Brandon’s Black Brant III build.

[Brandon Yuchasz]

I know you guys like pictures. By my count this is the third BB3 being built in the class of 08.

Well my boat build officially started on July 10th 2008. Finally after getting my work caught up the honey do list taken care of and tearing down and rebuilding a cabin at the resort I was able to start building my boat.

Before I could start building I had to find the floor in my garage.

After a day I had built some racks and begun to get organized.

After two day of cleaning I finally was getting somewhere.

During the week I was able to find time to build my table. Since I had a dirt floor in my garage it took some work but I used concrete cylinders to build off of and got a nice level workspace.

Finally it was time to Scarf the plywood together.

I started lofting on Saturday

My son built himself a table

Getting there.

Building the BIII is really a lot of fun so far.
Couple things I learned. Stitching on the sides by yourself is not to hard if you plan ahead. I simply used a masons string to hold the end from the rafters and started sticking at the other end. When I needed to I adjusted the string up and down.

 

[Brian F.]

Looks good so far Brandon!


Best,
Brian F.
A friendly troll...

 

[Doug Gradin]

Looking good, Brandon. Keep the pictures coming.

 

[Andrew]

Great stuff B.

A>

 

[Mike]

This fall when your son returns to school and is asked what he did over the summer. He can proudly say that he and his dad built a boat. He'll always remember these times. Way to go.

 

[Huntindave McCann]

Nice start. Thats using you noggen on the support string from the rafters. Seems like those kinds of ideas come pretty naturally to guys that are used to working alone, I can relate.

 

[Rick Kyte]

Boats looking good so far. It's a great feeling when you get the hull stitched together. From then on the project a least looks like a boat.

BTW, how do you find time in the middle of the tourist season to do anything for yourself, much less build a boat? Most resort owners I know are kept pretty busy unclogging toilets, fixing leaky cabin roofs, and chasing bats.

Rick

 

[charlie foulds]

Way to go Brandon, Its looking good.

 

[Denny Budd]

Looking forward to seeing more pictures Brandon. But REALLY looking forward to seeing it in the water this fall.

 

[Mark Oldeck]

Looking good... that came together quickly. Keep us posted

 

[Brandon Yuchasz]

Well, The bulkhead fitting is a slow process I have learned. I cut all the bulkheads out of 20$ worth of OSB I had on hand. One night until midnight and then again today for a few hours this evening to set the curve of the deck. Tomorrow I have lots of work lined up so its going to be atleast till friday night before I can cut into that nice expensive 3/4".

Here is some of the fitting process. As it turned out I could have went right to the good wood as these were all from the measurements with very little or no fitting. The one positive is I was able to figure out the curve of the deck ahead of time and fit all bulkheads on one sheet. If I would have run them wild I dont think I could of fit it all on one sheet of 3/4"

Charlie remember me asking about how you determined your deck. Here is how I did it. simply create the template at the widest point of the boat and then line up the center line with the center line on the bulkhead.

Here are the templates waiting for me to find the time. I bet I find it soon!

Rick. The resort only has four cabins so its not to hard to keep up with and all are in good shape. Only roof in bad shape is on my home and thats not getting done till late summer. My wife runs the resort I am just the fix it guy in my spare time. My "real" job is running a computer repair business and I also built a high speed internet company and provide high speed in this part of the UP to people on the lake and the surounding areas. In fact tomorrow I get to go climb a tower and replace a piece of equipment first thing in the AM then run some repair calls in two seperate towns. Tomorrow is going to suck! Should get home late for dinner.

Denny,
I plan to shoot several ducks with you out of this boat this fall. Bring that old A5 on up and we will find a bird or two.

 

[charlie foulds]

Great idea on the template for the deck crown,I will use that on next years Broadbill build. I always wanted a one man boat!!

 

[Brandon Yuchasz]

Ok everyone keeps saying I need to post my progress so here it is as of 9:00 tonight.

Fillet is done and the majority of the inside has a coat of epoxy on it. anytime I had some leftover I put it on.

I actually put in a marithon today and did the entire passenger compartment over the course of the day. I finally feel like I am getting good at fillet work now and I am done. I used a mix of wood flour and cabosil. I am actually out of wood flour now but I have plenty of Cabosil and micro ballons left. Down to exactly two gallons of resin and the remain gallon of hardner for it. Looking like I will need more.


I do have one question.
Tomorrow about 14 hours after the last fillet went in today I will have 6 or 8 hours to work on the boat. Should I start sanding the inside of the boat and cleaning it up for a coat of epoxy or will the epoxy plug the sandpaper that soon after curing?
If I cant work on the inside of the boat any reason I can't flip it tomorrow and start pulling wires? In this case I am wondering if the epoxy is fully cured and can have the wires pulled.

I really hate to pass up a chance to work on the boat for a good chunk of time because with my schedule I dont always know when I will be able to put time together again. Up until this point I have not had two days in a row where I could work on the boat. If I have to I could clean out the decoy shed and fix long lines

 

[Andrew]

Just an idea for things to do...

Are you going to install a wooden brace (mahogany or fir board) that spans the bow/floatation/storage area? I had to add one here and braces in the floatation compartment to prevent "oil canning" when someone steps on the bow deck and floatation compartments. Moreover, I installed my cleats through the deck into the braces for strength.


A>

 

[Brandon Yuchasz]

Andrew good point.

I can work on that and getting the bulkhead crown perfect. Also can work on the timbers for supporting the floor. Looks like I can do a lot of different work today.

 

[Andrew]

After all the fillet'ing, etc... true carpentry work is actually the most satisfying... so take a break, enjoy the carpentry and add value at the same time...

 

[charlie foulds]

Very nice Brandon, You are moving right along!!!!!!!

 

[James Dalton]

Brandon - Looking good man! After finishing my filleting on the inside I had to flip it over to move onto something different. Really...I couldn't wait to see the hull shape!

Moving on to the carpentry part of it is a great change of pace. Doing the wood work and building something that takes a specific shape is very rewarding. The fiberglassing is covering up the work to protect it. There isn't really any tangable/visual changes taking place. It seems to me to be a little more tedious. I can tell that I slowed my progress down considerably when I started the fiberglassing process.

Keep up the good work and we all look forward to more pics!

 

[Brandon Yuchasz]

I have been getting in trouble for not posting pictures so here is my newest update.

after lots and lots of time filleting on friday I finally called for help and flipped her over to work on the hull.

My father, daughter and wife. with my new boat.

It was very cool to see it sitting on the trailer and outside. Even if It was on the trailer backwards.

Before flipping her I sanded all the tape edges and smoothed the interior out. I was going to put a second coat of epoxy on it but since I was down to two gallons of resin I decided to wait for the next shipment of epoxy before doing that.

Pulling the stiches was not nearly as hard as I thought. I think the map gas helped on the torch for heat.

I taped the edges with 6" biax tape. One chine was taped with regular 6" because I ran out of Biax tape.

After sanding the edges I can say one thing for sure. I really like the Biax tape more it has a cleaner edge and wets out easier. I used it almost everywhere on my boat and would again it was nicer to work with.

Just like James I had planned to put the seam on my cloth down the keel and hide the seam. When laying out the material I realized that I could double sheath the front third of my boat and since ice is something I do see from time to time up here I decided to go ahead and do that instead and blend the edge later with a mix of micro ballons and cabosil mixing the hardest failring compond I can still work with sand paper. I will regret this I am sure!

Since I am working by myself I got everything organized and then went for a dip in the lake to cool off before starting.

I had decided to use Xynole fabric on my hull at the suggestion of Lary and RAKA and after talking with Joe at Devlin. They both felt it was a superior cloth and easy to work with. I had checked to make sure that two gallons of resin would be enough to wet this out and was told it would be enough for wet out and also a second coat to fill the weave.

Well 75% of the way into this I started to really stress it was becoming aparent that I would not have resin left for filling the weave in fact I might not have enough to finish the wet out. I was already well into my second piece of fabric by this point. My bigest concern was trying to stretch the epoxy out and causing epoxy stavation so I worked carefully and decided to be careful not to starve any area's. If I ran out I would have a section on the side with no epoxy at all and would have to deal with what ever problems that created when more epoxy arives UPS.

I finish the wet out with a total of 3 pumps of resin to spare. 2 pumps kicked in the cup since I was done and had nowhere to use it.

If using Xynole fabric it needs LOTS of epoxy to wet out !!!!

The remaining epoxy I had to pour it into the cups to use the pumps for mixing I was that low at the end!

The final pictures of the night all wet out and waiting to cure. Wahoo!!!

My goal is to keep up with the quality of Charlie and James' boats. So far I am doing alright but fairing it will be a challenge for sure especially since I want to keep the compound strong to withstand ice.

Alright there you go I posted pictures.

Oh and one more thing. Took my 5 hours to do the wet out myself. Man I was hungry at 9:00 when I came in. I had figured on 2 hours..

 

[Eric Caswell]

The boat looks good Brandon. Some of my build memories get a little fuzzy (not just the build memories now that I think about it) :^) but I do remember the weekend I glassed the hull the only radio station I could get was having an ACDC weekend. While I liked some of their songs a whole day or two pretty much left a bit to be desired. I went around the clock to finish filling the weave cutting excess etc. (Even fast cure can be a pain in the cooler temps)

You should be fine to wash the hull with water and a green scrubby to loosen the blush and wipe it dry with paper toweling. As soon as the paper towel doesn't show any yellow coming off the hull you are good to go with the remaining fill coats. If you see anything on the paper towel just wash and dry again. (Your post about filling the weave.)

You can reduce your epoxy consumption by only wetting out your cloth on your deck to the point where the cloth is wet on the first coat. Pull the excess out with a squeegee but beware of epoxy with bubbles when doing this, discard this epoxy. Without trying it is easy to put excess epoxy on and float the cloth. Once it tacks the filling can begin. (I'm guessing you have learned all this by now but I thought I would mention it anyway.)

There are some good looking boats being built.

Eric