tools and stuff

As the progress photo is quite boring:

here are a few pictures of the tools I use and like

 

A friend of mine called it a "ladies drill". But after working a lot upside down I know a really small and light drill is best (festool cxs)

 

 Fein is great (but I'd probably buy a cheaper bosch the next time). Powerfile is good for cleaning up excess polyurethane glue.

 The festool skillsaw costs an arm and a leg, but a great time saver.

 

Especially because I decided to keep it simple and use just one kind of epoxy this thing is great. It's a sticky stuff dispenser. Mixing up a milkshake cup of epoxy just takes a minute.

And finally I just ordered a set of flexicats (http://www.flexicat-tools.com/en/product-start-pack.php but with a longer sanding board) . I'll let you know how I fair (ouch. that was a bad one)

second float half laminated

I know it looks like a mess, but I think this one will come out better than the first (which had two bubbles)

First float half popped

The learning curve of building a farrier is steep and expensive as collegue farrier builder Nico Peursum (www.nyker.nl) mentioned. The first laminate really sucked, and I pulled it out before the epoxy set. The second time I tried vacuum bagging it, and that also sucked. I've now decided that I'm only gonna vacuum bag the parts that really matter like bulkheads. And the parts where resin buildup is likely (like the stringer in the floats). For a slightly curved surface manual layup with peelply is sufficient for what I want to achieve (a really fast cruiser). If you oversaturate carbon, slight wrinkles in the peelply appear. And I've deciced to live with some of them as I want to be sure the carbon is saturated. Some grams will be added.

When building a boat it's nice that you get to reverse engineer the plans. When I was laminating the front beam connection in the float I was amazed that Ian prescribed as much as 6 layers of the heavy fabric. (I'm using 400g/m2 as heavy fabric and 200 g/m2 as light fabric)  But then I realized that the whole weight of the boat would concentrate on this point when falling down a big wave. It's nice to work with plans from a really experienced multihull designer.  Anyway: on to the pictures.

This is my float plank bending rig. It's a terras heater combined with some mould cutouts. It works really nice plus I got a tan.

This is the laminated first float half with bulheads fitted. In case Ian is reading this blog: yes the fibres in the bulkheads are at 0-90 degrees.

One lives one learnes. For the second float half I've decided to go for narrower planks (20cm instead of 25-35 cm). These are more easily handled and extra time required is minimal. The second hull half looks to be much nicer that the first. (though I think they will be just as strong). I use Bison polyurethane glue which foames up while setting thus making sure the whole seam is covered.