Building Indoors

I'm hoping to get some advice on building a stich and glue kit boat indoors.  My single car garage is in the drive-in basement of of my house.  Both garage and basement are unfinished, but heated.  Besides the potentional workshop, it also house the hot water heater, forced air furnace, and laundry.   

My concern of course is for fire safety, dust, and fumes.  I'd be building over the winter, and the space stays around 18 degrees C, or mid to low 60s F.  I can open the garge door to exchange air as needed or on the odd warm days that we have over the winter.  We'll usually get a cold snap or two where it gets well below freezing, and it may get quite cold in the basement on those occasions.  

I used to work in construction, and have some experience rigging dust protection.  I'm thinking I'll need to separate the workshop side from the basement side with plastic.   I would probably need to rig some ventilation and a fan to keep the air moving through the workshop, and to the outside rather than into the basement and eventually the living space.

Anyway, if you have built indoors I'd appreciate hearing about your experience.  I built a small skiff several year ago, but it was warm outside for the whole build and I was able to work in a covered car port.  That was also a much smaller build and took a few weeks working casually.  I expect to take several months to build a Skerry or Northeaster Dory.  

 


5 replies:

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RE: Building Indoors

Hi meadeam,

I cannot claim to have totally built in doors, but I have built significant parts of my projects in-doors and in situations similar to what you are describing…..i would describe my approach as hybrid.

Your proposed approach strikes me as pragmatic and I would consider giving it a go.

First, there are a lot of steps in stitch and glue construction that does not create significant fumes or dust.   The stitching and the glassing for example.  Modern epoxies, while not appropriate for living spaces, are relatively benign and as long as you are venting to the outside should be fine (check the details of your individual epoxy brand).    The use of a block plane, vs sanding for certain steps, also cuts down on fine dust.

I am currently working in an unfinished part of my basement and all my sanding and cutting tools have vacuum hose attachments which I am finding very effective.    

However, when I get to varnish work and sanding epoxy where there are more fumes and fine dust involved, I will move the project to a garage bay where I can work with an open door to the outside.

below is current kayak project in unfinished part of my basement.

h

RE: Building Indoors

   Thanks hspira, and that is a great looking kayak.  We'll see how my boat building endeavors shape up, but if things go well there is a kayak in my future, too.  When I lived in Seattle/Bainbridge Island WA, I wanted to build a kayak but never got around to it.  I did build a rowing skiff to mess around Eagle Harbor, and later on Lake Union when I moved to the city.  I used to take it the few blocks I lived from the lake on a skateboard.  I rowed from the far shore of the lake to Salmon Bay.  The trip would have been much faster in a kayak. I had no space and little money back then.  Now I have a little space and slightly more money.
 

I think I'll keep moving forward with my plans and address any issues with dust and fumes as I go along.  If the build takes all winter and into the spring when it warms up, I'll be working with garge door open anyway.

RE: Building Indoors

   I built a Passagemaker and a Wood Duck 10 in the basement as well as parts of my Pocketship. As noted above the epoxy is not a problem. I invested in a really good sander with Hepa filter and found it kept dust very low. Finishing is a problem. I used the Total Boat water based varnish on the kayak and it was no problem with smell. I do think it gave a less than stellar finish but part of that is probably me.  My basement is unheated and hovers in the 50s on the winter. I ran extra electric heat when needed for epoxy work. 

RE: Building Indoors

   Hi meadeam,  

Beyond the dust, which I have no doubt you will figure out, be cognizant of the space.  I built a Jimmy Skiff 2 in a shed.  The boat is 13'2" and the shed is 16 feet long inside.  While it worked it was mighty tight.   I will not attempt to cram my dainty size 15 foot into a glass slipper again.

RE: Building Indoors

This is encouraging:

MAS Epoxy, which we ship with every CLC kit, has the LEAST odor of any epoxy we've tried.  It's essentially undetectable in a basement shop.  It is 100% solids, so it's not flammable if you're working next to your furnace.  We use common sense with ventilation with ALL epoxies, but we use this epoxy in our own home shops.

Getting close to placing an order and I finally read this on the site.

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