Matt, who hails from Alaska, is building his first boat.

He's made a lot of progress, just a little more than a week into the project.

Thirteen days into the project and the sheer clamp is already in place, tying the structure together and making it really look like a boat.

"I was forced to use oak for the sheer clamps as no other available wood types came in 12 foot lengths, Alaska isn't good for variety at any store...."

"The oak was super hard to make the bow bend and the epoxy broke once but nothing that more clamps and more glue couldn't fix."

Here a wedge has been added to form the downturned corner, which will aid in turning.

"I choose to actaully cut the transom 1 whole inch lower on the bottom cut so that I only had to make one wedge and glue it to the sheer clamps."

Moving along quickly, the bottom is on as well as the pad.

Here the pad is seen blended into the bottom forward.

Matt plans to fiberglass the bottom eventually. But for now, he plans to turn the hull over and continue building.

"I just don't feel like dealing with that epoxy mess at the moment."

Right side up.

Plenty of flotation added.

"Been a while since I've worked on my mini-v.... However now I'm back at it and finishing up soon I hope, very little work is left."

Time to start on the decking.

"I had a little mishap last winter and the pipes in my garage froze and sort of messed up my time line for the build. On a side note I now know full well that my boat is 100% water tight on the hull, the broken pipe literally sprayed water in the garage like a lawn sprinkler for a solid 8 hours. The boat had about 60 gallons of water in it and not one drop was leaking out."

But Matt, the idea is to keep water OUT, not IN! Haha.

A small problem: the coaming is not quite long enough for adequate blocking behind the motorboard. A fix is in the works.

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