Float progress

Starboard Float Inboard half is now covered with vacuum film.

I really had to get this done first thing before starting on anything else, because once you start pulling fabric off the rolls, it limits other things you can do in the shop due to dust and contamination issues.

The float is now sealed with no penetrations for tubing and will stay this way until I get the epoxy supplies ordered and delivered.

Doing this first allowed me to finish cutting the flange edges from the other float and getting the laser set up so I could sand that side down to make a level mating surface.

Covered with Vacuum film in preparation for infusion later on.

Disposable Injection puck made from scrap foam.
The underside is routed out with some grooves to allow for resin flow.

Excess flange material cut away and sanded down to a flat mating surface.
The edges are now covered with flash breaker tape to prevent contamination from fingers, forearms and elbows.

A closeup shot of one of the foam joints.
Here you can see the V-Notch filled with a Hi-Density fill.
That Hi-Density fill is tooled out to a concave surface and then back filled twice with a Lo-Density fairing and sanded smooth.

Float half ready for the next step.
Which means serving as a mold for bulkhead patterning.

The green tape is a "note to self" as a reminder to add additional layers of fabric over the Hi-Density foam areas once the float halves are joined.

Adding fabric to the inboard half of the Starboard float

It's a bit hard for me to admit that this series of pictures represents a day and a half of labor.
It looks so simple, just lay out the fabric and make a few cuts.

If that were only the case!
:)

First of all, before I started anything else I needed to "deal" with these two areas of the float raised section.
The angles are too great if working with a single large piece of fabric, so the solution was to get these smaller pieces worked into place and then simply make a clean cut in the inner hull fabric to capture these overhangs.

I left plenty of overlap to create a really strong bond here

Rolled the fabric rack over to allow for fabric application

Since this roll is near the bottom of the rack, I needed some way to pick it UP before sliding over the float.
In this case, I found the Full-Sized plans storage tube made for a great roller.

All clean and ready for glass

First layer of glass laid down, smoothed over, stapled in place (being VERY careful to avoid screws near the edges) and then trimmed back from the edge about 3" (75mm). I did it this way so the overlapping piece of glass will put additional thickness near the waterline. (same as the other half)

If you look closely, you can see the slit in the fabric allowing for a good capture of the underlying piece of glass while avoiding thread pattern distortion as much as possible.

Same for this side

Nice and smooth! Looking good so far.

The other half of the glass is now installed including the reinforcing materials required at the beam locations

Stringers laid down in approximate location

Using cardboard bulkhead patterns to locate the aft end of the stringer

Same for the rear bulkhead and stringer

Switching gears to show the post-curing map of the other float.
I should be done this weekend

First layer of UNI over the top of the stringers

Two layers of UNI followed by two layers of 18oz BD to cover the strringers

Peel-Ply in place.
You'll notice that I already have the tacky tape in location.
This helps to keep me on track when trimming the consumables

Perforated film going down.
Until this point, I can't do much else in the shop for fear of kicking up dust.
Once I get the Vacuum Bag in position I can do a cleanup (which always makes me feel better)

This past weekend

I had to spend some time away from the shop this weekend to take care care of some rental property needs, so I didn't get a whole lot done.

However, I did get a few things taken care of:

1. Final "top-coat" of lightweight fill followed by a light sanding on the second float half.
2. Second coat of neat epoxy along the upper edge of the float to provide a sealed surface for the tacky tape. A light sanding is still required followed by one last application and sanding.
3. I have been moving the heating blanket around and now have about half of the first float post-cured at 82C.

When the heating blanket had moved down a third of the float, I took the opportunity to start trimming the foam excess to get the float down to it's final size.

And finally, I infused a flat sheet consisting of three layers of 12oz DBX. 

This will be cut down to size and glued onto the bow section to serve as a gluing surface later on when the bow foam pieces get added.

 - An interesting story about that infusion - details under the picture itself

Setting up the laser to get a good cut line.
This self-leveling laser has been a great investment!
I use it quite a bit more than expected.

Good shutter timing! 

Line location to match the frames on both float halves

Marked out with Green Tape to serve as the cut line.

And trimmed to size.
This is where the three layer - 12oz panel will be glued into place

A shot of the float right before that upper rail and temporary supports is removed so I can cut the foam down to the correct size.

And, done - for now

I put a bit of tape along the cut edges to keep them clean and free of oil.
(People ((mostly me)) love to put their forearms and elbows on this area as they look at the float)

The three layers of 12oz DBX being infused.
An interesting story about this one...
Henny and I were discussing the infusion failure on the first float half.
We covered a lot of ground and some suggestions were made for the next attempt.
During that discussion I mentioned the fact that my thicker laminates always seem to come up a bit dry.
He said he doesn't have that issue.
I have a feeling that my resin flow is too fast, so I thought I'd try going down to a smaller inlet tube size to reduce the flow rate.
My first infusions were all done with 1/2" line (12mm), I later moved to 3/8" (9.5mm) and now I've gone down to 1/4" line (6.3mm).
It turns out that using this smaller sized line I can infuse just over 3' (almost 1m) in 60 minutes which works out perfectly for my 80min resin.
So in setting up this infusion I was so pre-occupied with that tubing size that I completely forgot to add the green flow media to the stack.
Once I realized my error, I had to release the vacuum, make an opening in the vacuum film to insert a piece of media and then seal it up again (you can see the repair in the middle of the stack)

Sometimes I'm so stupid!

Anyway, once I had it sealed up again, I opened the valve and the rest of the infusion went great and would have been better if the green flow was covering the entire stack.
You can see the HUGE jump after the six minute mark and then it starts to slow down.

Anyway, the infusion itself came out really nice despite my best attempt at screwing it up.

Rear of float cut-off pattern.
I have two sets of lines drawn.
The inner set is the actual PLAN size, but my floats are cut 1/4" (6mm) over-sized and additionally I'm using a slightly thicker foam, so I'll make the actual cut out on the plywood later on when I can accurately position it after trimming down the foam.

This float half is just about ready for fabric.
I just need one more layer of neat epoxy along the upper edge to provide a good seal for the tacky tape.

Starboard (Outboard) Float Half Infused (But not really)

After 10+ hours of crawling around looking for any sign of leaks, I finally gave up and rolled the dice on infusing the float half. At this point, curiosity was simply getting the best of me and I was hoping to run across a big leak along the infusion and get it patched. I knew this was going to be a gamble of sorts (and I always lose when gambling), so I had some backup plans in place.

The infusion started off just fine and right away we found a leak through the foam near the front end of the float. This was easily patched with some putty along the backside and we continued the infusion. Further down we found a leak behind a screw and that was also fixed easily.

The infusion flow itself went very well and came out better than I expected, but we had a tough time keeping all the buckets filled up while scrambling around checking out everything else.

When we were about half-way through, I noticed the front section of the float along the tacky tape area starting to get dried out. Evidently this is where the leak was. Not one tiny leak, but a slow leak along the entire tacky tape area. At this point I knew the infusion itself was going to be a failure and I'd have to resort to one of two backup plans:

1) Remove all the infusion consumables and finish the job via hand lamination
2) Remove everything down to the foam and squeegee clean before starting over.

 - In the end, we went with Option 1. -

I just couldn't justify the materials waste unless the job couldn't be saved, so we decided to try that before moving down to Option 2.

So after the infusion was completed, we turned off the pump and cut off the consumables leaving only the peel-ply and tacky tape in place. Once that was done we mixed up some more epoxy and just went along the float back filling the dried out areas with a squeegee. It took quite a while, but the end result actually looks really good.

(And NO, I don't want to repeat that again if I don't have to!)

As for lessons learned, (At this rate, I just might know what I'm doing by the time I finish this project):

1) Put on a thicker coat of epoxy sealant along the tacky tape edge of the foam.
2) Reduce the number of bag penetrations.
2) Use no more than two buckets to introduce epoxy into the mold (preferably one).
3) If you can't get a good seal, then just opt for hand laminating and move on.

I wish I had more pictures, but it was pretty hectic there for a while.

Epoxy supply Pre-measured

Labeled to avoid confusion

Resin front heading down the first inlet.

Resin Front moving along the hull very nicely as expected.
Notice the resin front lag along the top of the stringer.
The green flow media ends at the base of the stringer perimeter, this forces the epoxy to flow beneath the stringer and up the sides as it works it's way to the vacuum source.

Heating blanket set at 82C.
Insulated over the top to reduce energy waste.
I'll be sliding it down every eight hours to complete the elevated temperature Post-Cure.

I removed a small section of peel ply near the front of the float to get a good look at the fiberglass.
The first 4-5" (100 - 125mm) of foam here will be cut off as it extends past Float Frame #1.

Close up of same section

The shiny areas are excess epoxy sitting on top of the peel-ply, so that will come right off later on.

Looks like a good wet out of the fabric

Center section of float