Daggerboard case mold

Here I'm setting up the mold for the daggerboard case. To set the tapper on the sides I simply tilted the saw blade 1º as I cut the stiffners and it came out just fine. Inside stiffner tops are also tappered 1º to provide a correct alignment while clamping.Some wood glue and a few screws and it's done !

I had to butt join an extra board to make the 430 mm width out of the cut offs available.

Here I'm applying a sealing coat. If I find it satisfactory I might try to use wax instead of packaging tape as a demolding surface. Temperatures are falling down ( although they have been in the upper 20's till the end of September !) so it's taking longer for resin to cure. Tomorrow I hope I'll be able to sand the mold and apply another resin coat and test if the wax option works.

Cabin roof

After experiencing some unsatisfactory results on the lamination of the first float half at the very begining of the project, I decided then to apply a coat of resin thickned with microballoons before lamination and it yielded excellent qualities with nearly no flaws. Since then I've been using this technic prior to all laminations and the result has been very good.

Here it's possible to see the application of the pre-coat on part of the foam. The metal spatula works very well and the process is easy and quick. After, it only takes a light sanding to prepare the surface for glassing.

This was the most challenging situation so far regarding lamination. It took longer than I expected and for the first time I ended up with a steep exotherm in the resin pot with the roller nearly getting stuck to the fabric before I figured out what was going on. Luckly I had enough time to prepare another resin batch , set up a new roller, put on new gloves and resume the lamination with no problem.

In the end everything came out well. There are no bubbles and the bonding is very good. Perhaps this time I didn't manage to take out as much excess resin as I would like but still the laminate came out reasonably thin.