My F22 Trimaran

Dilemma (text)

2011-09-26T05:56:00.001-07:00

Dilemma
As far as boat building goes last 18 months have been poor in terms of turnover. Every time I make plans to give the boat a good leap towards completion I find myself tangled with all sorts of other presumably important and urgent things to do.
To start with I must build a shack ( 15x 3m) to breed rabbits, ducks, chickens and possibly a pig for domestic consumption. We have enough space and the prices of protein are getting off the budget, and then there’s nothing like home grown food. We already have home grown vegetables; now just have to add the animal protein.
Then I find myself facing another dilemma. Recovering or converting into stove wood an old corn dryer (espigueiro) clearly in intensive care. The boat may be delayed a month or two but this human artifact is at least 60 years old. Can’t say no!
Throwing in a glass greenhouse for the wife and some interior and exterior face lifts, oh boy , do I have plenty of work to deal with.
And then, of course, I have my professional activity in civilization where I get , although miserably, some source of income.
Can’t complain though. It’s keeping my blood pressure down. After being through a sort of high blood pressure gale ( waking up with over 100mmhg diastolic) and gone to the Cardio ( Holter, stress test, echocardiography, and the whole lot) it seems that I just need to keep working hard! By the way, the stress test was about to kill me. At 168 pulses/min on a brand new tread mill which the operator clearly looked like she didn’t know how to turn the thing down, gave me a glimpse of how one can shut down to death if caught running from some sort of an evil creature! The truth is that after the episode my diastolic pressure feel down as low as 65 mmhg! The heart was just a bit rusted I guess!
Been medicated allright ! But nothing like an off the shelf “maduro alentejano” ( Portuguese red wine). In acute situations it clearly beats all those fancy molecules like lisinopril and the benzodiazepines.

Dilemma

2011-09-26T04:35:00.000-07:00

Not much new!

2011-09-21T09:21:00.001-07:00

The boat is on back on its "feet" again!

All exterior lamination has been done. Now I can walk safely on the inside without the risk of cracking the putty bonds.

To brace the top and bottom laminates where layer overlaps were less extensive I applied an extra tape 0/90 280gsm between the arms mounting areas estending about 350 mm each side.

Unless you're a feather weight, walking on the unsupported cabin floor panels is a bit risky. To be able to work confortably on that section i built this simple jig out of some tube stock I had with some minor adaptations.

Here the jig can be seen in place and it works just fune. It's very easy to install from the inside without the need to get into the tight space.

Most recent work was to laminate the UD's across the cabin floor each side of the beam mounts.

Plans ask for 150mm wide 500gsm UD. I only have 100mm wide tape so I put two extra layer of 0/90 underneath one 200mm and the 2nd 150mm. That should give an equivalent 100 mm wide 780gsm plus some distributed reenforcement which I hope it will be an adequate compensation.

Next job is to complete the inside taping of the dagger board case,front bunker tops and bow inteior sealing and bonding.

Then, I'll be ready to open up the slots for the beams. Still a lot of work ahead!

On another register I've been tempted to go for a custom made carbon wing mast. Still waiting for cotations for the alluminum poles ( like Sparcraft F 185C). I'm pretty aware of the risks involved once you get into carbon mast building but I can´t resist the challenge!

I'm sure a boat such as an F22 can gain a lot of extra speed from a properly designed and built carbon wing mast with variable section.

Will see!

If anybody as any good inputs on this subject I would appreciate.

Largest laminate done! Yes!

2011-08-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning didn't look very promising weatherwise. It was foggy and there wasn't a single pacth of blue in site. Still , plans went ahead and inside the shop temperatures were in the low 20's and humidity under 55%. I was just hoping it would hold during lamination and initial curing. I knew drier weather was coming on Friday and Saterday so, it would pay off. After all everything was arranged with my friends for that day.

Laminating 6x7 m of 280gms glass using hand lay-up was getting me a bit nervous. The first layer gave some fight but then all went very well. I used the dry on wet method with plenty of resin under the first layer and that helped move the cloth around. Following layers just soaked up the excess resin . At the end used a bit more than 12 litres which brought the resin to glass resin pretty close to 50:50 which is better that I could ever anticipate.

Having three mechanical engineers as extra hands , including a college professor , to boss around (lol) was something special!

At the end cooled down a bit with some beer.

In the photo I'm the one with decent working clothes .lol

My thanks to Tó, Esteves ( the Prof) and J.Carvalho. I wouln't have been able to complete this stage without there precious help.

Now I'm making a pause as far as boat building goes.

My shop is a mess! I'm running out of floor space. Next week I hope I have a new set of shelves

and a decent working table custom made for the next building stage.

Weather issue

2011-08-22T20:52:00.000-07:00

The hull has been ready since nearly the end of July for final major lamination. There has been some good weather since then but it just doesn´t macth up with friends being available. Now that I had everything set up for next Thursday the weather forecast is a bit on the wet side. No good for amine blush. On the other hand I can use whatever peel-ply I have left to mitigate the situation.

In the meantime I built the porch and fixed a rocking garden chair. Working with wire isn't for everyone. I took a taste of the mean stuff (8 gauge?) on the porch. One the chair used a 10 gauge wire but still had to put on a fight.

Tomorrow will see how it works!

The porch looks ok. Put some solar lamps on the covering.

Have loads aof stuff to do around the house but right now just wanted to finish the hull and get on with boat building.

Whatever is left of this summer looks like it's going to be a bit on the wet side and that's no good!

Well...

One down one boat to go!

2011-08-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

Well it all started with a few pilars and a great load of " god damn me if I don't pull this one out!".

Then... it was mostly pain!

But in the end it's there and for me it's more than satisfactory.

I think I'll spend some good moments swaying on that nett after a good working day on the boat.

The boat is ready for glassing and the message to my friends is: "Let's do it!"

Do I have other projects?

Oh boy! This is going to be a hell of a year. Throw in a shed for rabbits, ducks, chickens and a freak'n pig... I'll tell you later! lol

Other stuff

2011-08-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

The boat has been belly up for time waiting for the right time to do the last large lamination.

I'm going to need some extra hands to do this in one go. Most of my friends are out on vaccation.

In the meantime I set my hands on another project long overdue, making the porch.

I'm using old wood from the original house and using whatever other material I have at hand. It's going to look a bit old fashion. So far (10 days working like a mule!) .

I hope to have it covered tomorrow!

I'm completely beat!

Belly up!

2011-07-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Finally got the deck surface ready for glassing. Here a rebate can be seen on the fore beam mount area. There's also a slot I routed through to serve as a guide for the position of the bulkhead. This area will be cut latter for the beam mounts.

Second cokpit floor in position and taped. Pre flanges worked very well. Amazing how stiff it become!

Belly up and ready for some sanding shaping and finally laminated.

Weather continues good with temperatures in the high 20's low 30's . Resin cures like crazy! Got to watch out for heat in the pot!

Comings days hope to continue on the inside ( plenty of stuff to do). Let's hope it doesn't get too hot!

2011-07-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

The rudder and daggerboard have been restlessly staring at me since last December. I guess I´ll have to glass'm up and put them out of their waiting misery.

Little trick'n Tip!

Created an access to work decently on the rudder mount. Later will use it to reenforce the outboard mounting plate.

To do it, just routed 10 + mm down and left the bottom layer as a flange to support the cap.

It's going to be a life saver!

Here , rudder mount in place. It's official! If it's got a rudder ( well sort of!) , it's a boat!

Rudder mount

2011-07-13T16:06:00.001-07:00

Getting ready to cut the gudgeon block in two. Cutting a thick glass/carbon fiber block can be a nightmare with all that terrible dust blasting off from the sawing disk. It can turn into a serious itching episode, so I'm not taking any chances. Despite the protection some dust still managed to get through my footware causing some very unpleasant skin irritation.

Finnaly the parts were cut and prefited on the web

A rebate was created to accomodate the UD

And first layer o C glass setting up.

Tomorrow will put final glass/carbon layers.

I don't know if it turned out to be easier or stronger than what was in the plans but I surely did my way.

Rudder gudgeons

2011-07-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

This time I decided to breach plans and do something out of my own imagination.

I started with a HD blank with a half circular recess at one end. Then wraped it on a BD 400gsm.

Wraped 2 layers of C lenghtwise , clamped it and then clamped the tube over the laminated strip.This helped getting some tension on the glass tape.

Added de carbon fibre....

... and trimmed the part, in this case, enough for both gudgeons.

Slow but steady!

2011-07-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

Wet weather has paid a visit in what seems to be a reminder that summer isn't a sure thing yet.

Anyway there's plenty of suff to do.

Right now I'm preparing the hull for lamination. At this point all rebates are done. Still need to place some HD inserts according to plans.

Before lamination I'll spread a thin coat of glass filled resin to create a better bonding surface. I've been doing this ever since I started the project and it has given excellent results.

My plan is to laminate in two stages . First the deck and then the hull. Still have to figure out glass layout and overlaps for best results.

I'll leave the bow for later. I find it very tricky to walk around the inside without the outer skin glass reenforcement. There would be glass overlaps in the bow area anyway so that shouldn't be a problem.

Finaly back on track!

2011-06-25T16:15:00.001-07:00

Nearly 7 months after I last put some work on the project, it's time give it another push towards completion. Finaly wind turned East ( hot and dry, actually a heat wave in the making) and the structural foam should be dry enough to start some serious lamination work.

The boat ( yes! it's looking like a boat now!) is off the mold and hangs off the ceiling.

Mold has been dismantled and it's time for some cleaning up an sorting away stuff to prepare the shop for some work.

The idea is to finish major lamination work before the end of the summer and hopefully have it ready by next summer ( where did I hear this before?).

Last friday I had the chance to use some friends help so didn't have time to install the cockpit floor on the starboard half and just braced the parts across. This way I can still finish up some details and apply some interior paint while it's more easily accessible.

Generally the surface looks good and workable. A lot of shaping and sanding on the coming days.

The boat is hanging on just a pair of straps and it looks pretty light.

First job is to make a couple of births and should be ready to fire away.

Given the circumstances, were I do name the boat right now, I would probably call it "Crisis Buster" !

What can I say?!

2010-12-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

Almost no work on the boat for the last three weeks!When it's dry it's way too cold. When it's not cold it's way too wet!

Still managed to put in a couple of hours of progress on it, like the roof stringer and some floor taping.It will take a good two days of dry weather just to dry up the shop enough to do some serious work.

I'm wondering if wouldn't be best to take on the metal parts and wait until next Spring to resume epoxy work.

Let's see!

Taping and waiting

2010-11-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

To align the two halves to join I used a set of small plywood squares with a 5x50 mm M5 screw across about every 1/2 meter and where it called for extra clamping pressure.
Then , after aplplying putty, I used 80mm wide tape in between the plywood pads to lock in the joint. The tape beds were previously rebated to avoid glass build up on those areas.
It seems to have worked very good.
Now the join line is ready for sanding and final taping acording to plans.
Temperatures are falling which is delaying curing.
I'm trying to get to the fairing stage which takes a long time and can be done in adverse conditions. Just hoping for a couple of days with decent weather to complete the exterior lamination.
Here the clamping pads acn be seen in more detail. It's very easy a quick to install even single handed. The use of a tubular m5 socket (?) on the power drill makes tightening the nuts much faster. In some spots it may be necessary to drill 6mm holes through the joining line if there's not enough clearance.

2010-11-07T16:56:00.000-08:00

Getting ready to join the two halves which is the first significant millestone of the project.
I never tought I could move around so easily the port half and I was planing to get help from a couple of friends. By now I feel pretty confortable moving the stuff around. In the photo the daggerboard case can be seen already in place.
Next step is actually joining the two halves.

As a tip to level up the case on both ends I used a plywood strip ( with plastic tape!) . This way it's very easy to do the necessary adjustments at the same time as it acts as a back mold plate to stop putty from spilling out inside. Not all ideas work as planed but this one turned out to be just perfect! Simple and very efficient.

Now have a lot of taping to do along the comimg days. I hope the project keeps going as well as it's been happening until now.

2010-11-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Trying to climb and stay up on the steep section of the hull can be a tricky business. Good solutions are straight forward. This one works very well. Several plywood boards are kind of stitched together with plastic straps and the whole set is suspended on the bow edge.
Today I wasted way too much time trying to lock in position the bow web. At first tried to use wedges but they couldn't hold position. Then I decided to drill fore holes and sandwich the web in between. By using a set of 4 nuts on each screw it was very easy and reliable to level the web. It worked just perfect.
On the underside I used a 5mm drill bit as a spacer to garanty center alignment since I lined up the bottom face of the template with the centerline of the hull.

The corrugated tube is .... well... a head bump saver!

Productive weekend

2010-11-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

The weekend has been quite productive. Since I had borrowed a laser from a local plaster wall company I wasn't sure if I had enough time to do all the alingment needed before having to turn it back. Fortunately Monday is a national holiday and the extra time really come in handy.
All simetrical parts have been aligned.

I put some foam on the main hatch edges since I was getting tired to bang my head ( ouch!) everytime I climbed in and out.
This laser is excellent. It has two cross lines ( vertical and horizontal) and four point markers on the plane perpendicular to the cross lines. I couldn't ask for more. It even comes with a great tripod. Nevertheless I still insisted on the plumb line as a complement to line up the bulkhead center holes.

2010-10-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend I managed to borrow a laser from a local contractor. Despite the terrible weather outside with strong winds and intense rain, thanks to the polietilene panels I installed on the shop I've been able to keep working without any problems.
Today I ligned up both main hull halves and glued the trasom, aft and forward bunk bulkheads. Tomorrow I plan to complete this stage by placing the forward and main hatch bulkheads as well as the flanges for the forward and cockpit panels and the cabin setee.
This way I'll be done with the laser and can return it to the contractor.

2010-10-25T15:13:00.000-07:00

Setting up materials for vacum bagging. Peel ply, bottom layer glass, foam ( not shown), top layer glass, peel ply, release film, breather fabric , vacuum film and sealing tape. Too bad most of this stuff will go straight to the trash bin! With this process it's possible to get excellent laminates.

This is the largest vacuum laminate I did so far measuring 1.08 x 2,60 m! With this size it's possible to cut out the forward bunk top and aft cabin floor and still get some off cuts large enough for smaller panels.

I'm using the vacuum cleaner tube on the venting outlet of the vacuum pump to avoid getting oil mist flying around the shop which could compromise resin bonding if it where to set on surfaces subject to future laminations. Had I known this I would have chosen an oiless vacuum pump. This is particularly severe if you don't get a full vacuum and too much air flows through the pump.

Starboard hull half sanded and ready for next stage. I was able to get a laminate nearly free of any imperfections without using any plastic film as many other builders use. It takes some practice to get the hang of it but after a while it actually becomes a lot easier than one could expect.

I planed to have some friends over to help me place the port hull half in position, but couldn't wait for the weekend so decided to do it myself with the help of some straps hung up on the ceiling. I didn't count how many times I went up and down the ladder but it must have been close to a hundred times!

After a few hours the hull is finaly in place. I'm very pleased with the alignment of the two hulls.

It's beggining to look like a boat, but still a long way to go.

Bow trimmed and ready to install the bow web.

Update

2010-10-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

Beams, folding system and beam mounts have arrived from New Zealand. Took a quick look at the stuff and stocked it away for later. Still have a lot of work to do before the project is ready for the setting up the beams. Not much I hope!

In the meantime caught a small snake ( Montpelier rat snake) in my backyard and decided to make it my project "partner". The little thing is quite picky as far as eating goes. After trying all kinds of normal food (live and dead) I only convinced the snake to eat lizards. So I set up a food chain scheme with glue to catch flyes first, then lizards and it seems to have worked fine.

Anchor well on the way. It's finished and set aside for instalation.

Getting ready for the daggerboard. I built a custom table to make working around the blank as easy as possible.

Building up the thickness ( 50mm!).

Blank ready for HD inserts

Some drawing board work.

Routing...routing and more routing!

Daggerboard routed with the core insert. Looking good!

I decided to apply a first layer of carbon UD to avoid any possible warping due to uneven exotherm on the two sides during lamination.

The Daggerboard has been by far the most complex single component that I've made so far. It requires a huge amount of concentration during the whole process, especialy when tracing and routing the isometrics. In fact I ended up inverting the foil on the second side which forced me to reinsert a plug and repeat the routing process. The putty used on the one side induced a warp in the board. Fortunately I managed to apply counter warp and "froze" the shape with some carbon UD. It's not the best daggerboard in the world but it will do just fine. After all I spent nearly two weeks around this part and wasn't in the mood to let the whole work go down the drain.

I don't recommend this process to anyone coming behind. Take a look at other solutions or have it CNC'd. It will save you a lot of trouble, believe me!

Anyway, if you really want to claim for yourself the statute of boat builder, you've got to negociate with one of these foils!

Rudder, Daggerboard and Case waiting for lamination.

Winter is setting in, so I decided to close up the side of the working space. This way I hope it gets warm and dry enough to keep me going through the winter. I expect to glue both may hull halves and laminate the outside skin in three to four weeks time, so most of the remaining work can be done under controled environment.

Job done! It looks pretty good and I can already feel the improved confort.

Here the second main hull half is progressing at good speed. Tomorrow I intend to finish the remaining interior bulkheads and panels to get the hull ready for joining.

Weather has been fantastic so far . Let's hope it holds for another week or so!

Rudder part 2

2010-08-31T14:50:00.000-07:00

... placed the HD inserts ( actually should have put them before tracing to avoid having to retrace the lines over the inserts)

Then started rounting form the edges in to keep the next lines always visible.

.... some preliminary sanding and the foil starts to show up.

On the other side I used 2mm steps. It's quicker and produces the same effect.

On both sides I left the contour isometrics for hand shaping since it's a lot easier and less confusing.

Finaly I cut the foil off and did some sanding.

Tomorrow I expect to finish final shaping and leave it ready for lamination.

I missed the little insert for the rope. I'll add it in later on using an HD putty fill or a piece of G10 tube with plastic bushings.

This process although time consuming is pretty straight forward and reasonably precise.

The HD core can now be cut and wraped with glass according to plans.

Rudder Part 1

2010-08-31T14:36:00.001-07:00

Before starting on the rudder I finished the second cabin setee.
Then I made a 30 mm foam blank the same size as the full size pattern sheet ( 139.5x37.5). This way its easier to get a perfect match on both sides. It also makes a good and stable base for the router.

Then, picking up from Menno and Grant's idea, I traced the isometrics on the blank.

Then using a foam strip I traced the lines for the router, in this case with a 1mm steps.

The routing guidelines look pretty good.

Update

2010-08-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Back in business!
Finaly got some slack off the work I had on hands since March.
In about a week's time I managed to make the bobstay eye... ...the bow web (here ready to cut the slots using a diamond disc on the grinder)...

... the daggerboard case...

... a practical system to prepare small batches without the mess...

... and about 2/3 of the second main hull half ( here ready for lamination).

Since I'm running out of resin and my local supplier is closed for vaccation in August, I'll use whatever stuff I have left to do smaller jobs.

I guess I'll be moving on to the rudder mount, main cabin hatch and anchor well ,while I wait for more resin, glass and other supplies. I still have three full size foam sheets which may be good to make a few panels for the second main hull half.

So far the working pace has been very good. Let's see how things progress along the coming days.

By the end of September I'm afraid I'll have some work to deal with, but I hope I'll be able to squeeze some boat building action in between.

This boat has to hit the water next summer no matter what!

2010-07-21T04:41:00.000-07:00

With the help of some friends, first main hull half is out and up on a rig suspended from the garage ceiling.
Mold has been inverted and ready for planking.

Work has been suspended since May due to some other projects that came up in the meantime.
Now I'm free to continue the boat project.
Will be doing doing some sailing on the Minitransat early next month.

Beams have arrived and are waiting in Lisbon to be transported by truck up north.

Some progress.

2010-03-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

Winter has been pretty nasty around here. Since I'm working on a partly open space I guess I was a bit betrayed by the traditionaly mild northern Portugal winter weather. Not that it doesn't get sometimes cold and wet enough to render work nearly impossible, but I was counting on two out of three days on average of decent weather. Under these adverse and unreliable conditions I decided to keep the main hull half on the mold for the sake of stability and covered it with plastic.
In the meantime I took down the unfaired floats I had set away, and brought the surface close to the final finish before painting.
Here you can see the solution I came up with for the long board. A simple piece of plywood. Wrap the sanding paper around and that's it!. This way sanding paper can be used up nearly 100%. I had made some custom long boards with handles and everything but it turned out the paper was ripping off prematurely leading to significant waste.

As I shopped around looking for a orbital sander I wasn't to eager to pay well over €100 for a decent 150mm disc sander. Luckely I found this 125mm bargain for less than €50 with variable speed and just about as effective as higher branded products. Since 125mm discs are more expensive and harder to find in different grades I ended up using 150 mm discs which work perfectly.

Using a vaccum inlet realy pays off! No more dust clouds around!

Fisrt hull half resting on the mould waiting for better days!

I still fancy good hopes to finish the boat before the end of this summer!

Long time no posts!

2009-11-24T07:36:00.000-08:00

Long time no post!
It has been some time since I last posted some pics about the daggerboard case.
Since then some progress has been done on the first main hull half and interior panels.
Here I decided to preglass the cabin setee stiffner . This way I hope I save some work later.

First float half is nearly ready to extract from mold. There's only some last taping to be do on the cabin bulkhead. I also left the cabin bulkhead for last as it was easier to walk in and out of the hull to tape all interior panels.

I'm stopping all major laminations until next Spring due to low temperatures. In the meantime I'll be making all the smaller composite and metal parts. This way I hope I can have the boat ready by july 2010. Floats still need to be faired and painted so that should keep me busy till next Spring. If I find I have some slack I may vey well set myself into making a carbon mast!

Daggerboard case mold

2009-10-03T14:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T13:28:00.001-07:00

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.

Cabin side

2009-09-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

I decided to do the cabin side and roof in two steps. This way it's much easier to set up the planks and laminate. Here is the cabin side laminated.
At the bow area I came up with this solution. It looks pretty good but perhaps there's no need to spend too much time here since plane butting will do the same.

I borrowed a laser from a local contractor for the weekend in order to mark the bulkhead lines. It's a very helpful tool. Now I have to figure out how to put the 5º angle in there!

On to the main hull

2009-09-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

After stocking away the floats ( I left them with the fairing strips to do the fairing later together with the main hull) I set up the frames for the main hull. Notice that I cross braced every other pair of frames to make sure they stay vertical as battens are screwed into place. In a first attempt without the braces I had a hard time keeping the frames upright. I was a bit afraid the braces could get in the way later on but it turned out they didn't pose any problem at all.

Here I laying down the first foam planks. I used 360 mm ( 14") wide planks and despite many other builders reporting difficulties working with larger widths I didn't experience any problems here.

Notice that I move the plank a bit to the side in order to use the clamps while I heat form the plank. The difference in the shape is minimal and makes planking a lot easier. I also use V slots on the planks. It worked well with the floats so I decided to repeat the process here. Slots are cut at 45º and they take up a considerable amount of bog . On the next planks I may reduce the angle a bit to reduce bog volume.

Well. Planking done! Thinking about it, it's much faster than one could expect.

Voilá!

Looks good but not as fair as the floats. I did have some misalignments in the curved section near the joining line. On next half I'll put some extra battens on that area.

Now that the hull is ready for lamination I'll be making the bulkheads and other components as I wait for the right temperatures to laminate.

I'm still getting daytime temperatures around 20ºC but by night temperatures can drop close to 10ºC so I guess I'll have to use a plastic tunnel and some heat source to avoid any possible setbacks due to improper curing.

Update

2009-08-24T15:36:00.001-07:00

I decided to make the deck right on top of the floats using them as a support surface for tracing, joining and lamination. Actually I made each deck on the opposite float ( upside down) since they are simetrical. I left the chainplate HD insert for last in order to make moving around easier.
It worked very well and could be a good solution for other builders.

Here I decided to make round holes for the colloidal silica HD inserts. It's much easier and cleaner.

Double layer laminations applied on specified areas and peel plied.

View of the bow. I think it looks pretty good.

Shaping the bow can be a bit challenging at first but it turns out to be pretty easy once you get the hang of it. A power planer comes in very handy! Just down start plowing too much! At the end elbow grease will bring down to the right shape.

View of the two bows.

Note the rebate that was made to compensate for the thickness of the extra layers. I decided to set them parallel to the bow line so I could use a straight piece of fabric and make lamination easier. It worked out very well.

Exterior lamination.

This close-up shows the foam before lamination. Here I applied a coat of resin and glass ballons to fill in the pores and create a substrate to improve epoxy bonding and avoid those typical white patches that frequently show up in the laminate. These patches can be extensive and ruin the laminate.

I used a roller to spread the coat around. I found it very difficult to spread a uniform coat along the float. This wasn't a problem since the idea is to create a grid like distribution to serve as anckoring points just in case conditions arise for the development of "no-bond" patches.

The float's surface was also very carefully dust vaccumed. It took a good 45 minutes ( 2-3 passes) using a heavy dutty vaccum cleaner .

As you can see the laminate came out with a very high quality for hand lay-up (I'm using two 280gr/m2 fabrics for A laminate). No bubbles, no white patches at all and a very thin laminate.

What you see below the glass is the pattern of the pre-coat distribution and some foam joints.

After applying the resin-putty coat the surface must be thouroughly sanded which takes a lot of time but it's well worth the extra work.

Here is a wider view of the laminate.

It came out perfect!

I couldn't find a single flaw in the lamination except for some minor spots with some extra resin.

I was a bit aprehensive about those damned white patches that kept on showing up on previous laminations.

This time I decided to put some extra work on surface preparation and it really paid off!

TIP

2009-07-31T04:33:00.000-07:00

Probably most of you builders have figured out some way to cut straight strips of BD fabric and avoid all those edge threads from coming apart and messing up the whoçe work.

I found this interesting and very simple way to cut straight strips from BD rolls.

First I measure the width on one of the sides, lift a couple of threads using a nail and just puçç them right out of the fabric. The result is a perfect guiding line.

Bulckhead Beam flanges

2009-07-29T15:24:00.000-07:00

Making the beam mounting flanges on the beam bulkheads can be pretty awkward and time consuming . Having to apply 12 layers! of fabric ( of a total of 96!) on each bulckhead half in a cramped space is far from being a stroll in the park. Yet it's coming out much easier and more fluid than I anticipated. Started with the forward beam bulkheads to build up some courage to tackle the aft beam bulkheads latter on.

Setting up the 70º mold plate was a bit challenging in the begining until I decided to just putty bond a piece of plywood rapped in packaging tape. I expect it to come out although it won't be a problem if they just hang in there as part of the structure.

Back to work!

2009-07-29T15:08:00.000-07:00

The past month has been pretty intense with plenty of things to do other than boat building. With several regatas and a visit to Holland to check on Menno's boat I spent many hours at sea.

Our Minitransat is out for maintenance after a pretty demanding sailing season with winds on the 20's most of the time and over 35 kts on one occasion. After several upwinds against choppy seas and some violent downwinds the boat just couldn't take any more beating ( neither could we!). The final account revealed engine failure, 3 busted mast sliders, 4 broken or lost battens and a busted running stays mast tensioner along with some ripps and tears on both the genoa and mainsail.

Now it's time to get back to some serious boat building!

Float half 3 of 4

2009-06-28T03:38:00.001-07:00

Past week has been quite productive despite some rainy days along the way. The first two float halfs are ready and the third float half is on the way. Working productivity is increasing with time as expected.
Floats should be done by the end of next week which is not bad for a an effective working time of about 160 hours.
There should be some delay due to unusual weather pattern for this time of the year. By now we should have continuous clear skyes and day temperatures in the upper 30's but actually it looks more like late winter weather with plenty of rain and temperatures around 18ºC.
While this may delay lamination jobs, there are plenty of other things to do such as preparing some smaller components in advance.

Race time!

2009-06-17T15:02:00.001-07:00

The building process will pause for a few days along the coming weeks because I have to get our boat ready for the next reggata. The start line is in Baiona (Spain) so we must sail the boat up north next weekend.

On July 10th we are participating in a reggata form Baiona( Spain) to Aveiro (Portugal) in a distance of about 100 miles. The reggata takes off at 3 pm and part of it will take place overnight with the first boats arriving next morning. Last year we finished 2nd out of about 40 boats with wind on the bow running mostly over 25knts.

Let's see how things run this year.

Here is a picture of our Coco mini650. This is a very competitive boat and it's just too bad we won't be able to keep both the Coco and the new F22.

Half no.1 almost ready!

2009-06-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

First float half is nearly finished. After bonding the chainplate the float half is ready to come out and free the mold for the second half.

Chainplate

2009-06-17T14:38:00.001-07:00

The sequence shows the process used to make the carbon chainplate core from design specifications to final step.

After spending some hours trying to figure out an easy and efficient way to make this part I decided to use this simple jig based on a hard plastic sheet ( from a paint roller package) and two pieces of wood with holes for the G10 tube and an extra hole to pour the resin in.

At the end the part came out quite satisfactory needing only some minor sanding to take out some resin flashing.

After pouring the resin there was a small leak at the bottom which was readely blocked. There's a significant volume o resin involved and considerable temperature build up ocurred during curing which called for the use of a small fan to keep exotherm under control and avoid the distortion of the plastic sheet.

Tomorrow I'll aply the carbon laminate.

Stringer

2009-06-12T16:04:00.001-07:00

After nearly two weeks of low temperature and rain I finaly managed to add another step to the project. Here I'm gluing the stringer. Tomorrow I should be able to vacuum bag the laminate.
I also decided to use peel ply as much as possible on laminated areas where other laminations will take place. This avoids sanding and leaves a nice surface for post bonding. At the far end of the stringer one can see the peeled surface patch where the later the forward beam bulk head will be bonded.

Back to business

2009-06-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

I've been busy lately with some CAD modeling for a local company. Anyway the weather has been pretty bad for the past 3 weeks so not much of a change to do any lamination. I took the opportunity to test my new CAD version and drew the mast foot step. Only if it were that easy to execute the part for real.

2009-05-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Today I glassed th first float half. It came out easier than I expected. Still there were some situations that can be improved in the future . Laying the fabric one-handed over all those form frames edges can be pretty tricky with the fabric getting stuck on some sharp corners and edges. I ended up sticking a meter long tube in the fabric roll which made the operation much smoother.

Working with the resin was no problem as I chose to make about 1/2 liter batches. Had a roller and a squegee at hand but the 6" nylon brush did the whole thing without any problem. At the end there are nearly no air bubbles and the epoxy layer looks pretty thin for a hand lay-up.

Next time I might however try to prime the foam with a thin film of epoxy to make the wetting process a bit more fluid and perhaps reduce a bit the resin uptake.

I'm short on peel ply to finnish the bulkheads but I've been doing some shopping around and I found some polyester fabric that might do the trick. Polyester is better than the nylon used in commercial peel ply but it's not as tear proof as nylon and special care must be observed to avoid the polyester fibres getting stuck bonded in the laminate. To avoid this plies should be cut long enough so that there's a sufficiently large resin free fabric overlap to get a good and even grip.

Chainplate pads

2009-05-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

This doesn't seem to be too difficult to make but still it helps if you find a simple, fast and effective way to get there.

This is how I did it.

First I traced the curvature on the foam blank using a strip of foam.

Then I cut some slits with a metal hand saw as a guide for the amount of foam that had to be planned off.

Finnaly used a small hand planner to cut the foam to the desired shape. For better results the planner should be driven into the foam at a 45º angle.

Simple does it!

2009-05-14T18:29:00.001-07:00

First float half is almost ready for glassing. It took me some time to figure out how to make the 20x20 foam fillet until I realized I could make them off the fillet cut-offs from the stringers. Each 2.5 meter stringer blank gives off 5 meters of fillet for it only takes an extra meter to complete the float lenght.

Vacuum test

2009-05-14T18:18:00.000-07:00

Before I get serious about vacuum bagging I did a test run using the aft beam bulkhead. I didn't give it much thought and actually let every possible mistake to take place. This way I hoped to avoid making fatal mistakes later on.

This test gave me a lot of information regarding the whole process. I have all the parts ready for vacuum but I don't have enough peel ply to do the whole operation so I'll wait for the material .

Chainplate pads

2009-05-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

For the past week the work on the project took all kinds of forms. Besides some shopping and cleaning up I made a custom cart to carrie around most frequently needed tools and acessories including ilumination.

Down at the bottom you can see the vacuum pump unit. The idea is to build different modules that can be hang up on the cart depending on the operation ( vacuum baging, foam planking, gluing, glassing,sanding,etc). This way everything is at hand and there's no need to wonder around the shop looking for stuff. The cart can also carry special jigs such as a hands free support for the heating gun to preheat the foam. I hope I can save some precious time with this thing.

The Boat

2009-05-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know what an F-22 looks like here is a picture of Sam Ballard's F-22 built in Maine USA.
Although there may be differences between one boat to the other mine will hopefully look something like this.
From now to then there about 2000 hrs of work!
With ups and downs , fun and some pain I will get there!

Battens

2009-05-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

Today the temperatures got well into the high twenties so it was an excellent opportunity to put the fast epoxy to work by bonding the scarfed battens. It was a pretty tedious operations having to make 130 ml batches and try to make 3 battens at a time. In order to use a single pair of clamping jigs I stapple gunned the joints and carefully moved them over to free the clamping jigs for the next batten bonding operation. I was afraid the joints might move and ruin the whole job but everything worked out just fine.
It's amazing the way the learning curve evolves along the process. The first batten must have taken me about 45 minutes to set up and bond, while at the end I could easely do three battens in about 30 minutes.
In fact the first bonding operation had to be done over because of a wrong resin/hardener ratio. The thing wouldn't simply cure! It turned out that the stapples where a bit off mid section of the scarf so it was a good opportunity to fix up this problem too.

This was the first contact with the resin and it was a good opportunity to calibrate the batches for maximum resin rentability.
I was afraid it could become a bit messy but it all come out nice and clean. In fact never had to put the nitril gloves on.
At the end used some left over resin to seal the boundaries of the mdf form frames. I noticed that some srews were sweling up the borders.

I will be planning in advance some side operations where I can always use excess resin and or glass. Maybe I'll make some custom tools to use later on in the lamination process.

Foam workbench

2009-05-01T10:34:00.001-07:00

Today I spent the morning cleaning and moving stuff around to make space for the project.
In the afternoon I used some steel profiles I had around to make a workbench for the foam to store and cut the foam sheets.
I'm still considering making a cheap aluminum linear guide where I can mount a rasor to make cuts easier and more precise.

Here you can see the the foam box already in its place. As you can see it's a pretty large box hard to stock away. This way I can put a laminated sheet on the top where I can cut foam on one side and eventually do some other operation on the other side like vacuum bagging.

I'm amazed how well this structure came out. I'm not an expert welder and I usually end up with a leg setting way out of level but this time it came out perfect!

My daughter "helped" me put the box inside the structure. Kids are always so strong , aren't they?

One down ! More to go !

Not so fast!

2009-04-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm currently sailing a Coco Minitransat 6,50.
It's a pretty competitive boat for its class. We participate in most races in the north of Portugal .
Despite the fact that we have won 9 out of 10 races in corrected time, by the time we cross the line everybody else has already gone through a couple of nice and cold beers.
The trimaran project is a means to turn this fate around . We will probably beat most monohulls to the beer but I'm not so sure about the final position regarding corrected time.
Right now we just want to go as fast as money can buy!

For more on the Minitransat take a look at this youtube clip,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivPFuk3P-iw

Vacuum Pump

2009-04-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

Today I spent most of the time out shopping for some stuff I need. I also picked up a vacuum bagging kit I had ordered from Greece. I have some homework to go through before I set up the whole thing ( valves,filters,pressure gauge,etc).

I ran into some dificulty trying to put the pump up and running. The instructions where not very clear about the need to add oil or not. According to the manual the oil level should come up to the marked line after two minutes running but it didn't so I figured I had to add some oil. I kept on adding oil time and time again and nothing so I figured the bottle contained the exact amount of oil needed to reach the desired level. Wrong!

I ended up going way over the limit and had to drain out the excess. In the end everything went back to normal and I'm very pleased the pump is operational.

Tooling time

2009-04-29T13:26:00.001-07:00

I´ve got the strongback almost finished. I managed to borrow a laser from a local contractor for a couple of hours to make sure I get a pretty leveled base then I used some masonry fast cement to level the feet and after I'm going to glue it to the concrete with epoxy.
As you can see I have plenty of space to build the boat without getting too much in the way of the family's daily routine. But that came at some cost. With the money I spent on the new roof I could build two sets of floats. Then again it's an investment in the house and it could make the project a lot easier.

Today I received the glass, epoxy, foam and fillers.
I already did some tests with the Airex and I'm pretty satisfied with it's flexibility.

Now it's time to think about some custom tools to speed up the job. I'm planning to build a simple foam cutting jig with the possibility to cut at a predefined anlgle to create a v groove for gluing. If it works out well I'll let you know.
I'll also need to build a cart for the glass rolls and some sort of worksation on wheels to carry around the most frequently used tools and acessories.
Now it's the moment to invest some time in preparing the work. Hopefully things will run smoother. Three days spent now tooling up may save 1 to two hours a day for many months to come.

Ground Zero

2009-04-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Today I started the strongback construction. I have all the elements ready for assembly but I'm going the use the extra long side panels to join the scarfed battens.
I've already ordered the basic lamination materias and if the temperature and humidity fall in the right range along the coming days I'm all set to go!