8.26.2010

youthful cockpit seats

Once the two cockpit seats are glassed, the shell of a catamaran will be screaming out for unending amounts of detail work.  At this point, this is where most people spend another twenty years making things perfect.  It happens all the time.........next thing you know the kids are grown, the wife made off with the UPS man and your sitting alone in your shop with grey hair and a perfect boat. 

Not me, I don't mind sailing an imperfect boat so the plan is to get this ship in the water before I loose my  youth............"use it or loose it"


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Allen,
As I see you use mainly one layer of triaxial glass to achive mechanical properties. Is it difficcult to work with this fabric if we compare it to "standard" ones? Isn't it to stiff? Regards, Peter

Unknown said...

There have been a few situations where multiple single layers of reinforcements could have made things easier but in most cases, with a little planning and orienting the pieces, the knitted triaxial fabrics have allowed me to laminate all but the most extreme compound geometries. In situations that involve compound curved surfaces,I found it possible to pre-cut the panels about an inch over dimension then pull the single strands of fabric here and there so that the glass lays flat.