boat and so the basic premise of how this works is we have all of these really long strips and they have little tiny holes punched on the edges and we've cut four inch lengths of copper wire that we poke through the holes and then gently Twist on the back to hold everything together and so that will kind of get our rough boat shape in and the the important part here is to leave all of those wires really really loose and then we add these frame pieces in and once all the frames are in we can keep working our way up the sides and we won't tighten things down until the very end and with the bow taking on a good shape it was time to just Stitch the rest of these shiplap pieces on are you proud of it all right Nico Take a Bow and then get to work on the stern because this transom piece still needs to go on so this piece was a little bit tedious to get on because each of those wires kind of has to Slit through the holes but with three people we made it work and part of the art of this that I discovered is kind of figuring out the order in which you Stitch like you tighten the stitches to get the shape of the boat to conform especially to this transom piece and once we deemed the whole structurally sound enough for severe turbulence we flipped the saw horses over and then flipped the boat over so that we could access the whole spiky porcupine death trap of a hole that we needed to tighten and the pliers you see me using here are aircraft safety wire pliers you've probably seen me use them in some of my airplane videos um but I kind of looked at the task and was like ah this is a tool that will make this much easier and then afterwards I did find out that Chesapeake light craft does not recommend their use because it's easy to over tighten but I think as long as you're careful they made my life easier and speaking of Chesapeake lightcraft I should tell you a bit more about them given that they sponsored this video so they've been an awesome company to work with but more than that they make dozens of lovely Wooden Boat kits ranging from paddle boards and kids kayaks all the way to power boats and full-size sailboats and even this beautiful teardrop camper the kits also range in tools and skills required so the one I'm building here is a pro kit so it's meant for someone with a bunch of tools and experience but they also have so many kits that can easily be done in a backyard with limited tools and come with like really detailed instruction books and going off script here this is exactly the kind of Kit I would have loved to do with a parent when I was a kid especially since epoxy takes time to cure it's really an absolutely perfect parent kid nights and weekend summer project like seriously the whole time we were building this Nuka and I were talking about how fun of a family project this would be so if you do end up doing it with your kids please tag me in pictures because I want to see it anyway there's a bunch more info on Chesapeake lightcraft in the description below so back to it and the last piece that really determines the shape of the hull is called the breast hook and it is this piece I'm gluing up here um and since it curves down slightly I just glued two chamfered pieces together um and then took it apart and dry fit it and once it was dry fit I was able to mark where I needed to take off in order to get it to sit flush against the inside of the hull and then I took that material off and could epoxy it in and don't be fooled by this extremely quick edit I am trying to condense two months of boat building until like a 30 minute video um it took five or six tries to get it to sit really really nicely for fillets we mix our epoxy wood flour mixture into a peanut butter texture this time and I do in fact know what peanut butter should be like although I like my peanut butter crunchy and this was a little bit smoother than I would have liked but anyway put it into a cake frosting bag or at least functionally a cake frosting bag and just fill it in it I don't know how else to describe it you just you you stick the epoxy in the corner and then you smooth it out and you do that a lot of times with a lot of epoxy over the entire boat and it was kind of convenient because I started in the bow stem and then worked our way through the rest of the boat by the time we finished filling the boat the bow stem was green which is the epoxy had started to cure but wasn't all the way cured and that is the stage in which you want to layer another layer of epoxy on so the bow stem needed to be fiberglassed so I laid some fiberglass tape that I cut you can see the darts that I cut into it to get it to sit flat and fiberglassed that in and that's just a little bit of extra structural support the next day when all of this stuff cured we flipped the boat over and then ran a bead of fixo epoxy which is a fiberglass that can epoxy in all of the little gaps between the shiplap sections so the bottom four shiplaps have a little bit of like overlap that has a gap and then the areas at the top where they fit really nicely against each other we used CA glue and accelerator and the goal here is it sounds insane but basically we are like super gluing the boat together so that we can pull all of these stitches out and have it remain a boat and not just fall apart on us so it's a little bit delicate but actually a lot stronger than you think plus the fillets and the supports inside help but yeah the boat is being held together by super glue right now and then I got to make my Asian Mama Proud and pretend I was a doctor and pull all of the stitches out and a little bit of heat gun will loosen the epoxy and then you can pull them right out super satisfying [Music] the center board will eventually have to sit in the middle of the boat in the center crazy um so we had to cut out the bits of the forms that will interfere with that and it's just more convenient to do that before we fiberglass foreign fiberglassing always comes the sadness of sanding and I think every single time I have to sand the inside of a boat I come up with like all kinds of creative ways to injure my back even more I've like probably used every single tool I own uh to find hacks to stay on the inside of a boat and the reality is it just always sucks and you just have to grit your teeth and do it and then get them not out of your back later I've said this a million times on this channel but when it comes to Composites I think my favorite tool is electric scissors which sounds ridiculous but it just makes your life so much easier and I can cut in the way straighter lines [Music] the problem is that you have to charge them the inside of the boat will get two layers of this four ounce fiberglass cloth and how we're gonna do it is actually lay both layers in each of the Bays dry first and once everything is perfectly smooth and ready for the epoxy then we'll mix the epoxy because that's when the timer starts so the important part really with fiberglassing and I say this I think in every single one of my videos is prepping the fiberglass before you ever mix the epoxy like everything should be perfect before the epoxy gets mixed and then this part's easy so you just like gently and you want to work your way from the bottom up also at some point I realized that like the sheer number of past and present SpaceX Engineers I have taught to lay up Composites between like the Rockets and the boats and the seasons eatings I should just invoice Elon for like foxland fiberglassing school anyway with that interior fiberglass cured it was safe to flip the boat over and start sanding and prepping for exterior fiberglass but before we do the fiberglassing we need to do some filler in the cracks time start mixing [Music] okay not butter sorry for any headphones users on that one um but yeah this is my application to the Great British Bake Off of boat building and then icing this okay I'll I'll keep rolling with this analogy um we have this beautiful white frosting that uh uh never mind you've seen me glass I'm just I'm just trying to say stuff at this point okay here's a random 3am editing thought but you know how epoxy pores were all the rage on YouTube for a really long time because they're so satisfying am I the only one that thinks that fiberglass is way more satisfying like you get the epoxy pour except a it's actually functional and B uh the fiberglass changes color because fun fact it has the same refractive index as epoxy and so when the epoxy seeps into the glass fibers light doesn't Bend as it passes through it and then it's clear and it's just it's satisfying and it's cool science okay I'm gonna in the back like sparing [Music] oh la la oh [Music] look at it and before the first layer of epoxy and fiberglass cures I always fill the weave while it's still green and that will make sure that the second layer of epoxy fully adheres chemically to the first layer we also glassed the center board while we were at it with the extra epoxy and once that's cured we have once again flipped the boat over and it is time to install the well sides so these are going to go in kind of at the same time as these stringers and um yeah we just we just glue it and now we glue responding time oh that was so awesome wow I definitely have a lot of really good epoxy tips and tricks on this channel but uh this is probably not one of them I don't think that heat transfer does anything but it keeps my hands warm while I'm mixing and that's all that matters also like shouts out to my new camera we glued the faces of the stringers to the sidewalls and then uh clamped the living crap out of it um and yes I am sort of flexing my clamp collection thank you so much Rockler also this reminded me so much of a saber Arch I had to take that clip [Music] the next really big step is that the deck is going to get glued to the top of all of this which means that it needs a really nice flat surface to adhere to so out came the router and then more importantly the discovery of the slo-mo function of my new camera so it shouts out that 4K 120 frames a second goodness right there that deserves a subscribe right but in all seriousness the most important part after you hit that subscribe button of course is we need to do a perfect epoxy coat in all of the area under the deck which unfortunately means you need to do a bit of sanding to get the epoxy to adhere to the fiberglass area like I can't even get away with not sanding the that's never going to see the light of day again this is just my 20s are getting sanded away and the reason for this epoxy coat is that if any water manages to get under the deck and into that area somehow we don't want it to rot the wood but since it's fully enclosed it won't really have a way to dry so we just have to make sure it can never physically touch the wood in the first place [Music] it also gets filled with closed cell foam so I'm using just pink foam from a hardware store but closed cell phone means that all of the cells like the little air pockets are closed so if this boat were to capsize for whatever reason it is always going to be more buoyant than like it's not going to sink because water can't get into all of those little air pockets in the film so it can't fully fill with water so this whole area down here is getting filled with this kind of foam and if you are watching this and you're like well then just don't capsize the boot let me remind you that I am building this for a youth sailing program in Seattle it will get capsized and it not only that it'll probably play bumper boats quite a bit too and with the pink foam cut and in place we could glue the middle stringers in as well [Music] okay so we're brainstorming how to clamp the deck on tomorrow and uh Nico came up we had to go sandbags and so we're looking at sandbags and it turns out because Los Angeles is sledding right now the fire department is providing up to 25 free sandbags to all homeowners in the Los Angeles area the garage is actually flooding like there are we're standing in puddles so it's Justified thank you [Music] this feels like stealing even though like this is my tax dollars at work [Music] and the other thing we did in preparation for getting the deck on is glue the deck pieces together and not only that but epoxy coat the entire like bottom half so the part that's not going to be seen is going to get weather protected too and right before we closed her up we both signed the inside of the bow [Music] and it was time to break out the bottle tote fixo which is that fiberglass thing and epoxy that I've been using this whole video and slap the deck on there also I have literally no idea how or why that paddle got in the middle of there I don't remember but it just disappears at some point and with the deck on we can go ahead and install these frame doublers which will hold the in whales in place eventually as well as fill it all the way around the edge of the deck and that will water seal it and also is structural and then it was time to glue in the quarter knees and quarter knees uh are just another ridiculous boat term by definition they are the knees that connects the gunnels to the transom if you want more boat word soup for you [Music] following the quarter knees it was it was gather and assemble the masked step and Mast step is at least like mildly descriptive since it's the piece that holds the mask in place so that's something for all these pieces that get glued in I tried to shape them on the table router before they get installed just because it's easier than going in later with a palm router [Music] [Applause] [Music] and unfortunately before we could install the center board trunk we had to like build and assemble the center board trunk so uh pieces like this require a lot of time management because you can glue a couple pieces down and then you have to wait for it to cure and then glue a couple more pieces down and wait for it to cure so we and then all of that has to be timed so that when the boat is ready for the assembly to get glued in it's all ready to go foreign [Music] a little trim here and a little shaping there and she is ready to get installed so we glued her in and this is the centerboard trunk which means that the center board can get lifted up into the boat if you don't want a center board or dropped through the bottom of the boat through this assembly into the water which means that uh there can't be a piece of wood there so we drilled a hole popped the router through and then we could just route out that rectangle and the reason we waited to do this until the center board trunk is in is that we could just trim route right against that trunk and while we're here it was time to make and assemble the skeg which is an extension of the stern Keel that will help keep the boat running in a straight line and so we glued the two halves together and those are rabbeted with like a little Groove down the middle so it'll sit more easily on the stern hit it with a round over bit for hydrodynamics and then grabbed a bunch of bottle tote thick so and glued it on making sure to fill all of the gaps and get a really good Bond we also drove screws in up from the inside of the boat into this gag for some added structural support and the skeg going on means that the entire exterior of the boat is ready for a flood coat of epoxy to protect it so while Nico and Karis were working on that I went ahead and added some fiberglass tape to the bow stem and that will give it a little added protection for running against ducks and to such it's gunnels and bead whale time so uh these are longer than you can usually get stalks of mahogany so we scarf jointed them together and then the first piece that goes on is the bead whale because it needs to be clamped from The Edge so if the gunnels were on they would get in the way um so we put glue on the beadwell and then we pre-cut a bunch of these little plywood pieces and those like kind of help us clamp the bead whale on [Music] foreign [Music] enough that we could take all of the clamps for the bead whale off and exposed the like edge of the hole it was time to install the out wheel now the hardest part of the out wheel is the bend that comes around the bow and so we got around that by driving screws into it and because there's a second strip that'll go over it the screws will get hidden um and then we clamped all the way glued and clamped all the way around but to hold it in even better we actually cut up all of these little spacer pieces and those will hold the in whale away from the hull by like one section and so those all get pre-drilled and then screwed from the inside towards the out wheel and that will kind of just hold the whole sandwich together and all of the screws will get covered by the like last out wheel and the end whale [Music] what's a bench or a fixture when you have a boat when you have a boat once the end whale was cut to size and dry fitted we went in with normal epoxy and painted the inside of all of those scuppers which is the gaps um just to weatherproof it because it'll be easier to do that now then when the inhale is installed and then we put glue on the inhale and clamped it on Center board I marked the disc s that the plans for this boat like suggest as the hydrofoil on and then shaped it just with a hand plane [Music] and once it was fully shaped and sanded it was time to fiberglass and there's no way really to have one layer of fiberglass and have it cover both the leading and trailing Edge so I decided the more important part to protect here was the Leading Edge so it bends around the Leading Edge while we were at it glued the rudder cheeks together and then gave the rudder cheeks the center board and the thought extra flood coat of epoxy and the epoxy here is just standard total about two to one high performance planing the gunnels is one of my favorite parts of building a boat it's just like really satisfying and it also gunnels I think are what make boats look like boats or especially look like good boats so working on them is always one of my favorite Parts I didn't round them over ahead of time to make clamping easier but in hindsight I think it really wouldn't have mattered and it might have been a little easier to round them over before gluing them on and the last step before we could start painting and finishing was to protect all of the wood like the entire boat with two to three coats of epoxy and we decided we didn't want to get epoxy on ourselves because we're gonna have to lean over the guns so we invented mine idea I think I've ever had four years of engineering school this is a pure genius so uh in case you couldn't tell the way that we waited out the two hour two to three hours of the first coat of epoxy curing is by going to a bar for the deck that like goes in the footwell of the boat we shaped all of the boards so we kind of like adjusted so they fit around the center board trunk and then we rounded them over with a round over bit and then we could sand them give them a couple coats of epoxy to protect them and then they could get sanded again and varnished [Music] and it was time to get painting so it hurts my soul a little bit to paint a wooden boat and so I'm not painting the entire boat although that is with the Center for Wooden Boats requested but you have to keep in mind that paint protects boats better than any varnish ever can and these boats are going to be living outside they're going to be beat to by a bunch of kids every summer and so after this season the boats will get fully painted but I just I couldn't do it so I left the mahogany alone but we are painting good sections of the inside of the boat and for that we're using bottle toads wet Edge which is this really nice Marine Paint um a couple coats and it does a really good job of protecting the lid now wet Edge comes in like 21 colors or something and none of them are purple uh because I guess there's no market for it but I am the market for it so I got red and I got blue and I went about trying to find the perfect purple that I wanted as the accent color for this boat I also think purple mahogany look amazing together anyway um got a bunch of syringes and just played with mixed ratios until I found a color that I liked painted a bunch of options on pieces of wood put them in the sunlight like really I took this far too seriously and then I mixed up two quarts of my new purple uh and that's what I used as the accent color for the rudder the center board and the top stripe of ship lab and we have now solidly entered what I affectionately or not affectionately called the bits and Bop stage of bow building which is basically like all the little things that have to come together so bits like gluing the orlocks on to Bob's like making and shaping and painting the masts and like getting the Rudders assembled Etc and then there was painting there was so much painting what I didn't think all the way through when I decided not to paint just the entire boat is that the areas that like get varnished instead of painted have to be like perfectly masked off and then you have to paint all of the same color at the same time it just adds a lot of steps and I did not have a lot of time um which is why when we got to painting the exterior of the boat I thought that the bottom needed to be an anti-fouling paint um but the whites of the anti-fouling paint and the white of the wet Edge didn't match so I decided to just paint the entire bottom in anti-fouling paint uh I got off the phone with Center for Wooden Boats this morning I was under the impression that the boat was going to stay in the water the whole season but no they actually pulled them onto docks and so they don't want any of it in anti-fouling paint so we have to strip it all off and start over and the boat is getting picked up to get shipped to Seattle in a week [Music] and once the Krypton was fully stripped off we went through and repainted it in wet Edge which was three or four coats and the weekend before the boat had to ship I was at a bachelorette party in Cleveland and I was really stressed about it so Nico came over and added all of the holes for the hardware so that as soon as it was done being varnished we would be ready to like slap it together and ship it thanks Nico [Music] [Music] and once all of the coats of paint were on we could peel up all of the masked off areas and get to varnishing so the paint does require 24 hours in between coats but varnish the total boat lust which is my favorite of their varnishes you can Overcoat in one hour so we could slap like five coats on in a single day and that is the only reason we got this boat shipped out on time I also hand painted like purple accents onto some of the spots and uh yeah with a lot of hands varnishing we got it done oh [Music] the very last steps before our precious little boat is done is installing all of the deck pieces which we definitely did not do at 3 30 in the morning the night before the boat shipped to Seattle as well as installing um the thought the hardware for the rudder the orlocks ETC and then taking some beauty shots just in case something happened to the truck on the way up I don't know [Music] and just like that our little baby boat was all grown up and ready to leave the nest so we loaded her onto a truck and met her in Seattle for the maiden voyage [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] ah this is the part that makes it a sailboat sailboat does that look great yep that's perfect [Music] thank you [Music] foreign things first is everyone's ready to go down there and be ready to launch the boat let's all carry it down together one two three oh yeah [Music] [Music] hey hey for the guns have a sticky trip and then a set yeah this boat's name is gonna be next Thursday because it'll be done next Thursday we swear six Thursdays later it'll still be done next Thursday we did finish it on a Thursday we did finish it on Thursday [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Xyla Foxlin

Views: 395,461

Keywords: Xyla Foxlin, chesapeake light craft, lake union swift, clc

Id: ZMFrlvlJ8S4

Length: 33min 52sec (2032 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 15 2023