2006 building logs

December 2007 Still more strip planking

With the hull to deck turn strip planked panels both made, there is still a lot of planking to do, next will be the inside of the bows, then the foredeck, then the cabin roof. I will also fair the now finished forebeam and dry fit it in the boat. If I can have all of these sections made this month I should be well pleased, December is often punctuated with long interstate trips for family celebrations.

December 01 Forebeam glassed

So after months of procrastination over work on the forebeam (remember I started it in January!) I have finally put the final glass on today. All that is left with it now is to trim and fair it before it can be fitted into the boat. I can be faired on the boat but it is much easier off the boat as I can turn it over and work on the underside right way up and of course I can work on the bench and not 10 feet in the air.

The glassing consisted of a layer of 1000g uni around the entire beam, although I did not have the ends overlap as the threads run along the beam so there is no need. I draped it over the beam and started wetting out one side, just my usual method, with a wide brush, than once I had one side done I turned the beam over and wet out the other side, making sure that the forward edge was well wet down with no air bubbles forming on the now underside of the beam as I went.

I had to cut a slot along the glass where the U bolts went through, being careful not to cut the glass just the cotton that holds the threads together. Then after separating the threads around the u bolt s I could wet it out. Another thing you must do is try to keep the threads running as straight as possible as kinks are weak spots in the transmission of stress along the glass.

Once the first layer of uni was wet, I laid the cross beam uni around the U bolts about a meter either side of them, again 1000g uni around the beam this time all the way around and overlapping in the centre of the underside. This had a duel purpose, besides acting as strength to hold the U bolt blocks in it also hold most of the tramp conduit. The conduit will not be under that much pressure and the final overlap of double bias would be enough but it all helps.

Then the final layer is the double bias. I had originally intend to wrap a one piece layer of double bias over the beam in the same way I did the uni but I decided it would be faster and easier to use the wombat to wet out 3 500mm tapes with 2 tapes overlapping the rear edge of the beam so that the conduit got 2 layers of glass over it, then the third tape overlapping the other 2 tapes top and bottom around the front of the beam and over the u bolts again with slots cut to go over the bolts. With the glass pre wet in the wombat it was a really quick job to roll it out on the beam and press out all of the air bubbles and ensure the glass was well attached to the wet glass below.

Once I has all of the air bubbles out using the special roller tool, I decided to have a go at attaching peel ply. I was not feeling too confident about it as every time I have tried the peel ply around bends such as the coves I have struggled to get a full uniform cover happening, and almost impossible to get air bubbles out. But to my surprise, the peel ply went on really smoothly and I was able to keep it quite taut as I rolled it out and could also stretch it around the beam to keep it tight both ways. Again I had to cut slots for the U bolts. They are both wrapped in masking tape (the blue color) and once I have finished fairing the beam that will come off leaving shinny steel bolts with no glue on them. The only place I had any bubbles was after the fabric had overlapped so I should get a really good finish once it comes off.

It is good to have the beam finally done. I will cut the ends off to length with a circular saw to remove the sharp ends of the wet glass and start on the fairing soon.

It rained all day today (first day of summer, go figure!) so I didn't check on the Pure Seal samples. These new samples have now been in the water for 1 year.

December 02 PureSeal 1 year old

I had a light duties day today, the beam is still curing so I cant do much with it. I did remove some of the peel ply to see how it came out, I am quite happy. So I glued some duracore panels ready to strip them for planking, I did a little more work on the dingy repairing a spot on the underside where I sanded through a tape but was not aware until I painted it and it showed up through the paint and had a quick clean up, although a more thorough clean up is due, especially on the boat which had a lot of dust in it now.

I also checked on the PureSeal sample today and I am happy to report on the first birthday of this sample that it is still performing as it should. After being in the water for a year I am still able to easily clean off the slight growth of algae that has grown since the last test 3 months ago, using just the pad of my index finger. The only degradation seems to be some hairline scratches starting to appear on the surface here and there. I don't know how they got there, maybe the result of friction of the rubbing clean but I doubt it, nevertheless these don't seem to be effecting the performance of the coating. Algae or other more serious growth does not get any hold on the panel. The pictures below show the sample cleaned after a year in the water on the left and the original sample before it went into the water on the right. You can also see some of the bigger scratches or marks on the panel were there all along and not degradation. The hairline scratches starting to appear do not show up on the photos and as I said don't seem to be effecting the way the panel cleans up. You cannot see them through the algae, they become noticeable half way through cleaning as the dirty water shows them up, but then disappear again once completely clean.

My feeling is that the panel is now about a third of the way to proving its worth. If the panel can continue to perform like this and maintain this finish for 3 years it is worth the cost, any longer than 3 years being a bonus, if you can get 5 years all the better (the manufacturer claims 10 years!). I figure it is about twice the cost of a traditional anti foul and if you factor in the cost of slipping a 40ft cat with a 20ft beam twice in 3 years or 3 times in 5 years we are starting to see a considerable saving and of course getting 5 years and its a no brainer. I don't believe it is right to beach the boat to apply a traditional antifoul but beaching to give this type of coating a dry rub, or to rub it clean in the water is environmentally fine, after all it is only algae coming off it. Not to mention how much easier a light rub every 3 months would be compared to a lift out every 18 months. I will have outboards (petrol or one day perhaps electric) so other than a safety inspection of the underside of the boat I cant see any reason the boat should need slipping if this stuff passes the test.

I think I will trim the beam down tomorrow and I will start on the inside bow strip planking this week. I have to be in Melbourne this week so I wont get to work everyday.

December 05 Dingy painted

I have removed the peel ply from the forebeam and I am very happy with the finish. I know it still needs fairing but it already looks great. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me today so I had to use my mobile phone camera which does not take high quality pictures, but you can still see the now nice curve to the beam and still just see the planks under the glass. The layers of glass have softened the hard edges that the planks still had so that the beam has a much smoother and rounder look. The cross beam uni around the U bolts has left a slight ridge that will need to be faired out with bog but otherwise the beam looks like it wont need much work to fair it. (Perhaps I shouldn't tempt the fairing gods with such talk!)

I got a very nice surprise when I got to the shed today, Paul (my friend that does airbrushing) had airbrushed my dingy. I have been hinting at this for a while now. Just take a look at how the dingy looks now! Again the camera phone pics don't do the finish justice, and furthermore, the air brush paint finish is matt and needs a few coats of clear to protect it and this will really bring out the color and sharpen the image up even further. I couldn't be happier with the way the dingy has turned out.

This weekend I intend to finish the dingy so that I can get it on the water. I will also get a start on the fairing of the beam.

December 09 Bow planking started

Another stinking hot weekend, yesterday was not as hot but today was low 30's and extremely humid, until the late afternoon summer storms hit. I rode the scooter in a t-shirt and shorts to the shed so I headed off to beat the rain at 5.00pm but it poured down as I got half way home. I enjoyed getting wet but I don't like riding the bike on wet roads.

It was hard to get much work done today as the heat in the shed is intense and slows down progress, jobs take twice as long in the heat, which is ironic because pot life of resin based products is halved! It means you mix smaller quantities more often, which takes longer.

I had business in Melbourne on Thursday and I usually fly down and hire a car and fly back but I bought this windsurfer mast, boom and sail on eBay and it was in Melbourne so I drove down on Thursday, leaving early enough to arrive in time for a 3 pm meeting, went and picked up the mast etc, then drove home on Friday in time to pick Jo up at the airport on her way home from Brisbane where she had gone for the 2 days I was away to attend middle school graduation for Jacob and accompany him back to our place for the holidays. We arrived home at 1 am and after driving for the last 2 days I was exhausted, so we slept in on Saturday morning, and I didn't get to the shed until lunch time.

Yesterday I spent most of the day working on the dingy and just pottering around trying to work out what and how I would mount the mast, how to mount the rudder and experimenting with sheeting points to figure out the best method so that the sheet and the rudder tiller don't impede movement from the windward to leeward hull when tacking. The method I chose for mounting the mast was to glass a plastic tube against the forward bulkhead and then sliding a metal pipe inside that (and removing at when not using the mast) and the mast would slide down onto the metal pipe. I was originally going to glass an oversize tube in that the mast would slide down into but the sail extends all the way to the bottom of the mast so if I used that method the bottom of the sail would bunch up and change the shape of the sail.

Today, despite the heat I finally got back some of the motivation that has been lacking for the last couple of weeks. I ran some strips off to get started on the inside bow planking and I glued back on the piece that I cut off the chamfer panel when I was making the hulls. If you remember, the chamfer panel was just too hard to torture and cajole into place so to make the job easier (with Brett on the first hull and using the off cut as a template on the second) we cut a piece off the chamfer panel. Today I finally glued it back on at the other side of the panel to return it to its original shape. The panel is now square to level instead of sloping down and it now meets the shapes of the bulkheads where they change from straight edge to curves for the planking.

While the glue was setting on the part added back I started on the forebeam bogging. In order to save sanding or at least make the sanding easier, there is method of bogging where you apply much less bog initially but using a serrated trowel, then you only have to sand the bog strips down to fair, then when fair you back fill to the height of the faired bog. I mixed the first batch of bog too thick and as a result when I started applying it with the serrated trowel it would lift or break in parts leaving a very uneven and blotchy finish. I compensated too far and mixed the second batch too runny, this is worse because the raised bog lines just melt into a flat finish again. I also discovered that the best way to apply the bog in even strips is not to apply the bog first up with the serrated side of the trowel but to apply it in the normal way, all over, then to run the serrated trowel through the laid bog to leave the bog strips.

Once the bog was on I went back to the strip planking and planked the first 2 planks. The first 2 planks on any strip planked section is always the top and bottom planks. These have to butt up to the panels they will be eventually glued to and form the outside extremes of the panel. Form there you basically plank to fill the gap, each plank making that gap smaller until eventually you have a completed panel. Some people also recommend that the next plank should run down the middle and then you plank out (above and below) to the edges from there. I am not sure why this is important. I did this on the hull to deck panels and it seems to work so I will repeat it on this panel.

I also glued some offcuts together today to make the keelsons. These are made from strips of duflex glued side by side and then glued and glassed into the hull at the keel in order to strengthen the sections that don't have webs and soles. Unfortunately these are the 2 sections between bulkheads 1 & 2 and 2 & 3, which are narrow buoyancy chambers and I will need to climb down into them in order to glue them into the boat.

Despite the heat I was enjoying making progress again and planking is a really fun part of the build and part of the fun is that the work is noticeable, that is, the planked sections change the appearance of the boat and the work is very tangible. Having said that, it was at this time that the first lightning and thunder started, so I decided it was probably wiser to get home before the rain set in as I was on the scooter (even then I left it a little late and still got wet), so I packed it in for the day. It has been a short while but I cant wait for tomorrow again, so I can finish the planking on this panel.

December 10 More bow planking

The bow section is much smaller than the sides of the entire hulls but they still take a while to plank. Not as many screws to drive in but more planks needed to fill a larger radius, and the inside of the bows change shape more dramatically over a shorter area than the hull to deck side turns so there is more twist on the planks and more planks will end in tapers.

I have managed only a couple of hours work today and in that time I got about half the planking done on the starboard bow inboard side. As with the first (port) hull to deck, my first attempt will no doubt be a bit messier than the second one but once glued, glassed and bogged, there will be no way to tell which side is better.

I am hoping to get the rest of the planking done over the next couple of days, although I am off to Melbourne again later this week. Then hopefully on the weekend I can glue and glass the outside of the panel.

December 11 Computer crash

Last week my computer crashed, a fault with a ram chip corrupted windows and it had to be re imaged, which is new speak for vista needed to be re installed, but the repair guys had to wipe the hard drive clean first. Fortunately I had a recent back up of most of my files including this website, but unfortunately I have not backed up my emails for quite a while. So I lost all of the emails sent to me as well as my replies, and your email addresses. So if you have emailed me in the last 3 months I need you to email me again on crew@mahnamahna.com.au so that I can get all of the contact details from you again. Better yet if you could forward me the emails I sent to you and that you sent to me I can restore my email archive.

No work on the boat today, I was busy restoring my computer and working on product submissions all day.

December 15 Inside bow panel glued

Another hot day today. When I first inspected this shed in February I must have done so on a cool day because I don't remember it being a concern to me then, but this shed is much hotter than the last one, at least it feels that way. And it is only going to get hotter. Anyway I mustn't complain, there are people building boats in much hotter places than I am.

Today I cut and fitted the rest of the planks on the starboard inside bow and then glued them to each other so they set overnight and perhaps tomorrow I can get them sanded smooth and glassed.

There are 2 more webs to be fitted to the foredeck to close each hull off from the foredeck and they will then become wells for sails, fenders ropes and other gear. The webs also provide the profile for the curved foredeck. They are the same profile as the other webs for about half their size then they have flat sections at the front to match the angle of the top of the chamfer panel (inside bow). The web gets in the way while planking the bows so I have not glued it in yet, I also have to run a 70mm diameter pipe along the front of the bulkhead all the way along to run plumbing and electricity to the forward ensuite and also to run uni along the front of this bulkhead so when I eventually do glue this web in I will cut a slot in the back of the inside bow planking where it hits the web. I will need to glue the webs in before I plank the forward deck turn as I need the profiles for the planks to sit on, so I will do the other bows planking, then the uni and pipe then glue the final webs in, then I can do the final planking.

 

Once I had all of the planks on and the gap closed I levelled the planks to each other using the mdf strips and then I glued them together using the same method I used on the side planking. I use a scraper to squeeze glue down in between the planks. I could have buttered each plank with glue and screwed the panels down with glue on, but I decided against this as it was easier for me to just squeeze the glue in. Once it has set (tomorrow) I will sand it smooth, fill the sections behind the levelling straps and then glass it wet on wet.

 

I was originally intending to glue the forebeam in before I planked the inside bows so I could plank around the beam but I changed my mind and I will cut holes in the panels for the beam once they are finished. I figured it to be easier to glass in one piece and then cut it out rather than trying to glass around a hole in it. Hopefully I get it glassed on the outside tomorrow. Then during the week I will take it off and glass the inside.

December 16 Inside bow panel glassed

I got an early start today with the intention of knocking off early. Also the shed is cooler in the mornings as the sun has not had a chance yet to cook the air inside, and it felt cool until I started sanding the panel and I soon felt hot, then later as I glassed the sweat was dripping off me. Even though the temperature is still at overnight levels the humidity is high 90's and that is what makes you sweat the most. And I think I have burnt out my sander polisher. It was still working when I stopped using it but it had smoke coming out of it so I think it is cooked! I couldn't smell the smoke as I had a face mask on for dust protection so I didn't notice the damage for a while, it just kept cutting out and I thought it was an overheat trip switch kicking in but then I noticed the smoke and switched to another sander to finish the last bit of the panel. I will check it out tomorrow to see if it is still working. I doubt it. This was the Ryobi I got for Christmas 2 years ago, so I guess I got a good run out of it. Ryobi is an OK brand, not industrial like DeWalt or Makita but better than the really cheap Chinese stuff. It is an interesting debate whether it is cheaper to buy a decent brand at the start, or continue to replace cheaper stuff. For example, I now have a dewalt cordless impact driver drill, about $400, and I will probably have it forever. I have also burnt out 2 really cheap $20 cordless drills and am on my third. I recommend both, because you need a cheapy that you wont care if you cover in resin by using it with gloves on (taking gloves on and off is a pain) and  the good drill for jobs like strip planking or seriously long screws into really hard wood etc. As I don't intend taking many tools with me, only the ones I will need after launch such as a good driver drill, I am not fussed about buying tools that wont last out the build and any I have left (in other words I haven't killed yet) will be given away.

Anyway, I got the sanding done and I then cleaned the dust off and cut some glass. I used the offcuts from the side planking, in 2 pieces overlapping in the middle. I filled the gaps in the planking glue as I wet out (by rolling the glass out as I wet it out) and glassed straight over the wet glue. This process worked well and saved me having to fill, wait and sand again. I had to work fast though to keep the glue and resin from setting in pots. I used the scraper to apply the glue and a brush to apply the resin to the glass, pouring resin on in small pools then spreading it out over the glass, except near the bottom edge where I painted it on to prevent dripping onto the floor.

While the glass resin was tacking off a bit I did some work on the dingy, I glassed in the mast tube against the forward bulkhead, using uni across the tube then covering it with double bias, after having glued and coved the pipe in. I also drilled oversize drain holes into each hatch then back filled it with glue and tomorrow I can re drill smaller holes in the glue. I also gave the airbrushing a coat of clear enamel to protect it. I really only have to hinge the hatch lids and put the fittings in (bow anchor/towing eye, stern eyes, sheet eye and cleats and hatch lid lock downs) to finish. I am still in 2 minds about gluing side bumpers onto the hull sides as I like the paint job and don't want to detract from it, but they are really a necessity once the dingy becomes the tender. I may wait until MM is launched.

I then went back and bogged the panel and checked the time. It was already 2.30 pm. I had been working for 7 hours! So whilst I could start on smaller jobs such as making the keelson, I decided to head home. I was on the scooter and it was threatening to rain (it was already raining lightly) and I thought I would get home before it set in, which it did so I spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch!

December 26 Inside Port bow planking

I have not managed much work on the boat over the past 10 days. Just a few hours here and there. I guess with family obligations I don't usually get much time on the build this time of year. I have started planking the port inside bow, even though I have not yet glassed the inside of the starboard planking. I think I might do the outside of this one first, then take them both off and glass them at the same time.

In case I don't get much more done this month, thank you to all the readers especially those that contacted us during the year. I hope you all had a happy Christmas and that you have a safe and productive New Year.

December 29 Inside Port bow planking glued

On Thursday I was invited to sail on Warren's 40ft Crowther cat from Swansea (Lake Macquarie, NSW Central Coast) about 60 nautical miles down to Woy Woy, just north of Sydney. The forecast was for NE winds 10-15 knots for most of the day (perfect for our trip south) swinging to SE later, but we would be close before it swung around. Unfortunately there was little or no wind most of the day (even after it swung around) and we motored all the way on 1 9.9 outboard at about 6 knots and the trip took us about 10 hours instead of the planned 5 hour sail (you do the math). I had a ball regardless. I have never been out in the ocean before so had never experienced swell, and whilst the sea was glass flat most of the time and I understand it wont always be like that, it was a nice introduction to coastal cruising. We tried the spinnaker early but there just wasn't enough wind to keep it up. The wind did add a knot to our speed, with no sails we were making 5kn and with sails around 7kn most of the way.

Today I finished the planking of the port bow and glued it. I started early (about 8am) to get the work done before the shed heated up for the day and entertained visitors for an hour (entertained means one of my favourite pastimes, talking about my boat and boats in general). As is usual with everything done the second time on this build, I was faster and neater and overall did a better job on this panel than the Starboard one.

Tomorrow I will sand this panel and glass it. I will then have to remove both panels to sand and glass them on the inside and return them to the boat to set. Once done, I can start on the forward deck turn planking. On some builds this panel is made by kerfing a flat duflex panel or 2 halves joined in the middle but I don't seem to have panels like this so I will be planking them.

If I don't get a chance to post again in the next 2 days, have a happy and safe NYE and I hope 2008 is happy and productive for you.

December 31 Inside Port bow planking bogged, foredeck planking started

I have started on the foredeck planking. Even though I have not yet sanded and glassed the inside of the inside bow panels, I figure they are not going to change shape so I can safely make the foredeck panel and sand and glass them later. The foredeck planking buts neatly between the 2 inside hull panels and the panel must be made with the joins in mind. The angle that is made at the ends must be uniform and the same each side.

Jo and I are thrilled with the progress of our boat. We also thoroughly enjoy logging it on this site and enjoy the emails we get from readers. Thank you all for reading this year, we hope you have a happy and safe New Year celebration and that in 2008 you achieve all that you set out to do.