Deck Beams

Hi all. Deck beams and king planks went in today although not really necessary with a boat of this size i thought the process of fitting them would be a good exercise. The top picture shows the clamping method devised by Justin our instructor for claming down the plywood part of the deck. The next step is laying the oak and sapele veneers to match the bulkheads. We are slowly getting there and now have an extra persons help.

Chris

Bulkheads

Today we began fitting the bulkheads in the boat. I began by spliling the shape onto plywood. These were then covered in oak and sapele veneers and fisxed to the boat with epoxy filets.

Inwhales

Today we fitted and shaped the iwhales. The shaping was done using the router table to cut notches in the oak to give the scuppered effect. The next step was steaming the inwhales which is shown in the top picture. The oak was steamed for an hour and a half as it needs 1 hour per 1 inch of material. Altogether a very productive day although still so much to do.

Chris

Sent from my iPhone

Infusion

The boat was success fully infused over the last few days. Although the process only takes are an hour the resin need several days to cure properly. This meant time could be put to making the foils for the boat. I will update on these in the next few days.

Cheers

The boat ready and set up for the infusion



You can see in the photo below the resin flow front wetting out the layer under the vacuum bag. You can see the wooden strips underneath.




The boat out of the vacuum bag and a very successful infusion despite the panicky nature of the boat builder.


And finally the very wasteful nature of this process although it doses produce a really good quality laminate. All of this has to go in the bin.

Vacum Infusion

Image from http://www.gurit.com/files/documents/Infusion_brochure_2010.pdf

Unlike the outside of the hull wich was done using a wet layup method i plan to glass the in sde of the hull using a process called vacum resin infusion which without going into too much detail uses a vacum to draw liquid resin through the dry glassfire to wet it out. The digram to the right gives and rough idea of the process. There is also a video demonstrating the set up and an explanation.

Fitting the Gunwhales

The gunwhales were fit over the past couple of days as can be seen in the photos the number of clamps required is large when bending solid peices of oak around a curve. On one side the boat started to make some worrying cracking sounds under the weight of the clamps and so had to be supported. The next step will be glassing the inside of the hull. Cheers

Chris

Cleaning up the inside

The next job was to turn the boat over and start cleaning up the inside and fairing it off. Most of this was done outside as it meant not having to tent off the boat and aslo i got work in the glorious sunshine.