Friday, October 19, 2007

Winter on it's way, time to work on the workshop

So, I finally got the hole in the wall so the exhaust from the heater is let loose in the wilderness (and not in the adjacent room where I get my fresh air and now Mr "Sanding" is working on his car). The downside with this is that when the wind is westerly (which it tends to be, especially when the weather is unpleasant) cold air is being forced in to my workshop. To avoid this I installed a PVC kind of curtained hatch/register, not quite in to the technical terms, over the let out. This melted down in less than a minute after the heater started. It turns out this hatch does not work as intended after melt-down. (I know there is a lot of talking about heating and weather, but it actually is an important factor here. This summer I would have been able to work with epoxy in a tent in the garden for 4-6 hours for two days! If I didn't have a job I would probably been able to do ten times that.)


Today I went out in the garage and found some scrap metal (I never throw away anything, it might come handy some day, you know) and welded a box. Into this box I inserted two pieces of weather-protecting sheet metal for roof edges pivoting on rivets:

A bit more overview, inside of box:

And mounted it on the wall over the exhaust outlet:


It almost worked. I will weld pieces of machine screws to the rivets, pointing upwards and a bit inwards and adjust with the correct amount of nuts in order to balance the register right.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

More fairing pictures

I found that the surface of the starboard float deck was pretty even after sanding down the latest layer of fairing compound. Still some differences visible in the surface due to different pressure from the sanding paper, but I am not able to feel any unevenness with my hands. I just got a new neighbor in the workshop, haven't met him yet but I've been told he is a car body worker and his nickname is "Sanding". Guess I will have a chat with that bloke. Lots of dust on the surface and too poor light to make really sharp shots unfortunately:


Still some work to do around the wing net rail attachment points, and the chainplate of course.

Frontal view:


Then I cut out the holes for the hatches. At first I dug out foam with a screw shown in front. Then I used the 10mm rondell on the "lynsliper". Status after the screw digging:


And after the "lynsliper":


And after filling the edges and covering the bog up with peel ply:


In the case of nothing to work on on the floats (due to curing, for instance) I have some cardboard patterns for main hull flat panels ready. The down side is that my thorough "calculations" on how to place all pieces in order to make as little as possible offcuts (I see Biol did the same thing) are made from the parts for the cuddy-aft version, I have now decided to build standard-aft.

Fairing

I'm covered in dust. And I am not able to upload images today.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Details on attaching wing net rail

Builder tip: Do finish all work on the chain plate before fitting wing net rail!

I chose to attach the vertical supports to the wing net rail before fitting it to the float. Seems to have worked out well, other ways may work as well, but I did this for better access. Then I bedded the five attachment points in fiber reinforced putty on the deck, supporting the rail with temporarily rigged stringers. Then I covered the "legs" of the rail with tape, overlapping 4 cm in each direction out on the deck.



I used a bit excessive putty , making sure it would fill up around all edges. Here showing the underside:


After this first stage was cured I cut out a piece of MDF to use measuring the height of the rail over the deck. Making sure the height was even fore and aft, the vertical supports was bedded in fiber reinforced putty and strapped down with a stringer. I also placed the deck side tape and a piece of peel ply on the inner side and let cure:


And:


Then the final lamination on both sides. I always use peel ply. This makes an excellent surface for further laminations or fairing compound, and it helps smoothing out the tape ends, leaving less work building up and fairing.


This shot shows the slightly different angle on the two vertical supports due to the different width of the deck. The rail is positioned relative to the midline of the float deck.


Then I covered it all in yet another layer of fairing compound:

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Making patterns and mast inquiries

And I have been busy going over all my patterns, redoing them to fit the latest choice of model and also getting all the updates in.

And I made an inquiry regarding the F-22R carbon wing mast to Marstroem and received a mail from Torbjorn Linderson where he tells me that he is already working on the design and the price is probably around €10.000 + tax, hopefully somewhat lower.

I am also investigating the possibility of building a mast that do not require spreaders, this has to have a considerably larger profile in the middle part (approximately the double of the section described in the plans), but it would be nice not to have the spreaders and wires around when raising and lowering the mast. I guess the weight of this mast will be decisive on whether it is a realistic option. (Class racing rules will not, unfortunately, be a prohibiter for custom designs here in Northern Europe. And if this proves wrong, I will change the mast with great pleasure).

Slow progress, workshop modifications, deciding on which model again

After the last posting I first had to work a lot for a week. Then I went to the shop (two days trip) to change the 130 foam I got when asking for 200 the last time I was there. And the guy had this comment: The 130 would do, you know.. Thank you for your effort in redesigning the F-22!

Anyway, after seeing the pictures of Oliver's main hull I started to wonder whether I would rather prefer to have more space indoor than a large cockpit. The reason why I changed my mind from full cabin and aft cockpit (which I have all the form frames cut for and all bulkhead full size patterns transferred to cardboard of) to aft cabin and cuddy cabin was that I would not like to have a too crowded cockpit, and I liked the more sheltered cockpit, and I liked the idea of a large bed, and the weight distribution when cruising...... From the pictures mentioned above it seems like the smallest cockpit alternative is more than sufficient in such a small craft, there will never be more than four people sailing this boat anyway. And I live close to the polar circle. So I changed my mind again, after a "poll" with some of my friends. Øyvind's arguments was, as usual, decisive. The point is, I'm building a cruiser. I'm doing everything I can to make this cruiser as fast as possible, but it is a cruiser. That's why I'm building a Farrier design in the first place! (New drawing to the right)

Then I had to make a 6" hole in a 12" concrete wall in order to let the diesel fumes out and not recycle it in my ventilation system. This is the situation now:


I have also done a little bit of fairing, filling in the gaps between the ridges with two layers of fairing compound, it proves it should have been three layers as the fairing compound tends to shrink a lot when curing (or is it just the drag from the putty-knife?) and then long boarding it down.


As you can see from the next pictures I also attached the wing net rail on the starboard float. I do not want any more fairing compound than necessary and this results in a few hard spots. I went over and wetted these out with epoxy again today, the aramid tends to "raise it's fur" when sanded.



And