The final chapter 2010 !

Trophy photo

$313.50  contributed to Greene County Food Pantry !

Regatta race day

The boat is complete but has not been tested. We have decided to wait until regatta day and hope for the best as opposed to not having a boat because it went deep six.
We loaded the boat on Karl's trailer Friday evening and took it to the clubhouse for a send-off party. Any reason for a party here at DWLO.
The boat performed very well in the water, very stable, however the steering oar was too long and I could have left more room in the stern since we decided not to use a drummer. Those item we can address next year. We can also test the boat before the regatta since we have the confidence of our first successful build behind us.
The ladies won 3rd place and the boat won Judge's Choice Award. Our cheering section was the best at the event! Thanks to all who supported this community project!

The finish is near!

August is here and we are nearing completion. We have flipped the boat on its side so we can tape all side to bottom joints and lap joint all side butt joints using 4 inch strips and contact cement. We still have to prime the sides, two coats and we have switched to DRI-LOC latex concrete block sealer. Three coats should do with one more coat on the bottom. Makes the boat look like stucco! We were not allowed to use any silicone so we used Liquid Nails for caulk. Any open joint was filled with Liquid Nails. I also made a steering oar, which may be of wood and a cardboard  arm off the stern to support the oar.Final painting and we are ready for the send-off party on Friday the 13th.......

August is closing in!

Our ECD is closing fast, looks like we will miss it by a week, however that still gives us a week before the big event. Painting and seats are the next project to tackle. We primed the inside with 2 coats of Kilz 2 and 2 coats of porch floor paint before installing the seats. The seats were made by making a rectangle from standard cardboard with "Z" supports in the center. We then used two molded corner protectors attached with Liquid Nails on top covered by a layer of cardboard. Very strong. The seats were installed with contact cement and Liquid Nails.

July, construction continues

Time is flying by....who thought a cardboard boat would take this much time to build? Guess it is all the engineers on the project, and we are also thinking about the 6 women who will be paddling it in the race so I guess we don't want them to get wet. Yeah! Continue to work on the side and gunwales. We also reinforced the floor with two more layers of cardboard using carpenters glue. The floor should be good and strong with an air space provided by the honeycomb material. Unfortunately I don't have photos of the bow and stern construction. Most of it I did myself since I didn't know how I really wanted to attack it, thus no photos. The gunwales are a molded paper product used to protect the ends of appliances. They appear to be very durable and strong. We attached them with contact cement and liquid nails, and taped all joints.

More construction news and pics

June continues to be hot and we are moving along with construction. The side are coming along. We have tried a couple techniques and have found one that seems to work well. We are looking for added strength so we doubled the side material but instead of doing it in one piece, which was our first attempt, we decided to do inside and outside separately. We also put  laminated 3/4" x  6" strips between the side pieces. Adds a lot of stiffness to the sides.......engineering on the fly!! We may get this finished by the day of the regatta.

Construction continues

We have moved to the morning hours and are working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for about 3 hours a day. We felt the need to speed up our construction process to meet a ECD of July 30th. This week we flipped the boat over and reinforced the bottom floor joints. We used six inch strips of cardboard taped on the edges and glued with contact cement over the seams on the bottom. Then we taped those joints before we painted the bottom with three coats of Kilz 2 and three coats of porch floor paint. All paint on this boat is water based latex. We also worked on the sides of the boat. The weather continues to be very hot.

June 2, and 9, 2010 Construction continues

Continued building up and strengthening the bottom. Used angle pieces along edges and added a 1 inch thick honeycomb material from Jacuzzi tub packaging to the bottom. Glue of choice at this time is carpenters glue. This glue is not waterproof so we will only use it on the inside of the boat. We continue to tape all edges with masking tape of various widths, in order to prevent any excess water penetration. If it sounds like we know what we are doing think again, this is purely seat-of-the-pants!

May 19, and 26, 2010 Building process begins

Day one and two......Construction of the Del Webb @ Lake Oconee cardboard dragon boat for the OPAS regatta began by selecting and cutting enough 4' x 4' cardboard panels to start the bottom of the boat. Each panel edge was then taped with one inch masking tape to keep water from penetrating the corrugation. The panels then were placed edge to edge on a hard 16 ' surface and 2 inch masking tape was used to join them together. The panels were then marked 4 inches in from the two edges that will be the sides, gunwales, of the boat. A blunt tool was used to score each edge line and the the edge was bent upright. This was the start of the sides. These panels were then flipped so the inside of the boat was upright. The bow and the stern were then made and added to the bottom panels. Corner packing material from appliance boxes approximately 3" x 3" was glued to the inside of each turned up edge for reinforcing.