11.30.2009

Centerboard spar cores


After laminating, planing, shaping and tapering the centerboard spars, I am preparing to glass them and insert them back into the centerboard blanks.  In this case, I chose to use a light weight mahogany core material as my "high density" spar core.  Once these spars are embedded into the centerboards and laminated with 15 layers of 12 oz unidirectional glass,  these spars will become the primary structural elements in the centerboards.  Here, I am simply pre fitting my glass in preparation of vac bagging the glass onto the cores.  In this case, I used 3M 77 spray adhesive to keep my glass in place then I mixed a whopping amount of epoxy and rolled it on thick.  I then wrapped the spars with peel ply and vac bagged them to insure that I would get good saturation and bond between the wood and glass.  If I do this right, the wood will never know it is part of boat.  ( Being fully encased in glass and epoxy,  hopefully this wood core spar  will never see one molecule of H20 as long as I sail ) 

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