9.29.2011

Test fitting the battens


Here I am sitting on the head of the main sail with my buddy Cory Roesler ( the primary instigator  of the sport of Kite boarding ) and the man himself; Romeo Rubichaud of RBS Batten Systems.  http://www.rbsbattens.com/  We rolled the main sail out in the grass, stuffed the battens and checked the lengths of each batten.   By trial fitting each batten, RBS was able to make final adjustments to the lengths to insure a perfect fit.  We also discovered the need to grind a slight taper on the forward ends of the two lower battens so that they fit snugly into the batten receptacles. 

It's good to have the help and support of some of the most respected innovators in the modern days of sail. 

9.28.2011

Bow tube web detail



The bow tube is further strengthened by the addition of two webs that provide a base for the forward walkway between the two trampoline nets. In this photo, you can see 24 oz triaxial glass draping down from the port side web. I then used a dusting of  3M 77 adhesive to hold the glass in place while I smoothed it under the bow tube and back up along the starboard bow tube web.  With the glass in place, I saturated the glass with resin, covered it all with peel ply and worked things in place with a plastic "bondo" spreader. 


I then laminated the inside of the webs using one continuos length of triaxial glass.  To create bonding flanges, I screwed two temporary boards (wrapped in packing tape as a release) along the top edges of the webs and worked the glass up the sides of the webs and inwards.  


After removing the boards, the resulting flanges that were created needed to be roughed up in preparation for bonding the top deck plank in place.


Here I am about to mix up some low density pour foam. 


Since I didn't want to have to worry about water making it's way into the void created by the bow tube and the webs, I decided to fill the space with foam. It's often difficult to anticipated the volume of foam that is produced when mixing part A with part B.  


After the foam hardened, I used a hand saw to cut off the excess,  then I finished things off with a rough sanding block to produce a flat surface in which to bond the center bow net plank.