Saturday, January 30, 2010

Finishing the internal bow area, finally started

I have not been looking forward to this job.  All the time since Jim's awful but correct comments on this post I've been looking for a suitable manner to solve this problem in a structurally sound way without having to dig out everything and then go on with a close to impossible laminating job with uncertain outcome.  Given Jim's comments on how tricky this is, and I totally believe, I was looking for a better way to get a good bond between the bow web, tape and the bulkhead.  My solution was like this (forgot to put the hull in the drawing, you'll just have to imagine):



I laminated the carbon, put the HD inserts in, and placed the bulkhead with a generous layer of micro fibre thickened epoxy on the surface in place.  Then mounted a compression system to keep the bulkhead firmly pressed against the bow web while curing.  I'm not sure this is actually better, but I'm sure this was the good part of what I was able to do that night.  The forward taping between the bow web and the hull was extremely difficult, and I was just not able to place the staggered tapes the way I wanted.  Most of it is where it should be, but there certainly is something to clean up 'til next time...

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