Ready for glass

We finished planking the second float hull half and prepped it for the inner glass lamination.  I didn't quite finish the planking last Sunday, but by the end of Friday it was ready to go.  This hull half seems to be much, much fairer than the first half.  There were several things we did differently this time:
- I used the heat gun to only heat the foam in the tight bend from hull side to deck, rather than heat the whole plank in the toaster oven.  This process ensured that most of the plank was perfectly flat, and minimized distortion in the bend.  There is almost no scalloping of the planks, and what little there is is only in the tight bend where heat was applied.
- We used much less urethane glue so it wouldn't make such large overflow beads along the seams.  The seams required minimal cleanup on the inner surface after the glue cured.  The seams still had full coverage with the glue, I just didn't load it up with lots of excess.
- To clean the seams we used cheese-grater style planes, which did an excellent job of cutting the urethane while only scratching the foam so long as we kept a light hand.  We will do a light overall sanding to remove any residue prior to lamination.  As a result, there was no gouging or excessive removal of core material.
- I used the screws and wood squares to clamp the planks liberally to ensure they closely followed the curve of the forms.  I had no gaps between planks and forms.  The only concern I have is the planks bent a little too sharply in some areas between battens, so I had to soften the curve.  I am still thinking of ways to better control the strong bend, perhaps with some type of mandrels to roll them around.
- I used narrower planks at the ends.  In general, the last five feet at the bow and stern were formed with 4" wide planks.  I used 8" and 6" wide planks in the middle sections.  When the gap in the seem between planks exceeded about 1/16", I switched to a narrower plank.  The narrower planks formed more easily, and required essentially no trimming of the edges to make a tight seam.  As a result, the planking took about the same amount of time as the first hull, even though there are about 50% more planks.  And the seams were all very tight.

We will make a final evaluation when we remove the hull from the form, but I think this hull will be in a totally different class from the first half.  If it comes out as fair as I am anticipating, we will likely scrap the first half and build a new one using these techniques.  Although it will cost us some material and initial time, I think it will be a small price given the overall quality of the boat we are trying to build.  And it should only take a couple weeks to replace.  We will let you know what we decide in about a week.

In the meantime, we prepped everything today to do the inner glass tomorrow.  All of the fabric is cut to size, numbered, and laid out on the work table so we can efficiently apply it.  In the background you can see the stringer being pressed on the table.  I'll cut it to size in the morning prior to starting the glass work.  We also filled all of the screw holes and some very small gaps.  I found a mixture of 150 mL resin epoxy mix combined with 1.5 cups of microballoons makes a very stiff and light filler with no run on vertical surfaces.  Of course Murphy is alive and well, so we came up a bit short and still have to finish about 5 square feet of filling at the stern.  Dawna will do that in the morning while I start to wet out the glass at the bow.  That way we won't waste a whole batch of filler for such a small area.  And Mother Nature seems to be cooperating with cooler temperatures expected for tomorrow, so we won't be quite so rushed with each batch of epoxy.  So now we are ready for sticky fingers!