By Tuesday, we had finished installing all cedar planking. As the whisky plank went up that afternoon, we held off our celebrations until after work, and wasted no time in fairing the hull. Three levels of sanding was done to achieve a perfect fairness from stem to stern. First, the entire hull was gone over with a belt sander in broad sweeping motions to remove any noticeable bumps and un-fairness. After that, we attacked the hull with three foot sanding boards in a criss crossing motion at 45 degree angles. After everything was to our liking, and we had thought the boat was completely fair, Brendan has us go over the boat again, feeling with our hands and searching for bumps that we missed previously. These bumps were marked in pen and planed out, then faired to perfection with the sanding board. This sounds like a very long process, and indeed it would be solo, but with three people working at it, it took a full two days, which is pretty good. Brendan commented by saying that this was one of the most fair hulls he has seen right after planking, a notable compliment to both Alfie and the naval architect Matthew Smith.
Once the hull was fair, we went over any low spots with a special thickened epoxy, and also filled in the screw holes that we made in securing the planks to the molds as Dave cut out the slot in the keelson for the centerboard. Also, nail indents were filled where the fiberglass lay up will be, which is around the stem, keelson, skeg, horn timber, and stern. These fillings were again sanded to assure smoothness and fairness. Brendan created and glued on an outer stem piece and it was shaped to a fine point. Afterwards, I rounded it over so it would accommodate the fiberglass cloth. Then, the ultra thick, double weave fiberglass cloth was fitted, cut, and marked to its specific locations. Over 10 quarts of epoxy was used to wet out the cloth. The epoxy was applied with paint rollers, then the air bubbles were removed with special fiberglass serrated rolling pins. Cloth was applied to the stem and two layers for the keelson.
On Saturday, Brendan and I came in to finish up the fiberglass clothing of the skeg, where three layers are applied, and two for the horn timber, and two also for the stern. In there hours, we were able to complete this and call it a day.
After this, the Magic 30 is reinforced in many respects. When this boat is completed, it will be stronger then any wooden boat that I know.
There is a new system for the time lapse updates. Instead of updating the entire video, I will cut it into week clips, so you wont have to fast forward or watch the older video to get to the new video. When I get time, all previous posts will correspond. Enjoy!
week 8 clip
No comments:
Post a Comment