Almost prepared

Preparing for infusion of the lower leading edge half.  I have decided placement of halyard out, rope clutches and horn cleats. Carbon, peel ply and release film have been cut.  Foam is cut with recesses for the hardware.

Halyard out mould inserts.  Mould sealer and two layers of release wax have been applied

Release film, peel ply and carbon ready to go in the mould after another two layers of wax.

Some nice French hardware arrived.  Karver KF1 for the screacher.  Identical furler for the jib.

More mast building

Not much visible progress, but I have a lot of preparations done now, so the next infusions are getting closer.

I did the inside join.  Double layer triaxial, 5cm and 10 cm overlap, wet layup vacuum bagging.

Heat treating the bag.

Then I cut all the foam for the centre web.  15mm 100kg/m^3 Divinycell. I have no idea how to laminate it yet.  My vacuum table is 3m long, so laminating there will still be 2 joins on the upper half.  It might be possible to use the floor as a laminating table.  I might laminate one side, and then the other side after mounting, lapping down the UD recess on the side.  Or just plain double side laminate and glue to flanges with micro fibre saturated epoxy.

Using wire to scribe the shape of the mould, I am making moulds for the head sail tabs.  My wife's idea, thanks!

Cutting foam for the leading edge part.  I decided to use foam around the bend close to the join.  This way I can sand down and round off the shape at the joining height.  Mostly a visual thing, I guess.

Thermo formed mast foam

I also made mould inserts to form the halyard in/out recesses

And I was able to get a couple of daylight pictures of the floats.  Snow on deck.  Will definitely be visible on the fjord.

Joined

I finally decided to just do it.  I lined up the two pieces the best I could and made parallel marks on the sides.  Then cut them with my Bosch GOP oscillating saw.  Mixed up epoxy and cotton chop and end joined, using a drill bit inside the sail track to align.  After curing I sanded the outside of the mast and laminated a 10 cm wide tri axial fabric over the join, using the poor man's vacuum bag method.  This will make an airtight join and I will laminate the inside with regular vacuum bagging.

While waiting for the edge glue to cure I made up a jig for cutting the track for the sail.

It is not easy to show the mnolded pre bend in a picture, but here's the two pieces joined.

Next challenge: Joining.

I demoulded another perfect piece of composite mast today.  The challenge now is joining the two pieces, getting the pre bend right, and in tight quarters as the workshop was built for a 7m boat, not a 10,7m mast.

As seen the mast just fits the diagonal of the workshop, with the central pillar making the access a bit challenging. 

Aligning with a line, trying to match the pre bend with my calculations based on measures from the mould.  It's difficult to see the difference to the curve when changing the pre bend by a cm.  If anyone have a good idea on how to do this I will be happy to hear from you.

Floats in the dawn. Infusion.

I had to take a picture of my "motivation installation" in the garden when I got home from work today.

Later I went to the workshop to infuse the next mast piece.  I tried to take some video of the process, but unfortunately this did not work out in a manner that could enlighten the process.  Only -0,97bar and no detectable leak today as well.  So I infused.  There were no detectable bubbles in the bag during the entire process.  Low pressure passing by?  Might explain the strong winds and snowing horizontal ...

I infused about 8 kg of epoxy.  I used the heat gun to really heat up the epoxy as it entered the bag.  Ambient temp 22ºC.  This part is 1,5m longer than the previous, and have more reinforcements around the sail track. The epoxy is spreading nicely.

I made a kind of a tent over the mould and used the heat gun as an extra heat source. 

A fan sucking from the other end.  Thermometer showing ambient temperature and the temperature inside the distal end of the mould.

 After a while the exothermic reaction was clearly starting, the heat being easily detectable by touching the outside of the mould.  I left as I was assured the gelling had started.  I expect to uncover another high quality composite part tomorrow.

Floats finished, main hull going home, mast ready for infusion

The floats are finished with yellow sides, white on the deck and anti-skid.  I have to test the anti-skid, but it looks and feels like it's gonna work.  Not enough light for a picture, but they are waiting for mounting out in the garden, I'll get a picture, but I won't be around the house in daylight until next week end I'm afraid.

I picked up the main hull after the post cure.  It's now waiting outside the workshop for the mast build to finish and will then be faired.  I will hire help for this. This is the first trailering photo of Panta Rei:

This evening I continued the mast build, and the bag pulled >90% quite immediately. 

However, similar to last time, it stopped at 96-97% for a long time, falling really slowly, no leaks detectable.  My theory is that it's the moist in the carbon gassing out.  Last time it fell to -1 bar after a while at 97%.  The temp and the pressure in the bag is consistent with eventual water boiling.

The new but identical resin trap with gauge:

Looking up inside the mast, really big bag, getting better each time:

It got late, so I closed the valves, shut off the pump and will run a long drop test (or pressure rise test) until tomorrow.  For further reading on vacuum resin infusion I recommend Henny's publications on his blog and the main Fram pages.

I'm back!

It's good to be back after a week out of town.  This morning I dropped off the main hull at the paint shop in order to get it post cured for 5 hours @ 70ºC.  They were about to spray the float deck anti skid and I'll pick up the floats tomorrow.  We'll discuss solutions for the main hull fairing job.

Tonight I was able to wax the mast mould again, cut carbon and foam, join the sail track tube and lay it all up until the peel ply.  The lay up is 1 layer triaxial -45º/0º/45º 634gsm, 2 layers narrow 0º/90º 400gsm over sail track, 1 layer 10 cm wide 90º UD 400 gsm over the sail track, with extra 8 cm layer at sail head at full sail and all three reefs,  8mm perforated Divinycell H100, 1 layer triaxial -45º/0º/45º 634gsm,  1/2" PVC tube sail track, 1 layer narrow 0º/90º 400gsm inside sail track, peel ply.

Next is release film, RDM, the T-shaped aluminum profiles for making joining flanges and recesses for lateral UD fibres, the three spiral tube feed and suction lines and finally the vacuum bag.  I hope to shoot tomorrow night.