Saturday, 12 December 2009

The weather has turned cold enough that we decided that we are not

going to be able to get decent weather anymore that would enable us

to work on the inside of the boat with it lying on its side. One of the

things that we had wanted to do was to epoxy the entire inside before

tipping the boat all the way over. The weather today is below freezing

and they are threatening us with rain for late in the day today and all

day tomorrow. Monday is supposed to be fair, and cold but we decided

that we were going to need all the help we could get to tip the boat so

it has to be done today when help is available. Anyway by Monday we

want to be able to start work on the inside of the boat.

The boat is shown in the photo below, still upside down, but with the

cradles and the roll cages on. That's Larry removing the last screws

that hold the boat to the skateboard.

Larry and I had help from two of my neighbors in the tipping

process. Steve (about my size -- short and sort of overweight) and

Jerry (more nearly Larry's size). Larry, Steve and Jerry did the

lifting to do the tipping. I was on the other side to make sure that

when it went over, that it didn't go too far or too fast. With four,

the tip was a piece of cake.

The photo below shows the boat part way over, sitting on one of

the flats on the roll cage. You can look past the boat underneath

to see the skateboard freed from the boat. The boat was rolled

until all that was left to go was the last flat of the roll cage which

would have the boat sitting upright. At that point the skateboard

was rolled around so that that last turn would be onto the

skateboard. It didn't quite make it all the way, requiring the

skateboard to be blocked from moving and the cradles slid across

the skateboard in order to be centered. It only needed to be slid

by about 8 inches or so.

The last photo, below, is with the boat finally sitting upright on the

cradles. After having looked at the boat upside down for so long,

sitting upright the boat looks VERY strange ! ! ! ! We can now

stand on stools to look inside to see how much work still needs to

be done to finish.

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

The picture below shows the cradles that will support the

boat once it has been turned over. They will be padded

with carpet before being used. The red in the photo is

a nylon strap to bind the cradle to the boat.

To make the roll cage, we felt that we needed to make measurements

of the chine positions. We felt that the chine positions according to

what is shown on previous posting are not completely relevant

because they are to the inside of the planking. We now, of course

have 1/2 inch planking covered with a layer of fiberglass with at least

four coats of epoxy. and 2 coats of paint. The figure below shows

how the horizontal positions of the chines were made.

The pertinent part is the disembodied hand that is

holding a large square with a yard stick resting on top

of it. The projection of the stick beyond the left edge

of the white board was recorded along with the height

of the bottom of the yardstick from the floor. When

we had all of the measurements, including the

distance to the side of the keel and the height of the

top of the cradle, we transfered the measurements

to a plywood panel. That gave the contour to the

panel to match the contour of the boat at the

position along the length of the boat. Here, it is

Station 7. After some discussion, we settled on the

outside shape of the roll cage. The roll cage at

Station 7, is shown in the next 3 photos. The first

two are looking from the bow facing aft. The third

is looking from the stern facing foreward.

The 2X4 that can be seen below is there to give

something really sturdy to pivot on when beginning

to tip the boat over. Not really seen in the photos

is the fact that the pads that are resting against

the boat are covered with carpet to minimize scuffs.

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

Life has been rather hectic for the last several days.

The weather hasn't been very nice either -- it has been

cold and rainy. As a result we've been talking about

how to turn the boat over so that it will finally be

upside right. After all, the inside needs to be done

too. So as to be able to move the boat from inside

the garage to the outside, it should still sit on that

"skateboard" rather than on a trailer that I do not

have. To sit on the skateboard, it will have to be

supported by some kind of cradle. After some

thought, we decided that we could combine the

cradle with a roll cage. A little drawing, using the

frames that have already been drawn -- see the

post for 20 Sept 2009 -- we decided on what the

combined roll cage/cradle ought to look like.

What we came up with is shown in the figure below:

Looking at Sta 7, there is a double line running across that

is 24 long. That double line is a 4 foot long 2X4. Attached

to it is a short 2X4. At the boat end of the attached 2X4 is

a 2X4 that is on a diagonal, the flat side of which is pressed

against the hull of the boat. There are 2 more 2X4 attached

to the outline that is outside of the hull. That outline is

the roll cage. The diagonal 2X4 and the 2X4 that are

connected to it are the cradle. To be effective, of course,

there must be 2 cradles --- we have one at Sta 7 and one

at Sta 13. The outside curve of the roll cage is currently

not entirely fixed and is expected to change when we try to

implement it.

Thursday, 3 December 2009

This morning, checked the freeboard paint for dryness. And

since it was dry, we took the masking tape off and retaped to

paint with the antifouling paint. When we finished with

putting on the antifouling, the paint had dried enough to

strip the tape. We went in and had a cup of coffee to celebrate.

The antifouling paint that we used was an antifouling bottom

paint made by Rustoleum that comes in two colors, Blue and

Black. We used the Blue. There isn't a lot of contrast between

the colors of the freeboard paint and the bottom paint, so when

comes time to put on the second coat of bottom paint, I'll use the

Black. A picture of the boat is shown below.

Wednesday, 2 December 2009

The climate here has been so cold and wet that the epoxy

that was put on last Wednesday didn't cure until Monday.

On Monday we sanded the final coat of epoxy with 80 grit

paper using a palm sander except at the filet between the

body of the hull and the side face of the keel. At the filet,

the only thing that would get in close enough was a 3"

belt sander. Since belt sanders are so aggressive, it was

loaded with a 120 grit belt. This belt sander is old and

getting tired and so runs quite slowly as compared with

my small new belt sander. The result is that the belt

doesn't seem to load up as badly as does the palm sander.

Somewhere I read that if the sand paper loads up, then

either the epoxy is not sufficiently cured, or the paper

grit is not coarse enough. In any case, the boat was sanded,

cleaned off by giving a rinse down with paper towels wetted

with acetone. That done, we rigged up a piece of plywood

about 5 feet tall and about 1 foot wide with a horizontal

arm at the height of the waterline and we marked the waterline

height along the length of the boat.

A strip of painter's tape was run just above this line so that

the freeboard could be painted --- remember the boat is still

upsidedown on the giant skateboard. We felt that since the

non-fouling bottom paint is black that it would be easier to

do it this way than to paint the black bottom first. Maybe

we are right. Anyway this was yesterday.

Since I'm retired and the economy is not good and I'm

building on a shoe string, the paint chosen is Rustoleum

#7730 Teal. Very pretty blue-green color. This is an

agricultural area -- farms are of the order of 1500 acres

(this northeastern North Carolina). The county has a

total of 13000 people! ! ! The local farmers paint all of

their machinery with Rustoleum and then leave the

equipment out in the weather. Farmers tend to be seriously

practical people. They traditionally DO NOT waste money

or any other non-renewable resource if they can avoid it.

I grew up as a subsistence farmer during the great depression

-- remember I'll be 81 next month. The engineering degree

that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog was paid for

by Uncle Sam. I tend to observe and do what local farmers

will do.

This morning, the paint was dry, so it was sanded with

100 grit paper in palm sanders, and wiped off smooth.

Yesterday, the first coat of paint took 2 quarts of paint.

Today, the second coat took only 1 quart. Below is a picture

of Larry applying the second coat of paint.

Wednesday, 25 November 2009

The day before yesterday, we sanded the entire hull with 80

grit paper, and then brushed and wiped off the sanding dust.

We then proceded to paint the fill coat. We did this in 3

batches each having 2 cups of resin with 1 cup of hardener.

The weather has been so cold and wet that the resin was

just mildly tacky this morning.

We sanded the boat with 80 grit paper just like before and

again painted it with 3 batches mixed just like before. We

don't expect to be able to get back to work on the boat until

next Monday because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and it is

supposed to be chilly for the next couple of days.

Saturday, 21 November 2009

Yesterday we started sanding down the wrinkles and seams.

In the process of doing that, we found a whole bunch of

bubbles. They were dug out and sanded and marked with

a chalk for later. We sanded for only a little more when

my wife informed me that we had to go downtown. We

decided to mix a very small batch of putty (1/2 cup of

epoxy with the the epoxy sanding dust -- mixed until it

was like tuna salad ---- we are using a 2 to 1 epoxy to

hardener). About half of that mix was mixed with

1/8 cup of hardener which thinned it so much that we mixed

more sanding dust to get a decent paste again. This was

smoothed into the divots with a cleaned Bondo spreader.

Today, we checked, and in spite of it having been quite

cold overnight, the putty was hard so we started sanding

the seams and wrinkles again. Again we found some bubbles.

Again we marked them for later and completely sanded the

entire boat. We used up the rest of the putty to fill these

new divots.

As a matter of academic interest, the putty filled holes

sanded easily and smoothly. Using putty like this seems to

be a far better way of filling a bubble than using a small piece

of glass cloth. When filling the holes, we were very careful

to get the surface as smooth as possible just using the

spreader. Our hope is that Monday morning when we can

back to it, either no sanding or only a light sanding at the

divots will be enough. We'll find out. The first thing we'll

do is to vacuum off the boat and then give it a good scrub

fore and aft and in the process check the patches at the divots.

Washed and wiped, the boat will be ready for the coat of

epoxy to fill the weave in the cloth.