Thursday, July 28, 2011

All those couple of hundred small things...part 4

Very soon done with the mast now.  I had a solid carbon piece inserted side to side as attachments for the cunningham.  I will have a 6:1 system on one side and a rope leading trough the sail to the other side.  Reefing the same way.


Today I laminated a previously overlooked junction between the mast socket plate and the forward mast wall.


I made up the foam core of the forward mast support.


And glued the foam pieces together.  Also shown in the foreground is the mast rotator arm getting the last wrap of BD fabric


I've been sanding down the epoxy in the mould


And prepared the core with HD inserts

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

All those couple of hundred small things.... part 3

Because of my mast's dimensions, I had to remove the pop top in order to raise the mast.  Also, the aft mast support fell apart at the end of my journey, only cosmetic damage to the pop top fortunately.  Anyway, two good reasons to make a new support.  The new one is extended about 25 cm compared to the plan, and have an extra horizontal connection.  Also, it is widened at the upper end to accommodate rollers for the large mast section.


I also finally got around to make a permanent brace with a working connection to the traveller.



I am also working on a better (permanent and working) front mast support.  I moulded a lower piece to fit the bow web, using tape to pack out in order to make room for marine carpet lining.


Tape removed, trial fitting with carpet


Then there were several things to finish on the mast.  First I had to laminate the external junction on the front half (spreader height)


One layer 0º, then two staggerd layers of 45º/45º.


Then, as I wasn't paying attention when making it, "hanen" (sorry, don't know the English name) was too big and had to be shortened to give room for the sail.  Also had to terminate the dead end otherwise.  Unfortunately, the sheave does not have the optimal position, it should have been about 1 cm further forward.


I have also fitted the mast end cap and mounted the VHF antenna and the Nexus wind vane.  The cables are not there yet.  I will also make arrangements for an easy attachment of a red battery powered LED for trailering.



One daggerboard mould half is now epoxy impregnated, the other half is almost done with the repairs from the defect in the blank.


Mixing epoxy for the mast end of the forward mast support using an old style scale

Saturday, July 23, 2011

All those couple of hundred small things...on a horrible day in Norway

Slowly approaching launch, at the same time this afternoon turned out to be the bloodiest in Norway's history since WW2.  At this point it seems like a 32 yo Norwegian conservative Christian, right-wing extremist is responsible.  At least 17 people dead in two attacks.

Boating is more peaceful.  I have laminated the first fibreglass parts for the boat - the folded beam retaining brackets.  The plans specifies no carbon in these parts as it will be too stiff.  I made two moulds, here is the first set being compressed in the mould.
 

First set out and on the table as the last set is being compressed during cure.


I'm working on a carbon mast rotator arm, the core and the compact fibreglass plates for hole endurance is now ready.


The starboard half daggerboard mould  had a defect in it.  I have tended to this defect in between every other tasks, and it is now epoxy filled to the extent that parts of the mould is now steady, a piece will have to be filled with fairing compound and the moulds will be sanded and epoxy impregnated.  Time consuming this fixing, as I have had to pour epoxy in in different angles using gravity to ensure full stability of the part over the void.



The F22R comes with all the go fast tweaks(well, I don't know, but at least a lot of them) already covered by the designer.  Lowering floats in exchange with slightly increased folded beams is one of them.  I planned to lower the floats about 12mm or 1/2".  So I cut glass for spacers and measured and found that 9600 gsm of dry glass is about 12 mm and laminated a piece of this, using the above anvil(?) to compress the laminate.  In retrospect, it turned out that this anvil was able to compress the laminate more than expected and the plate turned out to be about 10 mm only.  So a sub maximum tweak this is.  Then I had to make spacer washers from the plate using a hole saw at very low speed and plenty of water for cooling.


The spacer washers


F22R performance option and eye bolt for front net wire shown.  The weather conditions also possible to imagine, it being about 12 deg and very wet.  Norwegian summer, hurray!


Splicing the bob stay side lines from 5mm Dynex Dux.  The background is the bright looking shore 75 urethane I sourced for various bumper pads.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

All those couple of hundred small things.... part 1

I'd like to thank all who posted comments to my latest postings. It's really inspiring to get that kind of remarks to my work. Then, and a bit contradictory to the previous sentence, I have been, for the first time in about five years, a bit fed up of boat building the last week or so, since I returned from my holidays. The boat was rigged in the garden and emptied from all the tools, parts, sails etc, but it has been hard to get on with all those hundreds of things necessary before launch. However, I can feel I'm getting back in the groove now.

I'm still working on some details on the mast. I haven't weighed it yet, but as soon as everything is fitted it will be, and I'll publish the result without any unnecessary delay. It's in the hood of 50 kg from the feel of it. Here are some details of the way it is rigged:

High load halyards are 2:1, that is main, jib and screacher. Main reason is taking load off of the clutches and the mast. Main exits at the base of the mast and leads directly to a winch.

Two headsail halyards exits mast in a pair of moulded recesses each side about 2m above deck, goes trough a Spinlock XAS clutch and a backup Schaefer self jamming horn cleat. A Colligo static snatch block at the deck will lead the halyards temporarily to a winch when needed.

I have had a great e-mail conversation with John Franta at Colligo Marine regarding the standing rigging ++ as I have had some special wishes as I made my own mast. This is his solution to my not-bolting-lots-of-steel-to-the-mast shroud attachment inquiry. Photograph showing the bitter end of the port "anchor" (Chinese stop knot) and the attachment of the starboard shroud to the "anchor" ring. (sorry, this terminology is difficult in a foreign tongue). Also shown is the Genua halyard moulded exit and the Ronstan Core block as an outside sheeve block. Loop will be switched to newly developed heavy duty loops from Colligo Marine. This set up allows the halyard blocks to freely turn as the mast rotates. By the way, I doubt I will ever have a Genua on this boat, a fractional spin for use with reefed main is more likely, I live in the 60's you know...
One more thing - peel ply clearly visible here. I will sail a bit to see if I'm happy with the sideways stiffness of the mast. Easy to add some more UD at this point, but it is designed to be as stiff or a bit stiffer than the original design (including diamonds). As soon as I'm happy the mast will be faired and painted in a light (white/yellow?) colour.

And here is the Colligo "turnbuckle"

Bolt rope track. PVC lining. Might have to make a nice carbon pre feeder, and maybe some sort of temporary lazy cradle for rising/lowering. Have to sail a bit to see the needs.

Just a shot of the nice molded pre bend.  About 78mm (3"), and the sail seemed to fit it very well.  The fore and aft stiffness seems to be a bit less than expected, which I regard as a good thing.


These two shots are showing (so far, I don't have a daggerboard yet) the jib track that squeezes in between the mast foot and the daggerboard head.  Daggerboard have to be partially lowered for it to work.  Sheets will be very similar to the system on the Multi 23 (unfortunately I didn't find out until after this solution was developed, in cooperation with Silas.) Double block at the close end is for 3:1 positive mast rotation control.


Silas (naval architect, owner of a set of F22 plans) also designed and made this custom two (three actually) part fairlead for where the jib furler lines exits the hull sides. They will be further led trough a Colligo two line two part fairlead on the inner beam top and terminated at the traveller support.

At last today's achievement:  The first beam bolting plate fitted.  Very tight fit.

Thursday, July 07, 2011

Sail fitting/testing

Pictures from my phone. Forgot to take a picture of the spinn, but there were no wind to fill it.

Self tacking glider jib.  Fitted perfectly.  Can't wait to try it.

Furled jib

Screacher.  Seemed to be deeper than I specified but the sailmaker was certain it would fulfill my needs.  Time will show.


Main raised for the first time.  What a great looking boat

Temporarily cunningham and mast rotator fitted.  It was beautiful to see the leeward combined curve of the mast and sail.

Very light wind, still gathering some power

Hardware and folding system, a retrospective story

After post curing the mast, by the way I achieved 45 deg C for 40 hours or so - not as much as I hoped for but hopefully better than nothing - I had to start assembling the boat.  We are southbound for our holidays and it was necessary to bring the boat down for sail fitting if any sailing is going to take place this summer.



The main hull was placed in the garden for fitting.  I bought a tent but didn't find the time to put it up, so some working was done in the typical rainy and cold summer weather. Here the pulpit and hatches are mounted, and clearly the lexan windows are fitted.

I ordered all the metal parts for the boat some three years ago at a local workshop.  They are doing a very good job but at a tremendously slow rate.  After lots of visits and calls I finally got the aluminium anodized and the last steel and titanium parts made the same weekend I was going to travel south.  Hence, quite hectic assembly.  I have also not been good at taking pictures of the process.  I was very lucky that Silas stayed for a couple of days helping me with this.


Folding system being assembled.  Workers in all sizes taking part in the process.


So, fitting the folding system.  I have been very cautious to follow the plans exactly, and so I did with this assembly.  After fitting the bolt backing plates and the compression pads, the beams were connected to the boat via the upper folding struts and final alignment was about to start.  Then we discovered that neither of the beams could be set remotely in the correct position.  The first thought was that the upper folding struts were not made according to plans (the first set weren't, as the holes were 3mm too big for the bushings), but this turned out to be correct this time.  So we had to go on and shorten the inner ends of the beams quite a bit (6-8 mm I guess) and we finally was able to move the beams in to the correct position.  When swinging the lower folding struts to the hull at this stage they all fitted perfectly central and even on the hull recesses.  We bolted the brackets to the hull and was very anxious to test the folding system.  That is when we discovered we had a Farrier non folding trimaran.

Further trimming of the beam inner ends corrected this, as seen outlined on one forward beam here, this was only restricted by the window.


When we finally got all beams sufficiently cut back, all beams folded flawlessly.  As a bonus, all four beam bolts were fitted quite easily without having to modify anything.  The thrill is now if this still fits after adding the last beam end pieces and trimming the compression pads......

Then fitting the floats to the beams.  This was not difficult, especially not when we did it like this picture shows, with the float upright and the beams partially folded.


A series of four shots showing Silas testing the unfolding ability of the port float.  One finger start of the motion


Two hands but still smiling


allmost there


Bolting the aft beam down


Port float folded and strapped to the trailer, boat steady for attaching starboard float.