1st ama interior

Five hours today. First we cut the specified 10 cm holes in the bulkheads with a cup saw. I'm not sure of what these holes are for: I think they're there to allow some air circulation. We then fitted the butt blocks to the bottom taking care to cut some bevel on the sides to avoid water pools inside. The blocks were glued over the bottom panels butts with the usual microfiber thickened resin. In the picture you can see the blocks in place with one plank each acting as a weight.

We then gave a double coat of unthickened resin to the bottom, the bulkhead faces and the butt blocks. Here's another pic showing one of the butt blocks

Total work time to date: 165 hours

Cradles done

2 more hours, and the cradles are done. I tested them under my not so light weight and they did not collapse. Anyway, here's a pic showing one of the amas rightside up.

The distance between the holes for the bolts turned out to be right on the spot, but there is indeed some twist in the hull (the top of the two bulkheads do not look not exactly parallel to each other.) Nothing alarming, but a bit disturbing. The building sequence does leave much space for such adjustements...

Total work time to date: 160 hours

Cradles

The cradles for the amas required quite some thinking. Here we are in the process of cutting the pieces, which we will assemble next time.

The second photo shows a partially assembled one (the one drawn around the aft bulkhead)

Each cradle will have 4 wheels, one at each end of the two base logs.

Total work time to date: 158 hours

Yet more fairing

4 more hours today (mostly by Cinzia) to complete fairing of the chines. Not much to show other than wood flour. Next step is going to be filling/fairing screw holes, dents and epoxy runs in preparation for fiberglassing.

Here's a view of the chine at the stem

and one at the stern, showing the sort of holes we'll have to fill and fair.

Total work time to date: 156 hours

More fairing, cradles

Oddly enough, boatbuilding is slower in summer... anyway, two hours today during which we started the cradles for the amas and did some more fairing. First thing was the building of a fairing board, using some scrap 10 mm plywood and some leftover fir. It took 20 minutes to build it from scratch. Here it is

And here's a close up of one of the ama chines after fairing with 120 grit sandpaper.

Finally, we drew the two ama cradles starting from the bulkhead outline to which we added the thickness of butt blocks and hull panels, plus some mm allowance. We made two cardboard templates. We decided to make two separate cradles, both on wheels, in order to be able to use them on both amas (remember: the ama sections are asymmetrical).

Total work time to date: 152 hours

Disassembling the "flat out" table

At this point the flat out table, i.e. the very first thing we built, is no longer necessary so we disassembled it. The two ama hulls are still light enough to be lifted and moved around by the two of us without much effort. I would estimate a weight of 30-35 kg each. Here's your truly between the two hulls.

Next thing will be the construction of cradles to put the amas rightside up to glue up the deck.

Total work time to date: 150 hours

More fairing

Only one hour today, to continue fairing the bottom edges and to round the stem/keel corner. Here they are after some coarse electric planing followed by Surforms. I shaped the first by eye and then did the second using a cardboard profile of the first.

Regarding the chines, the plans specify rounding with radii ranging from nickel to baseball sizes. Since we are very professional, here are our gauges

Total work time to date: 147 hours