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Finishing Frames, building the strong back

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 In September, the pressure was on. I had a looming date with a knee replacement in early October, plus an offshore fishing trip and the usual pressure of the end of summer in New England. We had boats to put away for the winter and an RV trip, too. I managed to get all the frames done with the exception of the backside of frame S, which will wait until I can drive again in a few weeks. I had the help of my beloved spouse to build the strong back. It's very nice to have a guy you can hand the design to and he will just go to work. He'll tell you he's a sheet metal guy, not a finish carpenter, but he builds a mean shed. Here are some more pictures of the work in September and early October: This is D1, for me the most complicated frame, lots of heavy pieces. Easier to do on the sawhorses than the table. This guy works hard. I built the transom frame on top of the transom plank, without attaching that piece. Alan Stewart of B&B recommended attaching that later so you can ...
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Building Frame D

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  This is the process for building these frames. First I lay out all the pieces. I've got small copies of the frame layout. Here I have blocked the pieces with little "modesty blocks" another builder suggested. And I have drilled the holes for the bracing pieces, and temporarily inserted the screws. There is plastic under the joints. At this point it is ready for me to disassemble the screws and mix up some epoxy. For epoxying: first I do light sanding to prepare the surfaces for epoxy. I previously gave them all one coat of epoxy. I want to have things well coated to limit the potential for moisture to get into my beautiful wood. The bonding coat needs that previous coat a bit roughed up.  Then I paint the bonding surfaces with clear epoxy. At this point I have some time to mix up some epoxy with filler. I slop on some filler (ok I really do this very neatly, honest!). It reminds me of frosting a cake, the West System guys say mix it to the consistency of mayonnaise on t...
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First Frame

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  TLDR:    Frame E is finished! Lessons learned:   ·        the little digital angle gizmo is very useful ·        don't forget to check the measurements everywhere you can ·        thickened epoxy can make a mess ·        don't make your countersinks very deep ·        that oscillating tool cuts away screw protrusions and hardened epoxy ·        when gluing and screwing two wood frame pieces together, clamp before doing your final screwing ·        following John Blinky's advice (hulls #99 and 100), I routed the inside edges...after watching a woodworking youtube on how to use a router.      Long version:   I chose Frame E as the first frame as it is the smallest. I first coated all the parts of all the frames with West System epoxy as a ba...
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Starting the Adventure

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I am building a boat in the garage. The wood parts are CNC cut and came from B&B Yacht Designs, a shop in North Carolina.  https://bandbyachtdesigns.com/   My beloved and I visited B&B in March as we were driving north from Florida. I hadn't yet decided to build and wanted to see their shop. The parts came via freight truck and we picked up the two crates at the depot here in Rhode Island. You can see the large pieces leaning up against a wall and the smaller pieces on top of the assembly table we made out of 3/4 inch plywood sheets with folding tables underneath. The first step in the build is to make frames. The pieces have letters and numbers printed on them. The plywood bits are cut from big plywood sheets using a CNC router. Because it would be hard to control a lot of little pieces, the router is set up to cut manageable sections of wood pieces with little tabs connecting them. I had to cut apart the tabs. At the suggestion of previous builders, I used a Japanese...
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