2007 building logs

August 07 Internal fit out

The bottom half of the boat is now pretty much completed, save for fittings and through hulls etc, rudders, daggers and the nose cones. Now that much of the work will be inside the boat, I will need to make a decent set of stairs so that getting in and out of the boat or up and down, is a bit easier.

August 04 Gluing furniture panels

Now that the unis are all down, I have started gluing the furniture panels together. Within these 13mm panels are the hull webs and soles. They are the parts I need next. Before the soles are glued in I have to lay any pipes or wiring and any tanks so I will probably leave the soles just sitting in place and glue them once the fit out is almost complete but I can glue the webs in and still be able to cut (drill) holes in them to run the pipes or wiring through. There is plenty of room between the hulls now that the legs have been removed.

A reminder for those that have only just started reading or have forgotten the panel gluing nearly 2 years ago, the way I glue the panels to each other is to run a length of timber with plastic over it (the plastic is so the panels don't stick to the timber) and then I lay the panels onto them tightly against each other, then screw through the panels into the timber to hold the panels in place, I used the strongback last time but felt it too much trouble to bring it back in (it is outside after Nine Lives second hull was finished) as it is extremely heavy. Once all of the panels I wish to glue are screwed down, I remove the screws from every second panel, the ones with the scarf on the top so they can just lift off and drop back in again. Then I run a brush of resin only along each join, this is because the resin is thinner and can permeate into the balsa grain. Then I brush on some thin glue (resin with 403 powder) and replace the panels and screw them back down to set.

I still have to fill and glass the last join down the middle of each hull before I glue the webs in but to save having to sand that glass before gluing the webs down to it I will glue the webs onto the glass whilst it is wet. Once the webs are in I will glue the keelsons down into the sections that don't have webs and then start on the cockpit furniture. As I glue the panels together the small stack at the front of the boat goes and I will be left with just the Duracore stack, which I will probably start on next month.

There has also been some progress with Nine Lives, both hulls are over and roughly in place, but now James has started on the bridgedeck.

August 11 First hull web in

During the week I got the rest of the furniture panels glued. The plans have pictures of the panels so you can see exactly how they should look glued together and the numbers of each panel. It is advisable to number the panels whilst they are still in one piece as once you release the parts it can be difficult to tell one part from another, especially when they are as close in shape and size as these parts are.

Once the parts are released it is time to fit them. I have decided to leave the parts in the panel until I need them, this way I know exactly where they are! I started with the walk in wardrobe in the port hull and will work back from there. This is the smallest area. The idea of the webs is they spread the loads that are placed on the hull panels out and provide a base for the sole to be glued to, creating a buoyancy chamber and an extra layer of sealing between your house and the water. Cats unlike most monos are designed to be dry bilged, in fact we don't have a bilge and will have portable bilge pumps to move from one place to another in case of water ingress, most likely through an open hatch, but there are no permanently fixed bilge pumps.

The web panels will not fit exactly, they probably should but if the bulkheads are just a mm or 2 forward or aft of where they should be it will change the size of the gap so maybe they are made deliberately oversize to accommodate this, because I needed to trim about 5mm from my first one, and I also needed to round the corners off because of the coves on the bulkhead to hulls. All of this is very simple and easy it is really easy to trim them to size. The cross bulkheads on the other hand were too small, again no problem, I just fill the gap with glue, cove it and glass it.

I still have some gaps between the hull panels here and there, so the first thing I do is fill them. I then lay some glass to cover that join, and because I am happier with a thicker hull between me and the wet stuff, instead of a 100mm tape to cover the join I glassed the entire hull floor in one sheet of glass, about 500mm wide straight over the wet filler. Then I buttered the edges of the fore and aft web piece and glued it in place and coved the edges, before glassing it. I wet out the hull glass on the job but I wet the cove glass strips on a sheet of plastic on the bridgedeck. I am still using the main pump so getting resin for wet out, glue or coving means getting up and down off the boat. 2 things will change to minimise this, first I will decant some resin back into the hand pump drums so I can mix up on the bridgedeck and I must start (and finish) some decent steps up to the bridgedeck.

I dry fitted the webs and needed to trim here and there, and will also need to fill here and there. I also checked for lever and square, although this is not that critical. Imagine if the floor were not level, once launched how would you ever know. You cant run a spirit level over the floor because one moment it would be level and an instant later no longer level as you move over waves even on the most gently mooring. Nevertheless I check it and as you can see it is pretty level. It sure feels nice to know but really means nothing. And of course I checked it across and fore and aft!

Because I have wet glass down I cant walk into the space to get to the front part for coving or glass so I had to stretch and balance to reach, which resulted in a fairly messy job, but this is of no consequence because it will all be permanently sealed under the sole once I glue that down, so no one will ever see it again. Having said that, to save weight you should still clean up filler spills etc but it is not critical in these areas.

So tomorrow I should be able to get the next section down, the port bedroom floor.

August 12 Main Bedroom web in

Today I had a fairly good day, putting in 6 hours and daydreaming for another hour or so. I started on the main bedroom (port) web. I dry fitted it and trimmed where needed. The fore/aft needed about 10mm taken off and the corners rounded and only one of the 4 cross web parts needed trimming, all 4 needed the corners rounded. You need to be careful with the shape of some of these webs. The fore and aft webs taper to match the angle of the hull but there is a top and a bottom, the top is square to the sides so that only the bottom is angled, so that you end up with a level floor. Seems fairly obvious but the taper is very subtle on some of them so you need to check with a square. I also trimmed and dry fitted the sole onto the web I set yesterday in the walk in wardrobe. Neat!

Once I had it all dry fit and level, I set about wetting out the cloth, and gluing in the web. There is very little room to stand to the sides of wet cloth, so I decided to just wet out the very centre of the cloth wide enough for a tape each side so that I would be able to kneel on the still dry cloth and I would wet it out as I went. Once I had the centre of the glass wet I glued down the centre web panel and coved it either side. I then taped each side. Then I glued the forward cross web panels and coved and taped these in and wet out the glass in front of it to finish that section. I then repeated it with the rear cross web parts and wet out the middle section, then I moved through the doorway to the room behind and wet out the rear part of the glass and finished the cove and glass tape of the back of the fore and aft web to the bulkhead.

This was a very slow process and I have decided that for the rest of the webs I will pre glass the hull floors and glue the webs down once it is set so I can stand on the glass. It will mean I will have to sand the glass to glue the web to but most of the remaining under sole areas will have tanks for grey and black water so I would need to sand them anyway so that there is no chance of a flexible tank being torn by a shard of glass. I think with black and grey water tanks a professional non toxic or taste tank is probably not going to be necessary like it is for fresh water and I may be able to make my own. I mean I think it only needs to be water and airtight with outlets and breathers where I need them. I have to do a little more research.

It is quite incredible the difference to the feel of the living space the soles make. Because the hull flares rapidly only about 300mm of height more than doubles the width of the floor from about 300mm at the keel to about 600mm in the fore of the bedroom to about 800mm at the rear of it. In the saloon hulls the floor is a meter wide and changes what feels like a cramped hull into a wide floor. You cant notice the loss of headroom that the web and sole makes yet as there is no roof but the standing headroom is going to end up at 2 meters which is pretty good. I am 182 cm so I wont have to crouch except through the doors but not by much.

All in all a fun day. I think I have regained my full motivation. I have had a tough work week so it was great to just forget about work for a couple of days and immerse myself in the build. My back doesn't agree but it is kind of nice relaxing on the couch after a shower and a sore body from working hard all day.

August 16 Starboard fwd webs in

With the Port bedroom and wardrobe webs in, glued and glassed and the soles sitting dry in place, I started on the same 2 compartments in the starboard hull. These proved much easier to fit as I had pre glassed the hull floors, so all I needed to do was score (sand) the glass to ensure a mechanical grip for the glass tapes before gluing down the webs. I started dry fitting the webs and trimming them where necessary. Then I glued down the centre webs and let them dry. Once they are dry I can more easily cove and glass the centre web without it moving. Then wet on wet I can easily glue, cove and glass the smaller cross webs.

I am hoping to have all of the webs glued in by the end of this weekend. I have half of them in so far but the last 4 are the largest. I will be away the following weekend (Wednesday to Wednesday) at the snow, then when I get back to the boat I will start on the uni troughs in the top of the bulkheads. Then once they are done I will have to finish the forebeam before gluing it in. Then I can start on the strip planking of the hull to deck turns.

August 18 Saloon webs started

I worked all day today but had a minor mishap that cost me an hour or so. I have finished the first of 2 200 litre drums of resin and was in the process of switching drums when I dropped a 20 litre drum of hardener with the lid off, losing about 5 litres of hardener. It tool me an hour to clean up and as you use 80 litres of hardener with 400 litres of resin (5:1) I am going to run out of hardener before I run out of resin. I will worry about that as I run out, by then the boat will be almost finished so I wont be too upset then. I was pretty cranky with myself today, it is not cheap stuff. I figure that little slip cost me about a $100. Anyway I guess it was inevitable that I would have as spill sooner or later. They say (Schionning) that there is a 10% wastage built in so perhaps I will still have enough to finish.

I have glassed the 2 port hull keel panels that I had not yet done, so tomorrow I can glue in the last 2 webs. Today I also glued in the SB saloon hull webs. These are the biggest of them I usually glue and tape the middle one in one long tape then glue the side webs on and glass them in smaller tapes. But I have tried a different method today. I glued the whole thing in and tomorrow once it is all set I will tape off the separate sections. There is no right or wrong so long as all of the tapes go in and each section is completely sealed but I will see which method I prefer and start on the last 2 in the port hull. I may leave the bathroom section as I have yet to design my plumbing diagram.

So with any luck, with the webs all glued in tomorrow, I may be able to get the soles trimmed and fitted before I go to the snow on Wednesday. Then when I get back I can start on finishing the forebeam before gluing it in.

James has glassed the underwing of 9lives. It is too heavy to lift without a crane so they plan to turn it over during the week and prepare to join the hulls.

August 19 Webs almost finished

There are many jobs on the build that don't look like they are going to take long but end up taking hours. It took me all of 6 hours today to cove and tape the starboard webs and to fit, glue and tape most of the port saloon web. I can see why the fit out takes twice as long as making the shell. Every job takes so long to do. Anyway I am almost done on the webs, I just have 5 of the 6 cross webs to cove and tape on the port hull.

Whilst I really already knew this, I am now utterly convinced that you should never glue any panels that need to be coved and taped with the intention of coving and taping when they are set. I tried that on the starboard saloon webs thinking that coving and taping would be so much easier if the panel could not move because it was set in place. Big Mistake. No matter how well you think you have cleaned excess glue you just cant seem to get rid of it all and it sets hard and stops you being able to clean up excess coving filler with a scraper. It stops you pushing the scraper along the panel so you have to pull it and this is never as effective. Think shaving. Anyway, it is not the end of the world but it is not as easy as it would be if you glue, cove and tape wet on wet.

Having said all of that, I ran out of time today when doing the port saloon web and only managed to cove and tape the centre panel (in one piece each side) and to glue the side panels in and coved and taped just 1 side of the 6 sides. So tomorrow I will cove and glass these last few side webs and be finished on the webs.

I figure about an hour or so to cove and tape the last few sections. Then maybe another hour or so fitting (trimming) the soles and I am finished the hull floors for now.

Also, I passed another milestone today. I went past 1000 hours working on the boat. I started on the actual boat work on 24 October 2005 (I started on the strongback in Sept 05) so I have another 2 months before I hit 2 years. I am not doing as many hours per month as I had originally set myself. I planned on completing 4000 hours in about 5 years so I needed to average 66 hours per month. But at the rate I have gone I will be at about 1100 hours in 24 months or 45 hours a month. I need to pick that up to about 80 hours a month so about double what I am currently doing to get finished on time. I will try to do that. I may not need as many hours as a standard rig would take as I wont have to make composite chainplates or fittings for rigging, so I will save a lot of hours there. I am also keen to minimise internal fairing by using linings throughout the boat so this may also save some time. Nevertheless I will have to ramp up the work to keep on schedule. It is not that big a task, for example I can start doing 8 hour days on weekends instead of 6.

Once I have fitted the soles (I set myself the goal of getting them down before I go to the snow) I can start to think about the next step of finishing and fitting the forebeam.

August 21 Soles in

We leave on a weeks holiday tomorrow, and I have all of the soles in place. They are just dry fitted sitting in place. They make getting in and out of the hulls so much easier. I still have plumbing and electrical wiring conduits to fit under the soles and tanks and through hulls so I wont glue them down for some time yet.

I ran the level over the soles to satisfy myself that I had done a good job and all of them are level both fore and aft and left to right.

Next job when I get back to it will be to run the uni tapes along the tops of the spanning bulkheads in troughs between the glass layers so I have to remove the balsa core and fill with uni rolled into a rope then back filled with fillers.

Nine Lives also had a significant milestone, the hulls are in place and the bridgedeck is turned ready to join it all into one boat.

August 30 Back from Holidays to near disaster.

We had a fantastic week off at the snow, our best snow holiday yet and Jo loved it, and snow boarded the best she has ever gone even attempting some jumps and rails in the terrain park. I spent most of the week in the terrain park doing jumps too, it was great fun.

We got back on Wednesday and on Thursday I went to the shed to get back into the build to find that we had narrowly averted a disaster, and by luck not good planning. I had a mishap a few weeks ago in that I needed to change resin drums and in the process spilt a half full hardener drum and lost about a quarter of it, or about 3 or 4 litres of a 20 litre drum.

When I got back on Thursday I found the top rim of the resin drum full of hardener and the rest of what was in the hardener drum on the floor. It was about half full, so about 10 litres had dripped slowly out of the tap on onto the lid of the resin and over the lip and onto the floor. It was bad enough losing the rest of the hardener but the near disaster was that it could have all spilt into the resin drum. Fortunately I had a rag around the opening to stop dust getting in and this stopped the hardener from getting in enough for the path of least resistance to be over the lip of the drum and onto the ground.

Even so a small amount got in and hardened on the top of the resin like the top of a frozen lake, but whilst the vast majority of the resin is ok, it could have been a lot worse. In fact so much hardener could have got in as to cause it to heat up so much it could have caught fire. When my mind registered that the pool of liquid on top of the resin was hardener my heart skipped a beat. I carefully cleaned the hardener pool off the top ensuring no more got into the opening into the resin before figuring a safer way to rig the set up so that it cant happen again. You can see from the picture below that the drum kept leaking until it was empty leaving only what ended up below the tap in the drum, straight down onto the blue resin drum, this is after I had cleaned up, before hand the entire lip was full of hardener and on the floor below was a pool of hardener.

It turns out that when I dropped the hardener a small tear occurred in the hose down to the pump just below the tap and this is where the resin leaked from over the course of the week and as the hardener was directly above the resin it ran down the hose and then dripped off and pooled in the top of the 200lt resin drum as described above.

To ensure this can never happen again I have moved the hardener to the side and ensured that if any leak occurs it can no longer get anywhere near the resin. I have never had to close the tap on the hardener drum in the past but I will in future. The hardener pump is gravity fed so the drum has to be above the pump but the resin is suction pumped through the pump head. So the lesson here is use the stop cock, its much safer. I was lucky, it could have been much much worse.

I was speaking to James (the boat builder) about it as I thought I would need to replace the resin but he said it will be fine but if I had been using polyester instead of epoxy I would have lost the lot as even the smallest amount of hardener will eventually harden the whole drum, whilst with epoxy only a small amount of resin will be effected, but as the usual mix is 5:1 five times as much resin as the amount of hardener that got in will be effected. I figured most of the 10 litres of hardener was in the lip or on the floor but say a litre got into the resin then I guess about 5 litres of the 200 litre drum or about 2.5%. And seeing as I finished the first drum without incident, I have lost about 1.25% of the total resin allocated for the build and I was told that there is a 10% allowance for loss, so I think I will be ok and still have enough to finish. I may need more hardener as I have now lost about 15 litres or about 18%.