main hatch

My first attempt to glue the ply bearing pads for the hatch supports was a failure. The pads have to be (and weren't) EXACTLY level in all directions. Even a very minor misalignment of the pads results in the supports noticably not standing/lying straight and thus not lining up properly for the slide tracks on the hatch.
Also the heads of the 10 mm slide bolts were about 6 mm thick, and together with the insulating nylon washer I needed about 8 mm between the coaming and the supports. Because the bearing pads were (as per plans) only 6 mm thick, the bolt heads rubbed against the coaming.
I hacked the bearing pads off again, and made new thicker (10mm) pads and a MDF jig to glue the pads properly aligned. Overkill? Maybe, but...
....this time the supports alligned beautifully. My home-made slide-tracks and slides also work well. I'm happy. I put some 600 gr glass on the pads to strengthen them, as ply alone will probably wear down (too) fast.
I want to drill all the holes and make all the inserts before fairing the outside of the hull. One of the last pieces I have to make before fairing the outside are the inserts for the mast support. Here is my mold (one sideplate removed): I use the two metal studs to keep the tube at the right angle in the mold.

interior + mast step

With the hull upside down it was time to finish the upper part of the interior. Prior to fairing I made four HD inserts + extra glass for the lifting eyes. Two eyes just in front of the front beam bulkhead, and two eyes at the main bulkhead.

Fairing the interior took a lot of time and it was one of the most unrewarding jobs so far. Despite that I tried not to rush it and to work just as long as it takes to get it right. End result so far (boat is right up again). The interior is primed from the gunwale up. The part in front of the beam bulkhead is finished with polyester topcoat with a textured roller. It looks OK but I'll think about it a little bit longer before I roll the whole interior.
I finally managed to get all the alu to build the mast step. Finding a shop willing and able to sell the alu took a lot of time and effort, and in hindsight it might have been easier to build the mast step in stainless steel, like Tovio did.
I was a bit worried I wouldn't be able to saw the alu, especially the 1 cm thick plate, but it turned out to be no problem. I glued a copy of the plans to the alu sheets and cut all the parts to (roughly) the right size with a jigsaw with a blade especially made for cutting alu and some cutting paste to grease/cool the saw. Finishing can be done with a file (????) and waterproof sandpaper.
Here is a picture of some of the parts put together. As you can see they are a bit rough, I still have to file and sand them to the final shape and I've got to epoxy-glue some extra pieces to the ears. The lightening hole was cut with a normal hole saw and my drill press. It looks good, and it might be handy to tie some things to, but that's it. The weight saving is minimal.

I'm still sanding... (yeah yeah yeah)

Last post I mentioned I enjoyed the sanding of the hull, but that's over now. Sanding this hull is a lot of work, and because of all the concave curves not as easy as the float hulls.
It's nearly done now, luckily. Yesterday I sprayed some high build epoxy primer on the hull.
For the primer I'm using this 'HVLP' paint sprayer for home use. It's probably not good enough to spray the final layer of paint, but for primer it works ok.
After that it's sanding time again, this time not by hand but with an electric sander. The primer is rock hard and sanding it shows imperfections much better than when sanding the relatively soft/coarse fairing compound. I started sanding a part of the hull and it seems I have to sand off a lot of the primer (+ guide coat) to get rid of all the scrathes and other imperfections. I'll sand with grit 80 and after that spray another coat of primer which I will eventually sand with a much finer grit.
When I get tired of sanding I try to work on some other parts. For instance on the slides for the hatch. Using real jib track + slides for the hatch would be very expensive so I decided to try to make it a bit cheaper. Since the slides will only have to bear the weight of the hatch itself, I thought the slides needn't be superstrong. I made a track by sawing a groove in a 2*1 cm aluminium profile. Then I made slides from a thick polyethyleen (HDPE) cutting board.
It's easy to make the tracks&slides if you've got a table saw with adjustable depth of the saw-cut. I think sawing aluminium with a good wood-sawblade won't hurt the blade too much, but to be sure I used an old damaged saw blade (hit some screws with it earlier on).
By cutting the grooves in the slides not at the same height, I angled the sliding track 7 degrees as per plans. I'll glue the tracks to the hatch with epoxy fillets, so I won't need to bother with HD inserts and screws.
Tomorrow I'm going on vacation for two weeks, after that I hope I can get the building up to speed a bit again. Still trying to finish the boat before next summer.

Fairing hull

Last few days I and my brother have been busy sanding the fairing compound on one side of the hull. I actually quite enjoy the sanding, I try to sand about 1,5 hour a day during lunch break and then it's a nice break from the office work.
I believe a trick for succesful/easy fairing is to put a sufficient thick layer of faring compound on to make sure you're able to sand the whole surface down to the required end result in one go. Much easier than to start with a thin layer, filling low spots, sanding, filling more low spots, etc...In my experience filling and sanding low spots is difficult without messing up the surrounding area which previously was fair.

Still a lot of sanding to do before this hull side is ready....


After a while I found myself only working with the four tools below: a bigish longboard (self made of cutof sandwich panel with paper glued with contact glue), a smaller and less wide longboard from a marine supplier shop, a brush and a drywall-trowel (hope that's the english word) to put the fairing compound on.
It's difficult to work on the concave part of the hull with the big(ger) longboard, so I ended up doing almost all of the sanding in that area with the small sanding board. As far as I can see now the result is still fair (enough), but maybe defects will show once some paint is on. Anyway, the bigger part of this hull area will never be seen once the boat is finished because it's under the wingnets.
The drywall trowel works really well: it's much thicker (stiffer!) than the normal iron squeeges and after some practice it's easy to put on a layer of fairing putty with a consistent thickness. I only use metal squeeges - they're easy to clean with just a paint heat gun and a scraper. On the first hull half I have used the 'ridge' method to put the fairing compound on, but on the other half I'll probably skip that step and just trowel a layer on.

Port side windows + mastpost

Putting on ridges of fairing compound with a candy bag on the port side. This time I put on more ridges than I used to do, about every 5 cm, and this worked better for me.After the ridges have been sanded flush they are used as guides to put two layers of fairing compound on.

Then it's time to sand with the long board (P40). Notice the bad spot above the front window in the picture below? On this spot there was some not cured fairing compound - apparantly not properly mixed by me. Stupid and some extra work....I'll make sure this won't happen again.

I used a different manner than on the starboard side to mark the cutouts. This time I used the templates to mark the outline of the windows, and then used a flexible batten (and some nails) to mark the cutout (2,5 cm overlap window) in stead of just sliding the templates 2,5 cm up/down. I believe this way the cutout is slightly more 'fair'. Not that anyone will ever notice once the windows are glued on.....

The hardwood mastpost is glued in place, and has to be trimmed and glassed to the cabin roof. I'm thinking about putting a lifting eye in the deck just aft of the mast foot (and two lifting eyes just aft of the aft beam mounts), so I'll probably strengthen this area a bit with UD running up on the aft side of the mast post to the deck + some biax on top of that.

With all the basis components and cutouts done, I'll put the hull upside down and start faring the ceiling and sides of the interior and the outside of the hull.

Doing some leftover tasks

I still had to do the exterior laminate for one beam mount. The other three I laminated while the hull was standing upright on its supports. Stupid: it's much easier to work on the mounts whith the hull laying on its side, like I did with this last mount. You can easily roll the hull on your own.
I have learned it's easiest to laminate the hull-upper folding strut slot corner later on with a light cloth instead of trying to do that while doing the 'main' laminate.

I'm also working on the mast post. It is made of a piece of hardwood. In the picture I'm using soms scrap wood to measure the angle I need to cut the mast post.

Karel Michielsen urged me to strengthen the supports for the anchor well hatch with a filet and a piece of glass, which I thought was a good idea indeed. Here's how I did it.
At the moment I'm also using a lot of time to search for companies to deliver the hardware, masts, sails, etc. I'm having a hard time finding a store to buy the metals and bolts. I bought the 1" stainless steel ball at the ebay-shop of toolsupply (thanks to Grant's blog) but that's about it till now. In the US there are some very nice online stores for small quantities metal, like http://www.industrialmetalsales.com/ and http://www.onlinemetals.com/ in Seattle but the shipping costs of those companies to Europe is very high. Any tips to get metals in Europe (6061 T6 Alu and 316 Stainless) are appreciated!

hatches and cockpit floor

This weekend Karel Michielsen http://home.ozonline.com.au/f41_sail33/ paid me a visit (he was in Holland meeting family). It was really nice to talk to such an experienced builder. I'll try to pass on some of the tips he gave me in this blog. One of those tips was to put a sanding disk (grit 40 or 80)on the angled grinder and use that to touch up fiberglass seams, spills and generally do all other kinds of sanding.
Maybe this is no news for some, but I had never thought of using the grinder for this kind of work. In Holland the angled grinder is considered by most people to be just a tool for cutting & grinding metal and not a sanding tool. Anyway, I did some tests with the grinder and with some practice it indeed is a perfect tool for cleaning up fiberglass, cutting out bubbles and smoothing tape edges.

Anchor locker hatch will lie on some supports cut out of some leftover sandwich panel.
This is how it will look. I'll not bolt through the hinges. Instead I'll drill oversised holes in the hatch and deck, dig out a bit of foam and then fill with HD putty. Then I'll tap a thread to bolt the hinges with short bolts.
I made a small foam coaming for the forward hatch. Has to be touched up a bit and then I'll put some glass on.
Cockpit floor still has to be doubled. Good opportunity to get rid of the scrap foam pieces. Some of those pieces got a little sunburnt during the last two years. The divinycell is apparently not very UV resistant....