2006 building logs

April 2006 Fairing the Port Hull

Now that the hull is glassed it is time to make it look smooth ready for final coats of various materials such as more resin then high build, a cross between paint and bog that is applied and sanded a number of times until the hull is super smooth and fair and ready for final coats of paint. The final task before the hull can be turned is to tape all of the inside joins, then the hull will be strong enough to move..

4th April 2006 Disaster strikes!

They say trouble comes in 3's. The week before last the timing belt on my car broke on the freeway instantly seizing the motor doing around $4000 damage to the engine on my car in Melbourne, and I was in the process of getting it ready for sale as I no longer needed to have a car for the few days a month I am in Melbourne. Then last week my laptop finally died, it had been struggling for a while, meaning I had to go and buy another one. I did get a good run out of the last one though, I had it 2 years and other than people connected to a heart/lung machine in hospital I doubt there would be too many people more connected to a machine than I am with my laptop. So this week came the 3rd in the trilogy of bad luck. This time on the boat! And this one is big. Not terminal but bloody annoying and a heap of hard work fixing it.

We had to go to Melbourne on business last week. We left (we drove down because I don't have a car down there at the moment and wouldn't you know it I needed one this trip!) very early on Tuesday feeling very good about the boat as we had managed to get the hull bogged on the weekend or so we thought....If you recall we glassed the hull with Brett's help on the previous Friday and decided we would not put the peel ply on as the resin would still be green and we would bog directly onto it the next day achieving a chemical bond and saving the peel ply. We did apply the bog on the Saturday but we only had Jo and I doing it and we believed that we had to get it done that day before the resin on the glass finally went off. After about 15% of the bogging the plastic pump on the West hardener drum broke (it pushed down into the drum) and as I was busy applying the bog and because I felt under pressure to keep going I asked Jo to keep mixing the bog by using a measuring cup for the resin and hardener instead.

The bog is made with West but the resin we used all day Friday on the glassing was ADR, which has a much longer set time which in turn gives you more time to work with and also stays green much longer which is also handy for working with the next day in our climate. ADR uses a 4:1 mix by weight. West uses a 5:1 mix by volume and the pumps take care of this ratio for you. But as the pump broke we inadvertently started mixing the bog at 4:1 using the measuring cup. I am sure we achieved a perfect 4:1 mix but unfortunately that isn't much good when it should be 5:1. We were of course oblivious to the error in our mix and worked away all the rest of the day and didn't realize our mistake until we got back from Melbourne on the weekend just past.

The consequence of this is that the bog did not set. It was still tacky on the Monday before we left for Melbourne and I didn't think too much of it thinking it would take a while to harden. We got back on the weekend to find it still rubbery not hard like at the stern which had the proper 5:1 mix. I rang Brett yesterday and the upshot is I have to strip all the bad bog off, re-sand the hull to remove as much of the stuff as I can, then re-resin the hull before re-bogging the hull again. The soft bog is just too soft to cover over and will be a weak point between the top gelcoat and the glass and will probably delaminate and is unlikely to be waterproof. Not to mention that it cant really be sanded anyway as it just balls up like it is rubber and kind of melts. It isn't melting it just has no rigidity so seems like it is melting under the sand paper so even if you could cover it over I can't get a smooth finish with it anyway.

I am using a 25mm chisel to remove the stuff, it is too hard to remove using a scraper, but then I have to be really careful with the chisel as I don't want to cut into the glass under the bog. I even tried deliberately blunting the chisel (by dropping its blade onto the concrete floor) but that just made it harder to remove the bog so I had to re-sharpen it. In fact I am finding it easier to use just half the chisel along the removed edge so using a larger chisel wont get the job done any faster. And that is super difficult in the chamfer curve or wherever I hit a tape edge. And It is really hard work on your arms. I am sore after about 20 minutes and find I have to do something else for a while whilst my arms recover. I worked at removing it for about 2 hours on and off over 4 hours today and got about 10% of the bad bog off, so at this rate I figure it will take me 20 hours work to remove the bog, about another 3-4 hours to sand it, and then another 1-2 hours to prepare the hull again (final clean ready to re-resin and re-bog), then 3-4 hours to resin coat and 4-6 hours to re-bog the hull. That's about 36 extra hours work, which at the rate I can put in, about 3 weeks. Maybe I will get better at it as I go and the hours wont be quite so bad but it is still a bunch of extra work I could have done without. And I guess we have wasted a couple of hundred $ of material to make the bog.

I was aiming for a turning party for my birthday in 3 weeks but doubt I will be ready now which is a bit of a shame. Anyway amid this gloomy news the good news is (there is always a positive to be found!) that it is all fixable to the point where once fixed will be as if it never happened. The moral of the story is DON'T RUSH!! And remember the different mix ratios. I will take some pictures of the process tomorrow.

Special thanks to Randall who is building an 1100 in Melbourne and invited us over. We visited him last week and took a look at his hull, he is just behind us but will soon be ahead now due to our mistake. His hull looked the same as ours (other than it being a different design) and re-assured both of us that we were on the right track. I had not seen another hull other than ours at the same stage. I also have to commend Randall on his neatness. His shed is immaculate and shames me into cleaning up and putting things away and setting up such things as resin dispensers and cloth dispensing rollers etc. Jo simply wont allow me to be as messy as I have been and is considering swapping teams to Randall's crew if I don't lift my game!! (Especially since it took us nearly an hour to find a missing hammer today!) I am a bit rattled at the moment. Nothing 20 or so hours of scraping bog wont fix.

I look forward to posting some good news again soon.

7th April 2006 Getting the bad bog off!

I have only managed to get about half the bad bog stripped off so far but I have only put in about 6 hours so at that rate it should only take about 12hours rather than my original estimate of 20. The more I do the faster I get but caution is still needed as the risk is ever present that I will cut the surface glass. I have cut into the glass here and there but whenever I feel the chisel cutting into the glass stop and come from a different angle to minimize the damage. I am sure that I have not damaged the glass at all. In the first pic you can see that the bog on the left (stern) is the good bog applied before the pump broke. It is a lighter color than the bad bog and it has set fine and hard and will need to be sanded. The chisel wont remove that. The soft bog is darker but I didn't notice the change in color or didn't understand the significance if I did when I was applying it. The second pic shows how easily the chisel will take the bog off although it doesn't show how tiring the work is as you do have to push hard, there is a lot of resistance. Sometimes I worked along the hull in longer strips sometimes in shorter strips up and down, other times I went across hull along the glass grain.

I found that no real pattern in what was the best way to strip the soft bog off, sometimes it was easier going with the grain of the glass other times it was easier against or across the grain. When I say easier I mean that the chisel would not catch on the glass or dig into the resin too deep. The trick I think is to get the chisel as parallel to the hull as possible which means I scraped the skin off my knuckles but if I lifted my hand away from the hull increasing the angle of the chisel to the hull the chisel went deeper and caught the glass. I will be wearing gloves over the weekend when I strip the rest of the hull.

It is almost impossible to remove all the bog with the chisel but the idea is to get the bulk of it off and use the sander to remove the rest. You can see how much is still left on the hull before sanding an how smooth it comes up afterwards. In fact it may come up very well because the bog left is creating a feathering from the flat hull to the higher edge of the glass smoothing it out meaning I am probably going to need less bog overall to achieve the all over smoothness that I was aiming for in the first place.

So to recap, I had about 15% of the boat properly bogged so I had to remove 85% and I am about 1/2 done removing the bad bog or about 40% of the boat is stripped. I think I will be able to strip the rest of the boat this weekend. I will then sand it all ready to re apply resin and bog.

8th April 2006 Still Getting the bad bog off

As of today (Saturday) I have managed to get all the soft bog off the outboard side of the hull and about half of the inboard side. I will be able to finish the stripping back tomorrow and should have the hull sanded and ready for reapplication during the week. So in the end this little mishap looks to have cost me about 2 weeks.

Some good news is I have the mother of all dust extractors. I bought it on Ebay for $535 delivered. It was delivered on Wednesday but I only managed to get it assembled today. It works really well, this thing would suck the skin off a passionfruit! I am going to try some pvc plumbing pipe step downs and a 9mt length of pool vacuum hose and another step down to the sander dust bag outlet. With that I should be able to reach anywhere on the boat with the dust extractor. It is on castors so can be moved from the front to the back if needed but the long hose should mean I would not need to move it much. The dust extractor has 3 inlet ports so I can replicate the hose and have 2 tools (or 3) going at the same time. I will report on how this all works after I get the rest of the parts and set it all up.

9th April 2006 Stalled Getting the bad bog off

I have had a lazy weekend, with a bad case of the CBB's (Couldn't be bothered) the natural enemy of the project boatbuilder. It is sometimes hard to maintain enthusiasm and motivation when having to do either the unpleasant tasks involved in boatbuilding (sanding) or having to do a long, hard tedious job that is purely the result of a silly mistake and one you wouldn't normally have to do. But you have to fight it or the job will stall. There are days like this. Most days you will jump at every task because it results in tangible progress but there are days that you have to look past the drudgery of the task at hand to the end result.

So I still have about 3 hours of bog stripping, maybe 2 if I work hard. I should still have it done this week maybe even by tomorrow.

12th April 2006 Bad bog off but still need sanding

Ok, do you want the good news or the bad news? I have removed all the suspect bog from the hull using a chisel. And in all it only took 15 hours. That's the good news. I am 5 hours ahead of forecast for the job. Now the bad news. I sanded a 1 meter section of hull at the bow and it took nearly half an hour to fully remove the remnants of bog. And I have another 15 meters of hull to do. (4 meters of hull has good bog, leaving 8 meters each side = 16 meters) so at this rate instead of 3-4 hours sanding I am looking at 7-8 hours of sanding. The stuff doesn't sand off the way hard bog does, it kind of rolls up into tiny balls before the sander is able to remove them. Maybe it will be like the chiseling (and most other jobs) in that I get faster at it as I go. It is difficult to rush or push harder as it is very important not to damage the glass so care and accuracy is much more important than speed on this.

Anyway, however long it takes in hours, I will have the hull sanded back by Sunday (I could do it all by Friday night hopefully) and we plan to resin coat the hull Monday morning and bog Monday afternoon while the resin is still green. Even if I do manage to finish sanding on Friday we are unlikely to bring the resin and bogging forward in our planning as we have a family bbq Sunday afternoon before we all head off to "monster trucks" at Gosford show grounds. If this weekend all goes to plan then I will have lost exactly 2 weeks by this little interlude. Not so bad.

And there may be a silver lining. I removed 7kgs of bog by chisel! You can see it all in the picture of it in the box. Jacob, Jo's youngest son helped by sweeping it all up and putting it in this box for me. And with the sanding to get the rest off, the tape lines are much fairer than they were so the new layer of bog should be thinner to get the same smooth result and therefore less sanding will be needed and will use less bog second time around.

Here is a before and after of what the hull needs to look like before I can be confident that the bond between the new layer of resin has bonded well to the now keyed (sanded rough) resin of the original glassing. If I leave too much bad bog on it can weaken this bond because it has no strength to hold the 2 layers together. If it is almost all gone then the 2 layers of resin will bond to each other and completely surround and even soak through the miniscule amounts of soft bog left.

I am still waiting on the rest of the parts needed to get the super sucker working and as a result I am banned from sanding the good bog back until it is going. The sanding of the bad bog does not create much dust so I can get away with that. It kind of balls up and drops off. The resin being sanded creates a little dust but manageable.

17th April 2006 We're back!

What a relief. And like I said we only lost 2 weeks and a small amount of material and a lot of hard work. But it is great to be back on track. (That is, of course, assuming we have now done it correctly! If we haven't you may find an abrupt end to this website!! I couldn't stand having to do that all again!)

As predicted it took me 8 hours to fully sand and remove nearly every trace of the soft bog, which I did on Saturday. I had another lazy day on Good Friday and whilst I thought about going to work on the boat a couple of times, I couldn't quite get my lazy butt off the couch! Then on Sunday morning I went in and got everything ready for today, I cut the 6 tapes to length, I set them up (rolled them) onto the Wombat and I put all the tools needed for the job out and I went and bought some hoses and clamps to use on the West heavy duty pump so that we didn't have a repeat of the plastic pump break down last time. And I had a clean up to remove the dust from the hull and vacuumed the dust from the floor, I still don't have the dust extractor working yet. That should happen this week ready for the sanding of the HARD bog. Yay, cant wait for that!

So this morning another set back, we just couldn't get the heavy duty pump to work properly. The hardener pump (1x) didn't pump anything and the resin (5x) pumped but the there is no breather that we could find so the pressure of the suction caused the hose to suck in on itself and it took ages between pumps for the hose to relax again to get a full flow through, and the back pressure is so great that it takes a real effort to pump anything through the pump through the reduced hose size due to the sucking in on itself. Because the hardener side didn't work we had to use the heavy duty pump to get resin into the original smaller drums with the original plastic pumps (we can pour the hardener but have to pump the resin as it comes in 200 liter drums and getting it into the smaller drums isn't possible any other way). So that is an issue to resolve in days to come as the heavy duty pump will save a lot of time if I can get it working properly.

After half an hour or so of messing around (and messing is a good word for it as I was getting resin everywhere!) trying to get the pump going we gave up and did the above and when we had enough resin decanted we set to work. The resin coat went in in about half an hour. I just used a roller and painted the hull with the resin. Too easy!

When we originally glassed the hull we deviated a little from the plans and put 1 less tape on each chine join than the plans called for. The reason we did that, is after consultation with Brett on the day he felt we could do without them, and that there is so much over protection built in we could safely leave them off. But as a result of this little side adventure with the soft bog I felt that I may have damaged the glass here and there, minimal but hard to completely avoid when you are sanding down to the glass. So I felt it prudent to tape over the chines again just to be safe. We were only adding what the plans originally called for anyway. I would rather err on the side of heavier but stronger on this one. Call it insurance, piece of mind, whatever, my mind is more at ease now.

So we used the Wombat for the first time today. (Click here for the explanation of what a Wombat is.) If you are contemplating building a Duflex boat I strongly advise you get one of these bad boys. I have now taped the same hull with and without the Wombat and I can tell you, the Wombat makes taping a 40ft hull a snap. It literally took 7 minutes from the moment we started mixing the epoxy to the moment I finished sqeegeeing down the tape. We did 6 tapes in about 1 hour and that includes set up and clean up! Setting up meant cutting 6 tapes to length and rolling them dry onto the Wombat's top roller (I did this Sunday and it took about 10 minutes maybe 15) and clean up took about 5 minutes. And it can all easily be done by one person, whereas by hand it took 2 of us to do, one to roll out the tape and hold it in place and one to epoxy it. The method I used with Wombat was to feed the start of the tape through the epoxy bag and then tighten the squeegee boards. We than poured in just enough epoxy to wet-out a 12meter roll, we guessed the first one and slightly overestimated and then corrected for the subsequent rolls. I worried at first about the residue epoxy going off in the bag and using many bags on the job but the tapes go on so fast that this was never an issue. The I simply took the wet roll to the boat (the rollers easily come off the machine) and rolled out the wet-out tape and squeegeed it down and very little if any excess resin came off. Here and there we had a dry spot due to winding too fast or not having enough epoxy in the bag but that was easily fixed with a roller and a squeegee but it happened in a few spots over more than 60 meters of tape. Minimal! I cant rave highly enough about how handy the Wombat is. The only improvement I can think of is if it had some method of measuring the tape you wet out you would not need to pre cut to length.

Once the hull was resin coated and the tapes attached we had a break for lunch of an hour or so, just to let the epoxy or more importantly the tapes to go off a bit and set so the tapes didn't move when I applied the bog. It was still a little tacky to touch when we started to apply the bog. Same method as last time. I just applied it as thinly as I could and still cover the gaps fully and the tapes and chines thinly. We were a little runny again in places but over all we are happy with the job. I may need to add a little more bog here and there but I figure it is easier to add some bog to thin spots later than to sand down a thick all over cover. I am still confident I will get a smooth fair hull.

Oh and I got a respirator on ebay for $20 brand new. I know Bunning's want over $40 and that Rob also has them at Schionning Supply. I got lucky on the price but the reason I mention them is that they are very good to have and that you can get a bargain on ebay if you look. (Sorry Rob, but I am sure you wont mind too much, I don't shop anywhere else and I don't think you can get everything you sell on ebay! Besides we have a thing for online, Jo and I met online and we now make a living selling online and on ebay).

So finally we are back to where we should have been 2 weeks ago. I estimated 36 hours and it took me 37 hours. Whatever, the hull is now bogged and tomorrow I will report (I will!) that it has all set properly and I can get on with fairing it.

I would also like to thank all those that emailed me with suggestions advise and support. It was appreciated and helped us find the motivation to get on with it. There is always a positive and the one we feel now is that there is virtually no problems we can't face and fix.

Because we have lost those 2 weeks and because I have some business in Melbourne again it is unlikely I will be able to turn the hull until sometime in early May (I was aiming for last week of April). In the meantime I have to sand the hull and resin coat it again before high building (another form of bog that precedes final painting) and I am still to tape the inside joins. I am yet to decide on anti foul so although many people do that whilst the hull is upside down, I may leave that until later.

18th April 2006 Nothing like a good hard bog

Yes, we have hard bog all over the boat. It is a bit thin in places despite Randall warning me that he needed to add a little more here and there. I have decided that I would rather also add a little more where needed rather than sand away excess bog. The end result is the same, and if you see pictures of sanded boats such as the one I have added below (this isn't mine so if you built this and recognize it email me and I will credit you with the picture) you will see how much or more aptly how little bog should be left when it is all sanded back.

I wont get to do much work this week. I may get some inside tapes done tomorrow but on Thursday I will be traveling to Melbourne again. So it will be next week when I get to sand all that hard bog! Great.

29th April 2006 Nothing much happening

For a number of reasons not much has happened on the boat in the last 10 days or at least it appears so. The first few days until the 23rd I was in Melbourne but in the last week I have been doing a lot of smaller jobs that don't look significant but in the end all must be done to progress. Annoying little things like sanding internal fillets smooth. Just a note on these fillets, they shouldn't need sanding because they can be glassed while wet. I didn't know this until after I had applied many of them so now I have to sand them smooth before I can apply the tape. Another job Jo and I did was a big clean up now that we have the dust extractor. We took the tarps off the stock and gave them a hose down (because they were covered in dust!!) and left them out to dry last Sunday afternoon and then managed to re pack the stock and saved about 4 pallet spaces, which will come in handy when we need the space when we turn the hull in around 4 weeks.

I also managed to sand some of the bog on the hull before burning out a Ryobi random orbital. What a fun job that is! After some discussion with Randal (building an 1100 in Melbourne and now just ahead of me) we came to the conclusion that the less Microlight (410) used in the bog the harder it is to sand because it has a higher resin content. But the more powder you add the thicker the mixture is and the harder it is to apply. The other downside of less powder that I can attest to is that it is far runnier and it does run a lot even though it doesn't seem like it will at the time you apply it, but the sanding is by far the most time consuming down side of less powder so make your bog as thick as you can apply it. I am waiting on a replacement for the random orbital to arrive before sanding the rest of the hull, or at least that is the excuse I am using for putting it off. I can't face doing all that sanding from start to finish in one go so I am doing it a little at a time. An hour here, an hour there. I am about a third done so far. I reckon it is about 15 - 20 hours work non stop but it is a tough 20 hour slog that I just cant do in one go so if it takes me a couple of weeks to get it done then so be it, I don't want to kill myself on this! The worst part is I have to do it all over a few times because after the bog is fair you re resin, re sand, then add another form of filler called high build and sand and re apply and sand that a few more times before final painting. I am told that high build is a lot easier to sand though, what little consolation that is at this stage!. Don't get disheartened, everyone that ever built a boat has been there before. And just think, this is only one hull, wait until it is a cat and 20 feet wide. All those topsides to fair. I don't even want to think about it at this stage!

So while I have been finding any job I can do to avoid sanding, I have also taped some of the inside hull chines. So far I have only done ones that had dry sanded coving but I will be doing some with wet cove in the next few days. The method I used was to measure out the dry glass tapes to length once the cove filler was sanded smooth. Then I would paint the join with resin, wet out the tape on a flat surface and squeegee out the excess then take the wet out tape to the job and smooth it onto the join. I didn't bother with the wombat on these shorter lengths as the set up for each tape was more trouble than just painting the resin on a table. I rolled the tape into a roll for the bulkhead to hull joins as it is a long tape and very difficult to apply if not rolled up. I attempted one without rolling it up and it is akin to trying to apply wall paper. You know, where you get the top attached and are smoothing out the bottom and it all falls down on top of you. When it is rolled you don't have to let more out until you are happy that you have it all in place and the bubbles smoothed out provided you work fairly quickly because there is always the danger of it going exothermic. It is important to be sure the tape is cleanly smoothed onto the surface and no bubbles are present because these will be weak spots when it is cured especially in the curves of the cove. It is quite amazing how even the biggest ripples at the turns will smooth out, there is so much give in the weave. When first applying it I even thought I would need to cut large notches at the corners to allow it to all smoothly go down but it isn't necessary (or advisable because you lose a lot if not all of the strength and load spreading ability by cutting it) because it all smoothes out anyway. In fact it is probably better to leave this smoothing until last rather than lingering on it as you go. Once the bulk of the tape is in contact with the panels below it, you can then ensure that the remaining kinks and crinkles are removed by pushing the glass around with your fingers until it is all smoothed down.

The taping of the joins is as per the plans, 1 tape of 150mm and another over the top of 100mm. The second tape is much easier to apply and is applied wet on wet. I don't advise wetting out tapes on the job, it is far easier to apply them already wet out (on a flat surface) and trying to transfer resin from a pot to a tape above your head in a confined space either by brush or roller ends up with you transferring a lot of the resin onto yourself! If you are going to use this method be sure to wear safety glasses. I also advise using a breathing mask. Working inside the upside down hull leaves nowhere for the vapors to go. I can barely smell them and don't know if there is any ill effect from breathing larger concentrations but better to err on the side of safety.

I have decided it will probably be neater and easier to tidy up the internals of the hull if I tape the panel chines first, up to the bulkheads, then do the fillet and tape of the bulkheads over the ends of the panel (except on the bulkhead that I filleted previous to taping...that's already down!). I will try to tape all panel joins except the one that runs down the middle of the keel before I turn the hull. That way the hull will be at maximum strength when the temp bulkheads are removed and the hull turned. The join down the keel still needs some filling which will be much easier to do right way up, that way gravity will be on my side.

April has been a slow month which is odd considering there were so many public holidays. I virtually lost it doing work that I didn't need to be doing if not for mistakes. But as Jo and I now say, "Bog Happens".

 

Time Spent: 52.00 Hours

Total build time so far: 355.00 Hours   Total Elapsed Time: 8 Months

May 2006 logs