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

Fairing the blades (4)

We're back after a quite busy period, mostly due to a conference in Germany which resulted in two lost (boatwise) weekends. Last saturday we were ready to glass the blades after a lot of sanding, which resulted in fairly nice shapes

However, we discovered that the trailing edges of both blades are too sharp to wrap wet fiberglass around them. To be honest, the plans recommend to make the trailing edge pencil-thick and round it, but I overlooked the recommendations. So we will probably increase the thickness of the trailing sides with 3 mm thick plywood or veneer glued on each side, and will fair again before fiberglassing... oh well

Total work time to date: 497 hours

Fairing the blades (3)

Two more hours to work on the blades. Spread some putty on the other side of the daggerboard,

and started to sand the rudder blade. This is hard and quite difficult work indeed..

Total work time to date: 494 hours

Fairing the blades (2)

This is a very busy period. We could only manage to work about one hour this morning to continue fairing of the blades with epoxy putty. Here are two pics. This is the daggerboard

and this is the rudder

Total work time to date: 492 hours

Vaka fiberglassing (8)

Just a couple of hours this week to smooth the rough FG edges on the vaka. We the put the boat rightside up again. Here are the two proud builders. By the way, the cockpit floor did non collapse

Total work time to date: 491 hours

Fiberglassing the vaka (7)

Five hours this week end, to prepare and fiberglass the port side of the vaka (main hull). We first faired the starboard side which we had fiberglassed the previous time 

We then cleaned the starboard side and turned the hull on the other side. It's getting heavier, but we could do that in a restricted space with no difficulties

We then prepared the side for fiberglassing, first sanding down fg edges and epoxy runs and then removing the dust and cleaning the surface with an alcool damp rag, and draped the fg cloth on it

More than one liter of epoxy was needed to laminate the fiberglass on the side.

Now all the three hulls are completely fiberglassed. We're getting there.. what's next?

Total work time to date: 489 hours

Fiberglassing the vaka (6)

Six hours of work between friday and sunday. We tilted the main hull (vaka) on a side to facilitate draping and subsequent wetting out of the fiberglass. However we first had to get rid of several epoxy drips and fair the deck and bottom fg edges.

We then wet out and simultaneously cut to size the fiberglass, using more than one kg of clear resin

Last evening we went to check everything and discovered a big (3 cm diameter) air bubble exactly on the side panel  butt joint, which was filled with resin and then squeezed with an improvised rig

Total work time to date: 484 hours