Under Pressure

As I mentioned in my previous post, I discovered that if the hull sides are stitched in tight to several of the frames the result will be a hollow around each frame. The hollow will ultimately require substantial fairing once the hull is flipped. More importantly, however, is that it takes a tremendous amount of force to pull the hull in tight to these frames. To me, it seems that pre-stressing the hull in this manner is not a good idea. I, for one, do not want my hull to contain substantial potential energy while it sits idle. After all, potential energy is what give bombs their power, right? I would worry that a minor collision in the area of a pre-stressed area could result in a substantial repair.

As an alternative I left the hull relaxed at these frames (all but 18 and 169.5). See pics below. I stitched the chine side and the rail side in tight and then transferred the curve of the hull section to a 2" wide piece of plywood. The 2" piece of plywood was sistered to the forward side of each frame with silica-thickened epoxy.



The "gap" on the aft side of the frame was filled with silica thickened epoxy and filetted as normal. One trick: the inboard side of the of the sister piece was beveled at 45 degrees to allow the glass tape to conform.