Silent & Vibration Free Propulsion! [Episode 218]

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]The propulsion motor installation project is on the horizon. I've actually ordered everything and it's on its way.

[00:00:07]And we'll get to all of that, all the details about that project when that time comes. But today, I need to get start getting ready for it by building engine beds. And Yanni actually just asked a really good question of first of all, why am I not just installing the propulsion motor mounts onto the stringers? As you can see here, this is our mockup that we have going. The brackets right now are basically sitting on the stringers themselves.

[00:00:36]In order to reduce the vibration as much as possible, I'd like to get those motor beds as close to the uh motor as possible. So, I'm going to be building them inboard from the stringers uh so we can make those brackets as small as possible. And it does involve gluing and fiberglassing for you fiberglass sickos that have been having withdrawals. This is another engineering project that Evan, the naval architect, helped me with to make sure I'm doing enough to never have to worry about a failure. With Evan, I usually draw up my ideas on CAD, and he comes back with the necessary engineering math and makes edits and suggestions for how to improve on my ideas.

[00:01:26]I'm using fiberglass angle stock I bought from McMaster car to make these motor beds. This angle is 4 in x 4 in and is a/2 in thick and cut into 8 in long beds. My table saw bandsaw blades would likely be toasted if I tried cutting this thick of fiberglass. So, I'm just using a sawzaw to make these cuts. Even my sawsaw blade was pretty torn up after these cuts were done.

[00:01:48]After the four beds were cut out, they needed to be sanded really well to give the bed a tooth for bonding to the boat.

[00:02:14]This week I'm also trying to get a lot done on the varnishing project while also building those motor beds. These are the overhead panels that currently have two coats of varnish again on them.

[00:02:24]Again, I'm using all wood by All Grip to coat all the wood that will be in the boat. Between the first two coats, I sanded between each coat. This is to get the grain filled and a good base of varnish before I can start building film thickness. So, I'm sanding them again with 220 grit paper and a quick scuff with Scotch-Brite pad to make sure to knock down any grain and to ensure that all the shiny spots have a tooth for the next coats.

[00:03:28]My bread boxes have four coats on them.

[00:03:30]And you can see from this angle that the grain isn't quite filled yet. My mom and I sanded and scuffed them so that we were able to get two coats on in the same day to really fill the grain and build the film thickness. That's the nice feature of using allwood is that multiple coats can be applied in the same day given the conditions are good.

[00:03:48]It's very tempting to lay this stuff on thick, but if it's too thick, the outside will skin over and trap the solvents which will bubble to the surface. So, it's important to take it slow and lay down nice thin coats.

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[00:05:15]Back in the motor space, I used these plywood plates to align the tops of the beds to the tops of the stringers and then pre-drilled holes that will be used to clamp the beds to the stringers.

[00:05:29]This space has already been painted, so obviously I had to grind off that paint to prepare the motor beds for bonding to the stringer. A question we get often is why didn't I wait to paint until most wiring and plumbing and in this case motorbo beds were installed. I think that this is mostly personal preference to paint first and then install. I didn't want to do any painting around wiring and plumbing. And in the case of these motor beds, I didn't have a fully fleshed out plan for installing the motor until recently. So, I was happy to put the paint project behind me and then figure out these details later, even if it means removing a little bit of paint to get it done.

[00:07:00]Okay, I'm ready to glue my motor beds to the stringers. So, these are just being glued to the inside inboard edges of the stringers. All I'm using is the TotalBoat high performance epoxy that I've mixed up a bunch of colloidal silica uh to thicken it up a bunch, makes it make it real strong. I'm actually going to brush on some pretty thin epoxy onto the gluing surfaces to make sure that it's really penetrated into any of the imperfections in the surface. Uh there's going to be no permanent mechanical fasteners. Uh, I am going to use just some screws to clamp these to the stringer itself, but otherwise it'll just be a glued surface or a glued um joint in order to make this strong.

[00:07:45]So, uh yeah, ready to glue these on.

[00:07:58]I really like to use deck screws with Torx heads as my clamping fasteners in a project like this. They grab the fiberglass substrate pretty well. I say this because a lot of times screws will strip out a fiberglass pretty easily.

[00:08:10]So, even with these deck screws that have a deep thread, I go slow when I'm torquing them down and I'm very careful to not strip them out. Of course, the fasteners aren't stainless. So after the epoxy is set, I'll remove them.

[00:09:07]Back to more coats on the bread boxes.

[00:09:09]The grain was pretty well filled, but not perfect. So, this day I got started early putting coats on and applied three more coats in the same day. I'm sure you're not bored by this yet, so don't worry, there are more to go.

[00:09:27]Okay, so I've got eight coats of varnish on these now, and that was just kind of to build up the thickness of the varnish. I have one more coat to go.

[00:09:38]It's going to be a satin matte finish.

[00:09:41]But before that I before I put this last coat on, I need to do a really good job sanding. In previous coats, between coats, I've sanded with 220 grit. This time, what I'm doing is using my DA and sanding them down with 320 and then again with 500 on top of that. And it makes it a really nice fine grit. Uh I think these will be super smooth now.

[00:10:08]And the next step is to clean them. And so I'm trying to be as thorough as possible. So I'm vacuuming up them off with a brush really well. And then I'm blowing uh compressed air on them. And then I'm wiping them down multiple times. I'm using the brushing reducer to do all the wiping. And on the last wipes, I do the two rag method where I wipe on the solvent and then wipe it off with a dry cloth.

[00:10:46]And then right before I do the final coat, I'll use a tack cloth just to make sure that any dust that has settled uh I can get off that way. I'm really really really excited to see how these things turn out. This hopefully will be the most difficult of all of the varnish projects that we have to do in the boat.

[00:11:05]Uh, and it's even though these are like I'm able to do these on the table, there's all these curves and edges that have to be done and it makes it very tedious. And so I'm hopeful that the future varnishing projects will be will go a lot faster than this one did. But these will also be like like once they're installed should really pop.

[00:12:43]The last big step on these motor beds is to glass the top of the bed to the stringer.

[00:12:49]The glass will prevent the bed from peeling off the stringer by the weight of the motor. The motor is less than 200 lb, so this is really just a belt and suspenders tactic, but prudent nonetheless. Before laminating with Totalboat epoxy, I coated the surface with TotalBoat's Thicko epoxy to make it sticky.

[00:13:29]And then put down four layers of 12 oz bacterial glass on each bed, spanning the stringer to the bed.

[00:13:50]Ooh.

[00:14:07]Ooh.

[00:14:10]Ooh.

[00:14:34]Heat. Heat.

[00:14:55]You do.

[00:15:16]And of course, peel ply goes on top to reduce the amount of sanding I have to do later.

[00:15:46]Heat. Heat.

[00:16:16]These motor beds are done. This was a quick and easy project. I got to thank Evan again for helping me with the engineering that went into them. Right now, I've just got primer on them. I have a few other little paint projects.

[00:16:27]So, I'll do all the painting at one time, but the next step with this is really to install the electric motor, which will happen in a couple months.

[00:16:35]So, really looking forward to that project. Uh, but for now, we're done here.

[00:17:45]This is the last bit of sanding and cleaning to be done on these bread boxes before the final coat. Again, I'm using a satin matte finish, which we'll likely use throughout the boat because I prefer to not have a super shiny interior.

[00:17:57]You'll recall that the interior paint is also a matte finish, but all the lower coats of varnish are done with gloss and the final coat is the satin matte.

[00:18:08]Next week, we'll reveal the finished product and get them installed. We're so excited to see how they turn out. We'll see you then.