JEM Watercraft

Got a little more done today. Finished stitching, made sure everything was square and fair, leveled the saw horses to each other, flipped her over, and started gluing. This is my least favorite part of a build. Its nice to get the pieces together permanently, but its the stage where the boat gets uglier rather than prettier with all the epoxy/wood flour mix everywhere.

I took a couple of pictures, and the angle I took them at makes things look a little crooked. .




Hopefully, this boat will be done soon. I am building it for a friend with his help. Its the first time I have ever had help building one, and it sure made the gluing go faster. I can't wait for the help with the fiberglassing!

Looks wonderful!
My DNA got into my boat because I peed my pants when I realized, "This thing might actually float!".

LEE SCHNEIDERMANN wrote:Looks wonderful!
My DNA got into my boat because I peed my pants when I realized, "This thing might actually float!".

Too much information.

Sanded her outside hull smooth last night. Got done at about 12:00 am. I had to have her ready for this morning. My friend, who is helping build it and is being built for, was going to show up bright and early this morning to fiberglass the hull exterior. It is amazing how much quicker things get done when someone is helping. We had already filleted and taped the interior seams last weekend, but here are the most recent pictures of the exterior:






I can't wait to start on the deck!

I cut fiber glass pieces a little over half the width of the bottom of the hull and epoxied them on the entire length of the hull bottom panels tonight. Now the entire hull has one complete coat of 4 oz, the bottom two hull panels have an additional coat of 4 oz, and the overlap of two inches on each side of the keel on these bottom panel cloth pieces gives the keel line another 4 ozs. I figure the 8 ozs on the bottom with the 12 oz keel line should be plenty of abrasion resistance, especially once the graphite is mixed in. It probably added another 2 pounds to the total weight, but I feel is worth it since I don't know where this boat will be used since its for a someone else.

Hi Craig,

How are you going with the Okwata??? are the deck's on yet???

Hi Craig,

Still keen to hear how the strip Okwata is going. I plan to start one soon as I have a shed built now the place is drying out (from all the rain)

Ossie Bruce wrote:Hi Craig,

Still keen to hear how the strip Okwata is going. I plan to start one soon as I have a shed built now the place is drying out (from all the rain)

It was a cold winter and epoxy was not curing real well. I was going to work on it today, but relatives from the east coast dropped by, so I didn't get around to it.

I spent most of my spare time this winter remodeling the kitchen and trying to catch a keeper sturgeon from the Sabalo. The sturgeon fishing was fun, the remodeling...not so much. Gotta keep SWMBO happy or I won't be happy.

I hope I will have some new progress in the next week or two. I need to get this one done so the new owner can use it this summer!

All right. After about 6 months off, it was time to get the strip built Okwata deck on. The first thing i did last night and this afternoon was stitch it together. This was a pain in the butt due to all the floppy pieces.



Then, I used some tarp straps to hold it tight to the forms inside. The deck did not want to flatten out where it was supposed to without the straps.


After this I mixed up the epoxy wood flour mix and glued the seams.


Side view:

Tomorrow I hope to flip it and do the interior seams with epoxy wood flour and fiberglass tape.