After gluing, screwing and clamping all the preformed foam in place, I covered the assembly with a piece of used vac bag sheeting and tucked a little 1500W heater under the cover and called it a good night.......Although the shop temp was around 35F, the aft steps felt like they were in the Bahamas........wishful thinking I guess.
Although it's darn cold in the shop, I was able to use my easy bake foam toaster ( seen here lower right) to thermoform the end radiuses in the step faces. My technique has been to form and fit most of the pieces and temporarily screw them in place here an there with some sheet rock screws. After everything fits the way I want it to, I come back and mark all the critical join areas with a sharpy ( A ----->A, B------->B, etc ) It also helps to label "up" in case your boat flips over or you fall off a ladder and get disoriented.
Here's a simple technique for fitting a strip of foam to an irregular curve. The foam piece that you see mid photo needs to fit against the lower surfaces so I've temporarily clamped it a full width higher than it will eventually sit. I then took a scrap or stick and used it to scribe the curve by moving the stick up along the curve while making dots with a sharpy. From there, it's a pretty easy exercise in connecting the dots and cutting the excess off. You can spend a lot of time making paper templates and trying to cut things perfect but using little tricks like this can help keep things moving along.
You're looking down at what will eventually become the starboard side stern boarding steps. I've taken a little extra care to sculpt some nice rounded curves to avoid having corners that may some day bruise the hips of careless bikini clad super-models if they try to board the boat in a chop.
Here I've added the extra thickness along the edges of the stern. All this foam work will get sanded and shaped smooth. the hull edges will also be gouged out and capped with the usual mix of epoxy, cabosil and microbaloon filler then I'll glass this grand stairway and move along to the starboard hull. When ever I feel like I've made some progress, I look up and realize that there's another hull waiting for me.
Here's a little progress made towards building the aft steps. I haven't built the lower step and this will involve boxing in a structure that will house the rudder bearing and it will have the ability to pivot up. I chose to create a slightly rounded cascading detail that eliminates any exposed step corners. Also, the next step is to add another layer of foam along the stern hull edges. The fun part will be going at this thing with a bunch of sanders and shaping tools so that it'll have a nice sculpted form
Here's a start roughing in the boarding stairs for the port side hull. I chose to go with the boarding platform and radius the stairs to eliminate exposed corners on the steps. I also decided to go with the under slung kick up rudder box so after I build the stairs, I'll go after them with a saws all and create the rudder support portion that will kick up.
This is the first posted photograph taken with my new Canon Rebel digital camera. From here on out, hopefully you should see an improvement in the quality of my photographs.
Here's a shot with the morning sun shining through the starboard side hull foam. The make shift scaffolds allow me to risk falling to my "harm" onto the cement floor between the two hulls. Since the cold won't really allow me to lay up the bridge deck floor, I'll most likely build a better temporary walkway between my hulls.
Here's a 3/4 stern view. Lot's of work to do but it's nice to see all this expensive foam, glass and epoxy beginning to look like a ship.
Since the Pacific NW chill is beginning to make her way off the cool Pacific and onto the North west coast, It's time to put the pieces together so that I can set up a protected place to work....mainly "Inside" the boat. I decided to position the hulls as they will eventually go, throw a big 6 MIL plastic cover over the shell and create a snug place to work me through the coming winter months. Of course, the curse to avoid is becoming bogged down in details at a time when large brush strokes are still required.
My brother flew in from Santa Cruz to help me sheath the port side hull with Kevlar. Unfortunately, "Big Brothers" latest wars have made this stuff fairly expensive. With new leadership, America will most likely be able to reduce the need to turn this stuff into vests. I think it looks better on a boat than a desert tan Hummer.
One advantage of finishing the bow beam is that you can use it as a scaffold when you're sheathing the port side hull with Kevlar. I used three 1 ton harbor freight chain hoists and a few straps to flip my hull upside down. Here, I'm applying resin before laying down my 9 oz. Kevlar along the keel and bow section.
I chose to go with the optional 9.oz Kevlar sheathing on the hulls. This option begins by laying down 8 inch wide, 9 0z. unidirectional kevlar along the hull center line "keel". This is then covered with 9 oz. twill kevlar fabric sheathing from 48 inches aft of the mast bulkhead, forward to the stem and 8 inches above the waterline. Kevlar is very difficult to wet out so using slow hardener, lots of patience and peel ply over the big sticky mess is about all you can do.
Someday, maybe I'll feel better about myself after I beach this ship onto the only hidden rock on the sandy beach.....
here's another view of the same. I was able to hand work the entire length of the boat one section at a time. By working about 6 ft. of epoxy, glass and peel ply at a time, it is possible to control the resin glass ratio to a high degree. any excess resin is simply moved along onto the next 6 ft. section. and on and on and on until the carpel tunnel syndrome kicks in. NOTE: high density foam core keel section can be seen lower right hand.
Although it's not advisable to skip too far out of sequence, I'm guilty of putting off laminating the final outer starboard hull exterior section. Here's the result of my weekends work......8 hours sat; 11 solid hours sunday laying two full runs of 34oz. triaxial glass, resin and peelply. Note 3" overlap section recessed into foam w/ power planer.
Also, In the upper background, you can see my cabin top. In order to preserve shop space, I winched it up into the rafters and tied it off.
Here's the final run of "B" (24 oz. glass) going down over what will be the interior top of the cabin. This photo shows my 10 step lamination technique.
1) lay foam over stringer mold
2) fair all glue joints
3) skim foam with a slurry of epoxy and micro balloons
4) roll wet coat of epoxy over foam using a 3" paint roller w/ 3/8" fur
5) lay glass over wet coat
6) wait until the glass soaks up from below
7) roll another wet coat over glass
8) lay peel ply over wet glass
9) wet top of peel ply with left over epoxy that is on the roller ( this makes it easier to work)
10) work excess epoxy from center to edges using bondo spreader.
Here's a look down the inside of the bow beam. For bonding, I used System three Gel-Magic which is a thixotropic structural epoxy adhesive. It's a pretty handy epoxy "glue" that mixes 2 to 1 like epoxy but it's formulated to turn itself into a gel that will stay put. I spread a decent amount along both bonding surfaces, placed the top chanel over the bottom, rolled them on their side and fixed the bow beam together with temporary screws. The photo confirms that I have 100% internal squeeze-out along the entire length of the seam.
Including building the mold, fabricating the two 19ft. bow beam sections has taken about 16 hours. Considering that I am paying myself 0 dollars / hr, that comes to a total labor cost of 0 dollars. Shown here, after popping it out of the mold, is the 2nd half of the bow beam section. Next step will be trimming it down to spec, bonding the two halves together and skimming the beam with a mixture of micro spheres and epoxy to smooth down the seams and minor imperfections. To eliminate bonding prep work I placed peel ply into the mold top and bottom. Peel ply is my friend.
After bagging one section of the bow beam, I used pressurized air to blow the bag up and then set it out in the sun. Thanks to the green house effect, on a sunny day, the temperature inside the bag can easily reach upwards of 120F.
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