Sides glassed

 The sides are glassed, 12m2 of glass (2 strips of 5x1.26m) took 6kg of resin. That includes the extra for peel ply, whatever soaked into the wood and whatever I wasted. Took about 2-3 hours per side for 2 people to do. But it did come out nicely. I used thin West System foam rollers (used up 3 of them), a fin roller and some squeegees for application.

 

After doing one side I noticed something funky: an orange peel like texture in some places, not related to the nylon stitching of the fabric which also leaves some texture. A mystery, maybe something in the plywood substrate, maybe some fin roller artefact... All to be taken care of during fairing. Whenever that will be.

And here both sides done:

Tomorrow the bottom, the transom and the extra piece in the middle to add a little bit more reinforcement to the keel/shroud attachment points. Probably not needed, but I will sleep better given the fact that I am erring on the lower end of the allowed plywood density - but then also the additional weight of such a reinforcement will not be a problem...
 

tot morgen.

Glass goes on longitudinally

 After a quick fit the biaxial fabric seems to drape quite well over the hull shape along the (almost) entire length of it:

not quite so in the back:

I'll do that part together with the transom.

So, the plan is: Today I'll do both sides and the rest (bottom and transom) tomorrow. Though the magic of peel ply there will not be any complications with laminating on top of already cured laminate. That way I can easily position the bottom strips (there will be 2 of them) and tie the transom in with the rest without worries about resin going off before I'm done laying up peel ply. Also: the chines will get their foreseen reinforcement. The bottom chine will have 3 layers (900g/m2) and the bow section will be even 4 layers just by virtue of the glass strip geometry. I will not even have to cut anything:) The turn of the bilge will be at 300 - which should be fine as it needs 600 when using woven roving. I will add one more layer in the center section where the forces are largest between the chainplates and the keel.

All in all, this is how happy I am:

More pictures tomorrow.

Hull ready for glassing, trailer

It took me 2 days to prepare the hull for glassing, plus some fairing compound and some sanding. The chines are rounded over and made as smooth as they will get - using a long board aka a torture board ;)

I'll start later in the afternoon when the temperature in the workshop drops to 20 degrees or so. I still haven't decided on a layup schedule, we will see how that goes. I will for sure have at least 600g on the bottom, the rest 300 mostly, except the bow which needs to be a bit stronger, especially on and below the water line and around the chainplate attachment points - but that can also be reinforced later.

Also: I got a brand new 10 year old boat trailer - 700kg allowed load, which is plenty for this boat. It is made for motorboats - the rollers are in a straight line and are expecting to support a straight piece of skeg or a false keel. I don't have one so I'll have to figure out how to best do this. Funny thing is: this one was very hard to find - no new ones are produced at the moment (maybe in september) and aluminium prices are apparently so high that nobody is selling theirs... So as can be seen here I did find one, but I had to take my son for a roadtrip to pick it up. 600km away. In Cannes. A fun trip it was. We even got to jump in the Med for an hour, but that is a different story.

In two weeks we will be already travelling, so I think I'll skip fairing and painting the hull until after the move. I will fair the bottom under the waterlin, I don't want to have to keep flipping the boat. I do hope I will manage to close the deck and cocpit - a piece of tarp is less reliable in transit:)

Turning the hull upside down

Much has been done in the past 2 weeks, I'll post the details later once I get the chance to photograph all the bits that are now slightly inaccessible because the hull is turned over for glassing the bottom. Here's how it went:

 

 As you can see in the video there is not quite enough space for a relaxed turn but it's just a couple of centimeters so with some effort we managed to force it to flip over.

Now busy finishing up the hull surface for glassing - filling holes, shaping and sanding. Tomorrow or day after I hope to lay up some glass.

cheers.

Bracing the foredeck and cocpit

 A lot of invisible things are halfway done like fairing the hull in preparation of glassing, cleaning the interior in preparation for varnish etc. More on that another time. Or never. It's a lot of sweat, sanding, scraping and wiping all to no visual advantage.

I'm in the process of varnishing the inside of the fore and aft lockers because I'm about to close those those spaces. The varnish I'm using does not have to be sanded between coats and I can easily put down 2 coats a day.

My sheer clamp is sick! Sap stain, a fungal infection. It did not look as pronounced before varnishing. Anyway, it is said to usually not affect the strength properties of the wood. The fungus does nothing in dry wood (as in below 22 percent humidity content) so I better keep my boat dry ;) .

 

Also: the foredeck and cockpit are now fully braced. The braces are encapsulated in 3 layers of epoxy, wet-on-tacky.

Somehow small jobs like that take hours - between the cutting of weirdly shaped load bearing slots in uncomfortable locations, fitting, sanding and beveling the timbers - many hours of work are poured into such small elements.

One of the braces has a knot - which I noticed only now in the picture. I've handled that piece for I don't know how long and only now do I see a big defect. Luckily the knot is on the top half, comes out on the side just next to where it sticks out the top. I'm gonna let it be.

I'll continue on the interior: floor timbers and bunk supports.

Hull screwed up

 All the screws are in, all bedded in epoxy. Now only the deck and horizontal surfaces in the cockpit are missing.

In the mean time I fitted and glued in the carlings for stiffening up the cockpit benches. Those are not in the plans, but 8mm plywood can use some support there - the spacing between the bulkheads is quite large and it does not get the benefit of being curved like the deck. I placed the braces flat so there is some give to allow the forces to be spread around - a stiff brace would try to carry the full load all by itself and that might not be a great idea.

I'll do a similar thing for the cockpit floor tomorrow.

One more thing on the agenda for tomorrow: fairing the screw holes.

Before I turn the hull for glassing I need to install the compression post and it's supporting floor timber. That would be hopefully the day after tomorrow.

until then.

Hatch carlings

Today I wanted to screw in the final stainless fasteners along the sheer and the cabin sides. I redrilled all holes to the correct depths (30mm on the longitudinals, 50mm on the futtocks). But then I got sidetracked by the carlings. Spaced 30cm, running from the forward bulkhead to frame D. Completely rigid as frame D will be supported by the compression post. I already ordered a hatch, a minimalistic 30x30cm contraption, will let in some light and air. The actual hole is something like 26x26cm which means my head may or may not even fit through. We will see.

Cutting into my carefully laminated deck beams was a bit scary, but luckily I managed not to cut too deep.

I did not want to cut deeper than absolutely necessary which means the carlins have to be about 2 cm at the crossing point. Together with the deck plating this will still make for a relatively stiff construction and will support the hatch sides nicely.

 Glued and filleted:

As for the screws I got distracted from: their time will come tomorrow.