I did get the large radius filet plus a 5" (125mm) wide piece of 12oz DBX fabric laid up on the inside corner of the flat topped area and float side. I also got the first lo-density top coat applied, but I ended up with a set back that needs to be fixed before moving on.
So backtracking a little bit, the last time I ordered a batch of laminating epoxy I made a mistake on the last digit of the hardener formulation which resulted in some 9226B arriving instead of the intended 9227B. And why did I do that you ask? Because my very own "Vendor Notes" page had the incorrect information.. (Doh!)
At any rate, the epoxy blend itself is actually a bit stronger than what I intended to order, but the gel time is eight hours instead of two. I also had to change the mix ratio a bit (100:27 instead of 100:28). What I didn't take into account was the filler ratio adjustments that were required and ended up with some draining on the vertical fills. That drainage resulted in some pooling at the bottom of the float.
I was lucky to catch it the first time and since the resin was starting to set up I was able to remove the excess by scraping with a drywall knife. That cleaned up most of the pooling and I assumed the rest of the fill was stiff enough to stay put. Well, I was wrong and ended up with a few areas that pooled up again (but not nearly as bad as the first time). Those areas will need some sanding before I can proceed with the second skim coat. I think what happened was the longer cure time combined with all those micro-balloon "ball bearings" just allowed the mix to slump more than expected.
The good news is that I'm almost done with that batch of epoxy.
I contacted the distributor this morning to order up another shipment of laminating and infusion resin.
Moving on to infusing the float halves, I plan on getting the final interior sanding/smoothing done this weekend so I can start working on laying up the fabrics and getting the infusion lines in place. My biggest concern at the moment is chasing leaks. I've been very fortunate so far in fixing the small leaks on table top infusions. The hull will be a whole new challenge and depending on how the first infusion goes I'm sure I'll need to make some adjustments to the infusion layout for the second half.
Once that's all done I'll start building out the bulkheads.
For the infusion itself, I plan to use the "Serial Infusion" process shown here.
It seems to be really simple with the only real variable being the distance between the parallel feed lines, but even that seems to be fairly intuitive. The big advantage I can see (in my novice opinion) is the ability to simply scrap the whole process right in the middle of the job. So, say if something catastrophic happened, you could literally shut off the pump, cut out the wet fabric and clean up the foam while leaving the other half of the layup undisturbed and in place for a second try.
I also tried to cut the beam anchors, but even with a replacement diamond blade on my table saw it just simply wasn't doing the job. If I had access to a large wet/tile saw, I'm sure that would work just fine, but since I don't have that, those will go to the machine shop instead for some water-jet cutting.
 |
| The large radius filet joining the inside edge of the float with the inside edge of the "flat topped" walking surface. The exterior corner of this angle is where the lashing tube is located and where the nets will eventually be installed. |
 |
| Still covered in peel-ply |
No comments:
Post a Comment