Shaping the appendages

Six hours of work between friday and saturday. At the end we have decided to cover everything with fiberglass so we had to order some more which has not arrived yet. Hence, this week end we worked mostly on the appendages (daggerboard and rudder blades).
Both are based on NACA profiles, based on which I cut guide grooves with the circular saw that I used as a guide to give the blade a proper shape, using the power planer, the orbital sander with a 40 grit disc, surforms and sanding pads. Here we are after a while

This is hard work, and produces a mountain of sawdust. The nice thing is that one can use the plywood layers like interference fringes in optical surface figuring :-)

Next pic shows Cinzia in the background finishing the daggerboard while the rudder blade is on the sawhorses.

Here are the NACA profile depths for the rudder blade

Total work time to date: 432 hours

Starboard ama bottom glassed

Today we moved the main hull out to swap it with one of the amas. This allowed us to use a different perspective to take photos. Here it is, structurally complete now.

So, we enter the "finishing" phase. We put the starboard ama upside down on two sawhorses and glassed the bottom like we did on the aka: two layers of 160 g/sq.m. glass gloth and about 600 grams of epoxy resin.

We soaked both layers simultaneously with a roller. Here's a close up of the glassed chine

Total work time to date: 426 hours

Vaka cockpit (2) and more

Six hours of work last saturday. With the usual sequence of power planer, rasp, surforms and sanding board, we rounded and faired the vaka deck/hull  joint as well as the cockpit opening. Finishing is a lot of work.

We then made a pattern of the amas bottom panel and cut to size three (over four) fiberglass shapes to glass those bottom as we did with the vaka. Unfortunately we run out of fiberglass so we'll have to order one more roll, together with another batch of epoxy (possibly the last).

BTW: we decided the name of the boat: it'll be GEODETICA. This is because we both work in the field of space geodesy so this looked like a good compromise...

Total work time to date: 424 hours

Working on the vaka deck

Four hours of work today, to continue finishing the vaka deck.
First, we measured and cut the whole cockpit opening. Here's yours truly cutting the 12 mm plywood deck with the jigsaw

and here is the first view of the whole cockpit.

We then continued the fairing of the deck. Here's a view of the deck "wing" and of the forward port aka mounting block.

Total work time to date: 418 hours

Deck fairing

Only one hour this morning to fair the forward deck under which we had previously glued the doublers. Here is how it looks after many fairing passes, starting with the power planer to Surforms, rasp and finally the sanding board.

Total work time to date: 414 hours

Deck doublers

We worked two hours on Monday April 25th (national holiday). We had spent the previous week in Vienna for a scientific conference, and the last week end went for other commitments. Anyway, we glued the two deck doublers under the forward deck "wings". Here are the two doublers

and here they are glued under the deck wings with the usual epoxy resin thickened with microfibers and cabosil.

Total work time to date: 413 hours

Vaka cockpit

6 hours of work in the last two weekends to make the cockpit the vaka. Our plywood sheets are 2.5 meters long, and the hull is 6 meters long, so using one sheet for the deck forward and another for the deck aft, a remaining space about 1 meter long must be filled.
The first picture shows all the four butt blocks (2 cm thick) already glued and screwed to the two esisting deck panels.

while the next one shows the two fillers glued and screwed as well. Those butt blocks needed quite some work since their shape is a bit tricky.

Next time we'll cut the whole cockpit and round the hull to deck joint.

Total work time to date: 411 hours