Back to boat building

It took me longer than expected to get back to work on the boat. Was sick longer than expected, work was/is busy, the weather was cold and rainy, and we're doing a bathroom remodel. Last but not least -- I'll be honest -- it felt good to take a decent holiday break with the family.

Anyway, we had some decent weather today so I got a little bit of work done:


Felt good to be mixing epoxy again.

I was able to do some successful test squirms through the passageway under the cockpit, but wasn't convinced I could do it "for real" without accidentally kicking the bulkhead, or disturbing the tapes. So I only taped the front side, as seen above. After the front cures, that should help lock the bulkhead into place.

I hope everyone had a good holiday. It's been fun being the F22 spectator for a change. Menno, all I can say is: wow! Grant, nice job on the daggerboard - you've made it look easy and got me rethinking my choice of cedar.

Progress halted

Unfortunately I have made zero progress these past two weeks on the boat. Had to put in bunch of extra time at work, and this weekend I've been knocked pretty low by a bad cold\flu bug. Even if I was feeling better, it's snowing right now, here in good old Bothell, WA, even as I type this:

Okay, I know this is nothing compared to what you folks in Scandinavia (or even Canada) get but we're not used to the white stuff around these parts. I told my wife this morning that if and when I ever build another boat, it will have to be in a heated indoor shop...

Starboard cockpit floor taped

I'm really speeding along here at one bulkhead per day. Still, better safe than sorry with these slow cure times. Here's the cockpit floor after taping:

Here's a view of the underside:

I also got the aft cabin bunktop taping areas ready, for doing the flange for the starboard bunktop half. I think I will put the port hull half back on the 2x4's, then slide it over to the side so that I can work on that flange from the outside of the hull - it would be very difficult to do it from the inside. But that will be the last thing I do - I don't want to move the port hull half until absolutely necessary, in order to keep everything aligned as possible. Overall, the bulkhead alignments are turning out really nice - I am pleased.

I'll have to squirm through that passageway above to get to the aft cabin, when I tape the aft cabin fwd bulkhead - ought to be a lot of fun. :)

Also got the beam mount flange extensions trimmed. First I made a template that matched the side-profile:

(That side flange has a lot of squandered glass and epoxy -- in retrospect, I could have used 7"x10" pieces of glass to reduce the wastage. But it's not that big of a deal.)

After marking the side profile with the template, I used the jigsaw to cut off the really big chunks. After that, it was full speed ahead with the sander (hallelujah for 40 grit!), grinding all of the edges into shape. I am very pleased with how they turned out -- from some angles, it's hard to tell which half of the flange was the original. Here's the finished mounts:

And from another view:

With the beam mounts done, all I need now is a joined hull to install them in.

Beam mount lower flange extensions

Originally had planned to do more bulkhead taping work today, but it was cold enough that I chickened out and decided to work on the beam mount extensions instead, at least until it warmed up. Working on the beam mounts took a lot longer than I expected though and that's all I ended up doing today.

First up was finishing off the mold pieces. I essentially followed the plans, except that I still didn't want to drill any holes in my beam mounts (yet, anyway). The clamp-only strategy worked well:

The mold surface is still in two pieces in the above picture. I decided to leave them clamped to the beam mounts while bogging the "V" joint, so the parts would be accurately joined as possible. So I used masking tape to protect the mounts, then added the bog:

After a quick cure in front of the fireplace, I sanded down the mold surfaces til smooth and added (clear) masking tape:

I couldn't feel any "wax" on the surface of the beam mounts, but since this is such a critical area I decided to be extra careful: first a careful de-greasing\de-waxing, then a thorough sanding on the surfaces to be laminated against, then another de-greasing to help get all of the dust off. The attachment points on the beam mounts are as clean as I could get them.

Attaching a temporary block along the center-line of the mold surface helps hold it in the right location against the mount, until clamped down:

First layer of glass on the first beam mount:

I found 8" x 10" to be a good size to cut the "C" glass to -- big enough to cover the area without too much excessive overhang.

Starting on the uni pieces:

When I got to my third beam mount, I realized (or remembered?), that the four uni layers can be stacked and consolidated separately from the mount, then added to the mount laminate -- just seemed easier that way.

One more piece of peel-ply to go on the first beam mount:

Need lots of glass pieces for this job:

Finally all done:

Laminating all four mounts took me four hours -- I sweated over each piece of glass, trying to keep the glass\resin ratio as high as possible, given the critical nature of these parts. Tomorrow I'll trim them up and post some pictures of the results.

Starboard main cabin bulkhead taped

Several things got done today. First, the main cabin aft bulkhead is now taped in:

Having to climb through the main hatch hole is a lot of fun now; haven't had to bend like that since my days as a circus performer (yeah right - but if I can do it, anyone can). The weather is still chilly so I left the main hull alone for the rest of the day so the taping could cure (don't want to risk kicking that bulkhead loose while it's still green).

Next was re-cutting the slots on the bow web. I did my best, but cured bog has a tendency to chip when being cut with a saw blade, so the job didn't turn out as neat as I would like. My neighbor (thanks Bill!) then helped me drill the holes. First we leveled the bow web as best we could: the tube is level, but the rest of it is best-effort by eyeball. I now have two reference points to use when mounting/levelling the web in the hull.

Check this drilling setup out:

That drill has a magnetic base; once the magnet was turned on I couldn't budge the thing at all - woof!

I am slightly nervous about the bow pole pivot hole -- it's in about the right place, but it's hard to locate the hole center from the FSP now that all of the glass is in place (plus, even this web is still a bit "chunky" - I'm not going to do it again though! :).

I also did the top flange extensions on the aft beam mounts. Here's the scheme I came up with to form the mold surface, without having to drill any holes in the mount:

I got both extensions laminated, here's one of them:

Finally, I also started making the mold pieces for the lower beam mount flange extensions and hope to get those done this weekend as well.

Starboard aft beam bulkhead taped

My wife is just sooooo nice to me -- despite today being Thanksgiving holiday, she let me go ahead and do some boat work today. Just too cold outside to do much (woke up to 27 deg F/~-3 deg C this morning), but I did get the aft beam bulkhead taped:

That bright spot is a flashlight shining through from underneath, in case you're wondering. I used it to help locate the edge of the form frame.

After the beam bulkhead was taped, I did some more work on the new bow web (see previous post).

For fun, I dug up a picture to show what I was working on last year, on Thanksgiving 2006. Turns out that I layed my very first pieces of float foam that very day:

Looking at that picture, I'm struck by three things: first, how far I've come in one year; second, how much cleaner my tent was back then; and third, how much more room I had when doing the floats. :)

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there. Time for some turkey dinner and pecan pie, yum!