Sunday, July 29, 2007

Wingnet rails, part...uh, never mind

A brief post to update progress this week.

My wingnet rails are now faired and primed. Earlier this week I attached the underrail supports:

I then spent some time fairing the support attachment points seen above (but not much time: my main fairing goal for underneath the rails was to leave them reasonably smooth enough that someone reaching a hand underneath there won't get cut).

Yesterday I applied two coats of the highbuild primer; today I sanded that down, then put on two coats of the finish primer:

Tip: when spray painting in your garage, even with a "low overspray" HVLP system, you should lean toward more plastic masking, not less.

Although progress on the floats is mostly stalled until the wingnet rails are done, I did get the deck attachment points prepped. It's not very fun grinding down through primer and fairing compound that you've spent hours and hours of sanding on:

I've also been trying to use this time to catch up on other stuff. Here's the last of the laminate (two extra layers of C on the front part) being bagged for the bow web:



I'm now ready to start cutting slots in the bow web.

I also bagged my first daggerboard case half. Here I am in the middle of lamination, before the core went on; if you look carefully you can see the UD glass:

Here it is with the bag on (got good seal on this one):

And here's a picture of the inside of it after unmolding (forgot to put peel ply against the mold first, but it looks ok):

Everything went fine except for one thing which I didn't notice until I unmolded it today: it looks like I left the foam core just a tiny bit too wide, and near the aft upper edge it butted out past the mold a small amount:

It's mistakes like this that makes me feel like a blithering idiot, but obviously I haven't made enough mistakes to learn the lesson yet. I've sent Ian an email asking for advice, to see if he'd keep the part or toss it. We'll see what he says.

Other than all of the above, I've been studying the plans every chance I get, to get ready for starting the main hull.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looking good....keep those cards and letters coming

Tom
F22#45 Teachers Pet
Nanaimo BC

Jay said...

Thanks, will do.

However, I think you forgot to tell me the address of your F22 blog? Where's it at so I can start following your progress? :-)

Jay

Anonymous said...

Hi Jay, I love your blog. Keep up the good work. Don't bother the mistakes. It ought to be part of your steap learning curve and when you're finished you're a prof!

Henny
("forgetting the peelply" is much better when "it isn't there" than when "it's still there!")

Anonymous said...

No blog yet Jay...shop is still getting retrofit....and my wife says I have to finish the fireplace in the house first. She's afraid everything will come to a stop when I start....be afraid, very afraid.

Tom