Rocking snail and kitchen drawers

If your going to build a boat, it's a good idea to save some shop time for repairing rocking snails and kitchen drawers with the little globs of extra epoxy.  Incidentally, the crates for the Yanmar 3YM Marine Diesel engine make good clamps for  gluing drawers together....... A bit spendy however.

Reinforcing for deck pulleys

Prepping for the under side of the cabin corners where deck pulleys will attach.

Lucy

The "Lucy" of all belt sanders.  This incredible machine was developed by a man named Eichenlaub; and yes. she's hydraulic. I picked her up from a salvage boatyard in Port Townsend, Wa.  It needed belts and some re-wiring but this machine was designed for faring compound curves. It has a clever mechanism for adjusting the curvature of the sanding surface.  Nice work Mr. Eichenlaub.

Notice the "missing" belt cover.  Ya wouldn't want to get your shirt tail caught in that!

composite half pipe

Rather than glass in the 6 in. PVC, I took the liberty of creating a nice composite half-pipe that I will cut down to form  external drains for the cockpit. Of course this is a Cat so I'll be doing another one. Although I could have ripped the pipe in half and used the two halves to vac bag these pieces, I decided just to use the squeegee peel ply method.  Gained the weight of another half-pocket full of dimes.  Oh well.....gained an evening under a palm tree.

clamps

It takes a lot of clamps to make a boat. Here I've used a few clamps and quite a few straight boards to make sure the lamination is spot on.

forward bridge deck bulkhead tips....(.for lack of a better name to call them )

Here I am demonstrating my remarkable ability to make the world go away.  If I try really hard, I have found that I can also make the universe go away too.

So I just realized that I forgot to show the small forward bulkhead tips that were laminated with the stack of batteries.

One would not be able to determine whether they had been vac bagged or not. They came out nice and light.

Port side transition

The transition between the forward hull deck to the front of the bridge deck is a bit tricky.  In the plans, Ian leaves it up to the builder to work out a nice shape. From this angle, it's difficult to get a feel for the lines and adding to the confusion is the fact that I needed to add a few wedges of foam to ease the transition the way I wanted.  Future photo's should make a better impression.   The array of tools from left to right are:  hand auto  body work sander with 36 grit, nice lithium ion cordless screw gun, spring clamps, Moisture cure polyurethane glue, spray mister full of water, heat gun for adjusting the shape and fitting of foam.

Gravity

sometimes you just want to get the job done......In this case, I'm laminating both of the small triangular bulkheads that were cut from foam using the cardboard templates ( see last post)

If you do the simple math, 4 old salvage trojan battery's don't even come close to providing the compressive forces that can be generated by vac bagging. However, in this case,  knocking the job out quick takes precedence.

Just for kicks, you can see my Ryobi drill which has become the  master epoxy mixer. It's not such a good drill but it works just fine for mixing batches of epoxy.

If you look closely, you can see that there is an open portion at the front of the forward deck. The piece that I made last night, will eventually go there but first I need to make two small bulkheads that provide support and seals off this area underneath. I'm using two pieces of cardboard to make a template that I can use to transfer the shape onto core cell foam then I'll vac bag them and bond them in place ..........looks like it's time to clean up the shop.  Extension cords sometimes look like piles of spaghetti on the shop floor and I sometimes find myself entangled and confused as to which cord goes to which tool. I think I have about 500 power tools but I have a wind generator on the shop roof that offsets some of my electron usage.

Trial fitting the sail drive

Forward bridge deck section

In the upper picture, you'll notice that the forward section of the bridge deck is absent.  The 13 inch x  12 ft. strip will eventually cover this section and form an area where the trampolines will attach. Although I didn't laminate the full 12 feet with one full length of fabric, I elected to use a few of my excess pieces of 24 oz. glass.  Doing so adds about a dollars weight in change due to the overlaps and extra resin but it actually creates a stronger part and I think it's good not to waste if you have the opportunity to make good use of excess material.   I then smoothed the entire piece down with peel ply.  The glassed portion will be on the inside of the boat.

The confidence of goats

After pouring the mounts with foam, I used a simple hand saw to carve away the extra foam then I used a disc sander wheel to create a groove all around the inside edges of the mount.  When bonding these mounts to the inside of the hulls,  I'll mix a good thick amount of cabosil and epoxy, load it into a large zip-lock bag  then cut the corner out of the bag so that I can lay a good thick bead of thickened epoxy inside this groove and smack the mount down where it belongs.

The thickened epoxy is then smoothed along the edges to form a fillet and then two staggered layers of DBM1708 tape.

When you're not really sure what your doing, it's always good to confide with a small billy goat.  Chickens provide little or no boost in one's confidence as they are generally very apathetic.  Note:  When making photographs of foam filled motor mounts, never leave them unattended as goats will eat all the foam out of your new engine mounts and you will have to go back the the previous steps.

Yanmar 3YM20 bed re-work

A little chopping, grinding and glassing and I have both engine mounts ready to go.  Tomorrow, I plan on pouring   the insides of the mounts with two part expanding foam. My thought is that when I bond the mounts to the hull, the foam will prevent the thickened bonding epoxy from squishing into the void and this should allow me to create a beefy fillet between all of the bonded edges. 

No worries

Although this fix got the best of my Sunday afternoon, I chopped the engine bed down, overlapped the flanges and bonded them back together with a thick mixture of cabosil and epoxy. While it was curring, I strapped the engine bed onto the engine/sail drive unit to make sure that it fits perfectly.  Tomorrow, I'll pull the temporary screws out, grind the splice into a nice shape then glass the heck out of the splice with multiple layers of glass fabric, inside and out. Although this miss-match created a fair amount of extra labor, the finished mounts will actually be stronger than the originals.

However, .......since this is a cat,  I've got to do the same dang thing again for the other engine.

wrong engine bed......

So what's wrong with this picture?.........Wrong engine bed!!!!!!!.........As you can see, the engine bed is about 8 inches too long.  ( This engine bed must have been for the larger Yanmar series engines.  so..........I can either whine or get out the chop saw.

Twin Yanmar Diesels

Now that both portions of the inner hulls have been reinforced, I've scribed and trimmed the engine beds so that they fit the contours of the inner hulls. Next, they will be sanded, and bonded into position with multiple layers of glass and epoxy.

Chicks digg epoxy

Here's  the starboard side aft cabin and as you can see, a small chick is inspecting the 40 inch wide layer of 24 oz. triaxial glass that has been applied over the location of where the engine beds will be glassed in place. The 2x6 served as a pretty lame scaffolding but it did allow me to roll on the epoxy, lay down the 40in. x 66in. glass, roll on a top coat of epoxy, apply peel ply and then squeegee this extra layer down nice and smooth.

looking back from the port side bow.

So it may seem like I haven't been making much progress but I promise I've been mixing epoxy and laying glass.  Just to prove that this thing is going to be a cat, here's a picture taken with my feet standing on the tip end of the port side bow.  The windows are just painted cardboard templates. As you can see, the forward portion of the bridge deck has yet to be sculpted and prepped for the final glassing of the deck.  I've ordered a full roll of 34 Oz. Triaxial glass so by the time I get the call from from fiberglass supply, I should be ready to glass the deck.

Gus speaks about the Oceans

While I continue to glass and bond the centerboards into the hulls of this ship, Gus Aiken speaks about the Oceans that will one day provide a home to this cat.  Note the concern on his face. Gus is a wise young man from New Zealand who speaks the truth, so please pass this along to your friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SN_4qkqy2I

Back from Australia and New Zealand

Made it back alive from Australia.  Spent a month at the Greg James Studio casting bronze.

http://www.gregjamessculpture.com/

If you're interested, click the link below and digg the video.

http://www.vimeo.com/10795035



"Jellie"
Original Bronze by Allen Smith
Cast with the amazing support and friendship of Greg James.  On location at the Greg James Studio; Fremantle, Australia

Photo:  Allen Smith
Background:  Indian Ocean