Fair, sand, repeat

Still fairing here. Weather had been cold so i have been picking my windows to epoxy. I NEED to get the floor done so i can flip the boat boat over. The low spots are starting to bury. All my core is bonded. I think itll be ok in the end but its put me way behind schedule. Ive done 2 rounds of fairing. One mote full round and another on big spots and i should be ready to glass over the whole thing and make it look nice. Need to get some wider bagging material for the floor as the 60" stuff i have is gonne be just too short. Progress will be slow until i can get the floor done, and the boat flipped. Then i can move into the woodfired shop to continue to make parts in the cold. Heres some pics of the fairing process.

More repairs.

Well it's been about a month but I am slowly starting to get where I would have been had I just gotten the side right the first time. 3 rounds of vacuum bag repairs, lots of sanding, now it's getting the repairs leveled with fairing mix. Ill get it pretty fair, then do the bottom. After the bottom is done ill  bag additional 10oz cover glass to each side, fair, and flip

I also managed to get the transom bagged. First bag would not seal so I pulled more bagging material out and got it right on the second try. Came out good. Transom layup is 12ozbiax/poly/12ozbiax/10oz on the outside. Here's some pics. Making progress

Repairs that were vacuum bagged

Transom layup in the bag

When good things turn bad

So its been pretty quiet around here lately. I had a pretty huge screwup laying up the second side panel. I started late at night with the layup, and had some major leakage issues with my bag. I never could get it to seal. I chased leaks for hours trying to pull vacuum. But no dice. At 7am, delerious i should have pulled the layup and started over, but no such luck. I got like 3" on the pumpwhich isnt enough to do much of anything but get the peelply to lay flat. I convinced myself it was a hand layup and it would all be fine. But when i came back later i found like 20 air bubbles in the lam.

 After seriously considering sending the boat to the dump, i began the tedious task of fixing what i screwed up. Its been weeks now. I started by grinding all the bubbles out, down to core. I have been going thru in sections doing 10-15 small repairs at a time and replacing the layup in the low spots, and vacuum bagging the repairs. The bag pulls the materials very very flat and even into the low spots made by the grinder. Ill come thru with a second round of repairs to fill low spots in with 10oz glass patches, then come thru and sand the whole works flat with a longboard. A bit of fairing to cover low spots, and she will be ready for another layer of cover glass to make it look like i didnt frankenstein the side of my boat and to add a little more structure. More glass cant hurt right..., but ill pull the hull layup first. Its getting really cold real fast and i need to get this glass job done on the next nice day. Heres some pics

More supplies

A failed vacuum bag yields lits of voids...yikes

So i grind all the ones in the core out. Gotta look worse before it can look better. Noe i start tracing patches to replace my layup. 12oz biax on the bottom, 5oz poly in the middle, 10oz glass on top.

Glass all the patches in sections and use the vacuum bag to smoosh it all down. Result is nice repairs with little to no high spots. Awesome. Low spots will get another round of glass patches, and some cabosil filler to level em off. Then a new sheet of 10oz cover glass.

First side panel bagged

All day marathon bagging the first side panel. 

I started the day off by cutting my biax about 2" over the chine. Turns out I only had material to do right up to the chine. The extra material messed up the taper of the second side panel making it a few free short. I have more 12 oz biax on the way and I will use the extra I have for the decks and transom to beef them up. Expensive mistake but it happens.

I got all the materials precut, weighed, and tacked roughly in place. I tack taped the perimeter of the bag off the chine tape, stem tape, transom tape and the inside funnel line edge which was already glassed. I left the gunwale holes open and just taped over them on the inside so they were inside the bag. Ill use these to hold the frame in while I flip the boat over.

Got started glassing after dinner. Michelle helped out and I am glad because I needed it. We glassed for the better part of 3 hours  before we had all the cloth saturated. That polyester soaks resin up. Luckily everything is bagged. I mixed a few extra batches to ensure everything got wet out good. I got the bag on about 4 hrs in, a bit late but fine. It's cold out there and I was using slow hardener. Of course the bag was a nightmare. Seated the bag turned on the pump and no vac. Go around and found some huge holes on the inner gunwale where I had tacked earlier in the night. Chased a few big leaks in the thru bag connector and the nose and was finally able to get some vac but not too much. Just below 10" hg.  I played with some of the leaks holding my ear to the edge of the bag.  Once I had vac they were easier to find. I got to about 12.5" hg and got stuck there. I hand cycled the pump a few times and  found  a few small leaks. There was one somewhere near the thru bag connector and the nose I just couldent find and seal. I had been chasing leaks for hours and it was 6 am with the sun coming up so I called it. The pump was holding about 13" when I went to bed, in the am when I woke up it was holding 14" and running constantly. Looks like I got good resin bleed thru the release film, but not too much at all. At the top edge I may have gotten some shop towel breather bonded where it overhung the peelply by a tiny bit. Ill just scrape and sand these spots level when I come thru and level the tape lines before I pull the bottom layup. 

I'm waiting on that 12 oz so ill prob precut and weigh materials for the other side in the meantime since that takes the better part of a day. I may lay some mini fillets on the inside panel joints right at the junction to make it easier to deal the tack tape at the edge. May also try to glass the transom while I am waiting, then pulling the hull should be reasonable easy.

Still in business over here

Its been a busy summer and i didnt get to work on the boat much. Other projects and guiding had me out pretty straight. With fall here iv been able to get some time away and work on the boat. Last we leftoff the tail was messed up and needed fixing. Got that done and quite a bit more. Lets get you back up to speed here...

Tail was not right, between lofting and reaility i made too many changes and didnt get what i was looking for. Too flat.

Bow looked good but has too deep an arc for my eye. Going for the subtle approach her so i decided this may need to change.

Ripped it open and reccut the arch about 1/4" less deep on center for a larger diameter at the bow cut and looks like whati wanted.

More models to  dial in the tail shape and experiment with small changes from my full scale dimensions comparing one to another

 Tail now looks much better

Precutting fabric for the hull layup

Mix up almost 14 lbs of resin

Bag the inside floor. I did this flat on the floor  on cardboard with a visqueen layer on the back.  did the layup, then peelply,p3 film, shop towels, and real bagging film on the top side. I left this full size so i can reuse it for the outside hull. then I flipped the panel and layed the entire hull bag over the boat into shape, then pulled the vacuum. I had a leaky thru bag connector and in the rush to fix it put a hole in the end of the bag. I moved quickly to seal it up and get the vac back. Put the connecter on the top side of the bag with a good amount of breather below and got it to hold decent vac. I had quite a few leaks. most on the 6 mil visqueen side, some at the tack tape seam. this is that plastics 3rd vac bag session, and it was starting to get some pinhole leaks.  Its been retired and moved to do wetout cover duty for seam tape. With the bag being so big the pump was running nonstop to keep up and keep the bag at 15" hg. I could turn the pump off and have about 30 secs to find leaks as they whizz and then become too faint to hear. Then the start the pump again at 10-12 hg and pull it back to above 15 hg and start the process over. Found a few big ones quick. Had a few elude me for hours. A 2 am the pump was pulling up to 18" hg before it would turn off and slowly drop to 14 hg and turn on again. It was a big bag and the largest of the build so i figured the pump would just run and it did. After now doing the biggest bag i can now officially say this pump setup is rad. Built for less than $200 and it works great. Had no problem pulling any of the big bags. I have a few large panel layups left to do this week and then the hull is ready to fair, bottom coat, and flip for bulkheads and interior self bailing madness.

Holding the shape close enough with my old world clamping method. i used tack tape to tape cardboard over the top of the bag for protection, then tack tape to hold bricks to cardboard, and bricks to bricks. Finish it off with some packing tape and duct tape clamping and we are good to go. Above, notice the carboard box i tacked to the bag and filled with bricks.

Looking good holding vac

Had a a bit of print thru again. This might be because the consumable materials folded slightly when the hull was flexed to shape. Then these got compressed and folded prob by the vac. Most of these are resin cap high spots, but there are a few small raised humps in the fabric, most are very small and hard and appear to have resin under the cloth filling the space which makes sense since the lam was compressed in the vac bag. Cant imagine there being any air in there. Again not stellar cosmetics but its going to be buried in hatches and under removeable flooring so im not gonna worry about it. The overall finish was good tho. Even resin distribution, really clamped all those heavy layers of glass. layup is 10oz/5oz kevlar with 30" center overlap/17 biax chine impact area in about a foot/biax and kevlar tip and tail reinforcement /12oz biax. Had a nice even cap on top with the p3 release ply although cosmetically i cant say there is too too much noticeable differance between using it and not using it. I was able to pull it in one nice piece though and clear the holes of epoxy. Ill prob reuse this stuff on places that done get seen like deck bottoms etc. i have a good bit more for stuff that should look nice.

 Glue oversized bottom on with thickened epoxy and use  zip ties and old world clamping to weight the edge

Make a router jig to match the side profile angle and buy a really expesive super long trace bit for 35 bucks that would break before the end of the night.

Trim the bottom to shape. Turns out the router doesnt like to do that cut and was smoking with in seconds. Managed to put a few small gouges in the foam before i decided i needed a plan b. a jigsaw angled with a paint scrape holding the blade from digging too deep did not leave an even or nice looking cut at all. However with all the excess material removed i was able to come back with the router and trim to shape which got me where i wanted. I few spots were just barely too deep from the jigsaw, but overall pretty good. They came almost entirely out with the bevel.  I put the bevel in with a longboard sanding block i made, then made a plywood jig for sanding that had the side and angle and radius cut all in it allowing me to get a consistent radius. I then marked the chines with my measuring jig for the tape line guides. a few rounds of sanding left nice results

 Cut the curved transom bottom to shape and find the right angle to construct a jig to bend the foam over

 

Thermoform the corecell with a heat gun. Careful not to get it too hot. Clamp it down to the mold with battens to hold it in place. Notice the false transom in he back that has been here the entire build and is about to get foamed and glassed over. The jig is underneath the curved bit and attached to the false transom and a floor spanning rib to hold it in place.

Glue up the transom and curved bottom. i only had enough 5/8" scrap left to glue a transom up out of 2 small pieces.  want a thick transom tho, so ill likely add another layer of core inside ...havent decided placore or foam. This is raw foam no glass. The bottom has  a layup so it sits about 1/8" higher. I had all kinds of crazy ideas like coremat etc to fill the gap. In the end i cut an angled sliver of corecell, sanded it to size and taper with the longboard and glued it down with thickened epoxy. There is still a small gap in height less than a 1/16" but that will taper down with fairing compound, layups, final fairing.

 

Establish flat front on stem and patch holes with thickened epoxy. I used peelply to hold the shape, sanded, repeated with another layer and another sanding and it was ready for tape.

Tape the chines with 3" kevlar tape, and 6" 12oz biax tape. Peelply over the top to leave a nice even and easy to finish surface. It also holds the whole mess in place and ensure the  edges lay flat on the biax as well as the kevlar. Kevlar floats in a laminate so the peelply helps keep the stuff layin flat under the biax. Worked really well, very pleased with results

Loos great, easy to finish. A few folds  and pleats in the peeply left a few small low spots, the edge of the glass had a few small hi spots, and few loose tows of fabric to deal with. At the transom i had to  cut pleats to get the fabric to make the curve. At the overlap there was hi spots and low spots. Came thru first with the random orbital to get the high spots. Then the long boat to level it out. Then hand sanding of low spots, and circulaur hand sanding of all chine tape, then longboard to level it out and a thickened epoxy mix to fill the real low spots.

Now that the chine is sealed off, i can start to vacuum bag the outside panels piece by piece. Ill tack tape off this line, and off the gunnel line inside. Stay tuned for more vacuum baggng madness this week as i try to fend off cold weather and winter and crack this hull out before i leave town in a week and a half. If i can finish these last 3 layups and fair/epoxy coat the hull, thats all the big panels for the entire build. From there on out i can build the small panels in my wood fired shop as it gets cold. If i do any glass work in the boat, ill cover it and stick a heater in there. I have a reddy heater for the garage too and am thinking i can keep that small space warm enough in the one bay with that 35,000btu heater. Ready but not ready for the cold....

The winds

Was able to sneak away for a few days with michelle and head into the winds chasing high alpine adventures, and the elusive golden trout. Heres some pics of our rainy couple of days in the mountains