hokeyhydro

Might want to contact Jethro Gibbs (TV show NCIS) and ask how he got the honking big sailboat out of his basement.

*pant - pant* Pardon, I am lusting over your workshop building. 38 x 36 - oh my goodness . . . CS-17 practice act sounds good to me. My captain has finally figured out that every boat I build is a practice act, since before all the epoxy totally cures on a boat I'm messing around with another bunch of boat parts. Go for it! Might want to do a pair of CS-17s, then you and bro can race them!

Great solution. But, I'm betting that it would get pretty uncomfortable after, say, 60 seconds. For sure, but no worse than dropping and reinstalling an automatic tranny while on your back on a cement driveway which is damp from the 4" snowfall melt. You do what you gotta do . . .

Nice! If you stitch it with copper wire you'll have a copper quill porcupine. That's what I called my last S&G project. Have bandaids handy - those copper quills bite! Waiting for 3-D pics . . .

How much taper? And is the taper required for weight reduction or just looks? Anyhow, I would build the birdsmouth spar/sprit straight - no taper, and then plane the taper in after assembly. I was thinking of tapering every single strip on my 22' birdsmouth mast which would have been a total PITA, and then I had Eureka moment -with tapered strips (mucho jig set up & hours) they would still be 14mm thick at the top and just a rat hair less wide, but if I plane the assembled mast down I'd probably knock off more weight up top, not to mention way less man hours involved. So rip the strips, rout the edge, slobber glue, assemble using zip tie clamps - done. Wanna pretty taper? Stroke it with a plane - done.

No snow to speak of here - about an hour from B&B Yachts - but the cold is yankee cold. Milady has mentioned that we did not move far enough south. And to this past summer I had to invest in WEST Tropical hardener to jack to pot life above nano-seconds. I yearn for those days again. My shed and garage size limit me to small boats. Both unheated, so my build time is somewhat limited, but prep projects (sawing etc) can be done during times when the epoxy says, not today. If I win a small lottery I'm thinking window shaker style heat pump. If I win a big lottery I'll have to buy or build a shop building near the Beach House the Admiral would buy approximately 15 minutes after the lottery check clears.

I would say your $200 estimate between a CS-20 and CS-17 is low. $200 might cover the extra plywood, but then you have more lumber for framing and a lot more square footage of surface to soak up epoxy and paint. Extra trailer cost would be minimal. The CS-20 is well under 1,000lbs, so you need a light duty trailer with a longer tongue. And at that light weight you could tow a 20 or 17 with a weenie 4-cylinder car. The 20 has more wind drag so an econo-mobile may struggle to tow at highway speed (55-70mph) and a crosswind will give you a bit of a fit. Your biggest problem will be forgetting you have a tow when hauling a tow that light. Easy way to spec out your tow is find out what hitch is available for your vehicle. A light duty car may have a 1500 lb limit, Class I is 2,000 lb, Class II receiver would go up to 3,500 lb, and a Class III (2" hole) up to 5,000 lb or more. All of them are adequate for the light CS series. Word of caution: some turbo charged passenger cars will not tow diddly-squat. The manufacturers claim the turbo will overheat or some such.

Good advice, Richard. Over my many decades I have discovered that bigger is not always better. And as Graham Byrnes said to me, with a wicked grin, "The smaller the boat the bigger the adventure!"

ThankS All. If the CS-17 sports masts or 19'6" and 18'10.5" then I'm good to go on either boat. So the CS-15 uses one less sheet of 6mm and 9mm than the CS-17, a modest increase in material cost. Decisions . . . decisions . . .

I like the CS-20 but it would be a bit large for my available shop area, so a CS-15 or CS-17 is my build list. RE: the CS-15, how many sheets of ply at what thickness are required to build it? The B&B website states the ply list for the CS-17, but not the CS-15. Masts: I've browsed the forum and discovered a variety of mast length stated. Once again I now my shop & talent limitations for rolling up a birdsmouth spar, so just how long are masts for the CS-15 and CS-17?

This is true = drain holes. 1/4" is a nice size. I plan to bung the holes while sailing since the Beach Cat pilot is a novice and I fully expect multiple capsizes before she figure s it all out.

ditto previous posts - BS1088 is the way to go. The CS-17 is a beautiful boat and you will want to keep it and use it. The handful of extra $$$ spent on BS1088 is worth it. When I was building stock outboard racing hydroplanes - useful lifetime before racing abuse or design improvements rendered them obsolete about three years - I used BS1088 plywood. Nice wood to work with - no ugly surprises when cutting it to shape.

PAR - shellac over epoxy . . . Yes, WEST is good for moisture penetration, but WEST recommends SIX coats to achieve a good seal. And I added doublers inside the boom as an afterthought by tack gluing aforementioned doublers to a thin stick, slobbering epoxy on them, and sliding them inside the already assembled boom. There was a tad of bare wood left, and the interior parts had two coats of WEST so I added shellac for backup moisture resistance. Probably overkill since both spars will be plugged to prevent flooding during a knockdown and the usual flooded mast turtle turn. Answer to the original query: I don't use shellac as an undercoat. But I do use several coats of shellac as the only coat for workshop jigs and cabinets. Dries fast and smells good :-)

I use shellac on the Birdsmouth mast and boom I'm building. All parts were coated with WEST resin and assembled with WEST. I had installed a few backer strips inside the spars where rigging parts are to be attached, and after assembly I squirted a cup or so of shellac inside the spars and ran the shellac end to end and around and around to coat the interior, allowing the excess to drain. The spars exterior will be multiple coats of WEST with multiple coats of spar varnish.

Try a "mouse" sander. They are available from $30 on up, just make sure the place that sells the sanders has plenty of hook&loop paper in stock so you don't have to cut triangular pieces out of circular sandpaper. The pointy end of the mouse sander can get into fairly tight corners.