2008 building logs

April 2008 Finishing the daggers and cases.

I am calling this the half way mark. I have been building now for 2 and a half years of a 5 year plan. In terms of hours completed, I am figuring 3000 hours is going to be the full build on my cat, a tad optimistic most would say but I intend to cheat! so half way is what I am calling it and I am just a smidge under 1500 hours. I did not finish as many of the dirty jobs in March as I would have hoped even though I did a respectable 88 hours for the month. This month I should finish the daggerboards and their cases. I will also try to get a few more of the dirty jobs done so that next month I can start to close the shell up.

April 1 Setting up the shaping jig

Not much to report today. I got a start on setting up the router shaping jig on the table. I have a stringline set up to attach the rear rail to the bench. Once I am happy with its position I will then go on and attach the front rail. This is more critical than the back rail because I have to ensure that it is set up exactly parallel to the back rail, at the same height and the same distance from the back rail along the entire length with no kinks or ups and downs.

Once the jig is secured to the bench I will then secure the blank inside the jig. It just needs to be level on the bench and square to the rails so that when I start the router at one position and one depth on one end it will be the in the same position at the other end. It will be more difficult to do the other side once one side is shaped because then the blank needs to be secured with a curved surface on the bench so to keep it secure I will need to use the female moulds as a cradle. The male moulds will stay attached to the blank until both sides are shaped.

The top sliding rails will be joined to each other with cross rails that will be placed so they act as stoppers inside the main rails to stop the cross rail from moving forward and backward (blocked against the inside of the front and back rails) so that the only movement is along the rails. Then it is a simple matter to clamp the router to the rail. The plunge router is then set to depth and locked off and run along the blank. After each run I move the router and reset the depth to the mould on the end and do another run. The actual shaping will take a fraction of the set up time, but all of the set up and shaping combined will still be a fraction of the time it takes to shape a blank by manual planing or sanding.

April 2 Jig ready

The long rails are set to the bench and the cross rail is made and slides easily in its track. There are only 2 things stopping me from shaping the blank. I have yet to glue the Cedar blocks for the sheave into the blank and the router bit I have does not reach deeply enough through the jig to the blank so I either need to raise the blank in the jig or get a longer bit. I will try to set the blank up higher first to save me buying another expensive router bit.

I set the back rail up to the bench using a stringline and I found that there is a 5mm dip in the bench, most of the length was at the right height to the stringline but both of the ends were low so it needed to be raised by packing them up with wedges. Once the back rail was set to the stringline, meaning it was both straight and level, just to the line not necessarily to the rest of the world although ironically it was now level to the rest of the world. I then set about making the front rail level and straight to the back rail. The method here was to run a level at each end and set one corner level and at the correct distance (any distance just choose one that works) from the back rail, then using a tape measure ensure that the rest of the front face of the front rail is at exactly the same distance from the front face of the back rail. I had to pack the end with a 3mm mdf strip to get it to be level with the back rail. I then repeated this at the other end and it also needed a 3mm packer and was set to the exact same distance from the back rail.

I then set a stringline along the front rail to firstly make sure that the rail was straight which it should be if the back rail is straight and the front was set to the back rail. Only the ends are secured at this stage so there could be bends in the front rail so the tape measure and the stringline ensures that it is set straight. I then had to be sure that the front rail was at the correct height along its entire length. It needed 3mm packing along its entire length in order to be level using the 1 meter spirit level. I learnt that level can be out so you should just pick an end of the level to be at the front and use it that way the whole time, this ensures that the job stays level. Once it was packed and set and the stringline and the level now also agreed you can be sure there is no twist, no kink no dips etc and the train will run smoothly on its tracks.

I joined the 2 parts of the cross rails into one with mdf slats leaving a slot down the middle for the router bit to slide along and plenty of room in the rail to attach the router. I then attached guides underneath to stop the cross rail from moving backwards or forwards. Once the router is attached it can now only move side to side (it can also move up which is ok because it cant do any cutting if lifted up but it cannot move down any further than the side rail height).

Once the blank is secured to the bench and is square and level with no twist in it (which I will check by running a stringline down the middle at the spine) it will be a simple matter to run the router along its length resetting the height of the router to the moulds on the end as I go along the profile from back to front. I will pack the underside of the blank where needed to ensure it is steady but it will be important when doing this that I don't create a bow in it up or down because even though I will shape the blank level with the router, any bend created under pressure will just pop out again when the blank is released from the jig. It needs to be sitting in there under no pressure at all either up or down.

I am very close to being ready to shape now. Pretty soon there wont be any reason to not shape them!

April 3 Levelling blank in jig

Builders will tell you that even an hour spent on the boat is well spent and brings the finish that little bit closer. An hour was all I had time for today and it wasn't a particularly productive hour but was worthwhile nonetheless. I found out today that I still have a couple of problems to resolve before I can shape the blanks.

The first problem is I am going to need to buy a new router bit. The sliding cross rail is made from the same material as the long rails, 16mm mdf. The drop from the top of the rail to the deepest router cut (the front and back edges to the centreline) is 50mm and the router bit only reaches 40mm at its furthest drop. I have access to 3 routers, my own battery one, a normal electric, both of which take quarter inch shank bits which I have but are not long enough and a heavy duty industrial model that takes half inch shank bits which I don't have. There are very long bits for half inch shank and buying one will solve the problem but I hate paying for stuff like this for just one use. Anyway, they are only about fifty bucks so it is not going to kill me.

The second problem is that gravity is still having an effect on the shaping of the blanks. They are still flexible enough and long enough that being propped up at the ends it still falls about 20mm. The bench top is out by about 5mm in places so I don't want to trust the shaping to the bench top. My solution is to suspend the blank by the ends in a cradle and then block the spine up in a couple of places to ensure it is level along its length.

I started by creating the cradles from the female mdf moulds that came with the kit (I made male mdf moulds to match in order to set the router to). I needed to trim them by about 10mm as they are too high as they came and by about 30mm on the length so they fit in between the rails. The male moulds are attached to the blank along the centreline and sit neatly in the female moulds. I set the top of the female mould (centreline) the same distance from the top of the rails at each corner (not up from the bench because it isn't level) by packing out under the cradle at the corners. This takes care of any twist as now the corners are the same depth and level. I just have to secure the cradles to the bench now so they cannot move and with the male moulds attached to the centreline of this blank and then the other blank it will automatically fit in place correctly at the right height each time.

I then ran a stringline down the spine to ensure that the blank is level along its length. I set a spacer from the spine to the stringline at the ends (just touching) then ran it along the blank and you can see at the middle that the gap grows from just touching to 20mm, that is the sag in the unsupported blank. I will solve this with some blocks along the spine to ensure that the height is correct, being careful not to be too high and create a similar bow the other way. This is where stringlines are so easy to work to and easy to set up.

The cradle set up is handy in that once set up I can do all 4 runs on them (2 blanks x 2 sides) but because the male moulds (that fit the female cradles exactly) are attached to the blanks I have to finish both sides of one before starting on the other. Of course there is no reason why I wouldn't do this anyway so this is hardly a problem. Once the blank is level I can secure the blank to the jig, run a quick recheck like I did when building the hulls on the strongback and then there is nothing else to do but run the router over the job and shape them. I just have to bite the bullet and go buy that router bit!

April 4 I cant believe I have still not shaped the blanks!

Sounds like a brand of margarine. No I still haven't shaped a blank yet, but I am ready. Nothing more to do but run the router over them. I have the router bit (I got a better deal at the local tool retailer, 20% cheaper than Bunning's across the road, only $34 so not too painful given I wont be able to use it with my router!) and I have glued the cedar sheave blocks in, I did that today and need them to set overnight. All is now ready to shape the blanks. My next entry here (tomorrow night hopefully) will be to report on how the shaping went. I have not cut the slot down the centre of the trailing edge or glued the batten in, deciding instead to do that after I have shaped the blank. This is somewhat more difficult given I have to cut a slot on the trailing edge that will then be only 10mm wide but the foam is quite easy to cut by hand so I think I will not have too much trouble cutting the slot and I will not have to worry about it not being in the centre of the blank as I shape it as it will be very easy to centre cut it after the blank is shaped.

So today I finished the jig by attaching the female moulds permanently into the jig with backs on the outside set to the centreline as another line of measure to ensure both sides are exactly lined up, they also ensure the blanks sit in exactly the same place along the jig (left to right) and cannot move either left or right. Tomorrow when I replace the blanks in the jig with the male plugs on the ends they auto seat themselves in the correct position on each side, and all I need to do is run a couple of screws through the end plates into the male moulds to stop the blanks moving and all is ready to shape.

Then I cut some cedar off the planks I have and trimmed them down on the table saw to the width of the blank (65mm a little oversize to be shaped down) then on the mitre saw to 200mm as the plans call for (100mm either side of the pulley centreline). 4 of them, 2 in each blank. Then it was a simple matter to cut the foam out to glue the cedar in its place. A jigsaw is all you need. You can start the cut by drilling a hole if you like but it is easy to just start the jigsaw on an angle and straighten it down then cut as normal. I cut a little undersize then trim out to a snug fit. Then just paste it up with glue and wipe back the excess and push some into any loose areas not full. Once set tomorrow the cedar will shape the same as the foam.

Once shaped there will still be a need to fair off the corners created by the router cutting like a Christmas tree, a series of steps, not unlike what I have now but much smaller and closer together. I may try to angle the router to cut parallel to the required shape to minimise the fairing but foam is very easy to sand so there is no great need to do this. Then once the blanks are faired the next step (after gluing in the batten) will be to glass the blanks.

April 5 One down one to go

I have shaped my first daggerboard. It took me all day because as usual I was a little over cautious on this first one. I measured and checked and checked and measured until there was nothing for it but to actually cut one. So I did. And promptly made a mistake. There is a lock on the plunger. The initial depth is set using a dial which raises or lowers the cutter. Then once the required height is set you lock it off and away you go. I forgot to lock it off which is fine if you just push the jig along the rails but I made the mistake of pushing on the router for the last 200mm (I grabbed the handles ready to switch it off) and in doing so I pushed the cutter down into the job another 2mm or 3mm for about 100mm. Not a big problem as it is at the very top of the board rather than the bottom so not under any stresses, but it just nicked the edge of the uni stack and will need filling up with glue again before the blank is glassed. So from then on I remembered to lock the plunger and only pushed on the mdf cross rail. Also my first cut was just a tad too deep, you want the router to just skim or just miss skimming the mould so that the bit does not destroy the mould (I have to use them again on the other blank.)

So with the first tentative cuts I gradually gained in confidence and kept moving the router about 15mm each time (it is a 16mm bit) so that each cut just overlapped the last and adjusted the depth of the cut each time until eventually the shape of the board started to emerge. I had wedges under one side of the router to adjust the angle of the cutter to the angle of the profile. It is quite a relief to get from one end to the other each time and see that the blade was in contact with the board the whole distance and exactly meets the mould at the other end. You know then you have a level straight board being cut.

Once I had the first side shaped, I turned the blank over, set it up in the correct position. This took me half an hour or so of checking with stringlines, the actual placing in the jig took 5 minutes, and then started shaping the other side. At the trailing edge, because I still have to cut a slot for the sail batten I decided not to trim the overhang off yet. I left the full width (40mm) overhanging piece on so that I have more room to find my centreline and cut the slot, then after I have glued the batten in I will trim the last pieces off ready for glassing.

After both sides had been shaped I took the blank out of the jig and ran an orbital sander over it to take off the uneven edges and smooth out the blank. This sanding is not to fair it just to get the surface smooth so that the glass has a nice surface to bond too and no lumps and bumps where air bubbles can form. I have a few holes and cracks where not enough glue joined the foam strips here and there so I will need to back fill these with glue before glassing. Then once it is glassed the bog goes on to fair it and then the only sanding I can do is manual with a torture board.

Although it took a little longer than I anticipated, I still favour this form of shaping over the usual method of planing or sanding the blank into shape using the female mould as a guide. I think it is a more accurate way of getting a uniform shape. I enjoyed today. There are days where you get tangible results and days where you don't get anything to look at for the work you have done. No prizes for guessing which days are the most satisfying.

Tomorrow I should get the second blank shaped a little faster, although I have to set the moulds on the ends and set it up in the jig. Still I should finish it a lot faster so if time permits I will start on the back fill of the centre spines and gaps and cracks. The trough is now only about 2mm or so (in some places there is barely any trough at all) at its deepest, so I will mix a thick lot of glue and using a large trowel as a screed I should be able to fill the trough to flush neatly or just overfull so I can sand it back to flush ready for the glass layers.

April 6 Both daggers shaped

Another fun day, even though it was pretty much the same as yesterday. I have now shaped both daggers and dismantled the jig. I had a couple of unexpected problems. Well unexpected is not quite accurate. I had a bow in one of my boards but I thought after attaching the molds to the ends that there was enough overhang to cover it. In just one place there wasn't. Right on a join there is a gap now about 10mm wide at the widest and about 1mm deep and about 500mm long overall. Its true extent did not become visible until I had finished shaping (although I knew it was there once I had run over the area with the router) and had sanded down all of the corners. I believe that in my attempts to save material I actually cut it a bit fine (no pun intended!). Although I only have a small section to backfill it is still a little more work that I would not have had to do if I had made the strips just a mm or 2 wider. That said, it is not a major problem or a lot of work given I have to backfill the spine anyway. In some places I was shaving just the width of a credit card off. If the router is touching the board along the whole length it does not matter (nor could you ever tell) if you are cutting a mm or a meter except for the amount of waste so this was a good result.

I also had another problem. Whilst turning the blank over to route the other side I dropped the blank off the edge of the table onto the ground a drop of about a meter and a crack opened up in one of the glue lines of the foam strips. It surprised me how much it opened, I would have thought it would have been a hairline crack but it opened up about 1mm. In a way that is also going to help me fix it, I will be able to squeeze glue down into the crack easily. The crack is not a problem, once glued there will be 4 layers of glass over it so it will hardly be an issue, it is just another small piece of work I need to do. In all I have to back fill the small gap in height of the spine both sides, the small low spot and a crack in this dagger and the spines on the other. I also have some holes here and there and some rough areas where the blade ripped rather than cut the foam to fill but for these I will pull a very tight screed (scrape it on very thin) just of thick glue just before I glass and I will glass to it wet on wet once it tacks off a little.

Once I had finished shaping the second blank I dismantled the jig so that I had the bench space back to work on and I sanded off the series of small ridges where the router moved from one level to another. I did yesterdays on the ground, today I got to work at a civilised height. With the second dagger sanded smooth, I finished the shaping of both by cutting the angled top in. The daggers don't need to be full width for the top third of the length, this will sit above the deck height when raised so it decreases the loss of visibility through it but more importantly it reduces their weight. When lowered this section is inside the case for about half way and full profile section inside the case from about halfway down so that when lowered the dagger is full size from halfway down to the hull bottom exit so that it does not move inside the case.

A sidenote on the jig. I am happy with the way it all worked. Being made out of mdf it started to get sloppy toward the end of the second blank, or the fourth side which is understandable. The height did not alter, I could just feel a little forward and backward movement in the sliding rail so I made a conscious effort to pull or push one way or the other (forward or back) as I slid the rail along, for the whole length of the cut to maintain its consistency of position. No problem. It is not as durable as steel and it was not designed to be so, although I can see where a production builder might want to make up a permanent jig, but all in all I would recommend this method over shaping with a plane or sander. The sheet of mdf cost me $27 and the router bit cost $34. (I still have to buy the sheaves but you need them no matter how you make the daggers) so the daggers cost me about $60 to build this way. I had to sand just the small ridges caused by the changing height of the router bit and this was hard enough. You cannot effectively plane foam with a non power planer either, I tried. So it would have required me using the power plane, not my favourite tool.

Tomorrow I hope to get the fibreglass batten glued into the trailing edge, to do that I have to get the slot cut first.

April 7 Fibreglass battens glued in

Not much work on the boat today. Just an hour and all I got done was to cut the slot in the trailing edges for the fibreglass batten with a hand saw and I glued them into the dagger blanks. Cutting these slots was into the daggers was not easy. The trailing edge is only 6mm or 7mm wide, I have not shaped the last 10mm or so with the router leaving about 30mm edge to cut into, but the cut needs to be about 20mm deep so if the cut is off centre or not running down the centreline the saw will cut a hole in the side of the blank. So I was extra careful when cutting this slot which almost guaranteed that I would make a mess of it! Whilst it was not a complete mess I did run off centre here and there but the hand saw did not protrude out of the side of the blank anywhere.

Once I had cut the slots I sanded each of the battens to key them. Then I mixed some glue and whilst holding open the slot I filled each with glue, and then inserted the battens into the slots. I then smeared some extra glue along the edges to be sure there were no gaps and that the foam was in good contact with the batten. Once set I will finish the shaping of the trailing edge. The glued in battens will stiffen the edge up a little to make the shaping a little easier.

The idea of the batten is to provide something solid that glass can be glued to. Glass wont go around such a tight corner so the idea will be to glue to the batten on each side of the blank (glass will go around the leading edge as it is a much gentler round turn as opposed to a sharp trailing edge). Then once the glass is set the batten gets sanded down along with the glass to create a sharp edged square corner trailing edge about 5mm wide and straight.

When the glass is on and set the trailing edge will be a combination of batten and solid glass and will be about somewhat thicker than it will end up and sanding it back down to the final size will take out the slight kinks I have in the middle of one of the battens. Hopefully I will get the glass cut tomorrow and then later in the week I may get time to get one of the boards glassed and the second one done on the weekend, if not then both of them done on the weekend so I can start on the cases.

April 8 Blanks ready to glass.

I have prepared the dagger blanks and they are now ready to glass. I have shaped the radius curves of the bottom of the dagger and taken all of the sharp edges off and rounded them also. I also sanded the trailing edges back to the fibreglass batten so all is ready for glassing. I still have to back fill the centre spine and the holes here and there including a new rough area at the trailing edge at the batten, but I will do this on the day I glass that dagger and then glass to the thick glue once it has tacked off but still green enough to get a chemical bond.

The glassing will take pretty much all day, there are 3 layers of uni (2 with the fibres running up and down and 1 with the fibres running across) and a layer of double bias as well as the back filling so this will take a while to get on. I will probably also peel ply the board so I can bog it without having to sand it. It is unlikely I will get to do them before the weekend.

April 12 First layers of glass on 1st blank

I have a cursed resin barrel. I am convinced as much as any rational person can be that I have somehow upset the gods of resin as I don't seem to be able to catch a break on this second drum of resin. If there is a way to spill some of it I will find it. I did not spill a single drop of resin from the first drum, but with this second one I am inventing new ways to waste resin in pools on the floor. I have been decanting from the second drum because of the crystallised hardened resin due to the hardener spill into the top of it. It seemed to be down the very last dregs and I was getting half an icecream container after a day of it dripping out. On Tuesday night I forgot to put the bung back in before I left (each night I bung the hole and remove the bung the next day to extract another half an icecream container) and could not go to work on the boat again until today. The icecream container was full, and there was a pool of resin on the floor. I have no idea how much, maybe 10 litres if I was lucky. James found the spill yesterday and put sawdust over the spill for me and bunged the hole back up. Of course just to rub salt in the wound because it has been a bit warmer, the resin thins and exits the drum faster!!! so more of it than had been coming out for the last 2 weeks seemed to come out. I will be glad when this haunted resin drum is empty.

So I started on the glassing of the first blank today. The plans say to cut the sheave slots before you glass but I don't have them yet (so I don't know the exact width of the slot) so I decided to cut them after the glass is on. I cant see how it would make any difference. I started by screwing in long (100mm) screws into the ends to act as axles the blank can rotate on. I will be glassing over the leading edge so the ability to roll the blank over whilst the glass on one side is still wet is important and you cant really lay wet glass down on a rigid surface so rotating on an axle suspended between 2 drums works well. Once the axle screws were in and it was on the 2 drums suspended, I started on backfilling any gaps, hole, cracks and of course the trough in the centre spine. I did both sides and let it tack off a little. I also resin coated the cedar blocks as this tends to soak in a bit, it gives the resin on the cloth something to adhere to.

Once it had tacked off enough I lay the glass over the blank (it was roughly pre cut to shape) and trimmed the overhangs where needed (the only edge the uni can go around is the leading edge) and smoothed and stretched the glass out over the blank leaving the glass for the other side overhanging the leading edge of the blank and just hanging down. The plans say to glass the uni one side at a time and overlap by 100mm over the leading edge to the other side, but I decided it would be easy enough to glass in one continuous sheet from one trailing edge, over the leading edge around to the trailing edge on the other side.

I made a basic mistake that may have made that decision a bigger mistake but I got away with it so in retrospect I am glad I glassed them this way. What happened is that once I had finished wetting out the first side I rotated the blank and started to smooth the glass down on the other side and as I did the wet glass started on the now under side started to peel itself off (gravity now the enemy) and once it gets a start it accelerates until gravity is satisfied. I managed to catch most of the now free wet glass before it hit the dust covered (not just dusty but 3mm deep dust!) floor and only about a foot of it hit the floor. So I turned the blank back over, reapplied the wet glass, smoothed out the air bubbles, removed as much of the dust and grit off the wet glass as I could and then clipped the wet glass to the blank (which is what I should have done as soon as I first finished the wet out on that side) and turned it over to wet the other side.

Once both sides were wet and I had used the detail roller to ensure it was well down with no air bubbles I had a break for lunch and let the first layer tack off a little. I am not sure yet if this was a good idea. On the positive it meant that once the next dry cloth was in place it was held in place by the tacked off resin below until I finished wetting it out, on the downside, it is much harder to get the cloth correctly into place as it sticks to the tacked off resin the moment it makes contact. If I applied the next glass layer straight away the resin below would be more slippery and the glass easier to move into place. Jury is still out. I didn't have any problems but I will try it the other way on the other blank and decide.

Once the second layer of uni (also running down the dagger) was wet out and properly set down (air bubbles removed with detail roller) I let the blank drop on the axle so it set without any chance of sag in the middle of the board to one side or the other due to gravity. Then I had to go as I had to be somewhere else, so I did not get all 4 layers of glass down today. It took me 6 hours to get just the 2 layers down. So I plan a very early (6am) start tomorrow in order to get the last 2 layers on while the resin is still green (able to chemically bond).

I am glad to finally start getting glass on the blanks because without the glass on the blanks (the foam) is very fragile, every time I moved the blanks I put a dint in them. The next uni layer goes across the board (so I will have to butt join smaller pieces and they cannot go around the leading edge, then a final layer of double bias across the entire board  and over and around all edges to seal it all in.

April 13 Another layer of glass on 1st blank

As planned I got a very early start this morning but unfortunately that didn't translate into a long day working on the boat. It probably should have but I had always planned to have the afternoon off to watch my football team (Carlton) win its first game for the season but I am getting so low on hardener now I don't think I have enough to finish the next wet out. It would be a huge problem to run out of resin with say a half wet out sheet of glass. I would need to remove it and throw that entire sheet out.

There is a cliché that you learn something new everyday. Yesterday I learnt never to rely on wet glass to defy gravity. If it can get a start to fall, it will. And of course there is the inverse mathematics of the dirtier the floor the more likely the wet glass will fall on it. Today I learnt that at 5am it is quite cold in the shed and that with the shed cold so too are its contents and that cold resin is much thicker than warmer resin. Of course I knew this but from the other side of that equation. In the middle of the summer heat resin is very fluid (remember the drum leak just yesterday from warm days!). What I had not experienced before or if I have I have forgotten it, is how difficult it is to apply really thick resin and how much more of it you end up using for any given job. And how much more difficult it is to pump. I am missing the wall pump (since I started running out of hardener and decanting the resin I have been on the bottle pumps).

First thing I did this morning when I arrived (at 5am!!!) was to clean up the board for any rough areas and dags etc that might make wetting out the next layer harder. I also decided to give the blank a quick sand just to be sure, I am pretty sure the resin is still green but I keyed it anyway as I had a couple of sharp lumps I had to remove as they will result in air bubbles with the next wet layer, so while I was at it I gave the rest a light go over. Then I cleaned the dust off ready to go again.

The I cut the uni to size and shape (for both sides of the dagger). Instead of one big sheet of glass like the first 2 layers, this is a series of small pieces as the threads run across the board and cannot go around the leading edge like the up and down threads can. A nice edge to the cut glass sheets is helpful as the pieces will butt up next to each other. With all the piece cut I started the wet out.

As I mentioned, it was still cold at 6am so the resin was hard to pump, mixed as thick as honey and went on the same way. It is a good idea to coat the board with resin first so that the glass cannot move once it is in place. I find it easiest to have the glass in place on the board then fold aside half the piece, wet the board under it and fold the piece of glass back over onto the wet resin, then repeat on the other half of the piece of glass and a bit further under the next piece and then replacing the piece and the next piece up close to each other for a nice clean join and then back to wetting out the top of the first piece before continuing on in that order. As always with uni it is important to give the cloth time to soak up the resin (from both below and above) before adding more thinking it is not wet enough. It takes longer for the resin to soak through with uni and much longer when it is cold and thicker. Having said that it is still very hard to not to end up using more resin than you would usually need and because it is so thick it is hard to squeegee out the excess without upsetting the glass threads but pushing too hard.

Once I had wet out the first side I needed to turn the blank over but remembering what happened yesterday I decided to give the resin a chance to tack off a little more so it wouldn't fall off. I did a few other things here and there in preparation for the next blank. But being cold it was making the tack off take longer so in the end I just turned it over and kept an close eye on it to be sure it was not falling. It didn't so I just got on to wet the glass on the other side. Then once I had both sides on I let the dagger spin on the axle again to set vertically.

The next layer of glass is a sealing layer of double bias. Uni is very strong in the direction of the uni but the stress that it can be under means it can be prone to lifting (or splintering) from the jobs it is applied to so to safeguard against this a layer of double bias (with the threads running at 45 and 135 degrees) is applied to hold it all in, and to wrap around the corners. But I am pretty sure I don't have enough hardener left to wet it all out so it will have to go on later meaning I will have to sand this uni layer. I pretty much would have to anyway as there are a lot of frays and bumps that would have made wet on wet around all of the edges that the uni stops at difficult and result in air bubbles. It is for this reason I didn't bother to use peel ply, peel ply would not stick neatly for the same reason, it will need sanding anyway.

By now it was about 10.30. I had intended working through until about noon but the prospect of filling the rest of the morning with sanding (that is a constant fill in job and seems never ending) so I decided to have the rest of the day off. I still managed 5 and a half hours.

April 19 1st dagger glassed and bogged

Another frustrating week of little work. I could only get in on Wednesday for 2 hours when I sanded the last layer of uni so the blank was ready to glass again for the last layer, the double bias on Friday for 2 hours and today, 6 hours. 2 hours is not enough time to get a lot done but I have managed to finish glassing the first dagger blank and to bog it  (yesterday). I had resin left over after wetting out the layer of double bias so I bogged one side of the blank with the mixed resin I had left. I didn't want to mix any more on Friday and I didn't have quite enough bog to finish the whole side so I left the bottom 1/4 until today.

The this morning I gave the second side a light sand (and the small area on the already bogged side that I did not do last night) to key the surface even though I was fairly confident the resin would still be green enough to get a chemical bond. Then I glassed the remaining edges along the bottom of the board and along the cutaway edge, with 2 layers of surfboard cloth and then bogged the other side of the board. I also gave the trailing edge a coat of thickened glue just to fill in any unevenness and pin holes so that I can square it off when I am fairing the board.

In the afternoon there was little more that I could do on the dagger as the bog needs to set overnight so I started on the long clean up of the shed and did another meter of sanding under the bridgedeck. I am about half way along now. The shed is quite a mess at the moment as I have not cleaned it for quite a while. I finally started to clean up the resin spill. It has been soaking in wood shavings for a week to soak up as much as I could. Now with the shavings picked up the rest of the floor whilst still damp will soon dry out. Hopefully that is the last of my spills for the rest of the build. I have managed to spill about 20 litres of hardener and about 10 litres of resin as well as wasting as much as a further 30 litres of resin inside the drum that some of the 20 litres of hardener dripped into. I base that on how much resin I have left. I have about 70 litres of resin left but have run out of hardener. I need about 14 litres of hardener but 4 x 4 litre hardener drums are more expensive than 1 x 20 litre hardener. So I am saving for it. 4 litres is about $125 so 4 of those is $500 and 20 litres is $425 so you can see how much cheaper it is to hang out and buy the 20 litres, then if I have hardener left but no resin I will buy more resin.

Jo and I are still suffering from the bum shipment we got in our business that has really knocked us about financially for the past 6 months but we can finally see light at the end of that tunnel and should be back in business in about 4 more weeks which will mean we can finally stop penny pinching. So I am hoping I will have enough to buy the hardener next week or the week after. I probably have enough left to glue the dagger cases which I will probably keep me busy for another week provided I don't need too much more bog. I will also need to buy the furniture panels and about 10 more duracore planks to finish the cabin roof soon (Ironically I have resin and hardener for that as I will use the last of the Kinetics for that but I need to have the money for the extra duracore!) I would have had the money for both of these but I recently paid for the hatches I am buying from the USA which used up the last of my cash reserves for now. They will arrive in around 5 weeks so I will report on them once they arrive. Anyway I am slowly getting what I need to get back to work. I have been working more slowly recently as I realised I would run out of material before I had the money to replenish them. Nevermind we are slowly getting there.

I passed 1500 hours today. So I have passed my numerical half way point now in years and in hours. Lets hope that the furniture goes in as easy as it has in my mind and that the ideas I have on linings work, so that I really am half way. I am also starting to think a lot about wiring and piping (electrical and plumbing). But I am still a few months away from any solid decisions. I still have a bit of external work to lock this baby up! The dagger cases go in then the side deck curves get glued on, then the flat decks go on then the cabin roof then the cabin sides finish it off to lock up.

There has been more work on Nine Lives, the boat is now completely bogged outside and the hulls are already faired. The forebeam has a foam front to round it off and the tramp conduits have been glued and glassed in, the electrician has run the cabling and conduit where needed but by far the most profound change is the cabin windows have been cut out. This dramatically changed the look of the boat and removes the boxy look it had previously.

So tomorrow I hope to fair the daggerboard, I am hoping I have put enough bog on that I wont need the 3 passes that the forebeam needed but I will need one more go using a yellow tongue as a screed to get the exact shape needed. Because it is not flat I will need to sand by long board again. Yippee! The top half is not so important other than cosmetic but the bottom half is a foil that will be in the water and the shape is very important. I do still have to the bog the edges but I will do that after I have sanded back this first layer when I do the shaping screed maybe tomorrow afternoon.

April 20 Dagger sanded and re bogged

Last weekend I got up early (actually very early) to glass another layer onto the glassing I did the night before whilst it was still green. As a consequence I was home by lunch time and spent Sunday afternoon with Jo. She liked it! So the plan now is to start early Sunday mornings and still get 6 to 8 hours in and be home by early afternoon. This morning I started at 6 am and did 6 hours to be home by lunchtime.

The task today was to sand the original bog layer to get the board as close as possible to the correct shape then give it another go with a screed to get the lows filled and the shape exact. This is going to sound like waffle and it is but there is a reasoning behind it. Whilst I was sanding there is little to think about and your mind wanders and today I wandered back to my university philosophy lectures, Plato debated the merits of 3 professions, a doctor, a cook and a beautician. A doctor is only concerned with the health of the patient not if he looks better or worse just that he is better and prescribes accordingly, a cook is only concerned that the food tastes good and gives little or no thought to the health consequences of the food and the beautician cares only that the customer looks good and again gives little thought to whether the health is actually helped by their applications just that they look better as a consequence. When I faired the forebeam I was acting as a beautician in my motive but on the daggers I am more like the doctor in my actions even though the function was the same, sanding and shaping.  With the forebeam (and most other fairing) the fairing is primarily cosmetic. With the dagger (and the rudder) the fairing is critical to the correct hydrodynamic performance. If the shape is out then the water flow over and around the board will not be correct which may affect performance.

I started by sanding with the rupes. It is a 450mm x 100mm orbital sander. You can move it along the job in the same way you would use a long board, at 45 degrees to the job pushing back as you go along, then you change and cross the other way (135 degrees). I use it to knock the highs down then once I get closer to fair I switch to the the manual long board. At half a meter the rupes isn't long enough to ensure a fair job but it also is less likely to dig holes in your job, so although the purists will tell you that you cant use electric tools to fair, you can get away with them if you don't use them to finish and leave enough bog that the long board will fair out any highs and lows.

When fairing the idea is to sand as much of the bog off as you can so you sand down the highs to meet the lows unless the glass below is exposed, you don't want to sand through that. If you expose the glass in enough areas and still have low then you fill to the highs and sand again. It can be tempting to fill the lows without sanding down far but this adds weight and you want to avoid that. The temptation starts about 5 minutes after you start with the long board and continues until you finally cut through to glass and know that you cant sand much further. Once I had sanded far enough, I still had a few low spots surrounded by bog of the correct height so I knew the bog screed would fix that. There were also areas the length of the board that were low. When I back filled the spine with glue to the same height as the foam I used a straight edged trowel and of course the dagger is a constant curve so I know it would be a flat area and that the centre would need bog to return the curve.

As part of the sanding process I continually referred to the female mold to see where the sanding was at, where the highs and lows were. After I had sanded as far as I thought was necessary I had intended to pull a screed of bog with the yellow tongue strip as it bends to form the shape the board should be when it occurred to me I already had a correctly shaped screed that would hold its shape no matter how much pressure I used to push it down and pull it along. I could put clear tape (so that the bog does not stick to it) over the mold and use that to pull the shape in the next bog layer.

I pile bog onto the dagger and spread it out where I think the bog is still low, then once you pull the screed over it you immediately see if the area is still low because the screed does not touch the bog below wherever it is still too low and it pushes the excess bog wherever the low is filled to the height of the screed, often little or no bog is left in places which is fine so long as any holes or lows are filled. I use the scraper to continually redistribute the bog in front of the screed from areas that are full to areas still not filled and continually re-screeding until the lows are all filled and you see a consistent mark in the bog from the pulled screed. You can then see that the lows are all filled and that the next sanding should result in a fair surface and should sand out without too much sanding needed. I finished by over filling the edges so that when I next sand the board I can pretty much finish it and round the edges smooth.

If I get a chance I am keen to sand this dagger again tomorrow and if this bog is enough I can then use this board to make the cases off. The thickness of the highbuild and paint wont add much to the thickness (less than 1mm) but I will take that into account and build the cases with 4mm or 5mm clearance. I will close one case up over this dagger but will finish the other dagger and close its case with it in inside just to be absolutely sure, but I am fairly safe to make the halves using just the one dagger as they should both be very close to each other in size.

April 23 First dagger finished (well almost)

On Monday afternoon I sanded the dagger until is was as fair as I could get it. This meant that I had sanded down as far as I could because I was down to glass again, there were still lows and holes (more like gouges or scratches) in the surface. These would need to be backfilled, which I did using the trowel edge to ensure that it was level with the highs needed and only filled the lows not added height to the highs.

Today I sanded back the backfill. So the dagger is starting to look like a patchwork quilt of different shades of bog. The idea is always to add as little bog as possible so the tendency is not to fill enough. The more bog or the bigger the bog patch the more sanding needed to fair it back which means more effort. So I much prefer to add a number of thin patchy layers than adding huge areas of bog just to sand it off again.

I have had a email asking how the bog stays stuck in the areas that are low if they are not scored by the sandpaper to key them (actually this is more pertinent when backfilling notched trowel bog lines). My answer is imagine 18 balls three wide, 3 deep, 2 high, the middle bottom ball is sitting on the non scored bog layer but all the balls either side are on keyed bog. Now imagine the balls are atoms of bog. The 8 balls against a keyed surface get a mechanical grip to the surface and the middle ball gets a chemical bond to all the balls either side of it and the all 9 bottom balls get a chemical bond to the balls above it and they all have a chemical bond to each ball they are in contact with, and then there are millions of these groups all in chemical bond with any ball (atom) they are touching. This is a simplistic explanation but with millions of atoms mechanically bonded to the surface and joined to each other chemically you get a strong surface bond and any atoms that have a weaker mechanical bond to the surface are chemically bonded to atoms that do have a good mechanical bond and as a total they are in such a strong contact.

It is not until you stand one of the daggers up you realise just how big they are, nor do you realise how much weight you add with the glass and resin. The weight of the finished dagger is about double the weight of the shaped blank that is not yet glassed. To give a perspective of the size of a dagger, I stood the finished dagger (on the forebeam which is on the floor next to the hull and about level with the bottom of the hull) next to hull roughly where it will be on the hull, and stood next to it to give it more scale. When the dagger is laying down being sanded it does not seem so big.

I still have some work to do on this dagger, I have to cut the sheave holes and I also still have some minor fairing work (another tight wipe, which means a really thin layer) of bog here and there, mainly along the trailing edge then I will need to resin coat seal it, highbuild layer then another final sand before it is ready for painting (the bottom third will get 2 coats of copper epoxy the middle third will get paint but not gloss as it wont ever be out of the case and the top third will be gloss finished). But for now it is finished enough to build the cases off. So the next task (over the long weekend) will be to make the dagger cases.

Tomorrow I will try to get the female molds for the dagger case made, I need about 5 or 6 identical molds and if I get time I will set them out on the bench ready to make the 4 case halves in the same mold. Then over the long weekend coming up I may just be able to get the 4 halves made.

April 24 Dagger case mdf molds cut

I made mdf molds for the dagger cases today. I made 5 molds, but tracing the shape of the dagger profile onto a piece of 3mm ply then I added 16mm for the duracore thickness and 4mm for the glass on the dagger and traced that line and then cut it out with a jigsaw. I then used that to trace onto mdf pieces all cut to exactly the same size and traced the shape onto them in exactly the same position on each and cut them out with the jigsaw as close as possible to the line so that they are all as close to the same shape as possible.

I also cut out a 100mm x 16mm deep slot with rounded corners into the bottom of the molds in the correct position to align with the sheave and rope slot. This plank is lower in the mold (and the first in) then the rest of the mold half either side are built to the correct profile of the dagger leaving a slot either side that rope can pull through. In the past the rope slot was built into the dagger, now it is built into the case and makes much more sense.

Tomorrow I will set up a string line to set these molds to the bench level and plumb and start cutting the duracore centre plank with its corners rounded and cut the fore and aft parts to size and cut the kerfs ready to glue the first case half. When it has set to shape I will unscrew it and glass it hopefully also tomorrow.

April 25 First dagger case half glued

Today is Anzac day in Australia (for those reading overseas) it is a day we remember the sacrifice of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps originally in WW1 but subsequently those who served in any conflict that Australia and New Zealand was involved in. Jo and I hope to one day anchor off what is known today as Anzac Cove (where the Anzacs landed) at Gallipoli (Turkey) and attend a dawn service. For those that have never attended a dawn remembrance service I strongly encourage you to do so, not only because of the importance of honouring the fallen and the sacrifices they made so that we may enjoy the freedoms we do, but because it is one of the most humbling and emotional things you might do, and I can only imagine how much more powerful that would be at somewhere like Gallipoli. I also reflect at how lucky people my age are having never seen any warfare.

Without sounding flippant, the other thing that Anzac day is, is a public holiday. So I got to work on the boat most of today. I started by setting up the molds that I had cut yesterday, on the bench. Using the back shaping rail as a straight edge and also used the top top edge of it as the height datum, knowing in advance that it is a level edge. So each mold is screwed to the bench square to the rail at 600mm centres (except the end 2 that were set in 20mm to ensure they were set in from each end) and packed up where needed to ensure they were set at the correct height at the back. At the front I set up stringlines to ensure the centre of the rope slot was exactly straight and the fronts at the correct height. With that done I now know the molds are now set so the cases will end up true. If any of the planks have any twist in them (many do) then by screwing them down to the molds the twist is taken out.

It was then time to cut all of the panels needed to make all 4 case halves. I cut 4 rope slot bases and rounded the edges with a router. These are 130mm wide, 50mm slot opening and 40mm overhang of the front and back case piece. The I cut the front curved part. I measured with a flexible tape and figured on 160mm. Again I cut 4 of them. There are 4 off cuts from the 4 front half pieces and they are 138mm (the sheets are 300mm so 140mm minus the saw blade thickness) so with a full width plank I am still 40mm short of the size needed, so I got 40mm strips offcuts from previous strip planking and I have all the parts I need. Next job was to kerf the forward piece. In all I cut 7 kerf cuts to within 2mm of all the way through. This was enough to push the flat piece into the curves of the mold. It took a while to coax it into place and there was a lot of cracking sound of the pine veneer on the outside of the case, but it only cracked in one place so it wasn't too bad (I squeezed some glue into the crack when I was gluing). I had already marked the 40mm front and back overhang on the middle piece so I curved the forward edge of the kerfed front and screwed it into place along the 40mm front line first then into the molds to pull down the curve. It was here I noticed that I am overhanging at the front (too big) by about 5mm. It would be a simple thing to run that strip off on the table saw but I decided to leave it too big, then plane this down later to the exact angle and size so the 2 halves butt together perfectly at the front.

I cut 2 kerfs into the full width panel at 100mm in from the front and back and rounded the front edge with the router and screwed it down along the 40mm back line then onto the mold. I then screwed in the 40mm strip butted up hard against the full size panel, then I cut a single kerf up the middle of the last strip and screwed it down tight against the 40mm strip. Then as a safety measure I decided to sit the glassed dagger in the mold half to be sure that I had the correct clearance. The screws had 3mm mdf washers on to stop them pushing into the soft duracore so that is just shy of the clearance needed, remember there is still a layer of glass to go in the case and there is still a coat of paint to go on the dagger.

With all of the parts dry fit in the mold I unscrewed the front piece and started gluing the parts up. I squeezed runny glue into each kerf and onto the 40mm overhang on the rope slot piece and screwed it back into the mold and removed the excess glue that comes back out of the kerfs when it is pulled tight into shape. I then removed the full width plank and did the same and ran glue along the 40mm back edge of the rope slot piece and also onto the back edge of the plank so it glued to the 40mm piece still screwed in the mold behind it. I pushed it hard up to it and screwed it back down in place. Then I removed the back piece and did the same again, glue in the kerf and along the front face and screwed it back into the mold hard up against the 40mm strip in front. Now I just have to wait for it to dry, sand it smooth and glass it. I have taken note of the positions of each saw kerf on the first half so I will cut all of them tomorrow now that I know they worked well. It all went rather smoothly. Very satisfying.

One down 3 to go.

April 26 First dagger case half glassed

I had a short day today so I could spend more time with Jo on my birthday. But I did get done what I had set out to do, glass the inside of the first dagger case half and to kerf and round (with a router) the rest of the pieces for the rest of the halves.

I glassed the inside of the first half by first removing all of the screws except for one at each corner to continue to hold the half firmly in place in the mold and giving the inside a quick sand to remove glue overflows mostly around the mdf tabs that were holding the duracore in the mold. The glue was still a little green and clogged the sand paper quickly but the upside is I will get a chemical bond of the glass resin to it.

I laid out the glass and cut it to size, using Schionning's recommendation of 3 pieces of glass, with the back piece and front piece overlapping in the rope slot then another 50mm strip down the middle of the rope slot to cover the joins. This method is recommended because you have to get the glass over 2 corners and 2 coves and having 2 coves so close the tendency is for any adjustment on one cove may disturb the glass on the other and it can become very frustrating very fast so 2 separate pieces of glass solves this issue. I then created the coves in the rope slot so the glass goes on in the slot properly and wet on wet. Using left over coving material I filled the screw holes and some grooves created where glue had sunk in the slots by a half a mm.

I then started the wet out of the larger back piece of glass. Once it was completely wet out I rolled the front piece (a 200mm tape) out on the wet back piece of glass and wet it out on the wet glass in this way absorbing some of the resin from the piece already down, then once it was wet I rolled it up and rolled it out on the front section. I then repeated this with the 50mm rope slot tape and lay that in the slot. Then using a fine detail roller I made sure to get all of the air bubbles and excess resin out from under the glass to ensure a proper contact of the glass to the pine veneer and in the coves and around the rounded edges.

The the fun started. I decided I would peel ply the wet glass. I wanted the rope slot peel plied then once I had a piece in the slot and over the coves and rounds I placed a peel ply layer over the front curved section then a piece over the almost flat (the curve is very gradual) rear piece. The fun with peel ply is getting bubbles out. It is very frustrating, no sooner do you get an annoying bubble out of one area it creates a lift or bubble somewhere else and you end up pushing bubbles around for a few minutes. In the end I made sure that the rope slot and coves and curves were well covered and the front curve also pretty well covered and didn't worry too much about the few bubbles I still had. The back sections also has a few bubbles here and there but again I am not too worried. The bubbles are definitely only in the peel ply not under the glass.

Once I had finished the glassing and peel ply I finished up by cutting the rest of the kerfs in the duracore panels I had already cut to size, and then rounded the corners with the router of the curved sections of the panels that will need rounded corners (as well as coves) for the glass to go over. I now have all of the parts cut, kerfed and routered ready to make the next case half.

So only 4 hours today but enough done that I couldn't have done anything else on the daggers or cases anyway. With any luck, I only have one more birthday spent boat building to go and that the birthday after next (my 48th) will be spent on the boat.

April 27 First dagger case half outside glassed

Today was a most satisfying day. I am always stoked when I get more done than I had set out to in the morning. I thought I would have an easy day as I really only intended to glass the outside of the dagger case and put it back in the mold to set. But I got the work done so fast I felt I would like to get a little more done, so I glassed the inside of the foredeck turn. It has been sitting on the boat since I glassed the outside waiting to be taken off and glassed inside. The inside forward hull parts also need to be glassed but I will do that the next time I get more done than I anticipated or when it cant wait any longer, there is no great hurry yet.

The first thing I did was remove the peel ply from the inside glassing. The inside will get another coat of resin (actually a couple of extra coats to add thickness to accommodate any rubbing of the dagger against the case) so having the peel ply will mean I wont need to sand. Then I unscrewed it from the frame and removed it so that I could glass the outside. The resin on the inside is still a little green, it actually takes about 3 days for it to fully cure. The case half is still flexible, meaning you could still bend it out of shape until the glass is on the other side and it is fully set.

It is important to note again here, that with any strip planked job that needs glass on both sides that the piece MUST go back into the mold to fully set, you might remember that I did this with the side deck strip planking, I glassed the outside on the boat (the bulkheads are the mold) then I took it off the boat to glass the inside and immediately put it back on the boat to set whilst the glass was wet. I can't emphasize the importance of this enough. The reason is that the balsa and hoop pine veneer can easily change shape with a change in temperature or humidity and until the glass is fully cured on both sides of the job the piece will not be a stable shape, so it must go back on the mold to set in its correct shape. The risk of not doing this is obvious, that if it sets out of shape you will have major problems as you wont be able to reshape it once it is set. And on things like dagger cases you want it to be exactly the right size, a too loose case (better than too tight which needs no explanation) the dagger will rattle and bang in the case but this is infinitely better than a dagger stuck in a case. Once both sides are fully cured then the job will be as rigid and stable as can be and as solid as a rock.

I turned the case half upside down over 2 drums and rolled out glass over it and cut it to size then rolled it back up and put it aside until I am ready for wetting out. I then gave the outside a quick sanded clean, glue dags and a little unevenness in the joins here and there but so small the sander took them out. I then coved the sides of the sheave rope slot piece. I left that to tack off a little and unscrewed the foredeck curved section and gave it a sand up, again glue through the joins and unevenness of one plank up against the next either higher or lower. I then rolled out the glass again and cut it to size and shape.

Then back to the dagger case I wet out the glass on the outside. I started by giving the coves and the area in front of the cove, the curved section a coat of resin on the case by folding back the glass first, then I folded the glass back over and brushed resin onto the glass from the front back, then once I had the forward part wet I went around to the other side and brushed resin onto the glass behind the sheave strip. Once the entire cloth was wet I squeegeed out excess resin and rolled it with the detail roller and left it to tack off a while before putting it back in the mold to set for the next couple of day.

With the case half glassed I mixed up some glue to back fill the gaps in the foredeck inside. I intended to fill it then leave it to set and give it another sand before glassing it tomorrow or later in the week. But just as I was finishing the glue back fill a friend Sam arrived to say hi and to give me a hand. Sam and his brother Amnon are going to build a Spirited 380 (A Craig Schionning design) later in the year and both have asked that they help here and there to get used to the materials which I am most grateful for and today's timing was superb. I had told Jo I would be home around 3.30pm so we could go for a walk on the beach and it was about 2pm when Sam turned up, so with over an hour before I was planning to leave, I decided there was time to get the glass on the foredeck with the glue still wet. So with Sam's help we placed the glass in place and started on the wet out, Sam with the squeegee pushing the resin out onto the glass, me with a brush.

Once it was completely wet out and had the detail roller over it we turned it back over and put it back into place and I screwed it down, we had already placed the dagger case half back in the mold and screwed it down before we started wetting the foredeck glass. So at 3.30pm I had finished more than I had set out to do for the day and was getting home on time. Thanks Sam.

Jo and I went for a lovely walk at Terrigal beach, it is also a small harbour with a few boats in it which is always nice for me, I don't think I will ever tire of looking at boats, and we walked for an hour or so. We had a northerly this weekend and the temperatures were back up in the mid 20's and absolutely lovely (we went for a similar walk here last night and decided to do it again today but a little earlier and for longer), and after we launch it is the sort of thing Jo and I expect we will do every day around dusk just before a sundowner back on the boat or a beach bbq. While walking we chatted about how things are starting to turn around, Jo's business is almost back with stock on its way after the disaster with the bum shipment that has crippled us for the last 6 months, and I am in the process of starting a new business related to my exposure to the boating industry through this build and this website but more on that a little later. Things are looking up. Life is good.

April 29 Second dagger glassing starts

I had a bit of trouble fairing the trailing edge of the first dagger (and I still have a little filling and sanding to do) because I had not glued the fibreglass batten in perfectly straight. Then when I glassed it the glass just followed the curves of the batten with each layer adding thickness but following the flow so I had highs and lows to sand out with fill in troughs and sanding glass down on the highs. I have managed to get it fair and is now straight and had square edges but it was more work than it needed to be, so I have a solution for the second board. I hot glued the trailing edge batten to a flat edge that took the curves out before I glass. Once the glass goes on and sets whilst the batten is straight will mean the batten stays straight and I will then glass the other side straight also. That will mean I have less fairing of the trailing edge later.

So I glassed the first layer of uni (threads running down the board) onto the dagger whilst it was on the bench, I will do the other side tomorrow on the screw axle between the drums like I did with the first board then continue to glass the next layer of uni (also threads running down the board) in one piece like I did first time around. I doubt I will get the time to do the third layer (uni across the board) tomorrow. I also cant glass the double bias until the uni layers are set and the edges sanded clean. After the warm front over the weekend that prompted Jo and I to go for evening beach walks, there has been a cold (winter freezing cold) snap so the resin will go off slowly so tomorrow I will be able to glass again without having to sand this layer as the resin will definitely still be green.

Once I had finished glassing the dagger I gave the inside of the first case half another coat of resin. The plans call for 4 coats wet on wet and again I will be able to give the next coat tomorrow and still be hitting green resin. I am only going to give it 2 more coats, one normal resin coat tomorrow then I will let it go hard give the top 300mm and the bottom 800mm a sand back and then give the top part a couple of coats white of 2 pack epoxy paint and the bottom section 2 coats of copper epoxy which will provide anti foul as well as seal coating. It will be too hard to reach up into the case to do this effectively once it is glued and it is under the waterline so it makes sense to do it before I join them.

April 30 Second dagger case half starts

The second daggerboard had a layer of glass on one side done on the bench while the trailing edge was hot glued to it (on the the first dagger I did the glassing on the dagger hung on axles between 2 drums) so today I released the dagger from the bench and cleaned off any hot glue stuck to the trailing edge, it just peels off, and I glassed uni onto the other side of the board, this time on the axle between the drums. I will do the rest of the glassing on this dagger this way. Because I did the first glass side on the bench it did not wrap around and do the other side, so these first layers are not 1 continuous sheet around the leading edge. The next layer will be.

The glassing starts with filling the spine trough with glue and any other holes, scratches (foam is quite fragile) dents or other marks and finishing with a tight wipe using the wide trowel flat edge. Then you need to give this an hour or 2 to harden off a little so whilst it was tacking off I released the first dagger case half from the mold and glued in the second one. This was a lot easier now that I have done one, and I was finished in about an hour.

As I had already cut the glass to size I carefully laid it out on the dagger even though the glue was still soft (especially in the trough). Because the glue is tacky the glass sticks to it so you have to be quite accurate in where you initially lay the glass because moving it is a bit more difficult. I was pretty close, I rolled it down the length of the board so only had to ensure it rolled straight and tightly so there was no bubbles or creases. Then once it was on the board and pretty stuck in place it was pretty easy to wet it out except that with the cold change and being late evening by now it was getting cold which meant the resin was pretty thick so it took a little longer to spread it out and for it to soak through the glass and also meant that I squeegeed more off than I usually would and had no use for it so it ended up left over in the tub.

I am pretty happy with the hours I managed again this month, second month in a row over 80 hours. If I can keep this up for the next 18 months I will finish the boat next year.