Fiberglassing the amas (2)

We had to skip the last two week ends due to personal commitments, the last one being my son Giovanni's graduation cerimony at the University of Glasgow.

Anyway, this moring we worked two hours fiberglassing the other side of the starboard ama, using the same approach that we used before. Her's a pic of the fiberglass being draped on the hull side

We then cut it to size and laminated it using about 600 cc of resin and a roller.

Next step will be fiberglassing the ama deck. Last week Cinzia worked about one hour to prepare the hull for today.

Total work time to date: 441 hours

Fiberglassing the amas (1)

Three hours to fiberglass one side of the first ama. We first sanded the side with 120 grit on the rotoorbital, in particular to feather the edge of the bottom fiberglass but also to take down drips and the like.

We then draped the 160 g/sq.m.FG on the side and cut it to size with scissors

 and then wetted out the FG in place with about 600 grams of epoxy spread out with a roller.

Total work time to date: 438 hours

Rudder (1)

Three hours of work this week end. We finished the daggerboard (which is now ready for fiberglassing) and continued working on the rudder blade, which has a particular shape. Here it is:

After cutting the laminated plank to shape I started to use the power plane to give the blade a NACA profile. Here's how it looks now

Total work time to date: 435 hours

More pics of the blades

Two more pics of the appendages as they look now. First is the daggerboard, almost ready for glassing and finish. This is a big and heavy daggerboard by the way: about 120 x 40 cm, 3.5 cm thick.

This is the rudder stock, which will have to be cut to shape, with the "NACA grooves" cut on both sides of the blade, ready for planing.

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