Coosa time is DONE!

The bonding of my coosa panels is finally finished. Here take a look.

Home Comming

Moving Day 5-13-08 #1

Here I just pulled up to the house with the boat. I finally made the move to bring it home. I was keeping the boat down in Woodbridge Va, about 23 miles away. Having the boat that far from your house makes it very hard to get any work done. Just two weeks ago I went through my annual spring " I want a boat now!, So I can go fishing NOW!" depression and decided to scrap the whole project. But I cleared my head got my focus back and that's when I got my second wind for the 40th time and decided to put this thing in my garage. I finally feel for the first time in a very long time that Its going to happen. "I mean I'm finally going to finish this S.O.B." But earlier in the year I told everybody I would be finished buy 7-4-08, I'm going to have to push that date back a bit. But stay tuned, lots of work and pictures will be posted. And yes there will be and end.

Moving Day 5-13-08 #2

Here I'm backing the boat into the garage and going through the process of taking the boat off the trailer.

Moving Day 5-13-08 #3

The boat is off the stands now and on the dollies. I was very pleased how it fit in the garage. And the dollies make it very easy to roll around.

Moving Day 5-14-08 the next day

Jake and Henry are so excited to have the Formula at the house.

Moving Time

I'm in the process of moving my boat into my garage here at home. The boats current location is about twenty five minutes away. This makes it very difficult to do any work on my boat. Having the boat at the house will allow me to work on it every day. Finally I feel that the project can be completed and I can start using my boat.

Stringers

For months I was trying to decide on what type of material to use for my boat stringers. For a while there I was all over the place on what to use. The original stringers were made from douglas fir which did their job for about twenty five years. The last twelve years they were rotten. Don't get me wrong - twenty five years is a very long time, but who really owns a boat for that long? Its the second or third owner who has to deal with the problems of rotten stringers or transom. I also thought about using foam for the stringers. The foam would be used only as a form for the fiberglass. When I thought about having to screw something to the stringer, foam does not hold a screw very well, even with five or six layers of glass. It may seem strong when you first put a screw in, but over time the screws will work loose. The two main factors for my choice of material were weight and cost. First of all, I don't have a lot of money and second I didn't want to add too much extra weight to my boat. My choice of wood is cypress. I found some for three dollars a board foot and it only weighs three pounds a board foot. All my local lumber yards wanted six to seven dollars a board foot, but I knew I could find it cheaper and I did. I found Steve Wall Lumber Co. in Mayodan, North Carolina. The drive was about five hours away which was fine because I made a field trip out of it. I was able to see parts of Virginia and North Carolina I never saw before. Plus on the way back I stopped in Blacksburg, Va to see my sister and her husband. I ended up buying eight 1" x 12" x 16' rough sawn select boards for a total of 128 board feet. Later I will show how I take these boards and turn them into a complete stringer grid system.

Winter Time

It is January 20th 2008 and it is very cold outside. I'm sorry I haven't posted any pictures lately, but I haven't done much work on the boat lately. But as soon as the weather breaks work will resume. I have a lot of good stuff coming up. My plan is to have this boat ready by July 4th 2008. That leaves me six months.