inspector tang

Here's Tang, the chief mold inspector, looking over the starboard side mold.

He keeps red tags under his wing and sometimes forces me to rework things....He also indescrimanately destroys things just for fun.

a little mist

Since my polyurethane glue is moisture cure, I mist the edge of the last plank before positioning the next plank. Again, the strip of plastic keeps the hull foam from sticking to the mold stringers. ....oh, when I position the plank with the glue on it, I try to slide the two planks together so that the glue really makes full edge to edge contact and works its self into the other ,slightly moistened, edge. .....for anyone building in the South, you can skip the "mist"; just glue the planks after an afternoon thunderstorm.

a line of glue

I squirt a line of polyurethane glue along the edge of a plank.......( I take a flat stick and spread it evenly; trying to keep the bulk of the bead in the center of the edge so that when it mates with another plank it will "foam cure" from the inside out towards the interior and exterior )

dressing the plank....walking the plank comes later

I dress the plank edge.......( the thermo-forming process flares out the inner edge a little in the curve so a few passes w/ an electric planer set @ 1/32in. produces a nice square edge)

a twenty plank day.....

Here's a pretty good run of planks.....Now that I'm working on the last hull section, I've really settled in on an easy way to lay down the foam. Here's what works for me:

1) Rip 10 inch corecell planks on a table saw.....( when using 4x8 sheets you end up with a 5 or 6 in. plank that can be used towards the bow.

2) Thermo form plank......( 5 min in my 160 deg convection / radiant hot box... ten seconds before it starts to droop )

3) climb up and over my mold and quickly lay it over the stringers.

4) Since I'm flying solo, I found it easy just to put a few sheet rock screws through some plywood squares here and there till it cools. ( make sure to put little sheets of plastic under the wood tabs so the glue dosen't stick )

5) after setting about twenty planks, I numbered them all with a sharpy and began fitting and gluing them in place starting from the center and working alternately towards the bow and then the stern.....beginning with the middle #10....then......#11, #9, #12, #8 etc.

6) .......more to follow

a nice vacuum pump rig

So here's an improved vacuum rig that I built while I was waiting on my corecell foam order. Rather than keep my vacuum pump running all night long when bagging panels, I built a proper set-up for my pump. Joewoodworker.com has a nice set of plans for adding a vacuum reservoir and switch so that the pump can rest most of the time.

http://www.joewoodworker.com/veneering/downloads.htm

With a proper system, the pump will only need to switch itself on every once in a while during the cure process.

ripping up foam

If your reading this from top to bottom, this is what happens when you rip a few sheets of foam across a table saw..........it doesn't take too long to lay waste to a fortunes worth of corecell foam. I've chosen to work with 10 inch wide planks mainly because it allows me to dial in the temperature/ "toast" time of each plank. I've found that if I keep the temperature, the "toast"time and the plank width consistent, it allows me to keep my forming technique under control while I lay each plank into the mold.

fresh foam

Nothing like opening a fresh box of Corecell foam.....