So. . .
Of those building or having built the vacationer.
Did you use butt joints or did you scarf the joints in your bottom?
Any feedback either way?
Pros?
Cons?
Thanks,
Dave George
Either method works, but the scarf is a very "clean" way of doing things and also permits you to skip the butt block, which leaves the floor smooth. The nice thing about epoxy is the scarf joint doesn't have to be a perfect fit, like many other glues require. You can just hack away until you'll got a pretty rough taper (8:1 minimum slope) and smear on some thickened epoxy, clamp and she's good to go when it's cured. A butt joint is easier to do, but does create a "hard spot" in the bottom panels, which can show up in the finished work if you don't knock it "fair" in the finishing stage. An 8:1 epoxy scarf will also have a slight hard spot, but not as bad as a butt block makes. If the joint was cut at 12:1 or better, you'd probably not be able to see the hard spot, in that slight a curvature on the hull. I love scarfs, they save weight and wood.
Like Paul said scarf joins are much cleaner and strong.
I've tested the strength of scarf joints by bending scraps strips with scarf joints to see were they brake, not one broke at the scarf joint.
The attached link shows a scarf jig I made from scraps laying around the shop.
The angle that gives you a 8:1 ratio is 7.13*
http://byyb.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=931
Use the scarph Dave. In the long run the panel joiners get in the way. Especially in the cockpit
Hey David,
Don't forget, if you scarf your bottom panels you'll need to account for the overlap of the scarf, otherwise you'll end up with a shorter bottom than you were expecting. If you plan for it, no big deal, but an 8:1 scarf in 1/2" plywood with 5 panels/4 joints adds up to 16".
Oh, and I used the butt joint on the bottom of mine and the scarf for the rubrails.
good luck!
John K.
Ahoy David,
We scarfed our bottom joints, and that seemed to have worked out well for us. We have no panel joiners running athwartship.
We did not use scarf joints for the hull proper.
I usually but join bottom panels and scarf side panels.
But joins are a tad quicker, and work well enough for bottom panels. I don't however use wooden but blocks like per plans.
I use an angle grinder with a flap sander on it to create a slight hollow in both panels either side of the join on both sides of the panels. I butter upo the edges, and paint epoxy on the tape join faces and lay in a single 10 oz glass tape on both sides. Then once cured and panel is fixed on the boat, then I skim over with thickened epokxy till flush.
Now generall I am building boats on jigs as opposed to the way the Vacationer is built. However it is easy enough to simple lay a glass tape on both sides and not bothering with divoting in with the grinder and then skimcoating with epoxy to fair the edges away.