Saturday, November 26, 2016

Blades ready for paint; false transom

Two hours today. We sanded both blades with the power sander (120 grit) taking down epoxy drips, FG edges and so on. They look good, I think. The pics give a good idea of the size. Here's the rudder


and here's the daggerboard (quite heavy!)


We also prepared the (basculating) false transom for fiberglassing. Here it is


Total work time to date: 507 hours

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Glassing the blades (3)

Two more hours today to glass the other side of both blades with the same procedure used before.


Total work time to date: 505 hours

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Glassing the blades, and more (2)

Two more hours today to check the results of yesterday's work. This pic gives an idea of what we did to make sure that the akas rest on a flat surface to avoid stresses. You can easily see the varying thickness of the resin due to the non zero inclination of the pad top with respect to the deck. This has been done for all 4 aka supports.


and here's a pic of the blades after fairing the FG cloth edges.



Total work time to date: 503 hours

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Glassing the blades, and more

Four hours today after a long hiatus due to many other commitments... and we passed the 500 hours mark!

I had noticed that the akas were not staying flat on the wooden supports. So we checked that the boat was level both longitudinally and atwartship, put some plastic tape under two of the aka beams and used them to properly level a layer of thickened (microfibers+silica) resin spread on the top of each pad. Tomorrow we'll see if this worked out properly. We might also wanto to put a thin (a few mm) piece of hard rubber to improve the contact between the akas and the supports.


We then glassed the first side of rudder and daggerboard with two layers of 160 g/sq.m. cloth (one 0-90, the other +45/-45) and clear resin. Here's Cinzia cutting the cloth to size


and here are the two blades glassed on one side


BTW we decided not to proceed with thickening the trailing side of the blades. We'll cut the clot flush along the sharp edge and we'll make sure to thoroughly coat it.

Total work time to date: 501 hours