Project update

The boat is painted ( November 2015). I decided to do it on site with the help of a professional painter. Before, I tried to find a painting booth close by but couldn't find one that would be big enough. The only possibility was too far away and was only available on Saturdays which made the logistics a bit tricky. So I decided to set up a painting booth with a wooden frame and plastic. Used an extractor fan and inlet filter. The filter area was undersized regarding the extractor power which induced excessive negative pressure making the plastic film look like it could collapse  ( a bit scary!) but it held on just fine . Painting the main hull in one go was a bit challenging but it turned out to be easier than I thought.

 

The paint is very hard and the finnish is excellent.

 

 Had to open a section of the booth to get the main hull out and the floats in.

 Here the floats are getting prepped for top coat.

Now everything is just about on hold waiting for the spars.

Rudder and Daggerboard

Rudder and Daggerboard Topcoated at a local paint shop.

Update

 

All components are now primed and ready for the topcoat ( Beams,daggerboard,rudder and rudder case are already topcoated).

It's looking pretty good with no pinholes in site and a very good finnish.





 

 

The structure for the spray painting booth is ready.

Next Monday and Tuesday it should be lined up with plastic and exhaust fan,intake air filter and door should be installed. Then it's just waiting for the right weather window to paint the main hull and floats.

 

 

After that the project will be basically on hold until the spars come in. In the meantime still have a lot to do ( wingnets, deck hardware,etc).

Snap shot

Sorry for the lousy quality of the photo. Gotta get a decent camera.
Anyway the floats are there and boat is getting bigger, well, at least wider!

No I just need to sort out the mast and it's not being easy.

Next:

Work on the trailer's berths, take the floats and beams apart and continue surface final finishing for painting.

So far, a lot of swet and high blood pressure but getting there, one day at a time.

Rush!

Trial fitting the beams. It ain't no piece of cake! If you want to get it done right, at least to the point the boat sails straight and even on both tacks you gotta spend plenty of time here. I mean more than 2 days! More than 5mm all around is just too much! Yet still have to tweek around with a close to 18 mm fore and aft gap on the starboard forward beam. The rest is under 5mm tolerance which is excellent by all means! Anyone that garanties more than that has  to come here and show me how it can be done! There are just too many degrees of liberty to handle. The boat was leveled by laser and two opposing lasers were used to line up the beams.
Tomorow the floats will be on. I just hope the process will be much easier than lining up the beams!

On a different front there's the mast charade. No one seems to have ( or to be willing to supply a decent mast for this boat). Some seem they never heard of a multihull. Others thing the world of sailing is all about super yacths and the Volvo Ocean Race ( justice be done here; that's where the $$$ is).At the end I might just make a carbon mast myself at a latter stage. After all it's not that complex and it certainly won't be more of a challenge than
what has been building this boat so far. It will be just another part. Difficult, time consuming but a lot cheaper ( and probably faster than the 6 or 7 months one has to wait for a factory mast). And what about those emails that seem to get lost in cyberspace?
All nice people. Thank you but no cigar!
Well, tomorrow we will see. One day at a time.

The time is now!

"One Flew Over The Cuco's Nest!"

 

It has been a long project and now it's time to kill the beast!

It's just one of those moments when you say " it's got to be now no matter what!"

 

Working 12 hours a day Monday through Sunday sanding, drilling, thinking and leaving bearly no time for dreaming.Living pedal to the metal!

It feels great!

 

 

 13:00 O'clock: using the precious resource of time to eat with the left hand while drawing the gantries. Nice wine ( good old Portuguese Alentejano Red Wine in a local "Tasco" in Ponte Lima just close to the steel supplier)) and  it worked just fine keep that blood pressure down!

 14:10 :People that make crazy dreams possible. Rocha " Fatela" from Ferrolimiana cutting steel tubes like there's no tommorow. Thank you Mr. Rocha!

 15:30 Welding... and weldind...

And voilá! One of the best things I've done! These gantries will make the project flow faster big time.

Sorry for the absence of decent and timely updates. Can't have the cake and eat it too.
My kindgom for time!

Carbon Fiber Rudder Case

 Case GRP tube that I had made before and a plate of carbon covered with tape to make the angled rib for the tube.

 Lining up the tube with a laser ( just in case!)

Trial fitting the rudder system. So far so good!
Next the tiller stub and tiller.
Keeping it rolling!

Rudder, Daggerboard and more

 

Somehow I can´t find what was left from the 1 meter long G10 tube after I used a couple of cm on the rudder mount. I nearly turned the whole shop upside down but no success. I think I paid around $98 for that tube! No way I was going to order another one! So I took on the task of making one by rapping 68 cm of 120gsm BD glass on a 16mm OD steel  tube after laying down 6 coats of wax. I used the metric version on the rudder mount ( 16x19mm) so had to make the same bore. Was a bit sceptic about the outcome but with the help of some searches on the net it came out way better than I could imagine. It looks almost like a factory product although it did put on a fight jacking it out of the mandrel. I’m only sorry about the precious time I lost trying to find a supplier close by.

 Also made flat table to have better control when cutting the rudder case flange molds. Using the jigsaw in this way avoids any angle in the cut out which can be very annoying. By using a remote control on the power main I didn’t need to bend under to turn on and off the tool. It also allowed to use the blade almost like a router to refine the surface. It took some time but after some filing and sanding it worked out just fine.

 The moldes are now in place ready for the carbon fiber. Here I used some vinyl I had around to create the desired thickness and then used plastic tape as mold release. The angled molds are locked in place with hot glue on the outside and wax on the inside to fill in any voids so resin doesn’t get under. As for the fillets I may just use putty and then sand it back to the carbon to get the desired fillet radius after the part has cured. I did buy some plastecene  but was not satisfied with how it handled and how it was releasing from the laminate on a small test I made. Now I'm just waiting for drier weather to lay down the carbon.

By the way the rudder came out super light! At this stage (only need to prime and paint it) it weighs 1575 gr which is incredible! It took me 3 vacuum bagging processes to do it and it was visible the amount of excess epoxy  that was soaked up by the breather every time.  I started with a 825gr foam core with central re enforcement and used full carbon all the way trough.

 

Here is a side view of the daggerboard after 1^st layer of BD carbon and unidirectional carbon. At this point it weighs around 5500 gr which is not bad for such a large part, I think. The perspective of the photo shows how reasonably straight it is.Those who have followed the blog may remember that at the routing stage I ended up with a serious warp due to uneven heat distribution as I was shaping the foil. For a moment I thought the whole thing was ruined beyond repair. I’m very happy the way it is as in fact I can’t find any visible foil misalignment .

 

As if I didn’t have enough thorns on my feet already I ended up with a friend’s Vaurien to work on ( so I believed!) some minor repairs. Oh man,  what a nightmare! Once we inspected the inside it looked like as someone who came out of  a car crash,alive but with every single rib broken in several places! Now I'm stuck with the thing and have to get rid of it to make space for the floats. Always learning! There's always a worse time for something to come up.

Sanding, sanding ..... and sanding!

 Not much posting lately. Not really that much of a change other then sanding. Most work has been around fairing. I don't know about other builders but the fairing compound I'm using is as hard as stone! Normaly I start with 50 grade on the long boards to read the contour and then go up to 80 then 100 until the surface is ready for the primer. I think I can skip the epoxy skimming since I nearly have no pin holes. I didn't go crazy by applying thick fairing compound. Just didn't see it necessary and I guess it paid off. Just about 1-2 mm and here and there some extra fills.

 



In the mean time managed to vacuum the first DB carbon on the ruder blade. Temperatures were around 10-12ºC and had to use a make shift heating chamber to get proper curing. It came out just great. I just hope next layers (UD and final DB carbon) come out just as well. Right now weather has turned very cold and most of the time wet too so I keep on fairing until an opportunity shows up to resume vacuuming de ruder and dagerboard.

wingnet lashing rails

 The way I made the berth with metal tubing made it easier to anchor the straps to keep the PVC tube in place.

 Vacuum under way of 5 layers of 200gsm carbon tape. I used a T splitter to allow vacuuming on both molds. Given the temperature ( 10-16 ºC) I used a 50/50 ratio of slow and standard hardeners to decrease curing time and reduce vacuum pump consumption. It worked just fine.

 Carbon lamination done. It looks good.

Repeating the proccess on the port side. Here Fernando whose been giving me a precious hand lately is dealing with minor vacuum leaks. The port side was a lot easier and faster to make given the learning curve development. On the starbord side it took us an extra hour to deal with major leaks ( I guess some tack tape got some resin under it and just wouldn't seal. As a result we ended up having lunch way past 3 o'clock. Vacuum was a bit below optimum but enough to get a proper lamination. On the port side it was just a breeze and vacuum kicked in just a few seconds.

Progress is realy starting to show. The cabin floor and rudder mounting area is done and all of a sudden I feel I'm left with just the dagger board, rudder and rudder case ( and some other minor details) to put an end to composite production.

Things are looking good and beating the launching timeline seems more possible than ever. Will see!

Deck Hatch

 

Vaccuming the recess for the Lewmar Low Profile size 40 hatch.

 Vaccum close to maximum.

 Done.

Off-cut puzzle for the cockpit floor. Not bad. Used up much of the recoverable off-cuts, and still managed to save about 1 and 1/2 of full lenght airex foam for the settee back rests and some other details. However I feel I'm running out of epoxy and probably will have to order a few more kilos of it.

Anchor well

 

 

 

As I promised I will try to fill in the steps I completed since july 2014.

 

Anchor well .

 

The part was laminated and trimed probably in 2012. All I had to do was to glue and tape it in place. The pictures below show the process. 

 

 



Here found a simple way to hold the part in place.

 

Precut glass and ready to laminate.

And done!

Quick update

It has been a long time since my previous post but a lot has been going on regarding the project. In fact during the last 2 months many hours have been put in the building process.
I intend to post some stuff regarding that period.
At this stage the platform is nearly finished. Still ahead are the cockpit floor, cabin top, rudder case ( rudder and daggerboard are ready to laminate). Main hull lower end is faired and ready for epoxy skim coat ( top side still need tobe faired).
Now it's time to look for a trailer and source for mast and other rigging stuff.
Close but yet so far!
Timeline is still next summer. I hope I can make it.

Update



 

I have resumed the project on May as soon as the weather conditions improved although only managed to work three or four days before another long rainy period held on until mid June. I did atempt to push forward but it doesn't pay off working under limit humidity and temperature conditions. Curing takes forever and it's dificult to keep a steady rythm.

 

The boat inside is nearly ready waiting for the boat to be turned upside down to do some taping easier to do in this position.

 

In the meantime I tackled the aft beam rear coamings and cockpit seats.

My plan is to do as much as I can with the boat upright before I turn it over to do the underside taping on some hard to reach and work spots.

 

Have also spent a lot of time ( days !!) searching for gear and acessories to prepare some areas for the correct fit ( front hatch, safety hatch, engine mount, side windows,etc). Have been also inquiring about mast and sails. Although the platform is suitable for the R version I am considering both F 22 or F 22R. I would like a faster boat but I plan to do a lot of cruising too under much safer and confortable conditions. On the other hand there are significant savings between the two versions and I must keep the costs under a controled budget.

 

 

At this stage a lot seems to be done but then just as much is still left to do and I haven't even started fairing!

It's mid July and rain has set in again! ( Thursday through Sunday!). Althouh I try to keep up with my professional activity taking advantage of the rainy periods ( and heat waves too!) it's not always possible to acomplish that and I find myself often bogged in professional agendas in weather conditions ideal for boat building and vice versa.

Still the projects keeps going ahead and launching is estimated for the summer of 2015.

 

There a lot more photos of other jobs done this year but I'm having some trouble getting them off my new smartphone. These were taken with my old phone which I use now for camera purposes only.

Here comes the rain

 No epoxy for almost a week. Rain has come and hard too! Still got to keep on so I decided to make the cuts on the side of the cockpit hull to lay down the sette tops.

 Been get some precious help too, here and there, where two sets of hands become much more productive. Here Jano is standing next to a weird contraption we set up to deal with the angle of the top to figure out the correct cut.

 Still need to glass these parts according to plans. Will have to do it with a 280gsm 90/90 stock and a 400gsm 45/45. Plans work with different weights so I will have to work some sort of compensatio that will garantee the same result and at the same time reduce excess weight ans overlaps.

 After all the cuts came out just fine and now the foam is seating in its place and ready for glassing. Monday and Tuesday promise a good weather window so I'm on stand bye.

In the mean time I'm making some stove wood lighthers off surplus parafin and saw dust to stock up for winter. I estimate I will burn through about 3 tons of hardwood to keep the home
warm until about March next here. That also means less work with the guey stuff. Well, there will be plenty of things to do anyway and it even might be interesting doing some sanding jobs. At least it will keep me warm down there.

Short update

Sorry for letting you all in the dark for a long time. At the end of the day there isn't much energy left to sit down at the computer. Have been out with the family for two weeks too. Anyway work as been going on according do plans with some slowing down due to , believe it or not, high temperatures. Funny that after such a long time waiting for hot and dry weather and the it just gets too hot.

Most of the work has been done on the interior. Latest work was filleting the cockpit setee fronts which are now ready for taping. Next I have to think where I want to place the emergency compartment before I put on the setee tops.

Will have to order some more resin and possibly 20mm foam for the setee tops.

 

I'll try to keep the blog a bit more fresh....