Well! It’s been three months since I shared our canoe-building process when we had finished planking the hull. A lot of progress has been made and there have been some big changes over at Muddy Water Shop. And we’re finally able to glimpse the end of this huge undertaking.
The big news we have to share is Muddy Water Shop’s new location! At the end of December we moved out of Hackberry House, where building began, and relocated to a Co-Op at Delta Millworks in east Austin.
I’m so excited to share my favorite photos of our work and our move! I can never remember to take pictures with my “real” camera so here’s a mashup of both things I’ve shared on instagram and never before seen photos! In other social media news, Muddy Water Shop is now on Twitter!
Follow our adventures on Twitter and Instagram.
Let’s see, where did we leave off? We finished planking the hull in October, which was a huge accomplishment and we both let out a big sigh of relief. The hull was such an intensive process that I hadn’t paid much attention to what came after planking, so it was a bit of a shock to realize that even after all that work we were only a third to halfway done with the boat.
The hull is made up of many flat strips of cedar, glued together and bent over a mold. So even though it appears round from a distance, the hull is actually a bunch of flat wooden faces that need to be shaped down into a smooth, hydrodynamic hull. We spent a few weekends shaping the hull with a block plane and spokeshave before sanding it with 80 and 120 grit sandpaper. Finally, after hours and hours, the outside hull would be ready to fiberglass.
Fiberglassing is an intense process that, once begun, must be completed in one eight to fifteen hour session. After a few weeks of procrastinating and schedule conflicts we finally set a date. Fiberglassing with epoxy-resin is complex for several reasons – the temperature must be a steady 70° and humidity must be low. Three coats of epoxy-resin are applied to the fiberglass cloth and must be done in timed succession to ensure even curing and a strong, chemical bond between the fiberglass, wood, and epoxy-resin.
After two coats of epoxy-resin the weave of the fiberglass begins to disappear and the hull becomes brilliantly shiny.
For the first time since beginning the project in February 2012, we were finally ready to turn the canoe right-side-up and see its form the way it will float through the water.
Work on the outside of the hull was finished for the time being so we shifted our focus to shaping the inside of the canoe. Beginning with a scraper we slowly rounded out the inside faces of the cedar planks to make a super-smooth curve along the 17 foot length of the canoe. The scraper was the hardest tool to learn for me – it required lots of force and had a close angled blade to pull the long ribbons of cedar from the planks. Ryan did an incredible job scraping the inside of the hull and most of the progress here was thanks to him. We glued strips of sandpaper to round soda bottles and sanded the bilge smooth with 80 and 120 grit paper (again) then used blocks to smooth the flatter areas of the ill along the keel and sheer lines. Near the end of December the shaping of the inside hull was complete.
Our goal was to get as far as possible in our progress by the end of December because we knew that we would need to find a new shop. With just a few days to spare on the end of our lease I spotted a Craigslist ad for an east Austin wood co-op and we realized we’d really have to move. We packed up the original Muddy Water Shop and on December 31st we said goodbye.
So January began in a completely new space, now that we’d share with lots of tools and a few new people. It was an emotional transition – I didn’t expect to feel so displaced and vulnerable – but once we unpacked and settled in I began to feel that the new shop could have a lot of potential.
New Year, New Muddy Water Shop…!
We got right back into build mode, prepping the inside of the hull for fiberglassing. We took a whole weekend this time, starting at a leisurely noon time and finishing around eight in the evening. The inside of the hull only required two coats of epoxy-resin to lend a less slippery texture to where we will sit and stand. Repeating the process a second time was less stressful than the first and was even fun. The biggest challenge with fiberglassing the inside of the hull are the bubbles that form under the cloth and the pools of excess epoxy that float down into the hard-to-reach places near the stems.
We got right back into build mode, prepping the inside of the hull for fiberglassing. We took a whole weekend this time, starting at a leisurely noon time and finishing around eight in the evening. The inside of the hull only required two coats of epoxy-resin to lend a less slippery texture to where we will sit and stand. Repeating the process a second time was less stressful than the first and was even fun. The biggest challenge with fiberglassing the inside of the hull are the bubbles that form under the cloth and the pools of excess epoxy that float down into the hard-to-reach places near the stems.
Turning the canoe back over, I spent a morning scraping runs in the epoxy out with a cabinet scraper. A thin block of stamped steel, cabinet scrapers are one of the cheapest but most valuable tools in the box. With a sharpened edge you can scrape away the smallest bits of excess without difficulty.
The last step in finishing the hull before adding trim was to sand the epoxy down to a perfectly smooth and uniform finish. The shiny epoxy instantly tuned opaque and bright white, so we temporarily named her the Ghost Boat. The Freedom Canoe is now ready for the final touches: gunnels, decks, seats, and several healthy coats of varnish.
