Saturday, January 30, 2010

Working in tight quarters

After the messy experience last night, I wondered how I was going to be able to clean up in this cramped compartment in order to be able to do further laminations.  No need to say, I was not too impressed with the quality of the tapes I had made last work night.  I ended up buying the "electrical finger" in the picture below and a few new bits for my straight and angled compressed air mini grinders

 

After extensive testing of the new equipment, a few f-words and a lot of carbon fibres stuck in my fingers, this is what the forward tape looked like:


And the aft part of the compartment:


The front bulkhead is at this point glued in at the lower third or so, using heavy compression to ensure good bonding in the area mentioned in the last post.  I found it necessary to have better support in the upper part before taping the rest of the front side of the bulkhead as this is partly a "not to be seen without a mirror" taping job. So I prepared the aft side of the bulkhead for taping. This area is huge compared to the front side of this bulkhead, but it still feels quite confined, rolling from side to side and partly supine to reach all the areas.


However, I was able to do some quality taping here. Also, extra reinforcements to the trailer U-bolt area and the front part of the front bunk top was taped in the same session.  My hair is so full of epoxy though, that I have to make an appointment with Helge, my drummer and hairdresser of choice, to fix it.


Then I made another shot on the extremely tight front end of bow web to hull tape, this time using pre wetted tape with peel ply attached manoeuvred into position using a thin piece of foam (no traditional tools such as fingers fit in here).  I was quite happy with the result and think I have managed to make this as strong as the designer can possibly have expected home builders to achieve.



Then I double taped the last piece of bow web to the front bulkhead, this being the roomiest corner of this compartment, it was almost like a walk in the park compared to the other taping.  I didn't peel ply though, it is most tempting to leave everything untouched when it lies flat and not risk to mess it all up again....


This leaves only the front side of the front bulkhead from bow web level and up to be taped the next time I go building, and I have dreaded for this for several months?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Tor , there is nothing to fear but fear itself . There are quite a few jobs that are tricky and messy ( and critical to structural integrity ), once doen it is nice to look back and say "did it !". We are now getting close to launching . Had the mast up and measured for sails . regards , Jim Buckland .

Tor Rabe said...

Thanks Jim! Saw a few pics of your boat on the F-boat pages. Looking very good. Would love it if you would share a few photos of your good solutions for a cruiser/racer.

Anonymous said...

Hi Tor , not sure if my solutions would suit everyone , I am 165cm and 60kg ! When I get it finished I will post as many photos as I can on my ( currently very out of date ) web site www.bucko.com.au . Keep at it your boat looks great . Cheers , Jim Buckland .