Knot Racing i550 Build

Fab-

2012-02-16T16:15:00.000-08:00

-ulous, -ricator.

One of the spreaders, stuck into a sort of H-plate to mount to the spreader root, and one side of the spreader bracket that will go on the mast:

Should look about like this when done:

And like this when in use:

(no fair mentioning what happened to this mast, if you know what boat it is!)

Getting rigged

2012-02-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

In between bouts of deck and cockpit sanding, I've begun getting my mast sorted.

First, make a pattern to cut in the t-ball plates:

Here's the top holes cut, I need to wait and assemble the mast before cutting the lower sets since they pass through the sleeve joins:

Making some tooling for the spreader brackets:

...and gluing up one side of the lower spreader bracket:

I've made the parts that attach to the spreader already (no pics yet), and I need to repeat 3 times the bracket process shown above to have the parts ready to assemble.

Can you tell I like these kinds of projects more than the glassing, filling, sanding, filling, sanding?

My plan is to do a rig measure when the deck is finished and I push the boat outside to flip it, so I need to have both jobs done at the same time. So there's my excuse to take the odd break from the cockpit sanding...

Pit in Pink

2012-02-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

Cockpit glassed last night, and a fill coat added this morning. Lots o sanding coming up!

Just a mayonnaise thickness phenolic balloon and epoxy coat, trowelled on and teased into the corners with a stiff brush. Feels good to be done with the deck glassing, except a little detail work around the rudder, but that's close. Now just to get busy sanding, every chance I get! Good thing I have lots of smaller projects to keep me busy when my arms go limp...

Change of pace

2012-02-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

Some folks have some difficulty with the bulb shape, and this kind of stuff comes easily to me, and I wanted to explore the possibility of using a beaver tail shape on the typical bulb design we've all been using. So it's the same weight, maintains the same curve of areas, and looks like this:

There's a step by step on the i550class.org forum if you want to make your own, and this plug is available to the class if you don't. I'll be adding the updated shapes to the "some useful files" link at the top right of this page.

I've also been working on the cockpit, getting it ready for glass.

This is going to be the companionway trim, a bunch of <1/16" strips of fir to be laminated. Even at this thickness, they'd break around that corner, so I soaked their middles in hot water for 10 minutes, and pressed them into the form. The pic shows them drying and "setting". I'm off to glue them up later this morning.

I've squeezed in a couple deck sanding sessions between all this, but I really need the cockpit glass done before I can finish the fairing and filler process, and get some primer on. Getting closer, though!

Evening glass off

2012-01-29T13:32:00.000-08:00

... a surfing term, referring to the windless, calm conditions that often occur just before sunset.

I'm using the term a little differently:

Deck, glassed and peel-plied.

In other news, I went to the Strictly Sail boat show in Chicago and saw some folks and stuff. Had a beer with Jeff and his parents, and he's keen to get out this summer after a year off to marvel at the wonder of a new child in the family. Hopefully, this won't be his last free summer before he goes and mucks things up with yet another kid! Kevin, who lives in Chicago, was out of town but says he needs to get back on the water as well. It looks like the upper midwest might just get its act together this year!

Cool stuff at the show were Harken's new T2 family of light, easier to tie on small blocks, Colligo has a couple new bits of hardware that haven't made the catalogue yet, and the "VX One Design" has a couple nifty hardware solutions that could be applied to an i550- their sliding shoe GNAV is very slick. Bainbridge says they're beginning to stock some of Marlow's D12 Max 78 & 90 in small diameters- this is basically the same kind of rope as Dynex Dux, similarly heat-set and pre-stretched, but in 2.5, 3m and 4 mm sizes, versus Dux's 5mm minimum size. I'm thinking top-mast shrouds at 3mm myself, I'm sure there are other uses as well.

Edit:

added a fill and fairing coat.

On top of the glass, the rule for me is no more West Microlight, just phenolic micro balloons. This coat is about like mayonnaise- basically as thick as I can get it, while still being spread-able with a chip brush with the bristles cut to half length. If I've done a decent job of fairing the deck underneath, I should be able to sand about 75% of this coating off. So I've got that to look forward to...

First boom lamination

2012-01-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

I've been working this out in my head the last few days, and spent a couple hours getting as much stuff pre-ready as I could:

These are the materials to laminate one side of the boom, from left to right is: the foam core; several lengths of 4oz. uni; the female part of the mold with packing tape, absorber cloth, and peel ply double-sticked to it; the top (side of the boom) caul with a stack of of mylar, peel ply and absorber all double-sticked to it; and the smaller strip are the cauls for the top and bottom of the boom.

I wet out the carbon uni in the long lengths, rolled up each length, then cut the several angled segments in place as the lamination proceeded. I figured this would be more tidy than trying to wet out both sides of 50 or so angled strips, all about 6" long. Next time, maybe I'd just use a single bloody piece of +/- 45 degree biax! It took almost three hours to get this all laminated and in the clamps- the very edge of this epoxy's open time.

Unclamped and freed from the cauls. Feels light, which is good...

Freed from the peel ply and absorber layers, feels lighter....

Showing 29 oz.

There's about 25% of the carbon to be trimmed away still, plus about 2" off of each end. Say 23 oz. once it's trimmed? Right on target to match (or beat?) C-Tech's 5.5# boom weight! Now, if it only turns out strong enough...

Latest filler round on the deck, backfilling against the cockpit/deck radius biax. I'll go sand it in the morning, then start laying out the deck glass. I'll do the cockpit later as its own separate glassing session, since there's still plenty of sanding, rounding over, and filling to do there.

More booming

2012-01-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

Spent a few minutes getting my boom plan more fully sorted, as seen in pic above. There's a pdf added to the "some useful files" link, if you're interested in a copy with better resolution.

So I've added the little mini fillets to the foam side pieces, now just waiting for an available couple-hour period where I can get one of them laminated on both sides. Might be waiting for some courage too- I know it's going to be a bit of a messy fur ball getting all the little +/- 45 pieces applied, sorta neatly.

Hatch shelf/gutter cleaned up and dry fit.

I'm still unsure what I want for the companionway boards. I've been thinking of using some sort of fabric solution instead of traditional boards, maybe a boltrope hanging from the back end of the lid, and the sides velcroed down the outside of the bulkhead? I'm not worried about making things burglar proof, just generally water resistant. Swapping the fabric for insect screen would also be nice for camping.

Deck sanding continues. I've sanded the radius from deck to cockpit, and will add a piece of biax tape over that foam, backfill some filler against that, and do another round of sanding before applying the deck glass. I though of getting the deck glass on just to achieve that milestone now rather than later, but I suppose it's better to do the steps in the order that best achieves the over all goal...

Random sanding thoughts

2012-01-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

First, a pic before the morning's sanding session:

And then I spent two hours sanding it down. It's freezing outside, the shop heater is dialed back to around 50 degrees, and I'm still coated in sweat, which means I'm also coated in filler dust. Yay.

How much sweat dripping on the hull until it's considered "wetsanding"?

If I sand long enough, there will be enough dust on the floor so I can step down into the boat.

I want to glass the shear with some biax tape tomorrow, one (?!?) more round of fairing to blend that in, then glass the deck.

Then move into the cockpit. Not looking forward to sanding in the confined space, but at least most of that surface gets coated in non-skid, so I'll work on just getting things smooth, rather than truly fair.

I've built a nifty mold for my hatch support and rain channels, and started on the tooling for the boom parts. Nice to have interesting stuff, in between the enhanced interrogation sessions!

Edit to add pics of the hatch support mold and the shear biax:

The cabin top is curved, but I've made the mold flat. The finished part will be flexible enough to bend into position. The curved bits are cut from a donut of ply made from drilling two different sizes of hole saw. The middle straight piece is tapered toward the center, and the end pieces are fatter at the ends. The idea is to insure there are no low spots, and the water always drains out the ends. All the pieces have a 3 degree taper sanded into the edges so the layup can be released. The mold needs to be wet sanded, waxed several times, then I'll layup and vacuum some fabric over it and then glue the assembly to the underside of the cabin. I'm using a glass (and scrap carbon) solution because my hatch is a little smaller than most, and I want to reduce the opening as little as possible. I think I can make this a lot smaller and thinner and less obtrusive this way, than if I made it in wood.

Shear biax under peel ply. The peel ply helps to smooth and slightly consolidate the biax, so it needs a little less fairing filler to blend into the deck and hull sides. I backfilled against the tape with some filler this morning, so I'm one or two sanding sessions from glassing the deck.

I found this biax at Raka- it's their 12 oz by 6". I wished I'd found it earlier, instead of the 17 oz. stuff that everybody else carries. Apparently, they used to carry 6 oz. biax tape as well, which would have been perfect in my opinion.

Not worth a separate post, so here's another edit:

Hatch parts a-bagging.

Out of the bag...

... and rough trimmed.

I got a little bridging at the inner corners of the mold, even though I tried pretty hard to work the cloth in there. Probably a result of using stiff cloth (17 ox biax, mostly) I imagine. Oh well, some filler will make it alright.

My inside corner sander. A 2" pvc pipe union, split in half, and screwed from each side to a wood block. By dialing the screws in, I can flex the plastic until I get just the right radius to match the fillet. The two pipe segments also articulate just a bit, so the paper stays in better contact around the curves.

I have another round of filler on the deck, cured and ready for sanding.

Glass going on soon.

Starting the new year with a boom...

2012-01-03T09:06:00.000-08:00

Not a productive holiday as far as boat progress goes. I've worked out how I want to build my boom, ordered the materials, and here's the drawing:

I measured the C-Tech boom when I took delivery of Brandt's and my rigs, so I have a benchmark to shoot for. The goal is to match their weight, while making it strong enough (duh!), easy enough to make, and cutting the cost in about half. Not sure why I'm doing this now, other than I needed to order some other materials and decided to figure this out so I could add it to the order. And it's fun to have an interesting project available, to break up the sanding sessions.

The working side of my shop is filled with materials for a shed for my father in law (once they find out you can draw, and build, it's all over!), so boat progress (other than sanding...) is at a halt while I push the shed parts through.

Happy 2012, folks!

Deck fairing and stuff

2011-12-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

I've done a few rounds of deck sanding and filling, including the shear. Nothing pretty about that so no pics, other than some of the little jobs that need to get done before deck glass goes on.

I want to add a little shear resistance to my all-uni chainplates, as well as visually clean them up a little. I'm using some fiber-reinforced bog fillets, a layer of biax, and a layer of thin glass so I don't sand into the carbon. I'm doing one side at a time, so I can drill through from the good side. I filled the holes with non-silicone caulking to keep them from getting epoxy filled and thus making it harder to keep the drill exactly aligned in the existing holes.

The "form" is a short piece of 2x4 with a 3/8" radius on one corner, wrapped in packing tape, weighted down with some left over lead chunks, and clamped sideways to the chainplate, over a piece of peel ply.

Both sides done, and smoothed up a bit. Still needs a touch of filler, but there's plenty of that being slung around these days so it'll get done shortly.

Tabbing the bottom of the compression post to the lower flange. I used shrink tape and the same tape-wrapped blocks-with-a-radius to press the tabbing into position.

In other news, I was asked about my prod setup by somebody that wants similar articulation from a below deck pole. I spent some time organizing my drawings, notes and pics in case anybody else is interested. That drawing can be found from the "some useful files" link above, or directly here.

I think I wrote about it earlier when the parts were being built, but the reason I did my prod the way I did was because I wanted a cleaner below deck solution, and I wanted more articulation than the inside angle of the bow would allow. The above deck solution allows a full 90 degree swing, so functionally it works better than anything else. The inside the boat solution allows between 16 and 19 degrees of articulation each way, depending how you brace the back end and how much you cut out frame 18. My puck solution is designed for 45 degrees of articulation, but comes with a little risk and complication. Your choice how you feel about the balance of aesthetics, function, and risk/complication!

For a primo interior solution, I'd copy this build, -I think his internal articulation is about as clean as anything I've seen. Following this example, it should be possible to get close to 24 degrees each side of center, much more than any other solution I've seen. Relevant pics here and here.

A few more sanding sessions to go, but 36 grit long boards make it go quickly. Gotta use the heavy grit now, since it won't be a good idea once the glass is on....

Bogging down

2011-12-08T12:34:00.001-08:00

I have some low spots on the deck near the cockpit edge where I didn't do such a good job of aligning the deck/cockpit edge when I glued the deck down. Two layers of toothed-trowel bog should bring the low spots up.

I bought 3 gallons of "Raka" epoxy for the fairing and glass sheathing work. It's half the price of West; for fairing where most ends up on the floor who cares about the brand, and for sheathing it's lower viscosity (is that right? -anyway it's runnier) and slow cure time should make things go easier for this one person shop.

Tuning up the quiver. Most of these were made for a keel fairing project, and are too flexible for the i550's straight-ish lines. I added a stiffener to two of them and I'll see how that goes.

Holy chicken feet!

Internal plug for the base of the mast is now done and ready to set aside until ready to start mast work.

Huh? What are these?

Not ballast!

Stepped up.

2011-12-02T09:22:00.001-08:00

The step is sorted. Trimmed it to size, dremel'ed a bolt head sized recess in the cabin top, and traced out a circle of tape to keep this area from getting further coated or painted- I imagine that tape circle is going to get re-applied a few times before all is done. The step itself won't get glued down until after paint, and I'll gloss it up and keep its carbon look.

And my sleeve could be better, so I'm trying plan B. The old one was too many layers and too thick, and I used too many layers of plastic between the laminate and the mast wall. I suppose I was a little timid about getting the thing stuck inside and ruining the mast. Put all that together, and the sleeve's ID was just too small to get the stuff inside that I wanted to fit.

So now just one layer of packing tape stuck inside the mast, a single layer of mylar with a small overlap, a layer of peel ply, the laminate- about 3 layers of biax, peel ply, absorber, a wrap of bag film (it's stretchy, and prevents epoxy adhesion to the latex), and then the bladder. So far it's holding nicely at 40psi, with a warming lamp under to keep things cooking. Once again, I'll see in the morning how it looks.

Also have the compression post propped up inside the boat, with the top and bottom flanges tack-welded in place. The post has had the wedge-sleeve glued in, I've bored the pivot holes and tuned up the fit of the moving parts, and it all seems good so far.

Once the tack welds set, I'll give it the full fillet and tape treatment, but it'll be easier to get clean results on the bench, than inside the boat.

Funky widgets

2011-11-29T15:13:00.001-08:00

I used my epoxy-free week (dang, stuff takes a long time to ship here!) to figure some stuff out, and cut a bunch of G10 parts to be ready to glue up.

I'll let these two pics speak for themselves. If you don't know what the parts are, you'll probably be offended, or something!

Also spent some time thinking about the jib tracks. The little hole in the cabin side is for the jib clew height line which will go the car and up to the clew, so I want the track to be sorta square to that, so that as the car is eased out along the track the clew at least won't be pulled downward -when you ease something, you generally don't want to decrease twist. This also slants the outward edge a bit further forward than usual, so that easing the car will also decrease the distance to the tack, which is what you usually do when you ease from close hauled to reaching.

The little stick jammed into the chainplates is to indicate where the lower stay will be, so I can see how far back and in I can get the jib clew.

The green rope is part of a clamping apparatus to glue in the little cleat boxes I made a long time ago, into the bulkhead. I put some pics on the Picasa site and not here- they show some stuff that would ruin the mystery of the funky parts and I can't have that.

Edit to add some progress pics of these parts:

Poor man's lathe:

chuck the bolt (shaved to 1/2"ø) in a drill press, and run an angle grinder against it while it spins. The cup was just cleaned up by hand sanding.

The cone gets wrapped in some cloth to create a stable mounting platform. I bagged it since it's tough sometimes to get the cloth to conform to the tight corners.

After bagging. I'll trim it to about 1" past the cone, then G-Flex it to the cabin.

Trying a bladder to make a inside-of-mast shaped sleeve to incorporate into the mast base cup support.

I'm dubious this is going to work on the first try, but I'll see in the morning. I have ideas for a simpler method if this turns out pear shaped (literally?).

And here's the little cleat recess boxes. Shades of the transom of a Santa Cruz 27?

Ah heck, I'll edit this again to add another progress pic of some of the parts mentioned above:

This is the internal sleeve for the mast which came out alright, the "bladder" -a piece of 1.5" latex tubing from McMaster with some closet rod pieces shoved in the end, and the assembly of the mast cup. The mast cup will be bonded into the sleeve, which will be bonded into the base of the mast. I'm not ready to do any mast work yet, but I want to get these parts built at the same time as my mast step, so I know they will all work well together, later.

Also in the pic is my jib track backing plate- a piece of scrap 1/4" ply with two layers of biax bonded to one side. I'll cut it into two inch strips and glue it to the underside of the deck, and the glass will be a hard surface to prevent the track nuts and washers from sinking in.

Also got the compression post top fasteners bonded into the cabin top, and some parts of the compression post assembly glued together. Lot's of little things to do before painting the inside, it seems. Besides, this is much more fun than sanding the deck!

Lidded

2011-11-21T12:46:00.001-08:00

I did as much interior prep as I could tolerate, and decided the time to put the lid on had finally come. I'm sure there's plenty more to do inside that I'll later regret not doing, but I need a dose of tangible progress and here it is.

I managed to run out of epoxy doing this, so I'll do some other stuff for the next few days- cut out the hatch, sand the deck and shear, sand and radius the cockpit bensons, figure out the mast step, and stuff like that.

Comp-posted

2011-11-18T11:20:00.001-08:00

That's compression post.

Trimmed to fit, with the top flange, bottom flange, the wedge-sleeve, and the cap shroud lever all in place. I won't glue the bits together until after the cabin top is glued down. Then I need to figure out how to fasten the post to the boat- I don't want to glue it in. Bolts at the bottom is easy enough, but the top connection needs some thinking- something that ties into the mast step I suppose.

Closer-up view of the top.

So after this fun project, I spent the rest of the morning sanding the under-deck taping, as well as everything from f18 to f124 to get ready for interior paint. I'll do the painting once the lid is glued on, so with the sanding done I'm finally ready to seal that big hole in the deck.

stuff to do before the lid goes on

2011-11-14T12:24:00.001-08:00

The cabin is ready to put on, but I'm finding lots of little jobs to do first. Stuff that will be much harder once the cabin is on...

I'm building cedar-slat bunk flats for gear storage and to use as a sleeping surface. I need some ledgers along the hull sides to support them, and here they are being installed, with lots of little sticks and pads to get them level and flat as the glue sets.

All set. With the easy access I have now, I'm also working on getting the slats cut to the hull side.

The other biggie is the compression post, which will look something like the pic above.

I've made the cap shroud lever and the wedge-shaped sleeve that it will pivot in, and now the post itself is getting laminated. I'm using some braided sleeve, a bunch of uni, and some biax around the cutouts for the pivot wedge. I didn't bother to vacuum this part- just milked the outer layer of sleeve pretty aggressively, applied some strips of peel ply, then wrapped in cling film packaging wrap. I don't need this part to be super light, and white eps foam won't resist more then a little vacuum pressure anyway.

Edit to add pics of the finished bunks, and the layup of the flange for the bottom of the compression post.

Spreadsheet fun

2011-11-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

Screen shot:

I ran out of time to do an under-deck glassing session today (that's the excuse I'm going with, anyway), so I used my remaining time to weigh the boat. The calculator entry is the sum of the bow, stern, and cabin top weights, and the spreadsheet above is based upon my gyradius spreadsheet, with all the stuff I haven't done yet "zeroed out".

Nifty, eh?

Shop geekery

2011-11-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

So I wanted one of these:

.... but they all go for over a hundred bucks.

Using stuff I had laying around...

... and a few bits from the local hardware store...

I have a homemade saw stop for my chopsaw.

This is sorta boat related, since I used some graphite powder mixed in 5 minute epoxy to highlight the etched hairline in the plexiglass window!

The weekend was dedicated to house projects- installing a new kitchen island (with many cuts made with the assistance of my new saw stop!).

I spent a few hours this morning cleaning tape residue off the deck and cabin, and just generally tidying things up. I'll be able to put a few hours in every morning all week, so I hope to have the cabin glued to the boat by the weekend.

Cabin work

2011-11-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

So how to attach a foam/carbon cabin to a plywood deck?

The easy way is to tape the inside and outside joint and then fair the tape, but I want to avoid as much of the overlapping as I can by getting some of my primary fibers to also serve as the bonding flange.

First, a clamping caul to the approximate shape of the deck cutout.

Packing tape on the deck, then peel ply, with the top layers of peel ply and absorber ready to go.

One layer of 17 oz. biax getting pressed.

There's the boat-shaped flange.

Gluing the cabin onto the flange.

And here's the cabin all laid up. There's one layer of 9 oz. uni running side-side (and onto that flange!), with some local reinforcement around the hatch opening, around some future hardware cutouts, and lots around the mast step.

I plopped the whole thing on the ground and stood on it- it's bombproof, and that's without having the sides restrained from flexing outward by the bond to the deck.

So the plan is to tune up the deck cutout, trim and sand the flange a bit, glue the flange to the deck, then add one layer of light tape to the underside of the deck/cabin joint.

Trying out the boat lift

2011-10-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

A day of boat progress, many days of shop progress.

Cross country travel really gets a boat dirty, so I took an hour to scrub off the road grime as well as any blush from the sealer coat of epoxy that is covering the hull.

I now have a chain hoist and a piece of track secured to the shop ceiling, and used it to lift the boat off its trailer. Had to drill a hole in the bottom of the boat where the keel slot will be, as well as temporarily rig up the aft kite blocks. So a fun day of rigging, and moving heavy stuff with ropes. The folding padeyes I wanted to use for boat lifting arrived via UPS while the boat was hanging...

With the trailer out of the shop, the boat spun around and sitting at counter height instead of chest high, things are starting to feel much less cramped. Lumber racks, a plywood rack, chopsaw bench, a stout workbench, a heater, and the good old Delta table saw that I've grown up with are all in place.

I've worked out how to proceed on finishing my cabin blister and that's what's coming next. If I can work through the winter, maybe I can catch up to some of you folks that have had a productive summer!

New shop

2011-08-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

So no actual progress on the boat, except (slowly) getting the shop organized.

I still need to clean the boat, and then take it off the trailer so I can better finish those bunks, as well as work on the deck at a more reasonable height.

Meanwhile, in other news I've milled new hickory (Missouri grown!) moulding for the house, knocked down a few walls, painted most of the house interior, put in wood floors, had carpet put in, sawn down a couple dead trees, mowed the lawn (it takes a couple hours), did some local (well, three hours away!) dingy racing, and drawn a couple houses -yep, still plugging away at the ol' day job.

My house projects are getting close to being close to done, and then I can sneak in the odd day or hour on the boat.

Trip stats

2011-07-09T03:47:00.000-07:00

1874 miles,

stopping to see the Grand Canyon,

going over Wolf Creek Pass, elevation 10,900 feet,

...and now safely tucked into its new shop, needing to be cleaned of a bunch of road grime.

Traveller

2011-06-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

So I hit the rail with a router and the whole boat with a DA just to rub off the weathered wood and clean it up a little, then rolled on a sealer coat of epoxy to protect it on the road. Then I pulled it out into the yard to see how it looks, and it's almost good enough to leave unpainted! Very cool to see that adding the curves to the frames really does make a fair hull. If I had been a little more careful with the scarf joints, and colored the hole-filing putty a little better, I just might consider it.

1800 miles to the new house, and expect to see pics of the boat in its new, real shop when we get there.

Cabin meets boat

2011-05-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

I scribed the still-large cabin to fit the deck, cut about an eighth inch from the line with the handy four inch grinder/cutoff blade, then block sanded to the line. This is the dry fit still, since I still have to laminate the inside.

I think it looks alright, but it's hard to get a distant view in my small build shed.

And back off the boat, with more work to be done. I added a decent sized microlight thickened fillet along the side/top joint. The fillet isn't really "structural" in this case- it just acts as a smooth form for the reinforcement that gets placed later. The two oval red patches are solid blockouts for a pair of through deck blocks for the jib sheet height adjustment line, and the big U-shape is where I routed out the core and backfilled it with thickened epoxy to give a solid edge to the companionway opening.

The doubled area of G10 is where the compression post will bear, and the additional area behind that, in front of the hatch will have a bunch of holes and fairleads cut through, so I can lead lines below deck.

The house is sold, escrow opened today, so the clock is ticking on getting the boat buttoned up enough to make the cross country trailer ride! I'm guessing my hull will soon have the most odometer miles of any i550 out there...

Progress in the neutered shop

2011-05-13T17:55:00.000-07:00

What's the opposite of monster garage? -One where the stuff inside has to be able to be put away at any time so the realtor can drag people through. So given that, I'm working on small stuff mostly.

Maybe this can be another "what is it" from the skunkworks? Recent followers of the forums at i550class.org might have a clue what this is...

Cabin, flipped.

Wood buck, removed.

That was fun- my first use of a hammer in building the boat, as far as I recall.

My carbon dude is out of the stuff I want to use for the inner skin, so this will have to wait until about next Wednesday or so. The plan is to run 9 oz. uni from side to side, 2 layers offset about 15 degrees from square, some additional stuff running through the mast step area completing the BOD, and with some additional longitudinal stuff around the companionway cutout.

Cabin, part 2

2011-05-06T17:15:00.000-07:00

Trimmed the sides flush and fair with the top surface. Block plane is the go-to tool for most of the shaping, then tune things a little with a longboard.

Next, mark out two lines equal distance from the "chines" to define a uniform bevel.

Then mark down the center of the bevel, and roll the double chine into a radius, using a long block sander primarily, working in long diagonal strokes, and trying not to take out the center-of-curve reference line.

One batch of fairing filler to clean things up just a little, a little more sanding, and then all the cloth bits cut and the lamination table set up. With my house for sale, my shop is a bit neutered so that I can park two cars inside, so trash can benches is what I get.

Can't vacuum bag this shape, so peel ply weighted down with a bunch of clamps will have to do.

I used up lots of the excess carbon bits from a few past projects. That also meant I couldn't just drape some big sheets over the whole cabin and wet them out in one step. So there's a big layer of heavy triax on the top, some uni and biax running up the sides and overlapping the corner to beef that up, and some uni tapes across the mast step to act as the first half of a sort of BOD, for the Olson 30 fans out there. The 2nd half of the BOD will be underneath, with a thickened foam stringer and some more uni, creating the bottom half of a big, bent I-beam that will keep the side decks from having any tendency to flex inward under shroud tensions.

Edit to add:

Peel ply off.

Forgot to mention, I added a layer of 6 oz glass over the carbon to act as a buffer when fairing, and to add a little bit of thickness for better impact resistance. I was shooting for about 30 oz. of material for the outer skin, and about 50 for the corners. We'll see if it is enough- it "feels" solid so far.

Tinted, slightly thickened coat rolled on. I'll lightly sand this, maybe do one round of fairing, then flip and laminate the underside. I've got to think about the hatch design, and any hardware that gets mounted to the cabin, so I can carve out the foam and place compression material before the inner skin goes on as well.

More cabin foam, mast step

2011-05-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

Mast step insert, ready to glue in. I'm using 1/4" G10, with an extra layer where the compression post will bear on it. In the foam I routed a rabbet all around so that the thick fiber patch wouldn't make a mound in the foam surface.

Ready to glue and laminate.

Low tech fiber consolidation...

And to back up a little, I've trimmed the top foam and added the side foam, but the side foam is still oversized. I'll shape a radius into the top edge, add the glass, then put the whole cabin on the boat and scribe the bottom edge to fit. It turns out the height I arbitrarily chose for the mast step is to be regulated by an arbitrary new rule (the rules have been a moving target for this entire build...), so I took a couple measurements and it looks like I'm a little short. I'll have to remedy this by scribing off less material when I fit it to the boat, or adding shims to jack the cabin up.

Winging it

2011-04-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

My latest sidetrack...

... a wing cradle for a friend's glider, with the first laminate underway.

Gotta say, it's just cool to have an airplane parked in your driveway.

Another sprit done, back to i550'ing soon.

2011-04-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Bow "splash" (background), rough shaped foam male mold, and carefully shaped wood tip plug.

Aaaargh!

First 4 layers of carbon in the vacuum bag, but just a little too much pressure for the glassed foam mold. I had to rip it off, tried to save the mold, but it didn't happen. So here's mold #2 made in record time (the 2nd ones always go faster than the first...), and honestly not nearly as fair as the first, but good enough.

Over the last 4 days I've worked almost nonstop on getting the two structural laminations done, a night post curing at 115 degrees, three rounds of fairing and filler (good torture board warmup, for when I eventually get to that step with the i550), cut the ends and slots, add the outside "beauty layer" of 2x2 twill, then ease and round all the edges. Seen here at 0600 after sanding and detailing since 0400, just before hitting the road to deliver it to the painter. The boat's program manager was there and was really stoked at how it turned out. We're planning to glue it to the boat tomorrow, if we get a break in the rain.

After the frenzy of the last few days, I have carbon dust, carbon scraps, carbon fibers stuck to the floor, and tools spread all over my shop- it's a disaster area right now. A day of cleanup and recovery is in order, then back to some i550 messes, I hope.

Edit to add pic of prod painted and glued to boat:

Best one-day paint job I've ever seen! Maybe it was that super fair shape he had to work with though, heh.

Other side:

Hmm, I can see the lump caused by the exit slot reinforcements. No, no more putty and weight and fairing needed, thanks!

steel horse

2011-03-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

My neighbor's new guest lodger likes cheesy classic rock, loud, so if I have it rolling around in my head, you get to share some Bon Jovi too.

Long couple days, getting the bunks made (they're about 90% now, just some sanding, glassing, and painting to go -hmm, made only 75% done, then), getting the trailer stripped (tore up knuckles from wrenching on rusty bolts and galvanized frame), getting the mold for another prod ready (side job), turning the boat around in the driveway on its cradle, pushing it back into the shed (it bottoms out on my yard, so I need to keep putting skid plates under, and ramps under the wheels, think egyptians pushing the rocks up when they built the pyramids), then lift the boat (turns out saw horses were easiest- just lift an end of the boat and kick the horse under, aligning it with your feet while your knuckles strained), roll the trailer under, and drop the boat on. Pics of this ramble follow:

build jig (missing f18 and f214 at this point, but I still have them)

moving things around

2011-03-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

A picture of the empty build shed. No I haven't cut the boat up to make room for a Shaw650 build....

I bought a trailer. The truck, with the hitch, was in front of the boat. To get the trailer, the boat had to be made mobile. So bolt a couple wheels to the building jig, and ooch it out onto the driveway, sweep under the jig (some fun bits were found there), extract the truck, go get new tires for truck since the old ones rotted over the last year of sitting, go fetch the trailer tomorrow, spend the weekend getting trailer ready for boat and somehow get the boat on the trailer. That's the plan.

Thinking of hoisting the boat inside the shed, from a rafter (or two). Whaddaya reckon a 10' long 2x6 can support, midspan?

Oh, and a boat name has slowly percolated to the top lately.

"Curious Mix", a reflection of the curiosities that I hope to include and explore with the boat, and the fact that my last name is Mc-something.

it fits

2011-03-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

Bolted the beast on to the boat this morning, using a temporary line and the old bobstay/downf*er to push it firmly onto the boat before drilling the holes.

I checked the measurements one last time- the rating cert for this boat allows for one meter past the headstay intersection with the deck, and the tip is sitting at 99.5mm. Close enough, eh?

Now it's in a painter's hands, and then we'll go sailing with it in a week and a half.

Busy in the shop, just on the wrong stuff

2011-03-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

Mast bracket for three B&G 20/20's, getting a clear coat here.

Grinding the paint and bog off a boat's nose. I tented myself inside a bunch of plastic while grinding- what fun!

... and vacuum bagging a couple layers over clear packing tape and peel ply, to act as a mounting saddle. I wrapped it in a heating blanket so it could cure overnight.

The splash, removed from the boat, and it still has its peel ply and breather/absorber layers. I wrapped the grind area on the bow with shelf paper to keep the boat from looking too guerilla in this swanky marina, while the prod gets made.

Here's the first prod, just about finished.

So no progress on the i550, and it looks like it is going to get very little attention before I move east this summer. My plan is to try to get the cabin glassed and put on the deck, glass the deck, then just roll on a protective layer of epoxy onto the hull for the trailer trip across the country.

Lot o foam

2011-02-01T16:40:00.000-08:00

...not from an overly agitated cold brew, in this case.

I have the foam for the top of the cabin in place. This is 9mm A550 Corecell foam, and all but the front bit (to the left in the pic) were just bent on, scribed to fit the previous one like broadseaming sailcloth, edges glued, and screwed to the wood buck/mold. The front bit I heated with a hot air gun to get it to curl under a little. I'll use a thicker piece for the cabin top corner and shape it to suit, rather than try to get a clean heat-formed curve there- it would take more battens in the mold to better define the shape, and I don't see the need in this case.

But now this is on hold for a little while because I got asked to do something even cooler than work on my own boat, if there could be such a thing:

I was asked to design and build a prod for a 40' boat, and I've been grinding on that in my spare time this last week. Went down and wrapped the bow of the boat with a bunch of layers of carbon and bagged it down this morning, made the prod tip reinforcement widget the day before, and have been turning my garage into an absolute mess shaping the male mold foam blank:

This is still just rough shaped, with bevels where radii will go soon- although I like the chine look! The bow widget fits against the wedge shape cut into the tip, to be wrapped and incorporated into the overall carbon skin.

So I'm hoping to exploit (heh!) an opportunity to get a sail or two for the i550 out of this, since my sailmaker runs this boat- we'll see.

Then, today I got asked to build one for a 50' boat...

Measurement woes

2011-01-16T12:12:00.000-08:00

I visited Ben yesterday, and we broke out copies of the old rules and the most recently updated rules that are being proposed. As most folks know, Ben is a "just build it" guy- he built the boat as close to the plans as he could with no tweaks. His boat is as close as anybody's to the brochure model- it looks like the original i550 with the long cabin and the deck mounted pole. No aggressive rules exploitation, anywhere.

But there are still three current rules that his boat doesn't comply with- it's too wide at the transom since the projected deck point exceeds the max width (this will be true on all boats built to the plans), his forestay attaches "further forward than the stem" (like Andrew's original boat, and two others), and his J is too long since he followed the designer's advice to "hook a tape to the stem" to set his mast placement.

I think the class should be really embarrassed by this. I keep hearing that the rules "are working for us", but it seems that's only true if you don't apply the rules.

Anyway, we tried a couple other ways of measuring the hull shape. I brought the transom jig that I made and it worked well on his boat too. He had a thick build up of tape under the transom center, but was still in compliance with the proposed rules. His other dimensions are right in the center of the tolerances for the proposed rules.

There's one other method of doing the beam/freeboards that I've been working on for the angle/template phobic, where beam is done to the actual boat, and freeboard (only) is done to the projected deck/hull planes, and from the hull bottom instead of chine. I was able to verify that another (besides my own) boat built to the plans has the tolerances centered on the actual boat's dimension. Which is good.

Since Ben built from tyvek patterns and still had them, I asked if we could lay the hull side panel pattern over his boat. I had the idea that this was a way of checking for gross changes to the hull shape, and it does. Ben cut his panels carefully, and joined them accurately- when the pattern is lined up just above the chine, it's easy to see the uniform reveal between the pattern and the chine- they follow parallel paths as you would expect. So in my opinion, this could be a valid way to check for large, deliberate alterations to the hull panels that violate the "from the plans" clauses in the old or new rules- sort of the equivalent of a RRS rule 2 violation. Since it made a fun pic, here's Ben's newly tyvek-sponsored boat:

And a little later we headed to the local lake for some uber-light air sailing, max 5 knots, maybe. Still a productive, fun day. We played with rig tune a little, and found some things for Ben to improve on the boat and trailer- this was only the third time he had been out. We managed to sky the main halyard for lack of a stopper knot, and leave the beer back at the house. Oops.

Progress has been made on my boat- I've finished the cabin mold and added about half of the foam. I'll post some pics in the next few days, once all the foam is on.

Tiller drawing

2011-01-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

Somebody asked for more details about this tiller, so here's everything:

Here's the cloth layout I used. It feels very solid as I lean on the various parts, so it should be strong enough. Sleeves came from Soller Composites, I used their 2.5"ø medium weight carbon sleeve.

The process is:

Use a paint brush to coat the shaped foam core with a heavy cream mix of epoxy and microlight filler.

On a plastic covered table, wet out the uni strips, squeegie-ing from both sides if needed to get all fibers wet. Then apply the uni strips to sides of the foam core.

My strips were sized so that they just barely lapped onto the top and bottom surfaces, giving them a sort of C-shape when installed. The important part is the stuff on the sides, though.

Next start wetting out the sleeves on the table, starting with the shorter ones.

Slide the sleeves over the ends- it's a little sticky, but by bunching and milking the sleeves over the ends, they'll pass over the wet layer below (I had to adjust on of the ineer layers slightly after this, but it wasn't a big deal).

Lastly wet out the full length sleeve and slide it over the rest, making sure there's a couple inches left over at each end. Soller recommends rolling or inverting the sleeve rather than sliding it on (like pantyhose or a condom), but I didn't have any trouble just sliding it on by gently bunching and milking it over.

Clamp one end of the left over sleeve and hang the tiller, and then firmly milk the sleeve upward and downward to compress it as much as possible. Hang another clamp from the bottom bit of left over sleeve to let gravity help out.

From here there are a few finishing options- I just let it cure after the last step above. You can also wrap this layup with spiral strips of peel ply for probably the best fiber consolidation and strength, with some risk of making the surface a little lumpy as the peel ply doesn't make all the curves, unless you have a fairly straight-sided tiller. Another option is to come back in a couple hours (after the initial epoxy has gelled) and add another coat or more of epoxy for a smooth finish with no sanding. I waited, cleaned off the blush, did some additional laminations for my rudder connection, then coated the whole finished tiller. The heavy weave of this sleeve weight will require at least on more coat to fill, but I don't think it will be needed- a little texture won't hurt anything.

Tiller done, cabin started

2011-01-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

Tiller, with a clear coat brushed on, hanging out to dry.

Laying out the cabin outline on the deck.

Making the forms look good, just eyeballing the shapes, taking them apart and whittling them, and putting it back together until it looks good.

Another view.

I did just the starboard side, and I've now taken it off the boat and I'll partially disassemble it to make matching pieces for the port side. I'll mount the form to a sawhorse and mold the foam over it, so the foam can run long at the bottom and later be trimmed to accurately fit the deck.

Deck on

2011-01-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Too late for a holiday themed "deck the halls" title...

Both mid-deck sections are now glued in. Starboard side went in yesterday, and port went in this morning. Feels good to cross this milestones. Or to invent new milestones to cross, depending on how you look at it...

I goofed a little on the layout of frame 110 and made the inner corner that supports the deck about 1/4" too low, so there's a bit of filler there. Oh, well. I'm going to let both sides cure a bit, enlarge the opening where the cabin will go- it's not the right shape yet obviously- and then do all the taping of the deck supports to the underside of the deck at once. Not something to look forward to.

Chainplates looking alright, poking through the deck. They need a bit of putty and sanding to look good, but I can see it already.

Here's the consequence of adding some round to my frame sides- the hull side panels don't quite reach the sheer. The continuous sheer clamps I installed are placed into the corners of the frames at the height the plans call for, so they are a bit higher than the panel and give continuous support to the deck edge. So this extra glue is no biggie, and most will get cut away as the deck edge gets radiused for glass.

Next steps on the deck will be to cut the overhangs off and rough out the radius- it's just easier to walk around the boat when it is 4" narrower and not catching your shirt all the time. Then I need to cut the cabin hole and build up the framework or mold for the cabin foam. More new tricks to learn there, can't wait!

Butt end of the tiller. I've excavated a 1/4" or so of foam out of the end, getting ready to fill it with some filler. I filled the cavities that face downward in this pic yesterday with the tiller flipped the other way- not going fighting gravity leads to less drips in this case.

The filler, tinted black with some graphite dust. I'm planning to leave the tiller "natural", so it looks better to use black goo where it will show. Last step is to sand it a little, bore the cross hole for the pivot, a little more "fitting" to make sure it can pivot upward, then a brushed on clear coat or two.

Holiday scarf, and other presents

2010-12-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

Foredeck glued down. I used lots of screws, removed them the next day, and have filled the holes.

Finally decided to tarp the stern so I wouldn't have to wait for another drying cycle after yesterday's rains.

Now that the aft and foredeck are installed, I marked the mid-deck pieces for length, trimmed their ends, and cut the scarfs on both ends. They have two coats of epoxy on their bottom sides now, and are almost ready to install.

I bought some larger sleeve material which arrived, so why not finish building the tiller? Seen here is the shaped foam core, and then onto that I'll add a strip of 4" x 9oz. uni on each side folded in half so it acts like 2 layers, then a shorter pair of uni strips about 24" long at the rudder end, then the sleeves: a doubler for the last foot near the handle, two tapered layers near the rudder, and one full length layer over everything.

The tiller all laid up. I lopped off the fiber ends this morning and tossed it on a scale- 22oz. and strong enough to take my weight in the middle. Cool. I continue to be amazed as I learn new tricks, how easy it is to make really neat and cool stuff nowadays.

jewelery shop

2010-12-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

Wherever I'm fabricating plastic parts and guides for the boat, I've been making a template so I can rebuild the part if it gets trashed or worn. Some of these will be really, really hard to custom fit after the boat is built, so knowing I can make an interchangeable part to just screw in later is a good idea, I'd say. Some delrin parts construction:

These are pole guides, to get the pole sorta centered as it first retracts. The S-shaped parts fit P&S against the hull sides, the U-shaped piece screws to the end of the pole, and (now) has a hole through it for the pole-out line. The jig/template is two sided for making the two parts- just cut appropriate square hunks of delrin, drill them as appropriate, bolt them into the fixture, rough cut and template-rout.

The pole end- this one goes on the inboard end (in front of the u-shaped piece above), and stupidly I didn't but should have made another for the outboard end at the same time- the saw is still set up so not a big deal. Anyway- I found one of my holesaws will cut a puck that is almost the perfect diameter to match my pole outer diameter, but no such luck for the inner diameter. This is the saw setup to nibble away a shoulder to allow the plug to partially fit inside the tube. DON'T do this unless you've had a long and happy relationship with your saw! Your fingers will be very close to the blade, and not getting it right is a good way to suddenly make counting past 7 much tougher to do.

And it fits.

Rain is supposed to continue for a while, so shop projects are the priority.

Rudder, part 4. And some bonus footage...

2010-12-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

So I put a vacuum together recently, did a few trial runs, and then bagged the two cap layers over the top of my rudder head. This is the plastic sheeting, over a layer of breather/absorber (terry cloth), a layer of peel ply, and then the two layers of CF.

Fresh out of the bag, not perfect but pretty alright.

After a little cleanup, it looks just fine.

Next up, some tangs to fit inside the ends of my jockey struts. Here's the jig parts...

... the finished parts...

... and the tangs installed into the ends of the struts. I goofed and grabbed the G5 epoxy instead of the G/Flex- they are in identical packaging except the labels. So let's hope the 5 minute stuff is up to the job- these aren't that highly loaded and they have lots of surface area so should be fine.

I test installed the struts in the boat, tied on the blocks that will make them move, checked it all over to see that there weren't any problems I'd be solving from inside the boat later, and I think this one goes into the "sorted" column.

Just a couple more little things before the foredeck goes on.

It'll never be easier than now

2010-12-11T18:22:00.000-08:00

... to put in the hardware that goes inside the boat. So...

some tangs that will be at the bottom of the compression post, to mount turning blocks for halyards and some other strings.

Pole out block in the bow, and the forestay turning block (below that hole in the bow frame) and guide tubes.

Aft side decks are on. When I originally glassed on the foam strips to the cockpit sides, I left a margin of dry glass for later (later = now) bonding to the deck underside, and it worked pretty well- it's a little ragged since it was done mostly be feel. I'll sand it a bit, but it's not an area I'm too concerned about, appearance wise.

Forward edge of deck with scarf, and pvc plumbing pipe lead into recessed box for spin sheet turning block.

And the entire interior has now been coated with two layers of epoxy throughout.

Just a few more small details to work out and the rest of the deck is ready to go on.

Harebrained

2010-11-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

Work's been busy the last two weeks, so there's been little boat work done. Had a full day today though:

I'm using 5mm ply for the aft 4', and the forward 80 or so inches of the deck. I don't think it is quite stiff enough without adding a bunch of stringers, so instead I'm coating the underside with 6oz cloth. I added a layer of peel ply to get a nicer finish, ready for gluing down to the boat.

I did the math, and this saves about 2# per full sheet of ply, versus using 6mm ply. That's if you squeegie the cloth aggressively so there is no extra resin- I used 8oz to wet out 25 sq. feet up front, getting a 2:1 fiber/resin ratio. Cool!

Skunkworks spyshot. Not saying more.

Inside jobs

2010-10-31T16:17:00.000-07:00

I've been doing what I can to make life as easy as possible once the deck goes on.

The spin sheet boxes are cleaned up, and ready to install. I also cut the speaker holes out back, so I can use it as an arm hole when I glue down and tab the two aft pieces of deck.

Bow is close to ready. Everything forward of f89 has been epoxy sealed, and I've installed my forestay eye against the back of the stem. I've got one more eye to install for the pole-out line- these things are heaps easier without crawling into the bow of the boat. It's very tight up there, I've already learned. Also visible here are the extensions of the boat's main stringers, done as a kind of I-beam with okoume ply on the vertical, and a fir strip rabbeted over it as the cap. To join the centerline seam, I laid down a piece of 6" tape, a piece of 3" tape, then some foam strips with beveled edges, capped by a piece of uni tape (folded in half lengthwise for a double layer, on top of the foam only), all capped by a 6" strip of glass tape. Trying to kill a few birds with the same stone- to join the panels at the seam, and add some panel stiffness.

The last areas to be coated are the bays between f89 and f124. Spent an hour today sanding and "de-burring" all the fiber edges and it's just about ready now except for a cleanup.

There's a couple other oddities that I'm working on in the skunkworks. If they turn out anything like I hope, I'll add pics as they go on the boat.

Last full measure (of plywood)

2010-10-21T17:22:00.000-07:00

I cut the last of my full sheets of ply, and now have all my deck panels, and just odd cut offs left in the scrap pile. Is that a milestone? Close enough.

The boat gets a little wet when it rains hard. No biggie, so far.

I've cut scarf joints in the two bow pieces, and joined them along the centerline. The middle section is the only one not scarfed yet, and it will be cut to fit between the far aft pieces, and the bow piece. I had planned to spend some time sanding and cleaning the area behind f169 so that I could epoxy seal it and glue down the aft deck pieces, but the rain is cramping my schedule. So...

...I've been working on other things, like sanding the rudder. It needs a last small wrap of carbon across the top to seal that bit of exposed filler and foam, then I'm waiting to have something else to paint, before mixing up a batch of primer. Seems like too much waste for little things like this, when almost as much paint goes into the pan and brush, as onto the part.

Spin sheet ratchets, to be installed a foot or so in front of the traveller, into the cockpit sides. Raw off the forms, except a light scotch-brite scrub in the sink. They'll get trimmed, sanded a bunch more, and coated again. These turned out better than the other pair, the difference being that I wrapped most of the forms in packing tape.

The whole kit. Out at the aft corner, I'll have a block, from there the line goes into the deck, through the pipe, and exits in front of the traveller. The pipe was cut at a very shallow angle, hypodermic needle style, and some glass glued around it while the cut end laid flat on the table, to then make a handy way to attach it to the bottom of the deck panel.

One less line to get butt-cleated, or lost over the side.

Brief interlude

2010-10-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

Ongoing house projects have been the focus lately- keeping the other half happy is a big component of successful boat building!

Right now I can't sand, and I don't have any work surfaces left to use for a wet out table, so boat work is nearly halted while this wood stuff is spread all over. I sprayed the last coat today, so I should soon be able to reclaim my space for its intended purpose. Good practice with the old cup gun, too- it's been a few years.

I did sneak the 2nd batch of fairing filler onto the rudder though.

Rudder, part 3

2010-10-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

This is what I did to remove the stainless steel pin (mentioned in the previous post)- heated some water in the microwave to around 150˚F, poured it into some stout ziploc bags, placed one below and one above, wrapped with a towel, and used a cooking probe type thermometer to make sure I didn't get much over 140˚F at the rudder surface. Once thoroughly warmed, the epoxy around the pin was soft enough to allow the pin to come out.

The first wraps of uni, over the epoxy filler "a-frames" from before. Chunks of Corecell foam in the background, getting ready to install.

Corecell pieces glued on, filleted and edges softened. I made the front radius solid filler so that the pin would have solid material to press against, and the unis would have solid material to wrap around. Also seen here is the G10 tube getting glued in to act as the tiller pivot. (I really should have bought a piece for the gudgeon pin as well, but the 48" piece was going to cost $50 or so, and I skipped it. This piece was left over from another project, but it has the wrong inside ø for the gudgeon pin, and was too short anyway.)

Just about the last of the carbon applied in this pic. There's continuous multiple wraps of uni at each strap location, followed by 2 layers of cloth that extend 1 and 2" below the lower strap. The waterline will be right at the notch, just below the strap "bump", so I want to reinforce this area without making it substantially thicker than the rest of the blade.

Today I sanded it all up a bit, and gave the whole blade a coating of very slightly fairing filler-thickened epoxy to act as a guide/warning coat for sanding. Until now I've kept everything black in case I wanted to clear coat it, but I've decided not to- I don't need the bling factor, nor the extra work needed to fair with straight epoxy. I like the filler additives too much!

And here is the most visible progress on the boat- adding the mid-deck beam in front of f53 and the fore-and-aft stringers behind f53. Both still have a bit of trimming and sanding to be done, but this is just about the last thing that needed doing before the foredeck goes on.

I've filleted and tabbed a few more of the aft side panel-to-frame seams as well, just have f169 and the transom to go.

Still ruddering, and stuff

2010-09-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

I have a friend thinking of building one like this, so I'm covering it more thoroughly than some might prefer...

I cut the tip to the rough profile that I wanted, used a dremel tool to hog out about a 1/2" of foam, wrapped the tip in tape to enclose it, squeezed it just a bit with the clamps and blocks, and then poured a heavy cream mix of epoxy, graphite powder, and high density filler.

The tip after rough sanding to shape. I want the leading edge radius to be consistent as it goes around the corner, which is why I put the squeeze on it earlier. Otherwise it ends up looking like a club foot and too chunky.

I did my figuring on what I want the top to look like, laid out the shapes, and cut it out. I used a 4" grinder with a cutoff wheel outside the lines, and then cleaned it up with a template and a pattern bit in a router. The foam was hogged out a bit, trying to expose about 1/2" of laminate inside, and leave the rest of the foam in about the shape of a fillet, from the inside.

Three layers of carbon cloth at three different axis orientations, peel ply on both sides, absorber cloth and mylar on the outside (pulled off, sitting at the edges of the pic), and packing tape on the wood block for release. The wood block was shaped to be the opposite of the cutout in the prior pic above.

...and then glued the laminate into the cutout. The foam was wet out, and the recess slightly over filled with a no- sag mix of epoxy, graphite powder (for color), and high density filler.

All trimmed neat, and all surfaces still have a clean peel ply texture, ready for the next steps.

This is pretty close to the finished profile. The trailing edge is still a bit ragged and a little long, and I'll wait to trim it to shape- the sacrificial extra material is nice to have for now.

Starting on the rudder gudgeons. I have a 3/8" SS rod for the pin, and I'm using it to align the several bronze bushings that will be embedded into the rudder. The transom gudgeon is just there to keep the right spacing between the lower two bushings.

Creating a sort of A-frame fillet enclosing the bushings and pin at the locations where the rudder straps will be wrapped. The epoxy filler is again wrapped in peel ply to shape it and eliminate (most of) the need for sanding.

I've since pulled the rod out (it didn't come willingly), cleaned up the filler some, and added the first layer of carbon uni strips over the top. Next will be some shaped foam blocks to fatten things a bit, and then wrap those with continuous hoops of uni, followed by a full sheet of cloth to tie everything together

And for something completely different-

I've been starting to build recesses for some blocks and cleats. Basically these are EPS foam blocks glued together until they're big enough, cut to the appropriate size and shape, their edges sanded to a reasonable radius, and then glued to a plastic-covered board. I cut a little window under the foam blocks so the glue would stick. The use quick, lightweight spackle to fill the pocks in the foam, and tool a radius at the bottom.

Here's the first set. I embedded a piece of G10 between the layers where the hardware will mount. The hardest part of building these is figuring out the folds and relief cuts and maintaining the fiber layout, especially once the cloth is wet out and stretchy and gooey.

Popped off the board, still have to dig out the foam and spackle, and then sand them. They turned out alright, might be able to leave them clearcoated, might have to paint, we'll see.

A deck beam to go between f53 and f18, made from strips cut off of my (former) fir rudder blank. It's been trimmed and installed, with some short little ply hanging knees under each end. Fun doing some wood stuff as a change from the constant glass work lately.

.... Which leads to what I was supposed to be working on for the last several weeks- glassing the frames to the hull sides. Nope, still haven't finished. I've done a couple, though- that work seems to require bigger continuous chunk of time than I've had available lately.

Rudder

2010-08-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

Seems to have come out just fine.

Removing the ply bits from the foam side forms and ends.

Removing the foam, then the absorber cloth and peel ply. I found equivalent material at the fabric store- t-shirt material for the absorber and nylon sport fabric for the peel ply, half price and they work just fine.

And here is the raw blade, tipping the scale at 3.25 pounds. It's straight, pretty fair, with a slight texture. Still to go is cutting the ends to shape, including the notch for the transom inset and shaping the bottom end, adding some compression plugs where the tiller will attach, then some thickened epoxy coats to sand and fair, and then add the gudgeons. And paint...

Overall, pretty happy with the result.

Cost summary, for those interested:

Foam- $85 (incl. shipping)

3yd 9oz x 24" wide carbon uni: $70

2yd 6oz x 50" carbon cloth: $60

10' of 3" x 9oz carbon uni tape: $11

Absorber cloth and peel ply: about $3

Epoxy and filler: guessing 1.5 pounds, say $20 ?

Scrap ply and 1x4

Putting off the dull stuff

2010-08-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

So I'm supposed to be taping hull sides to frames this week. Not a chore that is too exciting, a bit repetitive, involves bending over, etc. And I've had this snazzy foam blank from Flying Foam sitting on an out of the way shelf for a while, waiting to be made into a rudder. I got a few more frames taped, but the rudder has been winning more of my attention, go figure.

The rudder core is hot-wired foam. Since wires don't bend, to get a bent shape takes multiple pieces. I ordered a straight, parallel piece for the top half, and a piece cut to a 50% taper and a little sweep for the bottom. The core and the offcuts ("saddles") have been glued end to end with Gorilla glue, and the offcuts have been glued to some plywood backing. The core is glued to some pieces on each end... well, I'm basically following Bram's method for his Swift solo, you can look it up instead of me re-writing it here!

The foam foil came with some additional offcuts of foam to take up room in the box, turns out just enough to make into a tiller:

4 of the five pieces gluing, the last one is fatter to go around the rudder head, so gets glued last. I drew out and figured the angles to make the shape I wanted, cut them, and just clamped them over my wet-out table's plastic, with more Gorilla glue.

This is the general idea, before a bunch of whittling and then carbon wrapping.

I'll try to get more frames taped, but this work is so much more fun. It's all progress, right?

Edit:
Couldn't resist- I had everything ready, it was a cool-ish morning, so I went for the rudder lay up.

It went alright. I used heavy cream thickened epoxy to paint the foam, laid a tape of uni on each side, then a layer of 6oz coth, a 3/4 length layer of 8oz uni, a full length layer of 8oz uni, then a final layer of 6oz cloth. If i had to do it again, I'd wet-out the layers on a wet-out table and transfer them to the rudder. Wetting out cloth on the vertical feels so 70's, or something. Flicks of resin all over, the foam swaying all around as I pressed against it, it just didn't feel like a controlled process. But it worked, I'm pretty sure- I'll know more in the morning!

Plumbing, or something

2010-08-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

I've been taping the mid-panel stringers on both sides over the last few days, and now I'm starting to tape the frame to side panel joints. Of course, when I got to the 2nd frame (#53), there was "some stuff" going on that needed to get sorted before I moved on.

Internal, articulating prods need a way to keep them from ripping the bow of the boat apart. Losing a guy and letting the pole rotate past its designed limit would be a real bummer with this setup, to say the least. I've seen a couple ways to do this, drawn a few options, and finally decided on this. My solution is to add (retractable) jockey poles for the guys, and have stopper knots in the guys to limit how far they can be released. So, with the struts out, and the guy released "to the knot", the pole is about centered, and braced from both sides. As a jibe is completed and things settle down, the leeward strut is allowed to retract and the windward guy pulled on. Pulling in the leeward strut gives just enough slack to let the lazy guy follow the pole. In the pic is the guide for the struts, PVC pipe bonded to the hull sides and frame 53, bent to make room for the prod to retract, grooved for the adjustment lines, and carbon re-enforced where the strut's inboard end will be when deployed. The struts are 1 1/2" fiberglass tubes, stout and cheap from McMaster Carr. The last boat-preserving measure is to fasten the cover for the pole articulator with plastic screws...

I've got another few days of taping frames to side panels, then adding stringers to the bottom between 89 and 53, then figuring out foredeck support, a last look-around to see what I've missed (?), and then it'll be time to add the deck.

Getting back to it

2010-08-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

So I've had to take a break from i550 building to do some other stuff. I'm slowly getting back into it, re-stocking the epoxy supply, getting some uni carbon fro the rudder, basically taking inventory and making a to-do and to-buy list to get things moving again. Have to go easy on the wallet for a while though, so that goes into the planning as well!

I am going to use an upside down "pusher" vang, commonly called a gnav, and ordered most of the parts for that. On the mast at the top of the strut is a gooseneck, and I bought two from the company that makes them in Australia. This is the same fitting that the Vipers use, and everything except the mast saddle is what C-Tech uses for their goosenecks. Anyway, it's a Riley RM680, it costs about US$48, you would have to buy direct from Riley to get one, and they have a minimum order of US$100, wire transfers only, no credit cards. Which is why I have two...

(Pic from APS in their boat pictures section, no they don't sell them)

So if anybody else wants to use a gnav and save themselves the hassle and expense of going straight to Riley, I'll gladly sell my 2nd gooseneck at cost.

I have the rest of the parts, including the high load traveller car for the boom (from Harken, it's double the price at APS for some reason), and the track. Just need to get the strut sorted, aluminum tube or gucci carbon tube? Or a slightly bent tube to keep it somewhat out of the way of the main???

-Chad

Uncommon bond

2010-06-12T22:07:00.000-07:00

In old cowboy movies, they'd sometimes make two dudes slit their palms and hold (err, clasp?) hands. Blood brothers.

So I slathered some epoxy on another builder's boat today, and it felt sorta like that.
I said sorta.

Anyway, it was fun meeting Brandt and reviewing his mast with him and Ben- I'm sure it will cause him to redouble his efforts to get his boat going. He had the longer drive home so he left sooner, and I got to stay and help Ben do another coat of bog on his low spots. He thinks I put it on a bit thick, requiring extra sanding, as if it is part of a plot to slow his progress down to about the level of, say, mine. Wha, me? No, never.....

Couldn't possibly also be the reason we convinced to Ben to go "just one more round" of bog-and-sand, before glassing? And build a longer sanding board, with the handles closer to the ends, and, and, and? Only helpful things, nothing to do with delay! heheheheh.

Alright, 14 hours of driving today, and a bit of coffee and roadside crap food to make it happen- normal programming will resume sometime later. G'night.

Delivered

2010-05-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

The rig came on Friday. Actually, two rigs. By combining my order with that of another i550 builder, we were able to save a few hundred bucks in shipping costs from NZ. Plenty of others have said it, but I'll add that C-Tech's work looks really good. Having this juicy stuff laying around should be all the more of a kick in the pants to get more building done!

But alas, it's not going to be the case. With the clock winding down all too quickly for Pac Cup, I need to focus efforts on that full time. So other than the odd tinkering, I don't expect to spend any serious time on the boat until after July. Bittersweet- I'm stoked to have been asked to do a Hawaii race, something I've always wanted to do, but bummed at having to ignore such a fun project just sitting here waiting to be finished.

But don't let that stop any of youz other builders from passing me with your builds!

-Chad

A week forward of f18

2010-05-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

...with apologies to Richard Henry Dana.

This is the 2nd lay-up of the puck retainer. I turned the puck backwards in its hole, wrapped it and the bow in packing tape, and laid up carbon cloth and unis over it.

The mostly-finished part. It will get screw-fastened around the perimeter- I need to drill those holes and install some G10 discs inside for tapping into. This would be hell to do later, after the deck goes on.

Stem reinforcement. A layer of 6" wide kevlar tape under an 8" wide strip of bias-cut carbon.

More bow reinforcing. I added a bow frame to tie the mid-stringers together, and a solid piece of 17oz. biax on the hull bottom panel to tie the centerline seam and distribute impact and trailer loads there. I've begun to fit the delrins behind the puck, and re-drilled the holes for the forestay- they enter the stem at the top-forward edge, and can be seen exiting the stem right at the inside corner between the stem and puck plate. The idea is that the port leg of the forestay will dead end here, while the starboard leg continues down through the puck to the knuckle of the bow, turns aft and is lead to a bunch of purchase along the forward sole of the boat between f18 and f53.

I'll explain how (I think!) the puck works:

The top two holes in the pic are just lightening holes. The oblong hole at the center is for the pole-out line- it will dead-end below the puck on the stem, pass through the puck plate and enter the puck, turning aft (well rounded and polished holes here) and exiting the puck at one of the two holes seen near the prod hole. The line wraps around the end of the prod and returns to the puck, in the other little hole by the prod, out the center of the puck, through the upper puck plate, to a block at the top of the stem and aft to be cleated. So the pole out is a net 2:1 purchase so far, and will allow the prod to go all the way into the puck so the puck can rotate further than the hull's entry angle. Good so far? Now the last hole, the "smile" in the pic. That's for the adjustable leg of the forestay, which passes through the puck and is lead down to the knuckle as described above. The smile-shaped cutout allows the puck to rotate without interfering with the forestay.

So I've spent quite a bit of time this last week doing little detail things like this, and it feels I have little to show for it. But this really needs to be done and fully sorted before the deck goes on, because access will never be as good as it is now. I also ran out of tape for the stringers and frame-to-side panel joints, so this stuff gave me something to do while that was shipping.

Are tick you now, articuLATOR

2010-05-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a jig to mark the sides where the puck will hit them.

And the puck, prod, and boat meet for the first time. Here's what 45 degrees of articulation looks like.

And the pole centered and retracted. There's a bunch more going on here that I've worked on today after this pic was taken- pole out line holes, forestay holes, lightening holes in the puck. With that done, I can now reinforce this area with some of that fashionable black stuff.

Oh, and Tim F. (if you see this), an abrasive cylinder hone works really well for adjusting the fit of a carbon sleeve to a carbon pole. McMaster-Carr, around $23, I used 240 grit.

Sheer, stem, chainplate frames

2010-05-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

The big sheer clamp glue up.

With the chine all bonded, it was time to get the sheer glued and finally lock in the layout of the boat- I could shift things around a bit before. To prevent a hard spot at each clamp, I used a full-length batten as a clamping caul on the outside of the ply.

I have a slight hollow between f0 and f18, maybe a little further. It's the same on both sides, and it isn't "unfair", just hollow. The rest of the sheer looks good to me, except for the fact that it all needs to get planed to fit...

The chainplate frames are tabbed in with some kevlar tape each side.

The cockpit after a bit of sanding, but sill in need of plenty of filler.

Prodding along

2010-04-29T15:02:00.000-07:00

Not a lot of progress lately- just some things I can get done in short stolen moments from other stuff that's been keeping me busy.

The articulator puck, getting closer to done.

It's made from a cylinder of carbon formed by wrapping around a 4"ø pipe union, with another cylinder of carbon formed around the prod going through that, and then a pair of black (for the bling look) sheets of G10 on the top and bottom. All wrapped with a layer of carbon to tie and clean things up a bit.

I've been playing with shrink tape for this stuff and it seems to work pretty well.

And just because it looks cool, here's a pic of the puck after a light sanding and coating of resin over the carbon.

Bow reinforcement. Since a chunk of my stem gets cut away for the puck, I wanted to add some chafe resistance and strength to the hull side panels before the stem gets installed. So there's a bit of carbon for the strength, and some kevlar for the abrasion from the retracting pole, especially if it isn't perfectly centered when it starts to retract.

Mast step load spreading- here's 3 layers of carbon uni capped with a layer of cloth tape. There's kevlar tape against the backside of the angled chainplate frames, which meet at the mast step as well. So hopefully this is enough.

I'm still working on taping the chines- I've just done two frame bays so far. I think I'll be able to throw some more time toward it in the next few days so I can keep the build moving on.

Sides, on.

2010-04-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

I cut some diagonal cloth strips to tie the backside of the cockpit foam to the cockpit sides and deck. I left the last 1 1/2" uncoated so I could wet it out once the deck goes on. I think this will work, and beats doing all of the bonding from below, later.

And the sides are finally ON. Here's the dry fit, held on the bottom by 1" ears on the jig/cradle, and a few clamps along the shear. I have a little gap-osis in the f110-f124 area, and it proved stubborn to remove. It seems those two frames flattened along the boat's bottom during the various assembly and curing cycles, or the added curvature of my frame sides is using up some of the side material, so it won't reach the chine here. With some clamping pressure, it closed to about a 1/16", so I'm not too worried about it. Overall, I'm pretty glad it all worked out- I did a bunch of work somewhat blind, not knowing (for sure) that the sides would eventually fit if I built the boat from the inside out on an accurate jig instead of from the outside in as the building guide suggests.

The sides lightly tabbed in place along the chine. I see lots of bent over taping in my near future. But for now, I have a half-watertight hull, so woohoo.

Lastly, I received word from C-Tech that they have completed their move and are beginning production on my mast.

Random small progress

2010-04-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

First, I (with several others) got a front page mention in SA:

...so I got that going for me.

The strips of Core-Cell foam glued to the cockpit uprights. Once the decks get installed, I'll sand these to a nice 2" or so radius.

I love shots like these. Too bad this is just one coat of primer, with lots of orange peel. I'll light it better and sand it before the next pic.

The whole keel, primed and ready to hang out for a while.

It's been slow progress otherwise. A week off for a race to Cabo (and a weekend of house projects to make up for that), work on the Pac Cup boat, kid's birthday, the usual list of excuses.

So next up is more tabbing of the cockpit to the hull stringers- it's only glued in now. Then I think I'll finally be ready to put the sides onto the boat.

I ordered a couple of foam cores from Flying Foam for my rudder, abandoning the fir-strip blank I have glued up. I hadn't wanted to do a straight or straight-tapered foil, so had decided to shape my own. Then I saw that Bram at Swift had used two hot-wired foils glued end to end, duh! So I have a straight piece and a tapered piece coming, I'll glue them end to end and blend the joint a little, wrap it all in carbon, and the end result is a nearly elliptical plan form, much lighter than with the fir core.

Cockpit, sorted

2010-03-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

Foot bensons and forward console glued in. Once this cures, I can finally get the cockpit out of the boat and finish off the hull parts under it.

The forward console is two layers of 5mm ply, glued into the dished shape, then glued down to the fore-and-aft benson pieces and some shaped end pieces. I wanted to use two layers (albeit of thinner ply) since a lot of hardware attaches here, and it seemed silly to have a patchwork of backing plates.

The benson foot pieces each have tape on two sides, since they act as cockpit stringers as well. The bit of deck under the console will get mostly cut away after the cockpit is removed from the boat and flipped over. The console cover can then also be better filleted and taped underneath. Later, to the bottom of the console I'll attach cheek blocks and cam cleats, with lines exiting the face of the benson on each side.

The bensons aft of the traveller will get filled with 2# pour-foam, and their ends then sanded to some happy shape and glassed with an extra layer or two. I need to tilt the cockpit up a ways to pour in the foam.

Another obstacle to putting the sides on, done. So I'm happy about that.....

Heavy stuff

2010-03-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

Some keel and bulb progress.

Here's the bulb with a shallow recess routed into it, about a 1/16" oversize all around. I balanced the bulb and marked its center of gravity, seen as the lateral mark in the pic. I need the bulb's CG to be aft of the blade's 60% chord, so the bulb is a bit further aft than most other builders would choose.

A jig for drilling straight holes into the bottom of the keel blade, using an extra long drill bit.

Counterboring for the washers and nuts. I did this after drilling the through holes, which was a little sketchy but with the drill press it worked alright. I found it easier to block the bulb up and slide the little drill press around under it to position the bit.

The weight check! Tipping the scale at 180#, five under the class weight limit. I'll lose 1 or 2 pounds since not quite all of the all-thread rod gets used, but I'll gain maybe another pound in paint. Hmm, might have to fill those counterbores with lead instead of just filler...

The rods are glued into the bottom of the keel blade, and while their epoxy is still somewhat soft I glued the blade into the bulb recess. That way I had maximum flexibility to make sure the rods wouldn't bind going into the bulb holes.

All bolted up. Next, the rods need to get cut off flush to the nuts, some lead or other filler added to the holes for fairing, and a coat of primer applied to the whole assembly so I can see what still needs additional fairing.

Then it all gets stored in some corner of the shop for several months....

Back in the saddle

2010-03-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

So I've been busy doing lots of other stuff for the last several weeks, and have almost not touched the i550. Here's a few piddly bits of progress:

These are strips of Corecell foam glued end-to-end with Gorilla glue, then roughly beveled. They'll become the cockpit radius shapes after the cockpit is glued down.

While working on three (!) other rudders in my garage, I spent some time on my keel blade as well. It's been rough-faired, primed, and fine-faired. It needs another coat of primer, and at least one more pass with some putty before it's ready for paint. Which leads to....

The bulb. I didn't take any pics of its raw state- just too ugly. Like the Davy Jones character from Pirates of the Caribbean. I explained why earlier, and no need to dwell on that any further! Anyway, here it is after some rough fairing with a surform and bastard file, coated with a layer of fairing filler. Maybe pink is the new orange?

The last bit of progress is on the cockpit bensons, just fitted and zipped in yesterday. They approximately follow the curve of the sheer, so they'll always be the right distance away, and look a little better (I think). There's a kind of console going between these two, and more bensons going in behind the trav. I also fit and over-bored for the main traveller.

In other news, the rig has been ordered, and should arrive late April.

I've been figgerin running rigging stuff. Here's where I'm at right now, with just about everything lead below deck, double-ended, and ending up where you'd want it. I think.

Cockpit sole

2010-01-18T11:24:00.000-08:00

Cockpit sole and sides fitted, zip-tied, and lightly tabbed. I pulled the zip ties out later, sanded the temporary tabbing, ran full size fillets, and full length tape. Things that may be noticed here are a little spring/curvature to the sole, as well as the sides stopping 1 1/2" below the deck for the 2" radius curve that will go there.

Next, I made some spreader boards and a central strongback to hold the cockpit in position as I removed it from the boat. I laid out some lines for some tape reinforcing where I think it will be difficult to work from below, then added glass tape, some kevlar around the keel box, and biax along the outer "chine", and a sealer coat of neat epoxy. I ordered my main traveler track so I can add the appropriate reinforcement for the bolts- I'm planning to use little squares of G10 tapped for the threads, bonded to the sole bottom. There'll be an extra layer of glass in there, and the holes through the sole need to be overbored and filled as well. All that will be much easier now than later...

Just a close up of the end of one of my intermediate stiffeners, filleted and tabbed.

The aft two frame bays are clear coated. I left an uncoated margin at the edges so that the chine and hull side panel tabbing will be onto fresh wood, although I don't know that it's really needed.

Next up I'll mill up some 3/4" triangles to add to the tops of some of these frames where taping them to the cockpit sole will be difficult. I need to install some fairlead bullseyes for some underdeck rigging before things get too far along, mill up the cockpit radius foam, drop in and glue/fillet/tab the cockpit sole, and finally install the side panel stringers that have been sitting on the deck for a few months now, it seems. My shear clamp is just zip-tied in place now as well, so it needs to be tabbed in.

I keep thinking I'm close to putting those side panels on, then I think up all the little things that I need/want to do first.

Priorities

2010-01-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

I adjusted the width of the fore-aft stuff to accommodate a cooler between. I didn't want this crucial item neglected until later in the build. You could say the entire boat is built around the cooler, but that'd be only partially correct, I'm sure.

The rest of my diagonal stiffening stuff is bonded in now. I can lift the boat from where I'm standing to take this pic at f169, and the whole side of the boat lifts with no discernible torsion. I'm thinking it'll just get stiffer as the cockpit sole and boat sides go on to further complete the fore-aft girders.

I think I will add some small stringers to the bottom panel between the "girders" seen here- just 1/2" x 1" fir, filleted and wrapped in glass tape.

I've decided to go ahead with putting the cockpit sole in next. I'll still have decent access to the chine fillets through the deck opening, and I'll be able to do a much better job of bonding the underside of the sole to the top of the girders. So the cockpit sole pieces were scarfed and glued up this weekend.

Next is the little stringers, cutting the sole to shape, cutting the cockpit sides to shape (I have left over pieces already scarfed from the hull side panels), coating the stuff that is about to get hard to access, and installing the cockpit parts.

2010-01-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday started with a bummer- I had screwed up the epoxy mix on one batch of tape, and four pieces had to be ripped out of the boat. They were still very gooey after a twelve hour cure time. Two came out willingly, two with a lot of persuasion, persistence, and solvent. I had wet out the ply behind them all first, added the fillet, let it cure to a green stage, and added the tape. So only the tape's epoxy was bad, although the tape had stuck to the earlier wet coat a little, making removal much uglier.

Anyway...

I installed three little pieces yesterday after the remedial work was done- this is the forward doubler for the bunk flat, and two extensions of the floor stringers. The bunk doublers to the side of the keel are already attached to the underside of the bunk pieces.

And here's the bunks installed. I have access to all the spaces so far, except the tiny triangles under the mast step at frame #89. There will be an access hatch in the forward part of the bunk, where the seam is, and I have a cooler/toolbox combo that will fit aft of that, acting as a step at the "companionway" as well. Forward of these bunks, I intend to install slat-style cedar panels all the way to frame #53. Later.

I'm stoked with progress this weekend, despite the hangups. I've got the diagonal stiffeners to bond in now, then the hull side panel stringers, and then I need to decide when to put the cockpit sole in place. It'll be a trade off between easy access to its underside or easy access to the chine, depending on which goes in first- the hull side panels or cockpit sole? Hmmm...

50 squirt day.

2009-12-31T17:14:00.000-08:00

Started off the week with a jig alignment. My rolling platform has three wheels (tricycle style, one under #53, the other two under #169), so it won't be subjected to different wracking forces as I move it back and forth across my less-than-flat side yard slab. The pic shows one of the cradle cross-pieces, with a hole and "cross-hairs" drawn through the exact baseline point for that frame. So aligning the jig means leveling frame 169 over the rear wheels from side to side, checking each frame for level in the side-to-side plane, then peering under the boat at each hole to see if the string is still right on.

I put the diagonal chainplate frames in last week, and today was a 50-squirt day putting in all the undercarriage stuff. I won't install any of the floor pan bits forward of 89 until after the boat sides go on- the bottom is just too flexy between supports otherwise, and I'd be guaranteeing myself an unfair result. Aft of 89, the bottom is well supported by the close spaced frames, and then aft of 124 I have faired stringers under the boat as part of the cradle, so I'm comfortable with going to town bonding stuff in back there.

And here's a dozen or so of today's squirts. I decided to put a single centerline stiffener from the transom to 169. I'll see how the bottom feels after the sides go on and add mini stringers if needed. For the cockpit sole, I think the bensons will act as stringers mid way between this stiffener and the cockpit sides, so I don't plan to add anything else additional there.

Lastly is a closeup of the stiffener against the transom. The central layer is uncut at the aft-most triangle, and there's a cheek of ply on each side to give it some mondo stiffness. The clamps are just holding things steady while the epoxy sets.

Happy New Year to all.

-Chad

Carbon chainplates

2009-12-12T20:23:00.000-08:00

Decided to go for the Gucci way. I got some adapters for carbon chainplates from Colligo, one pictured here. They basically need to be inserted between two hoops of carbon, with a 1/4" pin through each ear of the chainplate and the adapter. So I have a spacer -that will create the groove for the adapter- which is a piece of 3/8" ply that has been beveled down to 1/4" to blend with the top of the 5mm ply, wrapped in packing tape for release. To wrap the carbon around, I have some 1" x 1/4" OD aluminum threaded spacers form the hardware store, with fender washers on each end. The washers are about 5/16" clear of the 3/8" ply, and provide about a 1/4" annular space around the aluminum spacer.

I went with the pins perpendicular to the chainplate bulkhead and spreader axis because I didn't want to load the adapters sideways. With a low stay to the gooseneck or gnav (if I do it, who knows at this point), the inner stay has lots of angle compared to the D1 and cap shroud. It would have been miles easier to use a continuous pin/spacer and just wrap sheets of uni from one side of the bulkhead across to the other, but I couldn't see that working well in this case due to the multiple angles on a single pin.

The chainplates are too close together to do all at one shot, so I did the middle one first with three layers of 6oz. x 3" uni tape (should have just done two, but it all worked out in the end). I let this cure to the green stage, then removed the screws and washers, and installed the ones in the outer two holes.

Here we are after the outer two pins are wrapped. I had to aggressively "floss" the uni down between the bulky middle wrap which was still pliable but sticky and stiff, and the outer washers to get it well snugged against the pins.

And the end result, curing. Tomorrow I'll add a little filler under the pins where the wrap left some voids, and then drill out the aluminum pins (assuming they won't come out voluntarily). Then remove the ply spacer, and install the half-frame into the boat. Later, the deck will get notched over the ears, and some filler added to fair them up a little.

Not sure how much "better" this is than a steel plate, but I figure it probably took less time overall than fabbing something from Stainless, it probably weighs a bit less, and it just looks cool, so I went for it.

I have had pitifully little progress otherwise. But Shawn's J30 is looking just killer with the new paint and all the work that has gone into getting it ready. Another week to get it ready to splash, and maybe I'll have some more time for my own project.

edit to add pic: The finished parts.

Framed, then strung (stringered) up

2009-11-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

Here's the cylinder for my prod articulator, cooking in the oven. It's a few layers of uni carbon, some biax glass, and a final layer of carbon cloth all wrapped around a waxed plumbing fitting (4" pipe union, od=4.5"), and then wrapped in plastic and tape for compression. It needs to cure at elevated temps so that the plastic male mold will shrink and come out after the epoxy kicks. It worked.

This is the current state of the keel. Not much progress, just a white tinted coat of neat epoxy added over the carbon, to be lightly sanded and then serve as a warning coat for future fairing and sanding.

The keel box sides being assembled to frame 110. I coated the inner surfaces with a layer of glass, and then a flood coat of epoxy with a little bit of thickener and some graphite dust. The sticks of fir ply are acting as alignment spacers, and are coated with packing tape where they are close to the glue.

I put the stringers and shear clamp on, still loose, just to get a look, and help hold up frames 18 and 53 for their bottoms to be bonded. Looks totally cool, I think!

Another shot, from the bow this time. I need to cut the stringer notches a little deeper on these last two frames, to account for the angle of the stringer.

So now I need to decide how much interior structure to bond in before the sides get attached to the hull bottom panel. I have the hull well supported on accurate molds, but I'm seeing some waves between supports -up near the bow especially- that I wouldn't want to lock in place. Hmmm, decisions. It sure is *easy* working on the bottom without those side panels in place...

Installing frames

2009-11-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

I want to do a rotating, aerodynamically improved (not quite wing-) mast. This is a kind of "proof of concept" model, although perhaps "evidence of concept" is more accurate. The shrouds go through holes in the boat-shaped board and their tension is held by the spring clamps. The mast is supported on the tip of a drywall screw. I wanted to see what effects leaving the spreaders free to pivot would have, as the mast rotates. So far, nothing goes over-center, or otherwise gets wonky. The model stick responds to tune as you'd expect, and the loaded (weather) side actually stays pretty static so that the mast doesn't displace much at all as it rotates. I'll talk to people smarter than me before I go ahead, but I like it so far.

I decided to do things a little (more) differently. After seeing the shape of the panels once they're propped into place, I just couldn't see how pulling the curving panels tight against straight frames was going to be a good thing. The panels looked very fair as they were, so why mess with a good thing? So I took patterns from the side panels at each frame location and used those to cut a matching curve into each frame. I added a notch for a sheer clamp and mid-panel stringer as well. This pic shows all the frames dry fit, just propped up in place.

And here's some progress. I added a kevlar tape reinforcement under the fore-and-aft bits, and then bonded in frames 169 and 124. The keel box is being fitted now, and then it and frame 110 will go in together. I have some diagonal and fore and aft stuff going in front of the transom, and behind 110 as well, which also still needs to be bonded to the bottom.

I must say that I like having the access to the hull bottom that this build sequence provides- I can reach all the middle bits without (hardly) stepping into the boat.

We're going to need a bigger shed...

2009-10-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

The boat's width doubles when the transom is added, and the shed gets smaller. Much smaller.

Closer look at the transom. I decided the whole thing didn't need to be 1/2", so the rudder area is 3/4" thick and there's doublers at the corner where my hiking butt will be trying to pry that wing off. The rest is just 6mm. I got some kevlar tape pretty cheap, and it's a bear to work with- I'll save it for flatter and straighter areas.

Here's my helper holding up the stem (still in her pajamas). I had some thick hondo mahog laying around, so that's what I used. The middle chunk of wood between the G10 plates is loose and acting like a spacer for my hockey puck pole pivot. I ordered my bow prod from Forte so I can verify my clearances with the stuff in hand rather than hope it comes in exactly on spec. A neat thing about an articulating prod that has guys and a downhaul is the elimination of any bending stress, so the pole diameter can be downsized a bit- I ordered the 1.7"ø.

And with the transom on, there's no reason not to offer up the boat sides and see just how things look. It looks like cutting the frames to fit (between the chine and sheer) rather than to plan will be the way to go. One of the benefits of cutting the boat parts myself is letting the parts run long at the transom, so I can hit that 216" max right on the money. I set the transom 1/8" inside that, to allow for some glass layers.

Next up is a bunch of zip-tying of the chines, milling and gluing up some stringers and sheer clamps, and a bunch of frame cutting. I've got more fairing to do on the keel, and the bulb needs it too. Throw in some rudder fab, and I've got lots of directions to go when the afternoons need filling.

And I'm helping with Shawn's PacCup preparations too, just to keep from getting too idle!

2009-10-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Somebody asked about cabin space, so here's a look at two people laying inside. Nothing more than "PG" happening in this boat, I'm afraid!

And as for progress, I have had none since the previous post. I've just returned from a week at the in laws, and I'm ready for a lot of building therapy, to say the least.

Bulb cast, 1st panel hits the jig.

2009-09-21T13:29:00.000-07:00

All hull panels glued up, and the helper gets a little R&R on the building jig, while dressed in her ex-flower girl dress.

Bulb casting day, and here's the set up. The mold is up on the horses to shorten the travel distance for the lead in the pipe, the "chiminea" is blocked up to get about the right height for the chimney, and the cast iron pot from eBay is hanging from a stout board securely clamped to the patio cover. I dumped two bags of sand all around the possible spill area to dampen any splashing, just in case.
I pre-loaded the mold with as many raw ingots (mine were shaped in muffin pans, I think) as would fit, and this may not have been a good idea for a through-a-hole pour. I haven't un-molded the casting yet, but I think there may be some voids where the lead cooled too soon as it entered the middle pour hole.
And here's the aftermath. It took lots of firewood, about three hours time, I charred one of my horses, cracked my chiminea (it was tired anyway), but I think I got close to 170 pounds into the mold. Things that could go better would be a big gas heat source (more heat, consistently), a brush-burner type torch to get the upper ingots heated, and a bigger feed pipe to the mold. I used 1/8" brass pipe because it was available and easy to get taps for, but I had to heat it a lot to get the lead to flow through it.
And as a break from the foundry work, this morning I made the last of my hull panel cuts, set up the jig molds, and dropped in the hull bottom panel just see how things look. So far pretty good, although I suspect that the "V" cut shouldn't be a straight-sided "V" but more of a concave-out pair of curves that are just tangent where they meet at the 108" point. We'll see, I suppose. I have my P&S hull panels cut and leaning to the right in this pic. I'm going to try to get the transom cut this week, so I can stitch things together before leaving for a family visit next week.

Keel progress, panel scarfs cut, bottom glued up.

2009-09-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

Here's the keel blank with the lightening holes cut and lined with kevlar tape for impact resistance behind the leading edge, and for grins everywhere else. I weighed the stuff that was cut out, and it came in at very close to the 3.5 pounds I had calculated.

Close-up of the cut outs near the keel bottom. I plan to bolt the lead bulb into the bottom of the keel rather than through the side of the keel end as others have, thereby lowering the CG of the assembly just a bit more.

And here's the 2# foam after pouring into the cut outs. I mixed a bit too much- the trash bucket was overflowing with the stuff even after I had poured way too much into the holes.

Here's two layers of 3" x 6 oz. carbon unidirectional tape applied in a slight recess along the fat part of the chord, under a layer of peel ply.

Lastly, I cut all the end-to-end plywood scarfs this weekend, and then glued up the boat's bottom panel.

In between working on the boat bits (the fun stuff!), I spent some time installing lights in the shed, setting up an epoxy station with all the potions and tools in one place, and I grouted the kitchen tile. Gotta try to keep the house stuff going too...

Shed built, keel shaped.

2009-09-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

The keel is parallel for the top half, then tapers a little toward the bottom, very similar to the plan, although a bit more aggressive on the foil shape. I traced the profile on each end, set up a Skilsaw for various depths, and cut depth indicating grooves about 1/16" shy of the finished shape.

Then, it's headphone time as the planer shaves it down to the saw kerfs.

I tried 50 grit on a belt sander, but it wasn't working for me. So the rest was shaped with a block plane, working as fast as the blister on my thumb would re-heal.

I left the trailing edge pretty sharp, and I'll soften that eventually, a little. I was happy that the edges stayed very straight.

And, the build area is now covered and mostly cleared. I still have a 16"ø x 10' cypress log if anybody needs some material for a boom, or?

Lastly, I built a building jig/platform which will have supports from frame 18 and back.

My plywood comes on Thursday, and I can't wait to get some boat-shapes going.

Keel and bulb progress

2009-08-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

Keel blank glued up, ends trimmed, glue buzzed off. My garage will look like a hamster cage over the next couple days I suspect, as the planer chips fly.

My helper, adding water to the concrete mix for the 2nd half of the concrete mold for the bulb.

The mold is cast, now I'm keeping it damp for a few days to let the concrete strengthen. Then waiting for a couple weeks for all the moisture to go away. I plan to do a single pour, using hi-temp silicone to seal the two halves of the mold. R/C guys do this, I hear.

Like Christmas!

This is the last of the lead (mail carrier was relieved to know), a crap load of epoxy, a s.s. threaded rod for the keel, etc.

Bulb pattern

2009-08-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

Next, it's off to get some concrete to make a mold.

More planning, some building

2009-08-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

The lead came in the mail today, and the bulb pattern is almost finished. Some just-in-time manufacturing being practiced here.

I've been drawing some details before cutting the wood for the keel and rudder, and those are attached. This is a 64-009 section (without the aft hollow) for the keel, and a 0009 section for the rudder. The carbon uni and cloth for the foils will arrive next week.

I've re-arranged the boat's interior stiffening to my own way of thinking, and I've put that drawing up as well.

Planning, making bulb pattern

2009-08-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

Just a tease of what things might look like...

I'm starting with a few of the components while I finish getting my build area clear, and a cover built. I've purchased my lead for the bulb, and begun making a pattern for the casting. I also bought the lumber for the keel fin and rudder, and should have that cut up and laminated this week.