Bow eye progress

Long no time post. Work has been very busy; same old song, I know. Plus my mom came to visit for a week so I spent a bunch of time with her. (Hi Mom! :))

I've been doing little jobs here and there, trying to keep making progress but it's been hard. Here's the upper bow nose closed in; nothing pretty about this, just formed some foam around the bend (with a slot for the bow web), then bogged it into place along with some screws to hold it:

That long upper section on the foredeck is wastage, it was only there so I didn't have to deal with heat-forming a small short piece. I cut it off today and sanded it down even with the foredeck - looks good, but seems that I forgot to take a picture (next time).

Have started fairing the daggerboard also:

Looks good so far. I have not weighed it yes, but I'd guesstimate about 20-25 pounds at this point, based on feel.

I finished fairing the port lower hull foam, and also filled in all of the screw holes and plank gaps.

The bow eye is in progress. Here I am getting ready to mark the angle it should be placed at:

(Yeah I used trig to place the tape on the square; how geeky of me.)

Here I was figuring out fore-aft depth for the bow eye:

I am glad that I waited to make the bow eye, because the length specified by the plans will be insufficient if you add extra layers of foam to the bow leading edge (which I did). So I first figured out how long it needed to be , then glued up the rest of the bow eye (the triangular part). Here's an inside picture; I know, it's a bit hard to see anything but you should get the idea:

Yes the bow eye fit is a bit sloppy, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Makes me even more glad though, that I didn't spend days trying to construct the bow eye exactly as specified in the plans - I'd have ended up trimming and sanding it to fit anyway.

I still don't have any true "G" carbon, so I am making do with a lesser weight (9oz) which means I needed more layers around the front of the bow eye. Rather than use plastic for the temporary mold pieces, I used taped-over plywood. This is my bow-eye taping station, ready to go:

Doing the carbon on the bow eye wasn't too hard, but I did worry about compaction of the laminate in between the plywood - I used a popsticle stick, cut in half, to work it down in the crack but it was hard. This is the bow eye with all the carbon in place:

Finally, the extra "B" laminate for the bow eye has been placed in the hull, so I am ready to install the eye next chance I get.

Inching closer to frame takedown...

Ok, so what got done this weekend?

Well, I taped the inside of the bow. That's actually more work than it sounds, since you're stretched out trying not to slide down the gunwale, while shoving wet tape up into a tiny space... But eventually I got it all done, and even peelplyed it.

Here's the test fitting of the trailer bow hook HD:

Once happy with the overall "fit", I bogged it into place with peelply on the inside to make taping later easier.

I decided to do the keel reinforcements before doing the final layer of "A" glass. That meant having to finish up the foam fairing around the keel, then back-fill the plank seams that weren't filled all of the way. Here's it all done, with peelply:

Yeah, the form frames are obviously shot for any future use. I keep whittling away at them whenever I need more space to do something.

Saturday morning I bagged on the first half of the second layer of "C" glass onto the daggerboard. Turned out pretty good. Unfortunately that operation used up the last of my vacuum bagging film, so I decided today to try to do a regular wet-layup on the second half, along the trailing and back edges:

I baby-sat it for quite awhile, making sure the glass was wrapped tightly around that edge. Let's hope it turns out ok.

Otherwise, I spent the rest of the weekend fairing foam and getting ready to laminate certain parts of the exterior. The deck (both main cabin and aft cabin) is all faired, and I also back-filled the plank seams. The lower hull half is faired but not yet back-filled. I decided that I'm not going to try to laminate over the gunwale, since getting the edge transition right will be very difficult to do while up in the air on a stepladder. I forgot how tedious it is to backfill all of the plank seams (easy, but tedious). Anyway, here's how it's looking right now (actually this was before back-filling the seams):

You can also see that I've pretty much got the bow leading edge all formed. I did end up glueing on a third piece of foam to the bow, but I'm not going to make it super-sharp; about 1/4-1/2" at the bottom leading edge, about like it was on my floats. Should be good enough.

I did not make further progress on the bow eye, since I decided I'd better get the bow leading edge nearly finalized, before trial-fitting the bow-eye.

Daggerboard support web and other stuff

Not as much progress as I was hoping for today. I glued in the two inside layers of foam at the bow, but didn't tape it yet. The bog is all peel-plyed and it should be ready for taping next time I work on the boat. I also need to fit the trailer eye insert; I have two layers of HD foam glued together and curing, to form that piece.

I realized - a bit late - that I still had not made my bow eye, so that got started:

I glued the daggerboard support web into place, and taped it in on the upper side:

Here's how it looks from below:

The blocks are temporary of course, in order to make sure the panel stays level. No blocks on the daggerboard case, but the fit was tight enough that the panel didn't move while I was taping. You can see some flange glass for the fwd bunktop hanging down on the right hand side as well. I'm debating with myself whether to tape the support web from the underside now, or to wait until after the hull is upright.

I also bagged the carbon fiber on the other side of the daggerboard; next up will be bagging the second layer of C. This time I will bag\laminate it in two steps. Takes more time, but is less stressful. :)

I spent some time fairing the foam on the upper (port) hull half; I am reasonably pleased with the fairness at this point, but I know once I get started fairing for real (after exterior laminate) that it will be a big job no matter what. It is fun to see the hull lines start to emerge.

Spent some time staring at the upper bow exterior corner, trying to figure out how I am going to close it in. Next time I think I'll just grab some foam and thermo-form it into a nice curve and see what happens. Sometimes you can paralyze yourself with too much thinking.

I dry-fit the bow bulkhead into place and it looks like it will fit with little or no modifications - always a good sign that things are lining up well.

Finally, I submitted my order for the folding system parts (made by Precourt, but ordered through Farrier Marine), and also submitted my deposit for the beams. I see some wallet pain in my future...

Daggerboard work, bow closed in

Last night I bagged the first layer of glass onto my daggerboard. I tried to do a complete wrap of the entire board; this is very hard to do and when I unbagged the board I wished I had it done it one side at a time. I had some "bunching" along some of the edges, but the worst part was a lot of bridging across sharp transitions (rebate edges, and the board transition from foil-to-flat). My overlaps were also a bit oversized. Well, no choice really but to cut and grind out the mistakes. Today I laminated and bagged the carbon fiber on one side and fixed the mistakes from last night at the same time. Here's the board ready for carbon; you can see the newly bare rebate edges:

Here's the carbon for one side:

I am having to work with two layers of carbon for each per-plan layer, since I could not find the correct weight. The lighter layer is only 4oz and I found this difficult to work with after it is wet-out; keeps wanting to twist on itself which is difficult to un-do with epoxied gloves.

After wet-out, the carbon forms quite a stack but it looks we judged the rebate depth just about right:

Originally I was planning to laminate and bag both sides at once, but I was using fast hardener and changed my mind and bagged it after the picture above. Tomorrow morning I'll bag the carbon for the other side.

I also spent time today working on the hull. I cut down both the deck and keel form frames, and removed all of the battens down to about a foot below the center line. I will admit there was some daydreaming going on today; staring at the emerging hull shape is pretty fun. I also did some preliminary foam fairing and so far it looks pretty good:

Here's the bow getting closed in:

According to the plans I can extend the bow out by one more foam layer if I wish; I'm going to fair it out first and see how it looks before I do that.

Last thing for the day was grinding out the bubbles on the deck stringer and then relaminating it. Man I hate having to do stuff over.

More hull taping

The fwd beam bulkhead tape and uni is done, and the winch reinforcements are done. Tonight I taped the top and bottom of the daggerboard case. Lot of fun that was. Here's a crappy picture:

It's kinda chilly at night lately, so I let the lamps shine into the hull for an hour or so after I was done. You can see I also did the extra glass reinforcement behind the daggerboard case bottom. And, I actually vacuumed out the "floor" (gunwale) which made a big difference in appearance inside the hull.

I also did the cabin deck stringer lamination, but when I tore off the peel ply tonight, it didn't turn out so good - one edge lifted up on me (darn it, thought I had it stuck down really good). Will have to grind that and re-do it.

I still have to do the bow cleat reinforcements, but that's minor and can wait. The next big item for tomorrow is closing in the bow. I also hope to start cutting down the keel form frames so I can start the keel reinforcements.

No progress on the daggerboard; I'm just gung-ho right now to get the interior hull taping all done.

Given that today is April Fool's Day, I had half a mind to create a post describing how I decided to give up sailing and was buying a Chevy 327 to mount in the aft-cabin of my F22. Well I don't have the energy to write all of that, so you'll just have to imagine how funny it would have been. :)

Came home from work and my wife said she was reading my blog. Suprising, but cool; she said the blog was "cute". Honey, if you happen to see this: I love you!

Weekend progress and a visit to an F44SC project

Yesterday was a day for taping. The pictures are not much too look at, but I got a lot done: all interior taping along the hull seams is now done, including the bow compartment up to about 4" of the (as yet non-existent) bow bulkhead. Much of the taping was done using DBM1708 tape; this was my first experience with the stuff and I definitely appreciate its ease-of-use (especially back in the aft-cabin!) but have some reservations about how much resin it wants to swallow. Next up on the job list will be starting the daggerboard case taping, and closing in the bow.

For fun and a sense of progress, I also trimmed off the extra flash on the front of the aft-cabin:

I had posted a question about hull thickness for the front aft-cabin hatch on the F22 builder's forum, since the Lewmar hatches I was looking at (even their low-profile models) all specify 15mm minimum. I checked with Ian who said it's perfectly fine to add a ridge of foam around the perimeter of the hole to build up to that, so that's good.

For Sunday I had made arrangements with Allen (he's building F44SC #1, link somewhere on the right) to make a trip down to see his project. It is a not-so-secret plan of mine to build an F44SC someday and sail away, so this was an informative trip for me and and I also wanted my wife to see something in person to get a real idea of the size of this boat. The drive is about four hours long (ok, 3.5 if I'm flying low), so we left early and arrived around 10:30am. Then commenced a few fun hours of general and boat-related discussion, and a good look at Allen's hulls. Wow - having seen his lamination work up-close, I can definitely say he is doing a very, very nice job. Here's one of the pictures I took:

Thanks again Allen for letting me come by, much appreciated.

After getting home, I decided to do one more small job on the F22: making then glueing the cabin deck stringer into place:

It should be ready for final lamination tomorrow.