Small 12' Panga Build

Pretty much done with fairing so I Bondo'd up any screw holes and imperfections, let cure, then sanded flat. Mounted two pieces of plywood tonight. Cut them at about 1" to large on all sides, then glued and screwed them in place. Used the saber saw to cut them within 1/8 of the edges and then ground flat with the belt sander. As you can see the corner came out really nice. A router would have been better, but I don't own a router :0

Will work on the other side this weekend. I don't have enough plywood for the bow and I have lots of work to do this weekend so I doubt I'll get the bow finished until Tuesday.

 

Looking like a boat now Greg. I bet the kids will wanna play in it once you flip it! Lol put them to work!! Mine is not all that much bigger then yours but took ages to build with all the detail I wanted for the **** factor That project is a few posts down in this section. My lil one worked out how to climb up inside the boat on the trailer when she was 1.6yrs old! We had to make sure to pick up all bits of sand paper and stuff as she would attack the new paint work with it after watching "dadda" at work

Looks like you are working fast, am sure you smile everytime you walk past it

 

I'll have to check out your build tonight. I'm going to put about five hours into the panga tonight and hope to have the bow done. I ended up having to cut 11 strips of ply 3" wide to bend to the tight corners. Just started with the Bondo and will start working on the starboard bow side shortly.

You are right, I can't wait to flip and level off the top rail nice and even. Contemplating going the gunwhale route, but won't decide until I've flipped her.

 

Spent the last two days working on the bow and started using Bondo on all the screw holes and imperfections. Had to cut lots of small 3" wide strips to make the bow work. First side was hard, second side was easy once I figured it out.

You'll see that I'm not really measuring the panels. I just stick them on and use a saber saw to cut them close, then an electric planer to get even closer and flat and then a belt sander followed by an orbital sander to get the joints tight. I used to build box drums this way, but back then, just used a router to finish the edges. Lots more sanding and Bondo to prep the hull for glassing. i have a couple of spots halfway down the chine rail that I might build up a 1/4 inch to make the curve more full.

 

Flipped the boat today with the help of wife and daughter. It's actually very light still. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to flatten the top above the sheer clamp, add some 1x6's or ply to reinforce the joints in the plywood skins and put some fiberglass in the interior in key areas to strengthen the stem and transom areas

Also going to plan out the interior. At 12' I want to have as much space as possible, so probably going to put a very low angled floor in with flotation foam in box and midship as well as come up with some ideas for small pedestal seats, bench seats and a water tight compartment for storage and extra ballast.

This will primarily be a harbor, lake and coastal fishing vessel so need to plan out an area go keep the fish and potential bait bucket as well.

Of course when you flip the boat you find all the mistakes you made such as screws being too long and not drilling straight so I expect a couple more hours of clean up on that as well.

 

Ground down the plywood above the sheer clamp. The plans call for leveling the sheer clamp flat with the top of the rails, but I think I like it better at an angle. I'm also afraid that I might hit some screws with the planer if I take the sheer clamp down.

I have discovered that its kind of difficult to build a small frame boat since all the pieces of lumber are so skinny. You have to be really accurate on your holes and its easy to split the .75 inch wide wood. I can't wait to build a boat with big old 2x4's. Be much easier to put together.

I'll be putting some fiberglass in the interior tomorrow and then flip it back over to glass the bottom.

 

I love the pictures. You might consider editing them to 700 by 700 pixels. I'm all for big pictures, I think they make a project easier to follow. These images however, are bigger than my computer screen.

 

Thanks for the tip on image size. My Nikon takes the big ones and the phone takes the little ones. A trick I learned is to hit Ctrl- and Ctrl + to resize your web browser screen to see the whole image.

 

Decided that I'm going to add a gunwhale to the panga. I'm going to follow the existing angle of the sheer clamp and add another 1x2 strip on the interior. The pics below are a quick mock up of how it would work. A gunwhale will really clean up the look of the area where the frames, sheer rail and plywood meet and will add nice mounting points for other goodies such as internal stainless rod holders. I'll glass all the way around the gunwhale to the interior.

Cool bit of trivia I learned today. Gunwhales were reinforced sections that a ships guns could be mounted to.

 

Thanks for the ctrl- and the ctrl+ tip. That did help but the text font shrinks down to something microscopic.

 

To be polite... for those who still have dial up... pictures need to be a reasonable size. I've been chastised myself long ago, so I can empathize but there ya go. Just load it into paint, re-size and save it before you upload.

 

The images straight from my camera are about 2700 pixels. I open them in the photo editor (what ever program came free with the computer) and resize them to 650.

At the same time, I crop the image to cut out the "noise" from the edges (stuff like the random junk that lays around the garage, my laundry room, other stuff like that.) Adjust color next, maybe the contrast, and done. After renaming the image to something that makes sense, I upload to photobucket.

Some posters go way to small. Their pictures look like postage stamps.

One other thing I frequently do, is increase the font size up to 3. I'm sure it annoys some people, but I want to publish pictures easy to see and text that's easy to read.

 

I like the pics.

Wondering about the 5 point "star" screws. Are they steel w gold zinc coating? Only ones I've ever seen I get by the box at Home Depot. A big hardware store in the US.

 

Hi there EasyRider,
I'm using a combination of deck screws from the Home Depot and stainless screws that I got from some marine shop. The deck screws are both gold/yellow colored and red colored. I'm not worried about corrosion since the boat won't be sitting in the water and all screws will be covered by fiberglass and epoxy. One of the benefits of the star screws is that they are super easy to put in and pull back out if necessary. I had at least 30 screws that I had to pull out after I covered them in Bondo. When I turned the boat over I discovered a bunch that were too long for the skinny little scarfed 1x2's I was mounting the plywood to, so instead of grinding the all down, I just replaced them.

 

Reduced photos down to 700 on Photoshop to be polite

I planed down the sheer clamp in preparation for the gunwhale that I'm going to put in. After that I put in the interior rail and screwed/glued it in place. I'll plane those down tomorrow and add the surface of the gunwhale.

My youngest son got his homework done early so we built a center console for the boat that measures about 10" X 12" X 22". We built it out of scrap 1x2's and 1/4 ply. I'm not going to mount it till the end of the project and am going to fiber glass the exterior and epoxy the interior.