2007 building logs

June 07 Still raising the bridgedeck

Time often gets away from you on a build like this. What looks do-able slips out and life sometimes gets in the way. I am sure I will get the bridgedeck raised this month. I was originally aiming over optimistically for the last week of April and here it is June and it still isn't up. But with it all but finished I have no doubt that this month will finally see the bottom of the boat completed and the start of the internal fit out will begin.

June 01 Pure Seal update.

Last month I prematurely raised the Pure Seal sample a month early. I hinted that the test plate looked pretty good. It does in fact look great. I think this formula is working. To temper my enthusiasm I have to add that it is still only 6 months in the water (from 1st December 06). 3 of those months were the warm water months so I am very encouraged by the results so far. The last test panel was a total failure after the same time in the water. To remind you, any growth on the panel simply rubs off with just one finger, not even your fingernail just the tip is enough. I am also told that because the sample plate is static in the water the growth is either going to be less on a moving boat or in fact self cleaning with the motion of water over the hulls at speed.

 

So with the panel still working the test continues. I will keep the test going for the rest of the time it takes me to build so at least another 2 years. If it continues to perform the way it has it will certainly be on my boat. I spoke with the Australian distributor at the boat show. They lost a lot of money paying for boat owners to remove the first batch from their boats and are understandably cautious about endorsing the stuff and it is currently off the market. However they are also running tests and their results mirror mine and if it continues to perform it should be back on the market by the time I need to buy it for my boat.

Back on the build, I got back from Sanctuary Cove on Tuesday night. On Wednesday evening I started sanding the deck again. Over the last 3 evenings I have managed to sand 3 of the 4 stiffeners. I worked out that it takes as long to sand each one as it took for all of the other work combined. In other words, to cut the stiffeners, glue them down, cove them, glass them and bog them took about the time it takes to properly sand them. And of course, sanding is such a fun pastime you hardly notice! Actually sanding never seems as bad as it is before or after, hence the underestimation of how fast you think you can do something before you start. Your mind refuses to allow you to believe that it will take you as long as it will so as not to discourage you from starting so you tell yourself it wont take long to finish, then once finished, even thought it took twice as long as you thought, it doesn't seem as bad as you made it out to be during the work. But during the sanding, it is so monotonous and such a horrible job that you exaggerate how annoying the job really is so that when its done you think to yourself, well that wasn't so bad. I guess this doesn't really convey the true nature of sanding, its not as bad as it seems but worse than it seems depending on when you are thinking about it. I cant imagine how much harder they would have been had I used round pipe! Maybe it would have been easier to hide the blemishes. Anyway I am almost done. I will experiment with painting over the weekend.

I am in 2 minds about whether I will paint the underside of the deck after all. The reason is that I may need to screw through the deck to hold it up in place until the glue sets and with the bottom painted the patch up is much harder with the paint on. If I can get it up and braced without screwing through it I will be ok. I want to practice painting on the underwing as it is hidden if I don't do a good job and I want to experiment with some non slip ideas that I would use on the deck if they work but can hide under the wing if they don't.

Either way I wont get the panel glued up this weekend but should get it up next weekend. I still have to turn the panel over which requires a few helpers, and then cut the kerfs for the curve at the front, then I can figure out how to raise it, butter the bulkhead underneath with glue and raise it up and brace it in place until the glue sets and I can get some tapes on.

Then of course all of the internal taping starts. I am hoping to have a little celebration barbeque on the deck once it can take some weight.

While I was away James got the panels glued on to Nine Lives and filled and sanded it ready for glassing. The glass has arrived but he is still waiting on his resin to arrive.

June 03 Bridgedeck ready.

Yesterday I finished sanding the underside of the bridgedeck. Here and there required additional filling, which I have also done and sanded and then after a final check I decided there were a few more areas I needed to add a little more filler to so I filled them before finishing for the day.

Today the last few spot fills had not fully set so I will sand them tomorrow, there is literally only 10 to 15 minutes needed to finish the underside of the bridgedeck to the point where I can either paint it, or raise it the way it is and have it painted at the same time as the rest of the boat is painted.

I have cut 8 legs to size to wedge under the bridgedeck to hold it in place while the glue sets and the tapes are on and set. I think 2 per bulkhead should be enough, but if not then I will simply cut some more. The legs are 100mm x 50mm timber cut to the height that the bridgedeck is off the ground and the offcuts used as feet of around 500mm to spread the load along the bulkhead (or across it if I decide to run the feet fore and aft - not sure yet). We have a box trailer at the warehouse and also a pallet jack so I think we can turn the deck over and lift it onto the box trailer to move it into position, then to finally lift it up to the underside of the bulkheads I can lift each end and then under each bulkhead using the pallet jack then slipping the legs into place and maybe slipping spacers of 3mm mdf in if needed to pack them out to tightly wedge the legs un place once the bulkheads have glue on them.

Today I also experimented with some highbuild paint and some fly screen to see if the end result is similar to the effect I am looking for in a non slip finish. I really like the look that production boats get with their non slip areas but their finishes are build into the moulds, with a pattern rather than the randomness of sand sprinkled in paint to achieve the non slip and I find that sand also does not wear very well leaving patches in high traffic areas and looks unsightly and dirty after not very long. There are professional additives to achieve a non slip finish or paint that already has the non slip grit or balls in them but these are still a random pattern in the paint and some areas can have excessive non slip whilst other areas are very bare. Another method is sprinkling sugar onto wet paint, then when the paint is almost dry pouring hot water over the paint to dissolve the sugar.

I had an idea that I might be able to replicate the look of a fixed pattern (non random) by painting over a layer of fly screen before removing the fly screen just before the paint dries leaving a mirror image of the flyscreen in the paint.

I have not yet bought the paint I will use as a final topcoat so I experimented with some highbuild I have left. I assume highbuild to be somewhat thicker than 2 pack topcoat urethane to be, and I am not sure whether this will help or hinder the paint to retain the pattern I am after but I had a go at a sample anyway.

What I learnt from the exercise is that I probably can get an acceptable finish but it might be very difficult. I had a very small piece of fly screen, about 200mm wide by about 600mm long. I lifted it off in sections to see what effect leaving it on longer would have, this resulted in lines in the finish where I stopped, suggesting I have to remove the flyscreen in one long uninterrupted motion, difficult with 7 meters of flyscreen. You also have to get a uniform amount of paint down, I used a brush so I may be able to achieve that with a roller or even spraying the paint but I don't think spraying will press the flyscreen down sufficiently to ensure it is evenly down in the paint with no lifted areas or bubbles. And you cannot move the flyscreen in any way except straight up off the paint never to touch again or you end up with smudged areas. So it might be too difficult to get a good unblemished finish over such a large area. So I may have to abandon the idea. I am not sure yet but I am not convinced yet this is going to work.

June 08 Bridgedeck in place ready to glue.

After deciding that I would not attempt the fly screen non slip on the underside of the deck it was just a matter of turning it over ready to lift into place. Yesterday three of us lifted one end and we pushed the pallet trolley under, then we lifted the other end and pushed the deck out from under the boat. Then we pushed it up onto its side edge and over onto the bottom and pushed it back to the middle of the space. We then lifted one end and put a 44 gallon drum under each corner, then lifted the other end and put 2 more drums under the other corners, and then rolled the trailer under lifting one end so we could get it centred. We then rolled it into position and I replaced the drums, this time with milk crates on top which balanced the height fore and aft at roughly the same height as the trailer in the centre.

It is really surprising how heavy the deck is. It took all our strength to turn the deck over. And also surprising how much flex there still is in the panel even with the 4 stiffeners on.

With the deck over and in place and with the drums and crates levelling it out I can safely walk on the deck. It creaks and groans here and there which is a bit scary but once it is glued to the bulkheads (and furniture is in) the longest open span will be little more than a meter or 2 which will add to its stiffness.

This afternoon, in one of the worst storms we have had here on the Cental Coast in memory I set about gluing in the forward web. It has rained hard for the last 24 hours and the sound of the rain on the tin roof makes normal talking impossible, you need to shout to be heard over it. Anyway, I have glued the forward webs in, 4 of them. I also squared and braced them so that the glue sets square.

The plan for tomorrow is to cut the kerfs into the front section of the deck that will curve up against the webs put in place today, remove the peel ply from where the bulkheads will glue to the deck and to cove and glass the webs in.

Then on Sunday I will attempt to raise the deck up to meet the bulkheads and glue it and brace it to set. The plan on how to raise the deck is to use the pallet trolley and a leg of 50mmx100mm timber to lift the deck and then slide in another leg along side it and brace the deck up with them, one at a time, repeating the process until I have about 2 or 3 legs per bulkhead. If this is easy enough, I will lower it again and glue each bulkhead and repeat the process, leaving the braces there for the glue to set, and not to remove them until the joins are all coved and glassed.

So on Monday (a public holiday) I will start to glass it in if I manage to get it all glued on Sunday. If I need to trim the deck (which looks likely as it looks too wide) it may take me until Monday to have it glued up.

June 10 Bridgedeck not glued yet.

I have coved and taped the deck webs onto the forward spanning bulkhead, square and plumb. I then set about cutting the kerfs into the front of the deck. I am cutting them 50mm apart for 1.15 meters. I cut 24 kerfs, probably one too many but I wanted to be sure that I didn't end up 1 short and struggling to get the bend started in the right place. This way if I didn't need the extra kerf it will just fill with glue and end up setting back correctly anyway. The kerfs took a lot longer to cut than I anticipated. It would have been far easier to cut them on the ground before raising the deck but that presented 2 bigger problems, firstly it was easier to get the trailer under whilst I had the help of others who may not have been available when I was finished cutting the kerfs but more importantly, once the kerfs were cut it would have made it far more difficult to lift that end of the deck, you cant put any weight on the kerfs until after the deck is glued up and I then bend it in the direction it needs to bend and is glued up. You certainly cant pick it up from that end or you will just snap it at one of the kerfs, all that is left is about 2mm of balsa and 1mm of glass. So I had to cut the kerfs in situ. I have braced the underside of the deck so that the kerfs cant break with gravity.

Cutting the kerfs parallel was just a matter of marking the ends of a plank of timber so I could use the previous kerf as the mark and screw the plank down as the guide for the saw for the next cut. I set the saw to a depth leaving about 2mm of balsa so as to minimise the sharp edges on the outside of the curved panel to make fairing a little easier. The more balsa you leave the more gentle the curve, so lots of less deep kerfs and you still end up with the same curve but less prominent changes in direction of the panel. I cut a test panel of the same material first and decided on 50mm spacings (I discussed them with Brett at the Schionning builders seminar after the boat show and we pretty much agreed on 50mm-75mm but I decided on 50mm) and it curved nicely so went with 50mm without even testing 75mm. It means 50% more kerfs so I could have cut about 18 instead of the 24 which not only meant more cutting but will also mean more glue to join them back up again but I am happy with the way the test panel curved so I am sure the deck will curve nicely.

Once all of the kerfs were cut I marked the centreline onto the bulkheads and onto the bridgedeck to make lining up the deck easier. I also removed the peel ply from the deck ready to glue. Using the centreline I tried to line the deck panel up a little better. It is difficult to move a panel this size from side to side on your own as it acts like a big lever, a small movement at one end is countered by an equal movement at the other end. I had to move just one end though. Anyway I got it a little more centred and was able to lift the stern up almost correctly into place, it is just a few millimetres out. The panel appears to be oversize in places along the length but not all the way, so my solution may be to lift it up into place and then just running a jigsaw blade down the join to free it up where it sticks. If it is any tighter than that I will need to lower it again and cut it after I have marked the really tight spots that need cutting. It isn't much but is enough to make getting the panel up exactly into place difficult.

My method of raising the deck up so far has just been to physically manhandle the deck up and place the leg into each corner but as I go along the hull from the stern forward 1 bulkhead at a time (I am only bracing at the bulkheads otherwise I may get high spots in the deck between the bulkheads) is to use the 500kg pallet trolley as a jack and using a 50mm x 75mm timber leg, jacking the deck up high enough to get my correctly measured leg under and into place and lowering the trolley down and repeating the process until I have at least 2 legs under each bulkhead on each side. Then I will remove the trailer and put legs under the middle of each bulkhead before attempting to walk on the deck again.

If this all works out dry or after I have trimmed and raised the deck dry again until it fits easily, I will then lower it again, spread glue onto the underside of the bulkheads and raise it up and braced tightly to set. Hopefully I should get this done tomorrow. I never seem to be able to work as fast as I anticipate I should.

June 11 Bridgedeck part glued.

Today I managed to glue the bridgedeck up to the 2 middle bulkheads, bulkheads 5 & 6, 5 is the back of the bedrooms/front of the saloon where the mast is stepped on a regular rig and 6 is the back of the saloon/front of the cockpit onto which the steering is placed.

But first I had to trim the panel by about 30mm, 15mm on each side. I raised it up as far as it would go considering it was too tight and then marked a line down each side and trimmed it by the amount needed. To ensure I took the same amount off each side I set a fence on a circular saw and trimmed each side up to the point where it curves out at about halfway between bulkhead 5 & 4 to accommodate the hull flare. I will still need to trim that section a little but will do that once I have the deck secured up to bulkhead 5 as this last section also has the kerfs to bend up and round at the front.

With the panel trimmed it was time to glue it up. I raised it again to be sure it fit, there was still a tight section so I ran the jigsaw down the join to loosen it up but was a little out in my angles and I made a bit of a mess of one area that need additional trimming but fortunately it will be easy to fill or glue to repair and will then become invisible and because it will be under fibreglass tapes it wont in anyway effect the end result, it is just a little more work, but no more than an hour or an extra amount of fill in the otherwise filled join anyway.

I lowered the front section so that it was about 150mm below bulkhead 5 and started buttering the bottom of the bulkhead. I then started raising it again and placing the legs in place. I used the pallet trolley and a 50mm x 75mm plank of wood to raise the deck. A warning here, always spread the load with another plank running along the deck, I forgot once and put a fairly deep dint in the deck that I will need to fill, fortunately I didn't break the glass. I raised it up on 5 legs (I was originally thinking 3 max, but I needed them more closely spaced to ensure the deck was hard up against the bulkhead.

The deck pressed up into place squeezed excess glue out, which I then cleaned with my scraper. This is important because I have to run uni tapes along each side of each bulkhead so the less preparation needed the less I have to sand later over the not yet fully secure deck. I then pushed the bulkhead fore or aft where needed to straighten it up. Graeme and his father (Graeme is contemplating building either a Schionning or a Spirited cat) turned up for a look at the progress and they helped me by sighting down a straight edge to tell me where the bulkhead needed to be pushed (fore or aft in places) saving me the extra climbing up and down and also helping me by telling me when the legs I was placing had properly pushed the deck up onto the bulkheads.

I then set about repeating the process on bulkhead 6. I lowered the most rear legs to widen the gap between the bulkhead and the deck and I removed the trailer which up until then I had left there as a safety barrier in case the deck fell off the legs, it would stop at the trailer and not crush me! Once I had the space opened I buttered the bottom of the bulkhead with glue and raised the deck back up, moved the bulkhead fore or aft where needed to straighten it and cleaned up the excess glue. I used the glue that I had cleaned off in the chamfer joins that looked to be in the correct position, about 400mm worth. The rest of those joins wont be done until after I have glued up the rest of the deck, then after that is done I can start on the taping, both the torsional strength uni and the double bias coving glass. Each bulkhead has a different amount of uni's depending on the engineering and the loads that the area will be under.

With any luck I will have the rear bulkhead glued to the deck tomorrow or Wednesday. I am hoping to start on the glassing next weekend. Jo and I want to have a bbq on the deck to celebrate another milestone.

June 12 Bridgedeck glued at stern

The bridgedeck is now glued at 3 of the 4 spanning bulkheads. Today I glued the stern bulkhead at the duckboard. This was relatively simple as the other 2 bulkheads are now glued solid so the panel does not move now when I jack it up. I had it absolutely perfectly lined up before gluing the first bulkheads and as I jacked it up it moved slightly, about 5mm so that it is slightly off centre left to right and about 5mm further forward on the port side. This is a negligible amount and easily fixed by shaping the hull panels to fit the difference although ironically the front is still square and the kerf lines still run absolutely parallel to the front bulkhead. In % terms 5mm is less than 1 tenth of 1% out over the 7.5 meter deck. Now that it is up and once I add a little duflex where it is short (5mm?) or plane off a bit where it is long and fill the side joins there will be no evidence that there was ever a problem.

The next step is to glue the bow. This is a more complicated job than the other three bulkhead as I also have to glue the kerfs up and around the web shape at the forward end of the deck. I will dry fit it first and once it fits then if time permits I will glue the panel to the bulkhead and glue the kerf all in one go, but if I find I have some time but not enough to finish I may just glue the bulkhead then the kerf the next time.

June 14 Bridgedeck glued to all bulkheads

The bridgedeck is now glued at all 4 spanning bulkheads. I just have to glue the kerfs to the forward webs and then the sides to the chamfer panel top for it to be completely glued. I can then tape the deck sides over and under, with the underside coved with a fairly big cove. I decided to glue the up to the last bulkhead before I did the kerfing, figuring it would be one less task I needed to get done before the glue went off and that it would not make the kerfing any harder to do with it already glued to the forward bulkhead.

Then I have to start on the strengthening uni tapes on each side of the bulkheads and the deck is done. I think I can have the forward web glued and the sides glued and taped by the end of the weekend, although I will be limited on Saturday as I have a 40th birthday to attend and have to leave mid afternoon. Once the kerfs are set I will also need to glass the inside of these areas as they will form deck lockers and will need to be completely sealed and will need the extra strength.

Then I can say that with the exception of a few through hull fittings such as the daggerboards and the outboard openings, the bottom half of the boat is done and it is time to start filling the boat with the various fittings and furniture before making the top half. Sounds simple don't it.

I am reliably told that I am about 1/4 of the way to a boat. ONLY a 1/4! Well that makes sense anyway as I am approaching 1000 hours and the minimum is 4000 hours and up to 6000 to 8000 hours depending on how good a finish I want and how fussy about areas that are mostly hidden like inside lockers etc that I get. I imagine I wont be too fussy because I am hoping to cheat a bit with lots of liners to minimise fairing work. Anyway that is all a long way off yet.

June 16 Kerfs glued, coved, taped.

I think the kerfing of the forward web would have been a difficult job had it not been for the kerfing I did when making the dinghy. I had confidence that it would work well and it did. I am very happy with the end result and happy with the speed and relative ease at which I got the job done.

I have now squeezed a runny mix of glue into the kerfs and glued the curved panel to the webs, glassed it whilst the kerf glue was still wet, coved the web panels and glassed them wet too. This saves a tricky sanding job on the inside of the curved section and also gets me a chemical bond of the glues rather than a mechanical bond.

After I had squeegeed a runny mix of glue into all of the kerfs I used a combination of legs and screws to hold the panel up in place. I found that having an adjustable leg (2 50mmx100mm planks clamped together at varying heights) helped to get the panel up tight against the webs and then screws (with washers) held it in place from there. I then adjusted the length of the leg and repeated the process until I had the panel up tight all over. I then used the squeegee again to clean up the excess glue.

I had pre-cut 5 sheets of double bias glass to the size of the curved sections between each web panel, so once I had removed the excess glue from the kerfs I started on glassing the panels again. The glassing once set returns the strength that the kerf removed from the panel and also seals it. The inside of these sections will be deck lockers and the anchor locker. I will probably lay an additional layer of glass in the anchor locker to prevent any chance of it wearing through with the constant motion of chain against it but I will do that toward the fit out stage once I determine the windlass layout and chain fall.

Once I had the forward section glassed and taped I had to tab the curve join into place before the glass set otherwise once set it may have been too hard to move. I need to tab the entire panel on both sides to ensure it is fair and that the join is level. Here and there the deck panel is either too high or too low and the tabs will lift or push down the panel into place for gluing.

June 17 Deck glued.

Today I tabbed the deck panel into place then I set about filling the joins with coving material in the same way that I did on the hull panels. I filled from above first and then I went below the deck and cleaned up wherever the glue had run through (where the gaps were a bit wide). I mixed a thicker batch of filler and back filled from below. I will actually have to cove this join from below anyway but rather than do that now I decided to glue the panels together and then give it a sand and then cove again later. The cove will be fairly large so it may be easier once the panels are set in place, I will then be able to glass onto the cove wet on wet.

With the deck completely glued up, glassing is next. First I will need to sand the filler smooth from above and below. Then I will glass the joins from above and also glass the joins in the panels that I have not glassed yet (these are the topside of the joins I glassed to join the 3 smaller panels into the full size deck that I did upside down under the boat before attaching the stiffening pipes). Once that is done I will cove the underwing join and glass that. Then more glassing, the next step will be the uni's along the bulkheads and the double bias layer to finish each stack.

With Nine Lives hull glassed it was time to turn it over. Unfortunately I missed it, but it needed a crane and only took 15 minutes or so. The hull is about twice as heavy as mine are so even with 12 people it would be a struggle to turn but easy with a crane.

I finally have a separate page for Nine Lives, so where you see this link it means I have posted extra pictures on that page. It is better for those interested in Nine Lives to have all of the photos on one page and it also creates a brief pictorial history showing the progress.

 

June 20 Chamfer joins sanded and deck joins taped.

As I mentioned in my last post, the plans call for the deck panels that are joined together to create the giant full bridgedeck to be butt joined together, glued and taped, so I glued the panels and I taped the underside and then glued the stiffeners on and faired it. But when it came to turning the deck it was much easier to get the deck onto the trailer straight away in order to move it into position under the boat whilst I had the extra labour at my disposal making the taping of the top of the deck a little difficult at the time. So I raised the deck and glued it into place before taping the other side of these joins. I taped them today. And as I was taping the deck after it is glued in place I decided to take advantage of that by extending the tapes down the chamfer panels in order to add some cross deck strength mid panel (the joins are about half way between each bulkhead) in the same way that the unis along the edge of the bulkhead will. Not much extra strength but it all helps.

I also have sanded back and rounded all of the chamfer to deck joins ready for taping on the weekend. I still have to fill the spaces under the holding tabs but I can do that as I tape wet on wet. Once these tapes are down I can get started on the unis. And once they are done I will be able to remove the legs under the deck. I need to use that timber to make a set of steps. I had very sore hamstrings and thighs from climbing up and down all weekend.

June 23 Chamfer joins taped.

After a couple of days in Melbourne I got back to work on the boat. Today I taped the topside deck to chamfer joins. I filled the remaining gaps that were under the tabs as I went and then taped onto the wet filler. I also decided to peel ply the tapes with recycled peel ply to minimise the work needed to sand them back because not much of the joins if any will be exposed to scrutiny as they will end up inside furniture.

Whilst the plans call for the usual 200mm tape and 150mm tape I decided to use larger tapes on these joins and opted for 250mm and 200mm tapes on the inside and will use 300mm and 250mm tape on the underside. It is probably totally unnecessary but I figure the additional weight is minimal and the extra strength whilst it may never be called into play will at least add to my piece of mind.

Tomorrow I will start on the underside. I still have to sand those joins back and then cove them again, this time with a larger radius curve on the chamfer. I will then tape this wet on wet. I may use the wombat for that tape wet out as these are full length tapes whereas the internal joins are punctuated by the bulkheads and are therefore a series of shorter tapes.

June 23 Port underwing join taped and bogged.

Today was a tough day. I thought I might get both hull to underwing joins coved and taped today but I worked all day (7 hours) and only managed to get one done. I did manage to bog the tapes though. It took me about 5 and half hours to sand back the rough spots on each join, then to cove just one hull and run 2 tapes over it. I realised there was not enough time to do the other so I decided to bog the tapes instead. This has 2 benefits, first I get a chemical bond of bog to resin and also I avoid having to either sand the tape before bogging or using peel ply today. I had enough trouble getting the tapes up that peel ply (which was going to be the way I went) was scrapped and the bog went straight on.

The sanding was relatively painless, it took about half an hour on each hull. On the underwing work I discovered that sitting in an office chair on wheels saves a lot of backache. Once I had the sanding done I set about coving the port hull with a fairly large cove. I was going to make an even bigger radius cove than I eventually settled on but I quickly discovered that with the larger radius I would use way too much coving material.

It took me about an hour to cove the join and having finished it I started on the taping wet on wet. Initially I was going to cove both sides first but time was getting away from me so I decided to tape first and if time permitted I could start on the other side. I used the wombat to wet out the tapes as they are 8 meters each and this was much faster.

Again using the chair to move along the join, I started laying the first of the 2 tapes. I opted for 200mm and 300mm tape on the underwing joins even though the plans only call of 150mm and 200mm. Piece of mind is worth the extra few kilos.

Laying tapes completely upside down is a tough job! Gravity works against you on a multiple of levels. Firstly it is back breaking work, even using the chair. Then the tape is very difficult to get to stay up especially at the very start. I had to clip it up to stop it falling straight off again and the slightest loss of tension on the tape and the whole tape starts to peel back and fall. I went through this a couple of times until I hit upon the idea of rolling the glass down with a paint roller in one hand and the wombat roller with the glass on in the other until the whole tape is down then back over the entire tape to complete the adhesion and get out any air bubble. Surprisingly the second tape was even more difficult to get to stay up. I thought it would adhere to the tape already laid but this didn't seem to be the case and it took a long while, all the time my arms and back aching. And don't get me started on explaining how hard it was to get the tape to go around the curve of the deck and stay lined up with the tape over the centre of the join. In the end I gave up and just let it go off centre especially the 300mm second tape. I still had the first tape completely covered and it completely covered the cove.

As I was laying the tape onto wet cove this seemed to help the first layer stay up but it also meant that it was impressionable and I got a few dints in the wet cove. Not a big problem as the bog will fill them nicely anyway. I did manage to roll a few of the dents out but in the end I felt I was making more dents than I was fixing.

Then as I was laying the bog, our old friend gravity re appeared and I dripped a lot of bog on myself. It didn't seem to matter how thick I got it, I still dripped on myself off the back of the trowel mostly. I found the really thick bog was harder to apply so I opted for a wetter mix as I was getting quite tired and sore by this stage. I think I will have to retire the grey pants I imagine they will stand up in a corner on their own.

I think it will all sand out fairly well, and the chair will make that work at least a little easier but I am not looking forward to it, and after today I am not looking forward to taping the starboard underwing to hull join either. It will have to wait until next weekend as I wont get another chance to work for that many hours in a row until then and this really is a job to be done start to finish in one go or otherwise I need to sand in between and I want to avoid that.

I am sure I will find some smaller jobs to do during the week.

June 27 Underwing sanding.

I don't think I can ever complain about the sanding on the decks of the boat because they must pale into insignificance when compared to the horror of sanding upside down. You may think I am exaggerating but not only do your arms start to ache the moment you lift the sander but you also get covered in the dust, it cant fail to fall in your face. I could only do a meter at a time and then had to go do something else for a while before returning to it, and I was only doing the 45 degree stuff on the chamfer panel, I am still to attempt the completely upside down stuff on the bridgedeck.

The good news is that the tapes are fairing out fairly well. I will probably still have to do another light layer of bog here and there. There seems to be 2 methods of bogging and fairing the tapes out, one method is to lay a fairly thick layer of bog then sand it down just once, the other method is to lay a thin layer of bog then fair it and fill again any low areas then sand again. I favour the light bog method. I think it is faster even though you sand twice both sands are lighter rather than having to sand down a thick layer all over. The other thing to remember is that apart from a meter or 2 at each end the rest is fairly well hidden so you can afford to be a little less fastidious on these sections.

I have decided that these underwing tapes don't need to be finished to move on, so my plan is to do a metre here and a metre there until the entire underwing tapes on each side are done that way it wont seem like such a tough job. The hulls do not have to be completely faired now because there is still the top halves to make and fair into the bottom halves anyway, so even if I only do a meter each time I work it wont matter.

June 29 Dinghy diversion.

During school holidays whilst Jake is down we are slowly building him and Dennis another dinghy each, only this time we are trying ply walls to see if light ply will create a lighter boat, not that the original is too heavy, as it is lighter than an equivalent rigid inflatable but solid duflex is way over engineered for the role it will have.

Last holidays we cut out the 4 bulkheads (2 for each boat) and some of the ply hull panels, yesterday we cut the bulkhead slots in the upright hull walls, the front bulkhead at 90 degrees the rear bulkhead at about 105 degrees (or 75 degrees depending on what side you are measuring from horizontal) to accommodate the usual 15 degree transom lean.

Today we started gluing the hull sides to the bulkheads to form the framework of the boat. Because we are using 4mm ply we also glued triangle shaped moulded timber bracing in each 90deg join to increase the surface area being glued and to hold the joins at 90degrees a little better. We only put these on joins on the inside of the hulls so that they will end up invisible (except perhaps inside a compartment). Outside we will cove and glass as we will need to glass the entire outside of the boat. We will also cove and tape the inside of the joins a glass any compartments inside but otherwise we will probably only resin coat the inside of the hulls.

Tomorrow we should be able to get the next hull panels onto the glued dingy and to glue the other dingy, we ran out of time this afternoon before getting the second set glued together. And of course I also still have to cove, tape and bog the glass on the starboard underside wing to hull joins.

June 30 Starboard Underwing coved, taped and bogged.

Back on the real boat today and I managed in 5 hours what it took me 7 hours to do last Sunday. I coved, taped, and bogged the starboard hull to underwing join. Some of that extra 2 hours last week was preparation for this job such as sanding the rough glue away in the join and cutting the tapes to length and rolling them onto the wombat top axle but otherwise I was working faster as I had the benefit of having already done the same job last week and ironing out the problems so that the job went more smoothly.

I started with a thicker mix of coving filler and then running a more runny mixture over the top to smooth it out. The thicker cove does not drip but it is also harder to get a good finish hence the 2 applications. Even though I did this job this way, it would seem like more work but it is much faster. Then to finish it properly I painted a layer of resin on the panel the thickness of the widest tape, and used the brush with resin to smooth out the cove even further.

I then applied the 2 tapes. I used the same method as last week, I used the wombat to wet out, then unrolled the tape onto the job, pressing it down with a paint roller as I went and this week the tape stuck down far better, it didn't try to fall off, as it stuck to the tacky resin coat on the panel. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the glass before I bogged it as I had to keep working.

Then I applied the bog. I made a bigger trowel this week so that I could apply it much wider with each stroke and the bog took half the time it took me last week to get on.

Now that the last tape is on and bogged I only have to complete the sanding of each side and apply a coat or 2 of highbuild to finish the underside of the boat.