Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Been busy, but not writing

I have managed make some progress on the Hull sides over the last couple of weeks. Took a week off the get the Courtship running and deliver her to West Palm Beach. I am really happy that project is done. Ended up taking her from Fort Pierce to West Palm Beach on Friday, then raced on the Furmious from West Palm Beach back up to Port Saint Lucie on Saturday and then back to West Palm on Sunday. I got my share of water wind and sun......


So the outer skin of the hull side extension is done.
Here is the Starboard side, with 1 layer of 1.5Oz. Mat and Two layers of the 24OZ Biax with binder mat. I put the Mat on first then added the next layers with the biax side in which made it a lot easier to wet it out. It is very hard to work the resin through the Biax material to the binder, but the binder wets out easily.

Here is a not very good shot of the transom. The white square in the upper left corner is where the steps down to the swim platform meet the transom. So the first two steps will be in the deck and then they pass through the transom and turn to go down to the swim platform. I made an indented flange in the transom which will mate with an external flange in the stairs which will be molded into the deck molding. Keep your fingers crossed.....


I forgot to take pictures of the first two pieces of core going in, the plastic at the right is the vacuum bagging
material over the 3rd piece. There is 1 layre of Mat and two layers of the biax with binder on the inside of the core. It is amazing how much stiffer the side is with the second layer of glass.




Here is a better shot of the last piece of core going in. I was trying to reuse some bagging material that had the tape in the middle of it....








 Today's job after rebuilding another section of the ramp was to add two layers of 1.5Oz mat + 24Oz. Woven Roving to the glass-work holding the upper horizontal stringer on the transom. They only had a little bit of mat holding it. I think I have been fighting vacuum leaks though this glass-work.


I think the problem is solved on this one. Notice that you can see the foam fillet though the glass-work. The mark of good glass-work is how transparent it is.