Prime Time, Part 2

After a few hours of sanding and filling tiny fish eyes in the epoxy (and then more sanding!) I got a coat of primer (Interlux Prekote plus a touch of 333 Brushing Liquid) on the hull. I rolled and tipped the primer. Unfortunately, the primer didn't flow out like I wanted it to (streaky), but it will get sanded anyway. Hull seems pretty fair, so I am happy with the result. I still need to hit a few spots with spot filler tomorrow, and then maybe finish coat.



Over the last couple days, I also faired in the spin pole tube. I cut a couple of pieces of plywood for the top and bottom and one for the front end. A little thickened epoxy, and layer of cloth, and some fairing filler end it looks pretty darn good. I've got a thin coat of epoxy on it tonight so hopefully it should be cured up and ready for paint tomorrow.



OK, that's it. I'm bushed. More tomorrow.

Jeff

Happy Trails

Well, at least one thing is actually done: the trailer.



I wanted to be sure the trailer was ready before the boat was painted so that it could be flipped right onto the trailer. To finish off the trailer, I painted the bunks with an oil-based paint (grey to match the galvanizing) and then glued polyethylene foam to the supports that would contact the hull. A little "googling" suggested that plain old Weldwood Contact Cement would do the trick in gluing a normally tough-to-adhere polyolefin like polyethylene to the wood. At six hours in so far, so good. :) Now if the boat fits in there I'll be all set.

I also got another coat of epoxy on the hull, but that looks just like it did two days ago before I sanded so I didn't post a picture.

To do list...

Lots of little things going on.

As you can see below the boat was flipped and a couple of weeks ago Traci and I got the entire hull covered in 6oz glass cloth. We used a 60" wide roll (from US Composites) which covered from the centerline down to the rail with a couple inches to spare. I had originally order a 25yd roll. Early we glassed the topsides, and when we got to the hull we were exactly 1ft short. Typical. :) This was not a huge problem since there was extra cloth near the bow. So we seamed in the port half of the transom. I was fairly precise when I was doing the topsides; 30yds or so would give you ample margin for error.



Since the boat is upside-down, it took the opportunity to create a couple of bunks for the trailer out of 1/4" meranti and 1/2" doug fir. If I did it again I would go with 3/4" ply for the uprights. As it is, I added a couple of vertical pieces scrap cedar to each bunk to stiffen them up a touch.

In other news, my standing rigging arrived today from Rigging Only. Looks good! I am going with stainless rigging, rather than the fancy ($$) poly stuff. I had rigging only swage the t-balls on the upper ends and they left the lower end raw for attachment to a Hi-Mod stud which will go into the turn buckle body.

On the immediate to do list is getting a second coat of epoxy on the port side of the hull, getting a few small spots along the centerline faired, and then shooting some primer.

God, I want to go sailing...

Flip-Flopper

Well, yesterday was the big day and everything went off without a hitch. I invited a few of my work colleagues and my sailmaker over for a little light manual labor and a BBQ. We started by lifting the boat off of the cradle and setting it on a couple of pieces of styrofoam. I then quickly mounted a couple of crosspieces on the cradle. With a couple of lines tied to the chainplates, we vey easily got her up on her side and then lifted finished rolling her.

As easy as it was to roll the boat, I have a hard time imagining she will weigh in at 800lbs when all is said and done. Time will tell! Next up, you guessed it: more fairing and sanding. :)

Prime Time

Wow. It's really starting to come together now. Today I got a coat of primer (Interlux Pre-Kote) on the decks. A while back I thought it would be cool to keep a portion of the boat bright finished---that's varnished wood rather than painted wood for you boatbuilding neophytes :) . So before I primed the decks I masked off the cabin sides. Due to the presence of fiberglass tape and filler at the corners I had to leave 2" on the top and 4" on the bottom edge painted.

I'm still not sure I'm sold on it. What say you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think---bright cabin sides or painted?

Well enough about paint. Tomorrow we flip to boat! First thing in the morning I'll need to get the chainplates installed (to secure lines to) and screw together a few 2x4s to attach to the cradle before the gang arrives to flip this little sucker.

Stay tuned!!
Jeff

Meet my maker

Sailmaker, that is.

I met up with Ryan Malmgren at MadSails this afternoon to have a look at the draft sailplan for the boat. Ryan has a ton of experience building small boat sails and we (Kevin and I) are really stoked to have him working on our project. Truth be told, I think Ryan is pretty stoked to be involved as well.

The main is going to be square-topper with about 160sqft of area. That should give us ample horsepower in the light stuff, and the sqaure top should auto-depower nicely in the puffs.

OK, time to go finish fairing the decks so I can flip the little beast on Sunday.

Jeff

Dead Sexy

Things are really starting to get cooking now. Over the last two weekends Traci and I got the glass laid on the decks. Unfortuately time did not permait us to do the whole job in one go so their was a bot of sanding and fairing required between glassing sessions. I think it looks pretty good though. Of course, the longboard will tell me the truth...

Going to try to get everything sanded this week and maybe get a coat of primer on the deck before we flip it next weekend.

Hit the deck!

Sorry for the barage of posts---I've been trying to focus time on working on the boat rather than blogging about it. Unfair to my "devoted readers"? Sure. Send me a check and I'll be better about updating the blog.

This long holiday weekend was a tremendously productive one. Three solid days in "The Boatworks" show solid results. Saturday saw the side and forward decks getting glued down. In addition to gluing the deck edge, this required filleting and taping of the edges and bulkheads from the underside. Not the most pleasent work, but not unreasonable. I got about 80% of it done on Saturday by myself---I would have done more but ran short on biaxial tape. Decks are solid, though. Will get more biaxial tape this week week and finish 'er off.

I spent Sunday trimming the deck edges and giving them a nice round-over for hiking. The ½” radius ease to the deck edge looks really good. I first used a straight laminate cutter to trim up the deck edge even with the hull. Then ran my sander down the edge to make sure there weren’t any little epoxy bumps. Then used the ½” round over bit with my "custom" fence attached (below). I used the fence to prevent the router bit from taking too deep a “bite”, particularly in the aft sections of the hull. I ran the router over everything twice. I plan to smear some Microlight in a few spots and will finish with the longboard.



Today I spread a mess a of West System Microlight filler (No. 410) on the rail and cockpit floor. There were a few spots that needed a bit of "help". More sanding and filling tomorrow, but tonight we celebrate an actual boat! :)

Carbon Footprint

NOTE: This should have been posted on 5/15/09.

Yeah, my carbon footprint just got a bit bigger. And I couldn't be happier...

At long last, our carbon fiber rigs, booms, and spinnaker poles arrive from C-Tech, Ltd. in New Zealand. They are truly masterpieces. Kudos to Alex and coworkers at C-Tech. Below are a couple of samples of their caftsmanship.





Hot, right?

After recieving the carbon kit, the first order of business was getting the spinnaker pole receiver tube glassed in so I could get the deck put down. I calculated some rough numbers so that the pole would be centered when fully extended and then got to sawing. Sawing holes in a perfectly sound hull. Nice, eh?

Once I had rough-cut holes for the recieving tube in frame-018 and -110, I used a flashlight to project the profile of the required oblate hole onto the bow section.



After a bit of fine tuning of the bow hole, shocklingly, the math worked out and the pole was dead-center when fully extended!



On to the decking...

Companionway

NOTE: This should have been posted on 4/26/09.

Companionway turned out nice, I think. For the boating neophites, the "companionway" is the door to "downstairs". :) I used a length of aluminum U-channel from McMaster with a 1/4" internal width and depth. At that size, the piece I cut out for the companion way slides right into the two slots. I framed the inside of the companionway with my trusty poplar stock that I cut down a bit. Along the bottom, I laminated two 1"x2" pieces of poplar together and cut it on the table saw so that it would shed water. All told, I think it looks pretty good and should work well.

I also slotted the side decks for the chainplates. If you lay the side decks in place and scribe a pencil line from underneath, you can carefully use your circular saw to plunge cut the slot. A little triming at the ends will let the 1/8" stainless chainplates slide into place nicely.

With business travel and a short trip for Traci and I to London for 5 days for a wedding, the Boatworks will be quiet for a bit. Stay tuned!