funny experimental tool

So....turns out, I was not able to buy a "super sonic roto foam fillet shapeing tool" at home depot so I made this freaky tool to create a nice radius on the inside juncture of the deck and the hull. ( When gluing the hull planks to the deck planks, I used a triangular strip of foam at the inside corner and wanted it to be rounded in stead of angular ) It works pretty good. I made it out of a crappy b&d drill, a 2" rotary rasp, some bailing wire and some scrap hardwood and ply....Give me an hour to do something and I'm most likely to spend thirty minutes building a tool that will allow me to do a job twice as fast with half the effort.......the problem with that is that I end up with all these unusual tools that often never get used again. ..... if you need one, keep a lookout on e-bay for a good used "super sonic roto foam fillet shapeing tool" in a couple of years. 

port side, outer hull half in foam

So here's my first hull half section. I've spent a little time fareing things down but haven't really spent the time getting it as smooth as I'ld like. Notice: The F-44SC does not have the chamferred gunwhale and in this photo, you can see the filleted join line between the hull side and the deck still covered w/ peel ply. When I'm ready to glass the inside, I will rip the peel ply off, lay down 24 oz. triaxe glass as specified, bag the entire part and infuse the hull half in one shot. I'm not one for wet layups so I'm doing all I can to minimize my exposure to the system III silvertip epoxy resin system that I have chosen to use throughout. 

carbon paper.....

Never pass up the opportunity to use carbon paper. When you are old, you can also tell stories of the days when pencils were made of real wood...... a late night laying out the aft bunk bulkhead using carbon paper and full size templates. 

aft bulkhead

Here's the aft bulkhead in the bag @ -28 in. Hg. Although this panel should turn out to be one of the nices ones yet in terms of a high fiber to resin ratio, I have convienced myself that it is not worth trying to reuse vac bags too much. It took me another 10 min with a tube stuck in my ear trying to locate and fix a couple of accidental snags that I had made while using it on a previous panel. Also...I replaced the top of my vac resin trap with a sheet of aluminum. 

mast bulkhead

So here's some prep work on the mast bulkhead. This bulkhead is bomber. since I've decided to go with swing up boards, this bulkhead calls out for a total of ten layers of13oz. Uni directional glass between the passageway opening and the side of the "center" board box . The final bulkhead also has reinforcements around the top and bottom of the opening as well. 

here's the cabin bulkhead "in the bag".....in the foreground you can see my resin trap that I built from a block of MDF and an acrylic bucket from wal-mart. This is a good example of how NOT to make a vacuume resin trap. Turns out that the edge porosity of MDF was enough to leak 10 in. of Hg leaving me thinking that I had a leak in my bag. Afterwards, I tested my vac pump without the trap and it pulled a full 30 in. Merc.......  

laying down the peel ply and glass for the cabin bulkhead