Readership halved last month, though at 65,000-plus views it's still a fair return for what is effectively a nobody's diary. And to to the other 65,000... go now go, walk out the blog. But I think one of the reasons might have been the drift away from boat-building and in particular the setting aside of the craft based around a seat and a pair of skis.
A French novelist once said ~ tho' I cannot remember which one ~ that a novel is never so much finished as merely abandoned and among these pages you'll see us return time and again to designs on the back-burner. It has also been pointed out that inventors often succeed with ideas they cannot but help re-visiting, so let us do a bit of that over subsequent posts.
It was such a design that called for panels of laminated backer-board to be set at right angles; so let us remind ourselves how we've done that in the past. In the photo above you can see that we've simply abutted the panels and run a filet down the joint. Once set, I shall drive skewers (tooth-picks at this scale, kebab skewers at the larger) into the outside of the join and into the abutted panel to secure.
We're a learning-by-doing blog here though, and we've seen how an advantage of backer-board is that it can be cut like plaster-board by simply running a Stanley knife down one side and then folding it until it snaps.
At that point with both plaster and backer you've to run the knife down the opposite side to free it. Where bonded with kevlar webbing instead of paper, as here, it pays to leave this in place so you're able to hang panels off a work-top to filet both sides... quick and dirty like the best sex.
This appears in the illustration below, which I've not finished off because I'd already cut one pair of panels throughout and I cannot have a pair of pontoons that are not matching, as for me it would be like turning up at the palace in odd socks. There's a kitchen-knife in the pic for the filleting, but quite honestly a wetted finger makes for a better adhesive filet altogether.
Fasten your seats-belts as we progress things, however, for nobody promised you an easy read.
Good news though in so far as there are more and more retailers of backer-board, all of which is sourced in Germany where it was invented however. B & Q retail this 12.5mm (half-inch) board at 600 x 1200 or 2' by 4'...but also do boards at twice the length that are ideal for scaling these designs upward.
