yellow sealer tape

To make good headway on completing the galley booth, I had to break out the 8 x 12 ft vac bag table and perform another marathon session.  This time, I decided to maximize the entire surface area by nesting the panels together so that they pretty much consumed the entire surface area of my table. For this mega vacuum bag, I used vac bag membrane on top and bottom because I was not sure that my table was completely air tight.  This took two rolls of yellow sealer tape.......say that ten times:   "Yellow sealer tape" "Yellow sealer tape""Yellow sealer tape""Yellow sealer tape""Yellow sealer tape""Yellow sealer tape"..........too much time in the shop makes Jack a dull boy.

booth panels

Again......another impromptu post cure oven

no place to sit...

After careful attention to human factors and proportion, what took about two days to put together came apart in about 5 minutes. Reason being is that the interior booth seating shapes have to be sheathed with bi axial glass and epoxy to give them strength.  Once the entire seating area is finished it will only weigh about 25 lbs.  If it were built in conventional plywood, I imagine it would weigh in at over 75 lbs. ...simplify and add lightness is still the mantra. The booth is constructed of structural foam sheathed with epoxy and glass and will be upholstered in a doe leather marine-tex.

An experiment in the reduction of production time

Faced with the prospect of having to laminate over 25 separate panels for the interior bridge deck galley area, I decided to run an experiment in vacuum bagging multiple layers and panels all under one vacuum bag. Did it work? I think it did but given the marathon layup session and a bit of a hassle peeling all the layers of peel ply perf and breather off,  I'm not sure if I'll be so bold in the future.

Here's the result:

That's a total of 11 separate panels laminated front and back and stacked all under one vacuum bag.

It went like this: 

lower part of the bag ( vinyl flooring on a temp floor panel)

plastic membrane to keep the lot from sticking to the vinyl flooring

peel ply

glass

foam

glass

peel ply

perf

peel ply

glass

foam

glass

peel ply

perf

peel ply

glass

foam

glass

peel ply

perf

breather

top vac bag.

beer

I think it was worth it because it would have taken me at least a week to use the peel ply bondo spreader method to bond both sides of the 11 panels that I made in one night. 

Here's a few tricks that I learned.

pull the individual groups of panels up and lean them against something

I used a few wooden wedges to separate the groups of panels

( this wasn't that difficult)

score the individual panel edges with an angle grinder on both sides along the panel seams then pop them apart like sheet rock.

After pulling off all the peel ply, I did have a few flaws where excess resin gathered but nothing a little sanding won't fix.

would I try this again?  Maybe not.  I may just turn on some good music and lay some panels up one at a time for a while.  If I were in a race to produce the most panels in a day I may give it another go but I can think of a few more enjoyable ways to spend an evening.

More icebox excitement

True.....how exciting can an Icebox be?
For effect, imagine you were a hundred years back in time and you told someone that you could make ice from sunshine and wind. ( solar panels and wind generators).....now that would be more exciting.

Here's the box with the last round of glassing which makes her 100 percent part of the integrity of the boat. The location of the unit actually provides structure to the cabin bulkhead itself and if I ever get blue water smashing against the outer cabin bulkhead, I'm confident that this unit will act as a dresser drawer against a door knob.

All the box components are now bonded together and peel ply was used to minimize the sanding required to prep the sides for a caramelized bamboo veneer that I have chosen as a final finish.  The top work surface will be covered with "Wilson Art" bottle glass Formica and once the insides are glossed over with white epoxy, I'll load it with the works: condenser, compressor, keel cooler, and a spill-over thermostat for the refrigerator portion.  

I've chosen a 40 inch condenser plate and followed the instructions to bend 3 in. dia corners so that it can be mounted inside the ice box so that it will allow one half of the box to be a freezer and the other half the fridge.. Note the keel cooler on the left.