Hull Extension is DONE!!!

I was able to finish up the last bits of glass work to complete the hull extension today. I added 2 double layers of Mat + Roving from the inner skin down over the stringer and onto the hull below the stringer. Now the glass on the stringer is nearly 7/16" thick. Big improvement over the 1/8" or less they had over it.

I also finished glassing in the corner, so now there are 3 double layers of Mat + Roving going from the inner skin to the hull at the end of the core. The layers are lapped in the corner so at the corner there are 6 double layers of Mat + Roving.

This is the forward end of the port side hull extension where it tapers down to the original rail. The stairs from the side deck to the sun deck are located here. I added 3 more layers of the Biax cloth + 1 layer of the Mat for a total of 6 layers of the Biax cloth + 2 layers of Mat. Final hull thickness in the area of the extension is better than 3/8" which is what the hull thickness is.

On to the next project.....I was going to reinforce the 4 stringers that start at the outer main stringer and run up the hull to the Horizontal stringer which is where the cored hull starts. But the original work is so poor that I think it will be faster and definitely stronger to just cut them out and start over. They used a very low density foam that was not shaped right, no fillet where it meets the hull, and the glass is very thin.
I have some 1-1/2" medium density foam which I can cut so the sides of the stringer slope at a 45 degree angle down to the hull. They will be much stronger and look a whole lot more professional.
And here I  was wondering what I was going to do next.....

Hull Extension Core in place and glassed

I realized that the core bonding material sets up much slower than the directions say. So I decided to bond all the core for the whole port side in at one time. I was afraid to do this before because of the time it takes to seal the vacuum bagging material at the edges. But when I realized that I had a lot more time to work with it I decided to go for it. With Steve mixing while I was spreading the glue we were able to get the 3 pieces up quickly. The bagging went fairly smoothly, there seems to always be problems do to the size and shape.

                                                       But we got it done.
Which is great. Before I was having to bond one piece in then glass it to create a surface to bond the bagging tape to, and then bond in the next piece. It was very slow going.

Speaking of difficult spots, I ended up cutting some of the engine room bulkhead out of the way so the bagging tape could make a smoother transition from the hull side to the top of the stringer. They had cut it too low anyway so it did not reach to the underside of the deck.
I will scarf in a piece on top of the bulkhead to bring it up to the deck. The engine room was never sealed off from the other cabins.

So today's job was to glass the inner skin on. Steve helped and we got it done in about 2 hours. There are 15 yards of glass on total in the 3 layers. I cut it into 30" widths which makes it a manageable piece to wet out. The cloth comes in 60" widths. I stagger the seams so that the seam in the first layer is in the middle of the piece of the second layer. That means that you need more time to work the glass. Let's just say that no one was sitting around during those two hours. 

I decide not to wrap the glass over the stringer on this side. It was causing a lot of extra work and did not look that great when finished. So I decided to glass down to the top of the stringer today, then add the fillet piece in the corner and glass from the inner skin down over the stringer and onto the hull below.

Sunday Funday with Fiberglass

Spent the morning grinding and moving stuff out of the way so we could add the

 4th and 5th layers of glass to outer skin of the hull extension on the port side and layup the first 4 layers of glass reinforcement for the horizontal stringer.

I still have to beef up the vertical stringers below the Horizontal one on each side of the hull. I am waiting till I get all the work above them done. The thing wrapped in paper and blue tape is the exhaust hose for the main engine.

Hopefully I will be able to get all the core in on this side tomorrow and glassed on Tuesday.

Hull Extension Transom Inner Skin is done!!!

Back to work after two days of moonlighting at the airport. I was able to get the rest of the inner layers of glass up today. You can see how I wrapped the inner 3 layers over the stringer. That stringer now has about 1/2" of glass over it.

Last job of the day was to fill the low spot at the joint between the hull and the extension so that the core does not have to take as much bend. Tomorrow I plan to add the 3rd layer of glass to the outer skin. Then it onward to the core.

Big day today

Today was a day of finishing and unwrapping....

I bonded in the final section of core in the transom. I had trouble with the seal for the vacuum bag again. I guess I am going to have to sand and re-coat with resin the areas where the bagging tape seals on the hull. I went round and round the perimeter tape trying to get it to seal. I did finally manage to get it to seal well enough to get 10 PSI of vacuum which is enough. I imagine that I will have it all figured out by the time I finish with the port side.

After lunch and a brief rest I cut the cloth for the inner skin for the core I just put in on the transom and then glassed the final layers of the inner skin on the starboard side aft. So the hull Extension is done on that side. Seems like it has been forever....

The last job of the day was to remove the mold from the starboard side and transom. That is a real milestone for this project. She looks pretty good. There will be a wood band that covers the joint between the blue and the white above it. You cannot really tell in this picture but the white area above the blue stripe actually leans in at about 8 degrees.

       
        Here is a shot from forward. The angled part at the front is where the stairs from the side deck go up to the sun deck. I use a mat finish Formica for the aft section and a high gloss Formica for the front part which really shines. It does not matter , they will both be painted.

Later on after dinner I went back to it and pulled the vacuum bag off and glued all the foam fillets. Now it is ready for the inner layer of glass.

Sunday funday

Couldn't resist making or at least trying to make progress today.

Started off with gluing in the backing blocks for the hull to deck joint screws in the remainder of the transom.

Then I tried to finish the glass work on the Starboard side, but the first layer of mat did not want to play along and decided to peel off the core just as I finished wetting it out. Once it is wet you can not do anything with it, the binder no longer holds it together....so you end up with glob of wet fibers.

Still had resin mixed up so on to the next section which was the Starboard corner at the stern.

I decided to use mat and roving instead of the combo cloth I have been using on the flat areas. The mat and riving are far easier to work into complex shapes.
The glass is about 3/8" thick around the opening for the stairs now. I added another 3 layers of mat and 3 layers of roving here.

Here is one of those complex shapes I was talking about. This one is where the corner meets the top lip of the hull. The whitish area at the upper right side is the cut out for the steps.

Moving Right Along...well moving anyway

I was able to bond the first piece of core on the transom in this morning. I figured out that the vacuum leaks were in the poor original glass work on the horizontal stringer. So I added two layers of Mat and Roving which sealed it up really well. I believe I covered that in the last post.

So here is the panel at the start of the vacuum process.
I kept the vacuum at 15 PSI for about an hour.That works out to a little over one ton of pressure on each Square Foot.......

                The gauge on the left is showing the vacuum pressure.

An hour later it had pulled some of the liquid from the bonding paste through the core to the other surface. I guess 10 PSI would be a enough.....

Here is the same panel with the inner layers of glass. The darker sections to the left are two layers thick. I stagger the joints between layers so the joint in one layer is in the middle of the section of the next layer. Next I will bond in the other piece of core and then glass it.

 I wrapped the inner skin of glass down and over the horizontal stringer. The second layer overlaps the first below the stringer. Now glass on the stringer is about 3/8" thick!

Here you can see the various parts of the whole layup. At the bottom right you can see the original 4 layers of glass bonding the stringer to outer layer of fiberglass. The white vertical part is the 1" thick Nida-Core, the light colored piece emerging from under the glass work at the lower right is the foam fillet between the inside face of the core and the top of the stringer and finally to the left are the two layers of glass. The second layer over laps the first one below the stringer. It's a lot of work but very strong.