Tonight I was able to complete planking on the outboard half of the starboard float.
I also had time to sweep up the shop and get things organized for starting on the inboard half.
I did manage to get the process down to about 30 minutes per plank for the 12" (305mm) widths and about 25 minutes on the 6" (153mm) planks. That includes the time required to trim the plank edges if required and insert all the screws from the backside.
It's a time consuming process for sure, but it feels good to see progress.
I'm thinking the fairing process will be the opposite in that you still spend all day doing working but there isn't a whole lot to show for it except a layer of dust over the whole shop.
Anyway, some pics of the progress so far:
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This is larger than the final product since I have a 3" (75mm) flange built in for the vacuum infusion.
But looking at this picture, I'm just now realizing that I cut the bow section flush and will need to go back and glue an extension in place to create a flange. :/ |
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| This will eventually be a really nice transition between the round float and the flat topped area. |
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Lots of work left to do on the foam before it's ready for laying up the fabric.
First I will sand down all these ridges to produce a smooth interior and then run a Dremel bit along the seams to open them up to receive a bead of epoxy filler. (See Below) |
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| I did end up finding out how much pressure I could put on a piece of foam. |
Moving on to another subject, I have noticed that some builders will lay down a layer of tape or some sort of plastic film between the foam planks so they don't end up causing problems with epoxy running through and sticking to the battens later on. I didn't do that, but wanted to make sure it wouldn't cause problems so I took a couple pieces of scrap foam and set them on a board with an extra large gap, then I mixed up some epoxy and Cabosil to a "cake frosting" consistency and applied it with a disposable cake decorating bag between the pieces of foam. I was hoping to get a good fill without pushing epoxy onto the mounting boards. Then I wanted to tool off the surface to produce a concave joint fill that could be back filled with a lighter (micro-balloon) second layer to ensure the joints will be air tight. The test went really well and the colors even matched pretty closely which was a bonus I guess.
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| Filled gap before tooling |
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| It's hard to make out, but the joint is tooled down to a concave surface |
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| Not a great picture, but you can see that I was able to get about an 80% fill without touching the bottom on this extra large gap. |
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| A pretty decent shot of the bottom side of the test piece. It looks as if the epoxy bead rises above the surface, but it doesn't. |
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