More on storage boxes

Here are a few more detailed pics of the storage boxes in the cockpit:

The boxes are about 8" deep (inboard-to- outboard). I built the first one at 18" long and then decided I want the other one a bit bigger so I made that one 20" long. The longer one got glass in on the port side since there will be few feet more spin sheet in there while gonig up wind.

The bottom of the box is parallel to the cockpit floor so water should drain aft. As you can see in the second pic, the top and bottom are not parallel---the bottom is slanted slightly inboard to facilitate draining to the rear inboard corner.

The opening is 5" x 11". I doubled up the edge with some 1"-wide scrap to provide a little added stiffness.

The other benefit I hope to get from these is added support under the cockpit sides where the crew will be sitting.

Jeff

Hurts so good

Tonight Traci and I got the cockpit sides planed even and fileted in the stow boxes in the cockpit sides.

The picture says it all. There is only ONE way out from the aft bunk with the stow boxes installed (foreground).

The bottom of the boxes are angled toward centerline and in the fore-aft direction are parallel with the cockpit floor, so water should pool in the after inboard corner where I will drill a hole to allow it to drain into the cockpit. The boxes are about 20" in length.

We're close to putting the deck down now. Just a little more finetuning of the bulkhead heights...

Stay tuned!

Jeff and Traci

Don't get lippy!

Actually, I think I will! One of the blog readers asked about the "lip" on the cabin top that extends past the aft end of the cabin.

I figured I would post the explanation for all. I got the idea from Kevin (builder of Pipedream) and from the Open 5.70 and 6.50. Those boats have a similar lip extending from the back of the cabin top. The Open boats also have several control lines come from below deck and, presumably, the lip serves to reduce water intrusion through the holes where those lines come out.

At this point, I plan to have at least the spin pole deploy line come from below deck. But there is the potential to have any of the halyards or the tack line for the spinnaker run below the deck.

That's it!

Jeff

Everything but the kitchen sink...

...is what we used to weigh down the cockpit floor when Traci and glued it in on Saturday.

To fit the cockpit panels, I transferred a few measurements from center line to the plywood and got to cutting. To span the entire cockpit (~8'8" in length) I placed a seam directly over frame 124. Frame 124 had my 1x1 diagonally ripped pieces already epoxied on so there was plenty of surface area to receive the floor panels (click on the image below for more detail).

This morning, I cut and fit the cockpit sides. The cockpit sides, when layed flat, have a very slight overall curve to them, so a straight ripped piece of plywood won't work (ask me how I know!). No worries, that 12"-wide and 8 foot-long piece was used for another component---more on that later. While cutting and fitting the cockpit sides, I thought it would be useful to have a couple of "cubby-holes" in the cockpit sides to store water bottles, spin sheets while going upwind, etc. So I cut elongated holes for those as well.

This afternoon, Traci assisted me in getting the sides filleted and taped. I should say that we started working together, but at 2:00 I had to get on a conference call with some other builders to discuss rig dimensions, and Traci went solo.

She did impeccable work!! Although next time she will be wearing a baseball cap so I don't have to spend a half-hour with nail polisher remover getting epoxy out of her hair! :)

So far, so good! Everything looks the way I think it ought to.

WrestleMania

Over the weekend I got the cabintop stitched up and Traci helped me get it glued in.



I started out by stitching the cabintop together on the floor of the garage---that's the wrestling part. There is a substantial twist in the cabin sides that the plywood does not want to do. I also found that the pieces as cut in the kit do not want to completely come together toward the front of the cabin top. No big deal, the small gap can be filled with silica-thickened epoxy before taping.
The trick to getting the front edge of the cabintop flat is shown below. After stitching, I "squeezed" the cabintop down between two 2x4s until the front edge was essentially flat. I then laminated a 2" wide strip of plywoodto the underside of the front edge with a piece of 9oz tape in between. the tape was 4" wide so I wrapped the tape to the topside which served to resist downward bending in the forward edge.

After an overnight cure I released the 2x4 "clamp" and there was only the slightest curve in the forward edge of the cabintop.

From there I lifted the cabin top into position and stitched it into place starting from the front and working my way back from the center to the outboard edge.

Filetting and taping the under side was routine. The only thing we did prior to that was fill the gaps (1/2" max.) between the side and center panels (see above).

Chain Gang

Since my last post I got the bunk tops coated with epoxy and filled and taped a small gap between the forward and aft bunks under frame 124. Actually, Traci filled the gap and taped the joint while I was traveling earlier this week. Her first unsupervised job on the boat! And the results were tip-top!

Over the weekend, I got the chainplate gussets installed. I started out by beveling the outboard end the gusset to ~26 degrees to match the angle from the outboard end of frame 110 to the base of the mast. I then "hung" the gusset and scribed the curve of the hull onto the gusset and used a scroll saw to cut out the curve.

Using the "hanging" approach shown below I tacked the gusset in place with thickened epoxy making sure that the gusset was pointed at the location of the mast base.

Once cured, I taped the gusset in place.

Total bunk!

Nah, it's actually true. The bunks are in place. And the keel box is extended up to the deck level.

Late last week, I glassed in the keelbox extension. In accordance with Andrew's (TTB) advice I put in some "big-ass fillets" to ensure the keel box was good and solid.

Over the weekend, Traci and I got the bunks glassed and taped in. The diagonal-ripped 1X1s that I epoxied to the bunk sides served to support the bunk tops. This worked nicely, but I plan to round over the edge of the bunk and tape it with a 2" strip of 6oz cloth to give the joint a bit of tensile strength.





I also got up the courage to whip out the circular saw and widen the forward end of the cockpit. The "stock" version of the long cockpit is just a little narrow at the forward end, and I really like what Kevin did with his boat. The wider cockpit will allow for a bit more room in the pit during mark roundings, etc. The result of the widened cockpit is a little less clearance (~12") to the aft bunks, but those will primarily be used for sail storage, so it's a good trade off I think.

What's up my sleeve?

Who cares---all that matters is that I finally got the keel faired so I could use it to glass up the keel sleeve. My first attempt on the keel sleeve consisted of three wraps of polypropylene paint drop cloth on the keel. The sleeve itself was composed of a layer of 0-90 cloth, a layer of biaxial, and a layer 0-90 cloth. I wet out the first (inner) layer with epoxy mixed with a liberal amount of graphite powder. I figured that if there was any wear on the inner surface of the sleeve, super-slippery graphite would be released---couldn't be bad, right?

FYI, to avoid giving yourself a hernia trying to remove the sleeve, drip a little water between the release liner and the foil and that sucker will slide right off! Ask me how I know...

Turns out the first try on the sleeve didn't work out just right since the end of the keel I used as a male mold had a chord dimension 1/8" shorter than the opposite end. Therefore, the resulting sleeve bound up as I tried to slide it down the foil. I wound up running the trailing edge of the sleeve through my table saw to open it up and "remolded" the sleeve around the opposite (wider) end of the foil with a ~1mm sheet of foam between the leading 1/3 of the foil (sorry no pics). This allowed a little extra space between the foil and the sleeve to account for maybe another layer of epoxy and finish paint.

I dry fit the sleeve with a couple of pieces of plywood with groove cut in them to serve as guides to keep the sleeve vertical. I epoxied those in place and set about trimming the keel box side panels to fit.

To glass in the keel sleeve I spread generous fillets on both sides of the sleeve, for and aft. I also filleted the bottom edge of the sleeve (with the sleeve protruding ~1/4" through the hull) and layed a 3" strip of glass cloth along each side at the sleeve-to-hull joint.

I epoxied up the core of the keel box with a bead of epoxy on the edges of the vertical sleeve guides and a bead up the sleeve at the maximum thickness. After getting the side panels in place I clamped them and turned in for the night.

Next up: Trimming the keel sleeve even with the top of the keel box core and extending the sides of the keel box up to deck level. Stay tuned!

Where'd everybody go??

The other i550 builder's blogs have been awfully quite lately. I know that Kevin in Chicago has been hampered by the cold in his garage, but that hasn't kept him from making great strides in identifying a carbon fiber rig for these boats. Sounds like a great solution. He has posted a great deal of information on the rig solution in the i550.org forum.

At the "Dalsin Boatworks" facility progress has resumed after a blissful holiday vacation. Work continues on the (expletive deleted) keel. Sorry, I grew up in Chicago---must be a little Blago coming through. Anyway, after a couple of iterations of filling and fairing over the carbon fiber reinforcement, two layers of glass were laminated to the keel. I tried the suggestion of wetting out the glass on a mylar film and then carefully slapping the whole assembly onto the keel in hopes of getting a nice smooth surface. It turns out that this is not as simple as one might hope. I found that the mylar film created a barrier which made it tremendously difficult to remove any bubbles under the film (of which there were many!). After substantial spitting and swearing, I carefully peeled off the mylar film and smoothed out the bubbles by hand. After it cured the results were not too bad. There will be more filling and fairing, of course, but the results should be nice. I imagine that I will end up rolling a coat or two of epoxy over the final faired foil.

Stay tuned...

Happy New Year!

Hey gang! Hope everyone had a great holiday season!

It was super busy around here getting ready for the holidays and trying to get a bit of work done on the boat. Before Traci and I left for vacation, I got the aft two compartments cleaned out and coated with two coats of epoxy. Looks pretty nice...



With spending a week in the Florida Keys over Christmas, I didn't manage to get much done on the boat, but I did manage to get engaged!



We are planning a September wedding and a May boat launch. Obviously there is a lot to do!!!

After returning from vacation I got back to work on the keel (and guest lists!). I had a decent foil shape in the laminated cedar and needed to reinforce it with carbon. I had ordered 3" carbon unidirectional cloth from Sollar Composites, which worked great. I first cut a ~3/16" x 3 1/4" trough in each side of the foil centered at 30% aft from the leading edge and laminated in a single layer of 6 oz. glass cloth as a tie layer.




While the glass layer was still wet, 4 layers of carbon uni got laminated in and covered with saran wrap. So far it looks really good; after the carbon cured I set the keel between two milk crates and stood on it and it only deflected 1/8". I imagine I can get rid of that little bit of that flex with the two layers of glass cloth I'll add next. The resulting glass/carbon laminate was a little "low" in the trough which allowed me to fill with epoxy and West Systems Microlight #410 so that I don't sand through the carbon during fairing. The filler is curing now, so stay tuned!