Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Lot o foam

...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...

2 comments:

  1. One day İ'll just go visit you and learn with you. The stuff you build is really cool. İ seriously want to learn how to do the same things ! :)

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  2. Thats the way to do it! Only make beautiful carbon stuff, advertise with it in a 1550 blog and then sell it or exchange your craftsmanship for nice sails!
    Carbon, the new gold.

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