Jeff, from the "Alchemy" build, made this nifty map of all the licensed hulls, worldwide. i550 Sportboat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hull # 87 (5.5 Meters = 18.044619422572175 Feet)
"any progress, no matter how infinitesimal, is progress."
Jeff, from the "Alchemy" build, made this nifty map of all the licensed hulls, worldwide.
HULL #87 recommends and supports these quality vendors:
C-Tech New Zealand 
Boulter Plywood Corporation
----------------------------- Building i550 hull #87 ------------------------------
Comments, criticism, advice, Viagra spam? Contact me at: webwolf a t nbayracing daht com
8.25.10....Inside Slider
Finally finished the layup of my keelbox sleeve. The sked was:
- one layer of 10 oz e-glass with a hearty graphite component mixed in
- one layer of 6 oz CF twill over the 10 oz.
- one layer (slightly overlapped in center) of 9 oz biax over the CF
Here it is just after I popped it off the plug, still ragged. It came off pretty easily.
Below, here it is cleaned up a bit. The best news is that it slides easily (right) and yet fits snuggly!
Next task is to build the keelbox.
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8.22.10....Back in the Battle
Able to do a few things now as long as I don't lift anything over 10 lbs. Yeah, right.
So, thanks to my helpful kids, we dragged the second mold under cover and I was able to further fair the forms by loading the inside up with mud (dry wall compound) and smoothing it out pretty nicely. This was on the advice of Chad, of the Mission Viejo build.
Was also able to finish the 3rd coat of Brightside on the keel foil and start building the sleeve for the keel box. The first layer is 10 oz. e-glass with a lot of West Graphite added into the pox mix. Maybe a little too much, in fact.
I made the sleeve layup approx 9.5 inches wide, but this will get cut down to 8.25 inches. I have learned the hard way to make things larger than spec'ed and then cut it down to the proper dimensions.
It may look like carbon fiber, but it isn't...at least not yet. A couple layers of 6 oz. CF twill will go on over this layer of 10 ox. e.
I just hope the damn thing will slide off o.k.!
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7.31.10....Layoff Notice
Put the tarps on for a few weeks while I recooperate from the effects of robotic laparoscopy. I should be back in the build shed by late August. This is going to further retard my progress in a month when I had high hopes of getting a lot done. Such is life.
As a swan song before wrapping things up, I was able to get the final coat of Interlux PrimeKote on the keel foil, sand it and prep it for a coat of Brightside. I put the Brightside on yesterday and it looks pretty good. My foil is by no means "perfect," but for an amateur builder I think it's not too shabby. Two more coats of Brightside and then I can take the foil inside and use it as a plug for the keel box.
I also completely taped the house, which needs to go on soon!
I also got the chainplate gussets taped in. This is a good feeling, having them in. It took some ingenuity. But the real help was having my daughter hold the gussets in position to get them clamped in place for the fillet and taping....there are some times when you just cannot function efficiently as a single-handed builder.
Lastly, I cast the other side of the bulb in concrete. This one didn't go quite as well as the first. I bought the concrete from Home Depot and they stock "Sakrete." Then for this one, I went to Lowes (having decided a few months ago to boycott Home Depot...long story). Lowes stocks "Quikrete."
Strictly anecdotal, but I found Sakrete to be a better product for this application. I have no idea why, most likely it was probably more based on my technique than any huge difference between products, but the Sakrete seemed to have conformed more closely to the shape of the plug.
The dark band on the bottom on the left side of the mold is a very rough, porous section where small rocks and lack of sandy filler left significant voids in the Quikrete. I did not get this effect with the Sakrete. Again, it might have been related to operator error, but I thought I was pretty consistent with the way I performed both castings in terms of methodology.
I'll try to fair out the rough areas with some Sakrete devoid of pebbles.
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7.4.10....Misc. Fourth of July Projects
One good thing about the i550 build is, as soon as you get sick of working on one part of the project, you can switch to something else. I guess that's a good thing. For someone as A.D.D. as I am, it's a great thing.
I decided I had had enough of the tabbing for awhile and with temps in the build-shed hanging in there at about 94 degrees, it was time to start screwing around with some other component of the boat...so I recycled the forms that I had built a few weeks ago, for sand-casting the bulb, and converted them to concrete forms.
I followed Chad McNeely's advice about casting the bulb in 'crete (after all, it is his plug) and things went surprising well. I was low on Saran Wrap® so it was maybe a little tougher than it should have been to remove the plug, once the concrete had set-up. But, after some initial digging and chipping, the thing more or less popped out and I have a pretty fair female mold!
Happy to report that the plug survived pretty much intact but will need a tiny bit of repair before anyone else uses it. A skim coat of pox and Microlight 410 ought to do it.
On another front, got the next layer of the sked on the rudder.
There was a bit of a CF with the carbon fiber cloth, but as this was the first time I have ever messed with a piece of carbon fiber this large (50" x 36"), all-in-all it went rather well.
What I learned: make sure you use a few inches more on both sides of a two-sided layup and mark the centerline very well with something that will show up on the CF cloth.
Another coat of Interlux PrimeKote on the keel foil.
Organic respirator, Tyvek® suit, & nitrile gloves make it a challenge when applying this stuff in 98 degree temps. My glasses kept sliding off my sweaty nose and face.
Good fun!
Last on the agenda was to laminate the chainplate gussets (three 6mm plywood triangles) and get them fitted in between frames 89 and 108.
Kevin McD's drawing (available on the Class website) is spot-on and the forward edge of the starboard gusset lines up perfectly at 99.5"
Busy weekend! Lots done.
6.20.20......GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!
Well, three of them actually. 3 goals.
I left work on Friday with a list of three things I wanted to get done this weekend.
1) finish the last of 96 tabs.
2) get the prod receiver tube mounted completely
3) paint the keel foil.
Pretty much suceeded with the first 2. Late Sat. p.m. I finally laid the last tab for the cockpit structure. Man, that was a good feeling. I went in and made a drink. But I had to drive somewhere right away so I didn't get far into that drink. Such is life.
I also used a bunch of CF tape to finish mounting the prod receiver. It isn't beautiful but I don't think that tube is going anywhere soon. All I need to do now is sand off that raggedy aft edge, buy and install an inspection port for frame 18 and I can do some decking on the pointy end. I can put backing plates on the stem for any hardware that gets mounted later, headstay fitting, padeye for trailering, what-have-you, through the inspection port (I am hoping...there's a question for the class forum).
The last thing I had on my list (the "get-real list" not the "fantasy list") was to get the keel foil painted. I did not succeed in getting it all done, but I scored a little moral victory by plunging in to the 2-part, epoxy paint world without ending up in the ER from the paint fumes.
I don't like this stuff, to put it bluntly. I remember using some Interlux 2000e on some past keelboats I owned, back in the day, but I do not remember taking all the respiratory precautions that are necessary with these paints. But anyway, I suited up, organic respirator, 3 pairs of gloves, longsleeve shirt, long pants, (did I mention today's high was 92 F.?) and dove into the mixing task. 3 parts Paint, 1 part hardener, 1 part 2333n, and started rolling this crap on with a 6 inch high-density foam roller. It went on like a charm. The coat is light, but the coverage is consistent. It kicked and was dry to the touch in 1.5 hours (again, 88 degrees just outside the build-shed in the picture, above.).
So next is to sand it and do two more light coats. Then the Brightside. Finally when all this cures, I can wrap it and build the sleeve for the keelbox, which is the rate-limiting factor on a lot of the "inside" chores, like glueing in the bunks, etc.
Hotter'n hell in this get-up, but necessary.
One of the product reviews on the Jamestown site for this stuff (Interlux Primekote) mentions how bad the smell is.
First off, you really shouldn't be smelling this stuff. Your organic respirator should be trapping the malodorous volatiles. But I read somewhere this week that the masks only get about 90% of the bad compunds. Which means you better have some decent ventilation. I worked outside in a light and variable breeze.
Frankly, I wish there had been more breeze (where have we heard that?) and from a constant direction. As it was, I could never really get upwind of the fumes because of the constant shifts in the light breeze.
With keel foil drying and the resultant paint fumes just forward of the bow stem, the progress on mounting the cockpit sides was slow. But I got a few "anchors" in on both sides, these are strips of 3 inch tape that secure the bendable plywood against the bottom support....serves as a clamp. I can now go in and clear coat the panel and get it tabbed into some of the supports on the inside..should be pretty solid when done with some CF skin on the bendy panels.
6.16.10.....Wide body
Cockpit sides are dry-fitted and ready to be tabbed in. Progress!
6.14.10......And You'll Start Cryin', 96 Tears
Oops I mean 96 tabs, not the oldie 96 Tears, by Question Mark and The Mysterians. Just a giant buttload of tabs to get done before the cockpit sides and everything else can go on.
24 support beams, with 2 tags on each end, that ends up being 96 of the pesky tabs, each varying slightly in tape width and length...makes production work a little difficult.
I have been plugging away at this chore for what seems like weeks and I think I may have just another 6 or 7 left. Hallelujah.
Seriously.
Totally burnt out from the tabbing, I moved forward to get the prod receiver tube properly supported and honkered down in the forepeak. I used a bunch of CF tape, can't remember the weight of this stuff but it's heavy. I probably overdosed the CF tape with epoxy because of my, at this point, profound inexperience with working with carbon fiber, but I squeegee'ed the heck out of it with one of West's yellow squeegees and I think I got a pretty good layup. Everytime I work with this stuff it makes me more amazed at the work the pros like Hall and C-Tech do with this material. I know they have the expertise and tooling but still, I feel like a total hack whenever I do a CF layup. Nonetheless, this one turned out OK, or good enough for me.
On the aft side of frame 18 I cut another piece of ply and layed that up to beef up that section that will be mainly receiving a compression load (downward). I will lay on some more tape and tab in the reinforcement with some 9 oz. biax. I want to keep this section light but also want more than adequate reinforcement, so it's a bit of crap shoot with how much material to add. I wish I'd seen more about how people reinforced their receiver tubes, but I was too lazy to search the blogs. If anyone has any advice feel free to chime in at the email address shown above.
I also picked up a couple bags of Sakrete this weekend and will start on the bulb molds asap.
No shortage of stuff to do, at this point in time. I gotta make some serious progress in the next 6 weeks, before I go under the robotic knife.
Uh...make that knives.
5.31.10......Silicon Dioxide Blues
The hell with sand. I'm going with cement.
5.30.10.....Speed it up, Dude
So, umpty ump doctor's visits and stuff out of the way (see 5.28.10), I got a chance to ride herd on the project for a couple days this weekend.
First priority was to get going with the revived bulb cast. Chad McNeely out in Mission V, CA sent me the plug that he had made and already used on his casting. It's a really great goddam plug as you can plainly see from the pix. I have to send it on to another builder and I'm running behind sked, so I knew it was time to get going on this.
This is where good friends come in handy. My man Garry, already mentioned in this Build Log once or twice, came through with an idea (and the materials) to do a sand casting. I don't know squat about casting stuff, but Garry is a wiz. In fact, there is little on this planet that Garry doesn't know how to do. I have been blessed by having him as a friend and I don't think I would have even started this boatbuilding project, were it not for knowing he would count as a resource, knowledge base and moral supporter (as opposed to an athletic supporter).
So, I built the form...here is the photo sequence:
I built one form out of 2x6 and some 1x6 and used some scrap meranti 6mm for the floor.
Next, I sprinkled some loose sand to cover the floor to about an inch, then I pushed the plug down into it hard and seated it well in the sand.
Finally, I covered the plug in sand well past the mid-line and pounded that crap down hard with a various instruments to get it to seat compacted against the plug.
Then I pulled the plug.
The resulting impression was not too shabby considering it was my first attempt. The problem was, it ate up most of my sand and I also have to cast the mirror-image of the plug.
So, I decided to rebuild the form by adding a boatload of scrap lumber as spacers, thereby vastly reducing the amount of sand needed to fill the entire form.
I should be able to get two forms out of the amount of casting sand that I have on hand.
Now I just hope I left enough room to tamp down the sand adequately.
This whole project I seem to come up just a tad short of materials from time to time...see my comments on the curvy cockpit, below.
Two forms ready to rock.
I also kept at it on the cockpit time-sink both today and yesterday, e.g., tabbing in the support structures. I am enthused to say that I am almost to the point where I can start glassing in the ultra-thin plywood panels to build the seating. I did a dry fit late this afternoon and am happy with the way things are turning out. I must say that, as mentioned above, this would be easier if I had been smart enough to order the plywood from Bolter cut into 20 or 24"strips, but I ordered 16" ......which is going to be OK, but another 2 or 4 inches on the bent panels would have been nice. Such is life.
I also cut some pieces to fill in those nasty looking cut-outs in the transom that were there from my first, aborted, attempt at the seats. Not sure why, but those things were a high source of annoyance whenever I walked behind the boat. So they are gone, finally.
You can scroll down to 5.11.10 to see how ugly they looked.
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5.28.10.....Slow it Down, Hombre
I got the diagnosis that I have prostate cancer on Monday this week. That was 10 days after a biopsy I had on the 14th. The biopsy left me feeling a little dicey as I had some obligations just after the procedure and probably did way too much too soon, including a pretty hectic trip to NY and back.
So, since the 11th, I haven't done too much, just tabbed in a few more of the cockpit supports and stringers. Made a little more progress today, in fact.
Yesterday, I picked up a 5 gallon pail of casting sand that my good buddy Garry had left over from a project. This weekend I plan to build the form for the bulb-casting process. I want to get the molds done ASAP so that I can send the bulb on to the next builder in line. Build a box, pour in some sand, place the bulb plug half-way down in the sand, pour some more sand around the plug, tamp it down real hard and then repeat the process for the mirror-image other side.
How the hell tough can that be?
5.11.10.....More On
I made a bit more headway this past weekend. Doing the voluptuous cockpit meant tearing out some things and re-routing the supports and stringers. I got 16 of the 18 new supports cut and dry fitted (they might not look completely straight in these shots b/c they are not tabbed in yet). Then I got a bunch of the new supports glued in (straight) so that I can remove the brads that are holding them in place prior to being tabbed. I used a combination of the holey beams and 3/4 inch Coosa-composite. With the coosa, I cut it into 2.5 - 3 inch wide strips and mounted one set wide-side out, as a large surface to which the bendable ply will adhere, and then, above it, I rotated another set of strips 90 degrees to provide a support that is more resistant to bending inward. We'll see how it works out.
The port side, lower, wide-section-out sets are not yet dry-fitted in the pix above.
Assuming one day it will actually get into the mid or upper 60's, I'm going to have a tab-fest and get all of these tabbed in properly, then start bending the ply into the eventual shapes. But the weather has got to cooperate...it is mid-May for cryin' out loud.
This persistent Global Cooling is a pain in the rear.
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5.05.10.....Back in Biz
Well, sort of.
Finally got paroled from Solitary Work Confinement, and got the cover off the i550. It had been almost exactly a month since I had the tarps off. All I got done was: cut the cockpit sole panels down to fit the new curvu-licious frames and took some pix so that I could figure out how I would ultimately run stringers and supports and stuff.
If I ever get some days off work (scheduled for some this week, but that got scrapped real quick) I'll glue in all those orange and purple supports and then start to bend on the sides to the cockpit benches. Weather permitting.
So that's it. For now.
4.22.10.....Update: no update
I've been creamed by work, more work, and then some more work. No building for me. (okay, there were two consecutive weekends of sailing, but it's basically work that's keeping me away from the Build Shed...& some cold weather, too).
I plan to be back in the shed this Sunday....hoping it's 80 degrees.
4.04.10....If 6 Turned Out to be Nine, I Don't Mind.
Got a few things done in the last couple days.
Put another layer on the blue foamy foil. This was a layer of 9 oz. E-glass. Went on pretty well, no issues.
If you are wondering why that piece of 5/4 oak is lying on it, it's b/c the first layer, six oz. E, created a tiny amount of bow in the foil, maybe 1/8th inch from tip to tip. So, resting that piece of lumber on the foil as the 9 oz was setting up completely eliminated the bow...it had just enough weight to straighten the thing out.
After the glue kicked, I took the foil off the stand (which worked even better with the foil having a solid tie-layer on it) and I weighed it. After the 2 layers of glass, the thing now weighs in at a solid 2 pounds 2 ounces....it's 52 inches long. Cool.
I also finally made it down to West Marine to pick up my foil paint. Decided on the one-two punch of Interlux Pre-Kote and Brightside. Also picked up an organic respirator. But before finishing up the foil, I wanted to do one last set of measuring. I want to avoid, at all cost, a situation whereby, once I wrap the top of the foil to make the keelbox sleeve, I cannot get the damn sleeve off.
So, I am measuring carefully to make sure there isn't an "indentation" along the top 9 - 10 inches, especially on the trailing edge, that will cause the keel sleeve to hang up. It probably will, anyway, but at least I can do as much as possible to try and prevent it.
There was a lip at the top of the foil right at the end (bottom of photo just up from the eye screw). Not sure how it got there, but it needed to be filled. Again, one more thing that was going to be a big pain when laying up the keel sleeve....so I had to deal with it.
Measurements up near the root chord to make sure the sleeve doesn't hang up ^. Those numbers (in 16ths of an inch) need to be consistent along the length of the top ten inches and they aren't....need a bit more sanding, I am afraid.
Most of this weekend was spent on getting the cockpit framed properly for the bendable plywood that came last week.
Again, I cannot say enough good things about Boulter Plywood (link above). The stuff they sent is gorgeous, it came quickly and it's pre-cut perfectly. It's 1/16th inch Okuome....pretty slick.
Here are the butt joints being laid up to make 10 ft x 16" panels. My one worry was that the butt joints, laid up in 6 oz cloth (not tape), would be make the panels too stiff to conform to the cockpit frames....they are a little bit stiffer, but they should still bend to conform to the shapes I have cut.
Incidently, most of today was spent getting those shapes good enough to glue in, e.g., sistered to the existing planset frames. I glued them in and am hoping just a bit of sanding will make everything fit perfectly...we'll see.
As usual, deviating from an existing planset can be a huge amount of trouble. I hope it's going to be worth it....bottom line is it has been an interesting challenge, and that's what I love about building this little ride!
3.28.10....Wrap It.
I put a tie layer of e-glass on the rudder this weekend. The rack works well, but I wish I had made it a little sturdier; it wobbles a little bit more than I'd like.
Nonetheless, it worked!
One good thing about the relative flimsiness of the rack is, if you sight down the leading edge of the foam and it is not prefectly straight, you can torque it back into perfection by turning the end supports very slightly.
These are shots of how the two rods support the cloth and keep it off the wetted out foil in order to line up the visual marks on both the leading edge of the foil and the cloth. I did them in different colors to make that easier, too.
When things line up, drop the rods and wet out the cloth....this tie layer is 6 oz. e-glass.
Lamp curing the cloth because it's still a miserable 58 degrees in the basement. But this first layer came out really well.
Next: 9 oz layer and then a couple of carbon fiber.
3.22.09.....Rack It
Built this rack to hold my rudda when it gets covered with glass and foam. There are dowels, pointy dowels, on each side that get pushed into the blue foam. Holds it pretty well. The rod (wish I had another one) and the piece of canvas framing, on the other side, hold the cloth off the wet foam until you can get it into position perfectly by marking the leading edge when you dry-fit it, and then lining it up with the cloth draped over the rod (and frame). Then you pull the rods out and let the cloth drop on to the wetted out foil. Sounds easy enough....this was adapted from the SwiftSolo tutorial that is available on the internet somewhere....just google "swift solo centerboard" or something.
Shots of the sides, below.
You can see the dowels before they got smacked all the way into the foam. The ply is backed up with a 2x3 that was drilled to accept the dowels...that way they are held in tightly with sufficient support such as not to droop at all, and also another small piece of scrap ply that was knotched to hold the rod and framing lumber.
3.21.10......Curvaceous Sisters
The curvey frames that will be sistered on to the ones from the plan set are all cut. Some minor tweaking will be neccessary, but they are pretty much ready to go. I'll need to run stringers at the top and about halfway down the slope and at the intersection of the slope and the horizontal deck frame (along the lines of the piece of lathing to the right of center in the photo).
Then I hope Boulter plywood comes through and I'll glass in the bendy ply, cover it in carbon fiber and a layer of 6 oz. e-glass.
I also slapped together some frames to hang the blue foam foil that will be the core of my rudder....I want to get that thing done soon, too, so that I can get started on the rudder cassette.
Stuff is happenin.'
3.19.10....Opening Day
I don't think I've had the cover off since mid-December, so it was great to take off both big tarps and see the boat as I left it back in 2009.
That is, until I realized how much work I still have to do. There were stringers and stuff that I thought I'd tabbed in last year, but nope, never happened.
First thing I did was drive a nail into the middle of the stem and measure to the far corner of each transom to see if the boat was still square after the pummeling it took in February (see 2.06.10). I was psyched to have the tape stop precisely at 218.50" on each side....it was even more precise than I remembered it being....hmmm.....figure that one out.
I had never really come to grips with how the cockpit was going to come together and after a winter of electronic conversations with the ever helpful and most gracious PRoss, of Peter Ross Yachts, I hit upon a better strategy then just radiusing a laminate of Coosacomposite. I'm going to use a bending, bendable, doorskin (or whatever you want to call it) plywood. As a test, I bought a sheet of FRP which is typically used as shower stall or bathroom wall material. It worked OK as a test and frankly I would have used it in the build if it accepted epoxy adhesive, but I did a test overnight and the results were dismal...the stuff barely bonded with a light epoxy layup with 6 oz cloth.
So here are some pix of the way it'll go, once I find a place that will ship me the plywood for less than the cost of the material....finding this stuff in Maryland is not easy. I'm getting a quote from Boulter ply up in Massachusetts who seem to be amazingly helpful and have some pretty decent prices (another tip from PRoss).
I just used a french curve to trace a shape I thought I'd like on some pink foam to do the mock-up....took a little sanding and some 2nd and 3rd attempts, but I got something that I figure will look good and feel good on the crew's bodies.
Next, I cut some 6mm ply to sister to the existing frame...I'll use some 9oz biax for that.
Some 16" strips of FRP laid on as a mock-up....I think I'm going to like this.
Aside from some of the design and mock-up stuff, the thing I am the most stoked about is getting to the point where I can paint my keel foil!
Finally after fighting this thing, tooth and nail, it's starting to look really good. It is not going to be absolutely perfect, but it'll be close enough. Fairing is like using Photoshop...half the skill lies in figuring out when you can say "enough is enough."
Just a few low spots and dings to fill, some light sanding and then............primer-time!
Then, finally, I can wrap it for a keel sleeve.
3.14.10.....Acid
I must've been on acid when I decided to try to build the bulb this way. I don't know what the hell I was thinking.
(slight disclaimer: I haven't really "done" any acid in 35 years and I'm not even admitting that I did any, ever......and even if I did, I didn't inhale)
OK, I'll go so far as to suggest that this method COULD work, but you'd have to suspend the teeny lead balls in a matrix of epoxy and adhesive filler or something that's tough enough to stand up to enormous cycling loads. I gave it a go with a sash weight and all my body weight, and a bit more pushing on it from a door jamb, and the thing all but disintegrated...I had no illusions, whatsoever, that it wouldn't. There is no way way in hell it would last long in any sort of seaway.
Mixing it in with enough resin to withstand that kind of loading would result in a mixture much less dense than needed and the bulb would probably have to be the size of a sea kayak to be approaching class weights.
So this has been a bust and I will start over and do a melt into a mold. Like I should've done from the get-go. I have no idea what I was thinkin.' Or...in this case, not thinkin.'
On the other hand, I have been putting a lot of fairing material on my keel foil and it is starting to look like something that will eventually be near perfect.
But you have to use a lot of fairing compound. You have to use one great big helluva lot of fairing compound.
I have a new respect for foil builders.
I am hoping my rudder goes a lot faster...having it professionally cut in blue foam by foil cutting professionals with a CNC machine was a smart move.
I hope by the end of this week to have the keel faired and painted so that I can wrap it for the sleeve layup and then start building the keelbox.
Another small glitch....I am having a bastard of a time finding a LOCAL dealer in "doorskin" ply. Chesapeake Plywood apparently has it, but they have a $250 minimum. Aircraft Spruce has a great price on it, but warns that it will be "very expensive" to ship it....without naming a price. Then if you order it anyway, you get another warning about how expensive it is going to be....that was enough for me to throw in the towel.
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3.13.10......In Like a Lion
Luckily, I looked out the window at about 7 a.m. this morning.
We have really high winds that started around 1 a.m., puffs way over 40, I am sure. The house shaking woke me up a couple times.
And from a bad direction, too. Most of our big breeze comes from the NW, but this was the building breeze from the huge storm affecting the East Coast today, a NE breeze. The hoop house is less protected in breeze from the east.
It had sprung a few hoops from the rebar that holds the thing in posiiton. I think in another 10-15 minutes it would have been gone. If it got by the willow tree, it probably would have ended up in the next county.
I have enlisted the lion to hold the thing down. I never really liked this lion but it has brought us some good luck. Now I know what it was made for.
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3.12.10.......Down Time
When life gives you furlough days, make furniture! (bunks, hatches, compression posts, etc)
It's Spring Break and 4 of my 5 days off are unpaid, coutesy of the University System of Maryland. Am I complaining? Hell no. I'm damn glad they went with cost-cutting on the payroll side as opposed to mass layoffs.
Plus I get 9 straight days to mess around with epoxy, carbon fiber and E-glass tape.
Only hoping some of the days get well into the high 50's...when that happens, the hoop house warms up into the mid-high 70's and that, my friends, is glueing weather.
We also cleared out a lot of floor space in the basement, so no excuses. Except NCAA hoops...that could be a problem.
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3.07.10....Entire Weekend: Shot
Did a few more lead pours this past weekend!
It's going to be close. It weighs about 58 pounds now. I think I can get another 12 pounds on this half. That would be up to 70. 70 x 2 = 140, figure my final keel foil weight at about 28, that's 168 and another 8-10 gets poured into the gap between the foil and the bulb slot, that would be approx 180, so I'm close. This might yet work!
A new worry....its the shot/blob/epoxy matrix tough enough to stand up to repeated load cycles once the boat actually sailed? Time will tell.
I'll definitely lay in some CF strips in high-load areas around the thru-bolts to make sure the thing stays in one piece. Major props to Ballistic Products in Minnesota who fedexed, yes that's right, FEDEX'ed me 25 pounds of shot for the same price as ground.
2.28.10....Going Ballistic!
The continuing experiment I call "cold casting," progresses.
I realized that it would be smarter for me to try to end up with an intact keel bulb without having to heat a cauldron of hot bubbling lead up to 400-500 degrees and then deal with pouring it into a female mold. I'm too chicken and too capable of completely screwing up.
Look, the goal is to get a decently cast shape without ending up in the ER with 3rd degree burns and mental retardation due to lead fume exposure.
So, this is how it's working out, so far. I think it's going to be OK.
I got in touch with Ballistic Products up in Corcoran, Minnesota. Ballistic products sells shotgunner supllies. Turns out they can ship a bag of lead shot pretty cheaply through the good of USofA postal service. OK, it's more money than I wanted to spend on lead, but since I got the first 130 pounds for free, I could justify spending a little coin on some materials that are going to make my life a LOT easier (assuming this all works out).
The routine goes like this: go outside, don mask and gloves and pound strips of lead H-track (used to seat stained glass) into completely flat strips. Wrap the strips tightly into an armature and then pound all the air, trapped between the strips, out so that the result is a blob of lead approx 8 inches long and an inch thick, max.
Lay a bed on #9 shot in the fiberglass mold, mix some west-epox up with a teeny bit of MEK and mix the shot/epox into a slurry. Lay the blob in the slurry, seating it well into the bed of shot. Pour more shot on the blob, add some more epox and mix it up with one of West's black sticks. Let it cure. Let it be.
I used #9 shot for a couple reasons.
One, Ballistic Products sells a number 9 shot that is mostly lead instead of the other stuff that is laced with antimony and other lighter metals.
Two, according to my math, the smaller the shot, the less air or epoxy it will trap, interstitially, thus resulting in a heavier matrix per cubic cm than larger shot would. Please let me know if my math is invalid.
Three, the smaller shot will also conform more closely to other surfaces like the fiberglass mold and the lead blobs.
Plus, I like the Beatles reference: Number 9....number 9....number 9
Here's one of the molds with a hard layer (kicked epoxy) of shot & blob (right) and another (left) waiting for another pour. The blobs get better with a little influence from the learning curve. This one had a bit more air space than the later ones.
Each layer of shot and blobs weighs in at about 12-15 pounds, so I am right on schedule for 2 half bulbs that weigh in at approx 75 - 80 pounds each. I hope.
The keel foil weighs 25 pounds now, so there's the 185 class limit.
2.14.10....Still Cookin'
While the priority has been on shoveling and keeping the build shed upright, over the past 10 days, I have gotten a little more work done on the keel foil, mainly consisting of slathering on thick layers of micro-balloon fairing and then trying to get the basement warm enough to get the pox to kick. 'Bout the best I can do with conditions being what they are.
Bit difficult to do glass work in condits like this:
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2.06.10.....Still Kickin'
Bit of a scare when, at the height of last night's fierce snow storm, which dumped a record 28 inches in our backyard, I looked out the window and saw that the hoop house was crushed flat. I had been trying to clear it all night, but gave up around midnight, it was just snowing too hard and our power had gone off. So I sacked out for a couple hours with the intention of going out to clear it off at 3 am....but when I looked out and saw it was flat at 2:30 a.m., I said screw it, I'll deal with it in the morning.
So, at 7:30 a.m., I went out with fear in my heart and saw this. However, when I peeked under the crushed tarp, the boat looked relatively normal.
An hour of shovelling and the frame sprung back into conformation, the tarp was undamaged, and the boat was fine. Dodged another bullet!
Back in shape, pretty much.
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1.30.10....Same Old
Just as the last of the monster piles of snow from the 12.18.09 storm finally bit the dust, we get another dumping. Oh well, it's another excuse to take a few hours and work indoors. Best news of all is my bud "Crabmeat" is taking a large piece of furniture out of the basement tomorrow, and that will free up room to bring the house in and glass that bastid in the (relative) warmth of the cellar.
In the meantime, the layup sked of the keel foil is done and the fairing has begun. I had enough time this morning to sand the foil before the snow hit hard, that was a bonus.
Fairing is just a mixture of 5 parts microballoon (410) to 2 parts filleting adhesive (405) to enough pox to make it as slightly less thick than peanut butter. I totally understand that there will be a lot of applications of this glop from reading Jeff and Kevin and Chris B's build-blogs.
Also going on, simultaneously, is an attempt to clear out all the paster-crud that I mistakenly used to build the bulb plug...fine if it was going to stay a plug, but now that it's the actual outside skin (hopefully) I need to clean out all that paster. As it turns out, acetic acid (found in vinegar, but also available as basic photo darkroom chemistry in the form of Stop Bath) does wonders with dissolving paster. So a few applications of this, as a 28% acetic acid solution, has done a great job of scouring out all that soft, white stuff.
16 degrees outside and 5" of snow on the ground, so working in on these projects is about as good as it's gonna get for a while. Come on March....
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1.18.10......Dogfish Oven
This cold spell has made it difficult to get glue to kick in the basement. Luckily, we got a brief respite this weekend, and with the help of the Dogfish Oven, I finally got the carbon fiber strips on the keel. This week the goal is another layer of cloth and a bunch of fairing. Hope the warm weather sticks around. I need to get a "final" outer dimension before I can build the keelbox sleeve and finish the bulb.
An unfolded Dogfish Head Festina Peche box works pretty well to build the heat level along the length of the keel foil. Doesn't hurt to drink a few of these while you are working, as the stuff is DFH's answer to lite beer, just 4.5 % ETOH. Works for me. The lamp finishes off anything remotely sticky in short order.
12.29.09.....The Death of "The Whale"
I've been agonizing over the stupid bulb for so long, bringing it in to fair it, taking it outside to sand, over and over and over again, the family started calling it "The Whale." It does, in fact, look a bit like a tiny, tan, tail-less blue whale. Or...it did, because the whale died today. It was sliced in half and its blubber got rendered away.
This is a departure as far as I can tell and I'm not sure it's going to work, but what the hell, I'm willing to give it a try.
See, I spent so much time on The Whale that I decided to glass the damn thing and just stuff it rather than use it for a plug and then have to re-fair the thing all over again. I can't pour hot lead into it b/c that will grossly deform the glass, so I have to stuff it. I think it will be possible as the lead I have can be pounded into very fine ribbons and then the ribbons can be wrapped to form very, very solid shapes. The bulb will be a tiny bit bigger than the dimensions defined by the original pdf file, and perhaps a little lighter, but I don't think the difference is going to be significant. Like I said, we'll see.
Here's the whale just before the slaughter. The ridges are where 6 oz cloth overlaps...I think I have about 2-3 layers on in most places.
I was going to cut it in half using a friend's band saw, but that would have taken me well into early January, so I decided to just use a coping saw and be done with it. Since it's going to get glued back together, extreme accuracy doesn't really matter and the coping saw, while a pain in the ass, was adequate.
Done. Not perfect but fine for now.
The next step was to pour lacquer thinner into the pick stuff and watch it dissolve....it's pretty amazing. BTW, you might want to do it outside .
This is the fun part. I only used about a pint of lacquer thinner to dissolve all the pink foam in both halves. You should probably wear a decent respirator when you do this step. I didn't and was partially blind and coughing up blood for a good half hour afterward.
Just kidding.
Going.
Going.
Gone.
In other news, I also got a layer of 9 oz cloth on the keel foil This one turned out a helluva lot nicer than my botched first attempt.
Here's the foil after my crappy first attempt...it did get really nice clear-coat layer on it even though the glass was a toss-out. I wiped the clear coat, sanded it with 220 and 120 and then wiped it again.
A few things: I have this suspended, using the kitchen floor joists, in the basement. One: do not use curtain hooks to clip into an eye...they don't have the strength. One gave it up while I was doing this and the keel crashed to the floor and dinged the trailing edge of the laminate...no biggie, but a pain in the ass as the cloth was already wetted out and had to be repositioned. Repositioning a big piece of wetted out cloth is a chore.
Two: mark a big piece of cloth with a Sharpie or something to get it to lay down exactly in position when it's going on something wetted out. I marked the top edge and the right side so that when I put the cloth on it would conform perfectly to the way it had been cut to fit. See above about having to reposition a big wet piece of cloth.
Three: Allow a bit more cloth. I cut this just slightly oversize, figuring on the usual expansion when the E-cloth is squeegeed out, but I wish I'd made it a half inch bigger on each side....the cloth shifted a tiny bit and even with the slightly bigger piece, a tiny shift on one side gets multiplied by two and I have a small section where the glass is a 1/4" short on the trailing edge. No big deal, I'll get it on the next layer (a 6 oz E-glass top layer) but I'll make it a point to add just a tiny bit more overlap next time.
At 59 x 28 inches, this is the biggest piece of cloth I've ever dealt with, to date. I'm happy with the way it turned out and glad I had the chance to experiment with a big piece, on a foil, before moving on to glass the hull and decks. I highly recommend you do the same if you are not used to working with 10 square feet of cloth.
I learned a lot while doing this. Some people may have an affinity for stuff like this, but I know now that I definitely do not! I need to paintakingly plan, step by step, how I'm going to do a task as simple as this. Not sure why, maybe it's a learning disorder or something, but anyway, I also know now that I can cope with the task and stay focused...as long as I don't have to take an urgent phone call or something.
I'm SOL if that happens.
12.24.09...Christmas Spirit
Nothing says holiday spirit more than a 30 pound box of lead, all nicely wrapped up and delivered safe and sound.
This is from my friend "Steamboat" who has generously supported the building of hull 87 by coming through with lots and lots of lead.
With a 12 pound can of shot and a few fishing weights, I'm now up to about 175 including the keel foil and not including the fiberglass shell I'm building, shown in picture. This is a departure from the other builds in that I am stuffing the bulb with lead, lead that has been pounded together rather than melted, with air pockets and voids being filled with pox and lead shotgun pellets.
We'll see how it works but I got the go-ahead from another friend who is pretty good at figuring this stuff out.
12.18.09....There's Nothing Happening Here, Just Doin' My Best, to Keep the Roof Clear.
We are getting between 20 and 30 inches of snow today and tonight. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to keep the hoop house from collapsing.
Mission accomplished....18 inches of snew and still standing.
12.11.09...Supply Siders
If you visit this page every now and then, it's either because you're a friend of mine interested in the build, or you are actively engaged in building an i550.
Either way, because most of my friends are in some way, DIY'ers, I wanted to put a plug in for Jamestown Distributors, and a link to their site. I've ordered and bought supplies for this project from several vendors, but for sheer customer satisfaction, no one comes close to JD, Their website is chock full of info, easily navigated, and their web commerce buttons work really well. Their prices are great, their shipping is amazing and the free delivery over a certain dollar amount is much appreciated.
But aside from all this, the quality of their fiberglass and CF cloth is outstanding. And the care they put into packing for shipment is top notch. If you are ordering stuff for your build from an on-line source, I strongly recommend Jamestown. Even if you don't end up buying from them, their webiste is a primer on materials and technique.
The other link is to C-Tech NZ, the CF experts in New Zealand. As the dollar continues to tank because the idiots in Washington are oblivious to the fact that you can't keep cranking trillions of dollars out on a printing press and expect people to attach any significant value to what, in essence, is quickly becoming Monopoly money, you should think about springing for a CF rig from these folks in NZ as soon as possible. They do terrific work. Even though it's not ready to step, by a long shot, I get my rig out from time to time just to look at it, because the CF layup is so gorgeous. Now that I'm starting to work with CF, I can only my layups look as pretty as theirs.
I hope you supprt these excellent companies. As a boat-building community, we are all better off if they survive in this economic environment.
12.04.09.....Easy Bake Oven
I wasted a perfect 70 degree day last weekend by screwing up royally on an attempt to put a layer of glass over my keel foil. Won't even go into the specifics, too embarassing. But like someone already said, I think it was Ron with the Icebox build, or maybe Jeff in WI, it "ain't a mistake if you can tear it apart and fix it." Or something to that affect.
Anyway, I did learn that you can heat an oak laminate foil up pretty well in a garage-bag solar oven. The intention was to get the thing hot so that the pox would have better penetration, as was suggested some time ago on the class forum.
In broad sunlight, air temp about 48 degrees, the best I saw was about 118 degrees. At that point I went with the MEK wipe and cloth layup. While the cloth layup was absolute crap, I did get a good clear-coat layer on and I'm waiting for a shipment from Jamestown Distrib to come in this week and I'll give the cloth another go. This weekend looks like a total bust, though:
I think the job this weekend is keeping the hoop haus free of 2-4 inches of wet snow...not exactly a day for tabbing in more cockpit stuff.
11.22.09....Bulb From Hell
Somewhere, on the class site or the yahoo group or SA, I dunno where, frankly, there's a thread by some of the more advanced builders on "knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you could do it all over again?"
I can say unequivocally that "I'd a be a sheetload more careful when I cut the foam and glued up a skeleton for the Bulb From Hell."
Maybe I'm being a little too anal on this S.O.B., but the stupid thing is eating up man-hours like a State Roads crew on Quaaludes.
I think I'm finally getting close to a decent (read: symmetrical) shape, but it's only by being extremely methodical and ridiculously exacting that I'm to a point where I'd actually use it as a plug. A set of templates that are dimensionally stable and fairly exact are a huge part of doing it right the first time or, if necessary, making amends the 2nd or 3rd or 4th time.
This is basically just some paper templates from the pdf file (increased 131 percent) and printed on some fairly heavy coated stock (paper) and then spray glued to some old autoradiography (x-ray) film, then cut out VERY CAREFULLY with some damn sharp scissors. It's important to mark the centerlines of each of the holes, because just a degree or two of "twist: away from the centerline at each section results in some godawful ugly bulb shapes...I was pretty casual about lining these up the first time and man do I regret that!
Things are definitely at the point where working inside is the only option. I hung the keel foil up to be glassed over the T-give Holiday. The plan is:
- heat the oak foil for an hour or two with a big space heater to get it warm.
- wipe generously with MEK.
- wet out some e-glass cloth and apply
- let cure and clean off the blush
- wrap a 3" section of carbon foil tape along the length of the foil on both sides in the slight depression (barely discernable in picture at left) and let cure.
- follow up with another layer of 9 oz E uni.
- Then: cast the bulb
All-in-all, a great winter project. Just hope it don't snow.....
11.16.09...Weather Window
Temps up into the high 60's in November are Nature's Way of saying, "Get your rear-end in gear," so a little bit happened yesterday. A big butt- joint, that turned out well, got the cockpit sole dry-fitted and ready (pretty much) to go ahead and glass in everything aft of the coach roof. Given another warm day or two, the rear end of the boat could be solid and ready to skin with E-glass cloth by New Year's.
Also, a little glass went on the coach roof and a few more cable ties went into the garbage bin. The coach roof can come inside for the winter and be finished in the (relative warmth) of the basement. Yet another piece of the puzzle to be popped into place when spring rolls around...or even sooner if it's a warm winter (come on Al Gore, bring it to me, hombre). The prod receiver tube was also fitted in...it's just some 6mm meranti glued together and reinforced with 6 oz uni.
Another inside project/goal, over the next couple of months, is to emerge in February (or earlier) with a set of foils that are done and ready to fit right on the boat.
So, the fugly parts need some serious attention. I was not impressed, at all, with how the keel foil templates were fitting the oak laminate, so I wailed on that puppy for an hour or two with an angle grinder (with a very aggressive disk), and came out of that ordeal pretty happy with the new sections!
I've also been hating the shape of the bulb, so I layed on a thick layer (1/8th to 1/4 inch) of pox and 410 microballoons to have another go at shaping the thing closer to the bulb templates. I made some nifty new bulb templates today at lunch, by laminating the the sections on to some old, discarded autoradiography film and cutting them out extremely carefully. These will be a huge improvement over the piece-of-crap paper ones I used the first, 2nd and 3rd time around.
10.21.09........Club Sisyphus
I saw this on Sailing Anarchy the other day and knew I'd never be happy with a sharp-edged cockpit. So I decided to rip out the holey beams and switch to coosa-composite laminates. I figure the coosa should give me 3 inches or so to play with radius-ing the transition between the coaming and the deck. Not quite sure of the geometry yet, and how the complex curve of the sides (in some places, like forward) is going to connect with the coosa and deck, butI'll do some drawings and figure it out.
I hate ripping stuff out, but I hate finishing a project wishing I'd done so-and-so, instead, so while this is a pain in the butt, I think it's going to be worth it.
No way I'll get as much curve as this little Farr 25 design (looks like a Mumm/Farr 30 transom) but at least it will not be a knife sharp shin buster like I was planning on living with up until a few days ago.
A shot oddly reminiscent of one taken over a year ago (10.13.08) butt joints being laid up in the backyard again. This time it's the butt joints for the cockpit sides (rear), along with some coosa being laminated in a curve to match the cockpit design.
The holey beam has to go, but thankfully, there's not much glass holding it in. Then the frame needs a big notch for the coosa laminate to fit.
Here's the cockpit with the butt-jointed sides and the coosa fitted in the frames. My big disappointment with the day was not having time to do the butt-joint for the floor....the whole cockpit is 8'10" long, so a single sheet of most material, coosa included, is not going to do it for the cockpit layout...I guess that's one advantage to building the long house/short cockpit version.
So, one step forward, two steps back. Work goes on. I also did a lot of glassing the seams of the house...it is starting to look pretty cool.
10.13.09....Prod Uctivity
One good thing about working on Saturday is you don't feel that guilty about taking off the following Tuesday. At least, I didn't.
Aside from getting the filters changed on our two furnaces (it's getting cold in B'more), I was also able to take advantage of some terrific mid-October weather to get my carbon fiber bowsprit seated.
No one, to my knowledge, has written a detailed description of how they installed their prod, so here's mine. Take it for what it's worth, the whole thing was a helluva lot easier than I thought it would be, but it took some ingenuity...the end result was that the thing is exactly where I wanted it to be.
Cheers to Kevin, of "Pipedream" fame, for the excellent, detailed drawings he provided.
10.11.09.....Back to the Old Grind
Not having a finished keel foil is starting to retard my progress.
It's a cascading effect....I can't build the keelbox, and keel sleeve, without a fairly decent approximation (read: exact knowledge) of the outside dimension of the foil, once it's glassed and faired and painted (see Kevin's Oct. 6th blog entry). And I cannot glass in the bunks, and finish up below, until the keelbox goes in. And I have to completely figure out how the foil is going to intergrate with the extended cockpit version because, originally, I was going to build a short cockpit version (actually, I ordered a short cockpit, but received a long cockpit version, which was fine because shortly after I ordered the short cockpit version, I changed my mind, and then, somehow, Tim Reiter read my mind and sent me the version I wanted: long cockpit) and so to make a poorly constructed, run-on sentence shorter, I built the stupid keel foil for the short cockpit, and then received shipment of the long cockpit kit, which means the keel's a bit short, but I intend to adapt it and use it anyway.
I had to work all day Saturday, but this morning I got out my grinder and had at it. The foil was lumpy in places and needed a lot more shaping to the get the template to slide from top to bottom, unconstricted. I'm happy to report that now the entire length of the foil can be spanned in close approximation to the template(s). The hollow spots I'll fill in with something easier to fair than white oak. White oak is an absolute horror to fair in large surface area mode.
Next I'm looking into some CF tape to do a little reinforcing with. There's a bit of a hollow still, about halfway thru the chord length, and I'll probably work that out a bit more exactingly to accomodate a width of 3" CF tape. Then I'll epoxy the CF tape in place, fair it a bit and cover the whole foil in E-glass cloth. Fair it and paint it and then use the top 10-12 inches as the male plug for the guts of the keelbox, e.g., a female receiver in 9 oz biax with West's Graphite additive.
Looks nasty, doesn't it? It's really not as gnarly as the pix look....but it obviously is not smooth. To say that I was agressively using the grinder is an understatement.
Basically, I just got sick of farting around with heavy grit paper and decided to go hog wild with the grinder to get it roughly in confirmation with an NACA0012 foil.
Mission accomplished. Now I just need to make it look pretty!
10.03.09....Sicko
This god damn upper respiratory infection I have is really starting to screw with my build. I don't feel like messing with fiberglass when I'm already hacking up things that look like they ought to be served on the half shell with cocktail sauce. So, in light of that, the only thing I've been able to do is fart around with the bulb some more (starting to like the shape even though it needs a lot more work) and agonize over how I'm going to do the cockpit.
Problem is, I want the sides radius'ed a bit, actually a lot, and the question is how to make the transition from the flat sides to the flat deck, both of which are made from 6mm plywood which doesn't allow you to grind away much material (to radius the angle) before you punch thru to thin air.
So, after giving it a little bit of thought and hounding pro-builder Peter Ross, I finally said screw it and decided I would flesh out the angle with a bunch of lengths of Coosa Composite which would at least give me enough depth to bullnose the angle between the side and the deck. Coosa makes for an amazing substrate to which epoxy/glass can be adhered, and while the stuff isn't quite as rigid as I'd like it to be, it'll be fine with a layer or two of 9 oz cloth laid up on it. We'll see how this goes. Peter Ross is making complex curves with ultra-thin 1/8" Okoume, preflexed and laminated to shapes defined by frames he has constructed, then the thing gets glassed and bagged. I'm way too lazy and unskilled to try something like that, so the inside of this cockpit will not resemble a Melges 24, but it should at least be more comfortable than the configuration in the picture above.
Okay, so it won't be as sexy as a Melges 24, but at least it will be rounded off and the blood circulating to one's feet should be sufficient to the point where amputation will not be necessary...I hope.
Meanwhile, progress continues on the bulb...it's starting to look like something that might actually attach some laminar flow underwater.
09.28.09....Cast System
Life keeps conspiring to put me behind schedule...not that I actually HAVE a schedule, but if I did, I'd be behind. This past weekend, I was planning on putting 3 solid days into the build, I mean three days of like ten hours apiece. Wife was going away for 4 days, kids were accounted for elsewhere, I was ready to knock out a lot of work. Then some nasty pathogen got ahold of me and knocked the hell out of all my plans. I dont know if it's H1N1, but I had been exposed to someone who had it about 5 days prior to my getting sick. Working outside was out of the question. Getting out of bed was out of the quesiton. Finally by Sunday afternoon, I felt decent enough (I still feel like crap, actually) to, at the very least, address the issue of my keel bulb, with which I had done nothing since glueing up the pink foam many months ago. I had left it as a sort of lumpy pink mega-reefer, lying out in the build shed and I'd see it now and then and think "I gotta do something with that" and then forget about it for another few weeks. A while back, my buddy Garry of Supermodel fame had given me some advice and some material. The advice was to finish the keel bulb off in plaster and the material was a roll of the stuff they use to make casts, like if you break your arm or something. So Sunday afternoon I cut the plaster cast stuff into strips and wetted it out with a damp sponge and wrapped the pink foam. To my amazement it did an amazing job of conforming to the pink foam, and rounding out some most of the sectional ugliness of the unfaired pink foam. I let it dry (dries quickly) and then went to work with some straight out of the bucket joint compound mud, which is really not the optimal fairing compound, but I had a bucket of it right there and said "why not?"
It still has a way to go, but it's one helluva big improvement and a breeze to sand. A few more applications of mud, a bit of sanding, and I'll be close. I'm going to reprint the templates and cut out the insides to use as fairing templates at every other station, just to make sure the thing is still in conformation with the original design. It's been so long, I've actually forgotten where the plug design originated!
09.20.09....Infrastructure
A big buzz word for the new millenium is "infrastructure." Either it's crumbling or some "stimulas" dough has been allocated to build some, or sometimes it's putting a beat down on some community, like Dundalk, this past Friday, when it gives up the ghost entirely.
We felt really bad for the poor folks who took the brunt of the 72 inch water main rupture late Friday afternoon, but it did reinforce the concept that maybe building a boat in your backyard isn't such a bad idea after all!
So with all due respect to the people who's basements were flooded and cars destroyed, we plodded on with the finishing touches to the i550's infrastructure.
There are now enough holy T-beams to build a cockpit floor, although they are not all completely tabbed in.
I'll go the same route as everyone else, layup the exterior, including the sides, with 6 ox uni tape and then tack it togther, on top, with lathing, then pull the whole thing out and flip it and run 9 oz biax on all the seams underneath.
Even at this stage, I'm loving the size of this cockpit. Uncluttered by a tiller and traveller and bensons, it feels huge, especially for a boat that's just 18 feet LOA.