This was my first boat, so if you spot things that look wrong in the pictures, go easy on me. This was also my first time lofting.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with how the process went. Lofting itself was relatively easy. The most challenging part was getting a piece of wood thin enough to bend around all of the nails set into the loft. Once I finally made a good, thin batten, I held onto it for a long time, since they're so difficult to make.
After that, I cut out the two main panels, stitched them together, and started to stretch them apart, as shown here.
In this next step, I fit the transom, again using the stitch and glue method, running wires through to secure the transom to the hull.
Next, I added the fillets. Small fillets go in between all of the copper wiring first. Once those cure, you can remove the copper wiring and lay down a much longer, thicker fillet in the grooves left behind.
There are two reasons for this. First, it smooths everything out for fiberglassing, since fiberglass doesn't adhere well to abrupt angles. Second, it adds strength to the boat so it doesn't break while you're moving it around and prepping for fiberglass.
The last photo here shows the actual fiberglass work. I fiberglassed the interior, the bulkheads, and the seat to the main panels.
In this next step, I fiberglassed the exterior of the boat. I used a single sheet and carefully draped it around all of the sides, including the transom. As I applied the epoxy, I let the drips fall onto a plastic sheet laid out below the boat.
A couple of lessons from this first build and my first time working with epoxy:
You need way less epoxy than you'd think. And if you spot a bubble or a large pocket of epoxy and you're debating whether to fix it now or sand it out later, fix it now, before the epoxy cures. Sanding is already a difficult, time-consuming task. Don't double the work by leaving mistakes for later. Plus, if the extra epoxy is trapped below the fiberglass, you'll end up sanding straight through the fiberglass trying to smooth it out.
