Unicorn, a small electric fantail launch

Painting the Hull TL;DR:  Lots of text explaining finishing the boat. Read on for hopefully a little education and entertainment, otherwise just look at the few pics. The original idea was to leave the hull unpainted, showing the wood strip construction. The cheap fiberglass I bought left bubbles that showed the weave of the fabric. No amount of poking at the fabric with an epoxy-soaked chipping brush would make the bubbles go away. But fiberglass is an expensive part of the whole project, so I stuck with the "bad" stuff. The only way to hide the bubbles was to paint the hull. I really did still want to show the hull construction, so I sanded off all the fiberglass in the fantail stern, bought small piece of (expensive!) "good" fiberglass and re-glassed that area. It was SO much easier and faster using the better fiberglass. Lesson learned. The wedge shape shown in the pick below is an attempt to have something other than a boring straight line joint between the woo...

Rudder and Rudder Shaft The hull is sanded and ready for paint and varnish, but I've also worked on the rudder. It was a daunting task. I calculated the size using some formulas for much larger ships, then rounded up a little, then made the actual size a little smaller. It looks rather large for such a small boat, but at the low speeds Unicorn will be moving at a larger rudder will give more control. The remaining part of the oak board from Home Depot, that I used for the breast hook, was almost exactly the right size. The fact that it is a nearly perfect quarter sawn board would make it well suited for the forces on a rudder -if it was laminated between 2 thin boards with the grain going at right angles to the grain of the main board. This makes it into a 3 layer plywood-like board. Glue Layup of the Rudder. Note the cobbled-together long reach clamp coming down from the top. The central stripes are the cross grain of the 3/4" quarter sawn oak board. The grain going left-righ...

 Just a note: My boathouse was too cold to work in over the winter. After much research and education, I have figured out the least expensive and lowest effort method to get more power into the boathouse so I can have enough electric heat to keep it comfortable thru out the year so this should not be a problem this winter. Even if I finish this boat over the summer, I already have thoughts and hopes to build another perhaps smaller boat as soon as Unicorn is launched! For the curious, I have purchased a 50' 4 wire twist lock extension cord rated for 30 amps. This will plug into the existing 30 amp generator input (turned into an output) on the house. This provides 30 amps from each phase (like an electric clothes dryer) from the house's breaker box. I buried the cord about 6" underground. It comes up out of the ground at the boathouse and goes up the outer wall and in thru a hole in the wall. It ends up right over my workbench. ...and now for the cool part... It turns out ...