Woodastic, it's fantastic

Insurance..

2011-01-25T23:03:00.004+01:00

Due to differences between the plywood building plans and the implementation in strip plank, we decided to add a little bit to the beam seat structure. Aft of the beam seats we have added a bit of ply which we will tape the beam seat to. Then tape the ply to the hull sides.. In theory, this should make the structure strong enough for our 85kg and 98kg dry weight.

All the mistakes..

2011-01-25T22:57:00.006+01:00

Ok, we have had our share of mess ups, and a few "quick" solutions..

First, the carbon trick to transfer loads from the bows to the mainbeam and main bulkhead..

Then we re-read the building instructions, and realised that we had a bulkhead in the wrong place. Were we going to tear the bulkhead out and re-install? Nope, we created this beauty instead.. Note to next hull, install bulkhead in right place! There are supports in the bottom and top for the daggerboard well.

Shaping deck supports..

2011-01-25T22:55:00.001+01:00

We are busy shaping deck supports and gunwhales..

F16 bridle fitting..

2010-08-26T22:43:00.003+02:00

Just a quick pic of the bridle fitting half- installed. Hopefully taping the keel seam and the bulkheads next week. Then it is off to deck beams and beam seats. Yahooo!!

(Now the ground is beginning to burn under us, foils foils foils..)

Carbon beams.

2010-08-07T00:06:00.002+02:00

Our original plan was for carbon beams, as sourcing alu beams was more expensive. Thanks to being close to a carbon manufacturing plant we got a good deal on carbon so it was very cost effective for us.
That was until we found no less than four good alu beam candidates lying around. One set of vintage Tornado beams and one set of beams from another 16 foot cat. So carbon beams are off, for now.. We want to get on the water!!

Elvis has left the building..

2010-08-07T00:04:00.002+02:00

Well, not Elvis but Omar.. Life got in the way so he had to pull out of the project. This leaves us with four hull panels extra. Hmmm, what can we do with those, I wonder.. :-)

Bulkheads and gluing the panel seam

2010-08-06T23:45:00.004+02:00

Bulkheads tabbed into place in hull #1, and gluing the keel seam between panels. Soon ready to be glassed.
Matching up the panels takes a little bit of work, but it is realitively straigh forward when using straps with small pieces of wood under to match up the two panels along the keel.

Tools of the trade!

It has been a while.

2010-08-06T23:42:00.002+02:00

The blog have not been updated in a while. Blog burnout I guess..

The project have proceeded though, at a slow but steady pace. All 12 hull panels are now done (and we did celebrate that event. Quite heavily from what I remember of it).

Panel #10 planked..

2009-11-29T22:01:00.003+01:00

Rolf picked up 4000 staples saturday between other tasks. Sunday panel #10 was all planked. 5 hours from start to finish. Not bad I think.
Next weekend it would be great to have #11 out of 12 planked.

Winter has come and temperature in the workshop dropped quite a bit with the snow. We have got our hands on a bit of bubble wrap and will try that on the single pane window and the garage port.

Since first of august we have 116,5 hours in the project. Most of it spent on producing hull panels, ripping planks etc. It is good to get some progress, even if the number of hours spent on the project is substantial.

Out of staples!!

2009-11-27T23:01:00.002+01:00

Rolf taped over the male mould tonight with packing tape. We do this to stop the hull from sticking to the mould after glassing. We definately dont want that so this is an important job.
The first planks was also fitted, but after just four planks, we ran out of staples! Got to remember to buy more tomorrow!

Progressing slowly..

2009-11-25T22:16:00.003+01:00

Tonight Omar and Rolf ripped more strips for panel 10,11 and 12. Cleaned up all the sawdust and put the strips in storage.
Afterwards we removed #8 from the female mould and flipped #9 into the female mould. Set it up and clamped it to the mould. Filled all voids and cut off some of the longer planks. Friday night it will be possible to either do some sanding or begin planking of #10.. The ambition is to finish planking and gluing #10 this weekend. We will see..

Cutting planks..

2009-11-25T11:55:00.001+01:00

Frode and Rolf spent the night in company with a circular saw and some planks.. A load of new strips is in place and there is still one more 1 inch plank to rip.

Panel 9 glassed on the outside.

2009-11-25T11:54:00.000+01:00

One thing less to do.. Need to be quick in turning the panel over and glassing the inside as well to stop warping and twisting.

Panel #9 pre-coated

2009-11-12T17:13:00.002+01:00

So that is it. Just some light washing and sanding left and then it is time to get the glass on #9..

Panel #9 planked and glued..

2009-11-06T23:29:00.002+01:00

Title says most of it. #9 was planked in 3.5 hours, had the gunwhale laminated the same evening and the whole thing was glued. Now that is real progress.
Tonight I pulled about half of the staples on it. Plan to finish the job of pulling staples tomorrow and perhaps do some sanding. Have to shop for some more wood to convert into boat.

Panel #8 glassed on the inside.

2009-11-03T22:56:00.003+01:00

Another evening in the spacesuit applying glass and epoxy to the inside of pane #8. Some issues with the fillet where we added too much chopped glass and removed to much when rounding it. Also a zillion outgassing bubbles today. We suspect the 100watts lightsource that was positioned above the panel. Nothing 5 minutes with the garage door open did not fix.

Panel #7 done, and then some.

2009-10-29T16:57:00.003+01:00

Panel #7 was moved to Omars carport last night, for storage. Now the female mould is occupied by panel #8. The inside of #8 was sanded during last nights session. Finished preliminary sanding and filled all gaps with thickened epoxy. The sanding gear Florin sent me from Romania really makes all the difference. Variable speed angle grinder, 36grit discs and some foam pads. Stuff it is quite hard to get in Norway, or at least in Molde and on the 'net. Thanks a lot Florin!

Omar and Frode also cut the glass for a new test-tube which I hope to get startet pretty soon. Exciting times!

Glassing panel 8

2009-10-20T22:21:00.001+02:00

Late night session glassing the outside of panel #8. No drama!

Panel #8, take 2

2009-10-04T21:58:00.003+02:00

I am beginning to get really good at this..I am getting really good at this..

Ok...

2009-10-01T13:17:00.002+02:00

The quick fix was not good enough. After the staples was removed the hull pulled apart from the tension in the planks. Oh well.. That failure is no longer in the workshop and the new hull panel #8 is well underway. Lesson learnt I hope!

Quick fixes sometimes works..

2009-09-25T10:11:00.002+02:00

Looks like the quick fix worked well enough. At least the epoxy have hardened so the strips stay together. Next point is laminating a new gunwhale on #8, pulling staples and filling the marks left by the chisel when we removed the faulty gunwhale..

Then it is off to sand the inside of #7 and #8 :)

Quick fixes.. fingers crossed

2009-09-22T22:10:00.002+02:00

Frode and I spent two hours tonight chiseling off the gunwhale on #8, cleaning both #7 and #8 as well as possible and re-gluing. This time we made sure the epoxy was mixed correctly! Will be very, very, exciting to see how this went tomorrow evening!

First epoxy mishap.. bugger!

2009-09-22T19:38:00.002+02:00

The day had to come, and now it is here.

Looks like we have mixed hardener and hardener instead of resin and hardener. Consequenses: Gluing of panel #8 will not be optimal, and it will be kind of a mess. Gunwhale on panel #8 might be suspect. The filling done on the inside of panel #7 need to be re-done. Some stuff will have to be re-done obviously..

I hope the lessons is learnt so we dont do this again. It is a shame really as we did so much that night..

Panel #8 planked

2009-09-13T19:11:00.002+02:00

Hull panel #8 is all planked. Next task is laminating the gunwhales and gluing the panel with epoxy. Then we can sand the inside of #7 and the outside of #8 in one go.

Panel #7 glassed on the outside

2009-09-06T12:50:00.003+02:00

That is it, panel 7 is glassed on the outside and ready for sanding+glassing on the inside. Planking on #8 will commence immediately.

Planking #7

2009-05-14T14:43:00.002+02:00

Sunday evening I was able to tape all the stations + gunwhale mould + table with packaging tape to isolate the mould from the hull panel. I also got around to actually fitting 3 planks.

Last night I snuck down in the workshop for an hour and fitted 6 more planks. Planking a hull is actually a quite fast task. The time hog is the sanding.. Two more sessions and I guess the hull panel is planked + one session for the gunwhale. Then it is sanding and glassing before we try to match the hull panels. The big moment.. Got to remember to tape that moment. It will either be a "kodak moment" if the panels are ill fitting or assymetrical, or big grins if it is just right.

Test beam made in glass.

2009-05-10T13:25:00.005+02:00

First test tube is out of the mould. Last night around 2130 hours I began cutting and wetting out glass. Three layers of glass and three additional layers where the beam is to go. The evenings goal was to learn how to do this properly, and I certainly reached that goal!

1: Have a table for wetting out long enough for the whole piece of cloth you are working on. If not, the cloth will be hard to wet out properly and you will have to handle the cloth some, which it dont like.
2: This is a two person job. One mixing epoxy and one applying it. 3 persons would be even better.
2: Put all the layers of cloth in position on the table before putting them into the mould. Otherwise it is hard to align them properly.
3: The bag should not be too large, just a bit larger than the mould. If it is too large you get wrinkles!

After running the pressure up to 2 bar last night, the bag decided to start leaking. Somehow it managed to rupture close to the air-inlet. It was not a large hole, just 2 cm, but enough to create trouble. To try and save the situation I ran the compressor continously, but I did not take the chance on letting it run without rest for the whole night. The compressor managed to hold the pressure at 2 bar, but I suspect that the result would have been even better without the leak.
As it is, the tube is not perfect. At some places there are dents.. It looks like these dents are located where the bag have been twisted a bit? A smaller bag and no leaks should help. As the picture below shows, there is a dent where the bag have "folded" due to excessive materials in the bag.
Here is a pic of the bag inflated, resting on the bottom part of the mould. It is quite a bit larger than the mould, which I think is part of the problem.
Anyway, before committing carbon fibers, I will want to make another test run with glass.

The good news is that the finish of the beam is very nice and the method obviously works. Even with 6 layers of glass at one beam end the pressure made the laminate conform very well to the mould and no air-bubbles, gaps or anything. Overlap was very hard to see as well, so the pressure must have been immense. Considering -1bar is a perfect vacuum, 3 bars should be more than enough to consolidate the laminate for our beams.

Here is a pic of Omar with our beam mould. Looks quite dangerous! Considering that the mould holds 3 bar of pressure when the pic was taken, Omar was a bit skitterish :-)

Gahh, compressor woes..

2009-05-07T23:04:00.002+02:00

So I had to open the 400V controller for the compressor motor to adjust the working pressure. I was able to make the compressor stop at 3bar, but then it drops down to 1 bar before it turns on again. Not an optimal solution! Will have to seek advice with those in the know how in the composite business..

Compressor exploring..

2009-05-07T20:25:00.000+02:00

We stress tested the mould last night. 3 bar of pressure inside it and all OK.
The bag developed a small leak at each end of the mould so we need to check that, but otherwise the system worked perfectly. Tonights mission is to find out how I can make the compressor turn itself on when the pressure falls to 2.5 bar and off again when it hits 3 bar..

Gunwhale mould in position.

2009-05-02T23:12:00.001+02:00

Tonight I routed the insets for the gunwhale mould and fitted it to the stations on the strongback. We are now ready to begin building panel #7! Hooray!!

Frode talked about coming over tomorrow, if he does we can turn the strongback over so it is possible to begin putting planks on the mould.

Cutting planks..

2009-04-21T22:19:00.003+02:00

Since last update we have been busy cutting strips for the next hull parts and waxing the crossbeam mould. I dont know how many strips we have in storage now, but it is rather a lot..
Tomorrow night I have starter duty at the sailing club, but afterwards I'll do the final aligning of the stations after flipping them over.

Frode have gone to Spain for two weeks so Omar and I am free to head of on any wild tangent we can imagine. :-)

TADAAAAA

2009-03-20T16:04:00.007+01:00

Last night we could finally begin flipping the stations over. What a great day! Marks the halfway point in the hull construction process.

The process was a bit slow as some epoxy had dripped on the table, and we definately had to remove the high spots to position the stations correctly. Not long now until we can join some halves and look at something resembling a complete hull. Installing bulkheads, beam seats etc should be a breeze after all the strip planking.

Next week I hope to have some pics of the beam mould and the setup there. Just need to source 20 hose clamps of 100mm diam at a reasonable cost and some other stuff needed.

Here is a pic of Frode, enjoying flipping stations over and removing epoxy drips from the screwheads. Note to self, tape over the screwheads this time. Aligning the stations precisely is very important so we spend some time on each station to make sure it is flipped right.

And to top it off, here is a bonus pic of Frode:
(he have begun to complain over being the favourite motive on the blog but since he dont take pictures and dont upload/maintain the blog he dont get to choose which pictures are put up here :-D )
The experienced photographer will notice the height difference between motive and photographer. He really is that tall.

Inside of #6 glassed.

2009-03-18T23:09:00.001+01:00

An easy two hour session saw panel #6 glassed on the inside. Omar mixing epoxy while Frode and I laminate. This time we had no pre-coat so we had to use 6 (or was it 7, Omar lost count somewhere) batches a 132grams of epoxy. With a pre-coat on we need barely 5 batches.

Now the stations in the mould have to be flipped over so we can begin to build the other side of the hulls. Imagine that we have done no less than six strip plank panels!

We also had some discussions tonight on progress towards summer. Looks like we are going to try working on the boats two nights a week for a while. We can split the work now between building hulls and all the other bits and parts like beams, foils (Hmmm, still no plugs for the foils in the mail.. Need to check on my kind source), rudder system, spi poles and other bits and ends.

Frode have been shopping carnuba wax for the beam mould! Now we can begin giving it the neccesary layers of wax before building test tubes. The staff at the car equipment shop had no idea what carnuba wax was.. Bloody expensive stuff also!

Another hour..

2009-03-17T22:25:00.002+01:00

Another hour spent sanding the inside of #6. The tally is up to two hours by now, and I still have to shape the gunwhale to blend in with the fillet to go there (for the glass). It is 90% done though!

If Frode brings his angle grinder tomorrow night, I'll make short work of the gunwhale shaping. This is time well spent. Just 6 more panels to go (*groan*)

Sanding the inside of #6

2009-03-15T13:19:00.002+01:00

I had one hour available today, so I jogged down to the workshop to start sanding the inside of #6. When my hour was up, I was about halfway down the length of the panel. 40grit sure makes progress. Just wish my angle grinder was not busted, then I could have been done with the whole panel.

We do produce some dust with all the sanding we do! Here is a pic from the bow section after todays session.

Progress on #6

2009-03-13T22:08:00.003+01:00

Last wednesday we glassed panel #6 on the outside. Here is a pic of the finished result before the epoxy kicked.Spent 2 hours from start to end of the whole operation. We are definately getting better at this.
Tonight I was down in the workshop again to pull the panel off the mould and put it into the female mould/crib for glassing on the inside. Since the angle grinder is bust I spent the rest of the nigth filling any gaps on the inside. There are always some at the bottom of the boat no matter how careful I am with the plane. Sunday I might be able to sand down the inside and pre-coat for glassing the coming week. Who knows :-)
Anyway, we are near the point where we can flip the stations over and begin building the other halves of the hulls. That makes us this happy:
We have also progressed on the mould for the beams. The mould is in the workshop, alu tube split on a large CNC mill. Really nice split! Here is Omar holding the cast end-plugs
Last, I could not help myself but put up a picture of a sunrise as seen from my office window. It was on the phone with the building photos so..

#6 is pre-coated

2009-03-07T23:13:00.002+01:00

After some snafu with sanding pads having the wrong side of the velcro glued to them (we dont mention names, do we Frode?) and other fun mishaps, #6 is now ready for glassing. Tonight I put on a layer of epoxy as a pre-coat before glassing. About 60 grams of epoxy was neccesary to cover the whole hull with a thin layer.

I also cast the first end-plug for the beam mould. 260grams of epoxy mixed at 50% with chopped glass should do the trick at 2 bar.

#6 roughly sanded.

2009-02-18T21:56:00.002+01:00

Tonight all three of us was present, and I began the with the angle grinder. It is such a quick way to remove epoxy that using the beltsander is a drugde. Unfortunately the chineese quality angle grinder burnt out after just 5 minutes..
Frode finished off the rest with the belt sander. I was more than happy to let him have a go at it after doing the 5 previous panels. He did good work, so I'll let him do the same with #7 ;)
We also filled all staple holes and spent a good time cleaning up in the workshop so we can begin work on beams and foils.

Staples pulled on #6.

2009-02-15T20:50:00.001+01:00

Frode and I pulled all the staples from panel #6 today. 75 minutes total needed to remove the staples. Next opportunity I get, I will be busy with the angle grinder to remove epoxy.

#6 glued.

2009-02-13T23:22:00.002+01:00

Spent an hour gluing #6 tonight. It takes an hour and 10 minutes to glue the panel properly.. Panel #7 I will tally the hours for. This is probably one of the slowest building techniques on earth, but still more fun than working with foam ;) Wonder how stiff the hulls will be..

Panel #6 planked and filled

2009-02-11T23:13:00.004+01:00

Tonight Frode, Omar and fitted the last two planks on #6. Laminated and installed the gunwhale, filled all knotholes and fixed some other stuff as well. Great evening!

#6, just two more planks to go..

2009-02-08T22:43:00.001+01:00

Two more planks after tonight, and #6 is ready to recieve gunwhales and filling/gluing.

More planks fitted on #6

2009-01-30T22:58:00.004+01:00

Tonight I spent a bit more than an hour in the workshop, fitting planks. Next session I'll fill in the 'opening' with planks. Then the gunwhale and glue the whole stuff together. If I am a really good boy, the hull can be glued this weekend or during the next week.

Inside of panel #5 glassed.

2009-01-29T09:32:00.002+01:00

Last night Frode, Omar and I glassed the inside of panel #5. Quite an enjoyable and efficient evening. Done in two hours with Frode and me laminating and Omar mixing epoxy batches. 550grams of epoxy used, and then we squeeged off some so not the full weight. Will be interesting to weight this panel as we have not used the pre-coat technique on these.

Now, on for panel #6. The big one before we can flip the stations over! I have already put some planks in place, so it is just a matter of continuing. Overtime work have taken much time lately, and I have a cold that drains my energy, but much of the planking on #6 should be done during the weekend.

A co-worker and I have begun chatting about building a plane. A replica of a WW2 Mosquito would be fun ;)

Some light sanding and planking.

2009-01-25T10:21:00.002+01:00

Last night I sanded some fairing done inside panel #5. We had filled some gaps and knotholes with epoxy mixed with microballoons. It is the first time I have sanded microballoons, and that was a relatively pleasant experience. Sands really easily.

I also planked a bit more on panel #6. Hopefully I can glass the inside of #5 tonight, if I dont have to work more overtime..

A quiet weekend

2009-01-18T23:24:00.002+01:00

This weekend was reserved for the family, in a cabin far, far away :-)

Sunday evening Frode came over, we planed down the gunwhale and filled a few gaps where I did not use the plane sparingly enough while planking. We also re-taped the mould and I got to fit six planks before I called it a night. Nice to have started on panel #6. Last one before we flip the stations over.

By popular request.. the mould.

2009-01-15T18:21:00.002+01:00

Here is a quick pic of the mould. Many are wondering what the mould looks like, so here is a pic showing the whole thing.

Done sanding the inside of panel #5

2009-01-14T23:07:00.003+01:00

After some breakages I am finally done sanding the inside of panel #5. Sanding wood instead of epoxy is just SO much faster! The angle grinder with the cleaning pad was a real timesaver.

In the last two nights the attrition rate have been rather high. The drill used to sand the inside with a foam pad bust a bearing. This is a cheap chineese drill, so I dont worry about it. It is still under warranty as well, so.. I also bust two of the foam pads I use when sanding with the drill. Things delaminated while sanding :-( Time to find a stronger or more flexible glue I guess.

Tomorrow night I'll plane the gunwhales to shape and post some photos.

done glassing panel #5 on the outside.

2009-01-07T22:03:00.002+01:00

Practice makes perfect. Frode, Omar and me working together put on the glass on panel #5 in two hours. Will have to pop down later tonight for a quality check, but it went on easily and looked well. I did not have time to apply the pre-coat this time, so we used 100grams more epoxy than we usually do.
We also had time to do a movie pop-quiz while glassing. Great fun, but Frode is scary with his selection of movies at times. "Nobody puts baby in a corner".. Seriously!

Friday I plan to pop the panel off the mould and start sanding the inside for glassing. Hopefully we will manage to glass the inside during the coming weekend.

Done sanding panel#5

2009-01-07T09:19:00.002+01:00

Last night I went over panels #5 with the longboard, and the panel is now ready for glassing. Hopefully that will happen tonight, if Frode or Omar comes to assist. Aim to do this fast so I can do the quality control before I go to bed.

I skipped making a blog entry the other night after I was down working over the hull panel with the belt sander and the sanding disc. Funny how that works, much more fun to enter a blog entry after each session.
For panel #6, I will enter the working hours with each blog message. Phill Brander asked me how l many hours each panel takes and I could not give an exact answer. The best I could do was a guesstimate, so now it is time to record working hours. I will not multiply working hours with an hourly wage and get the cost though!

Belt sander is too slow, enter the angle grinder!!

2009-01-03T23:33:00.003+01:00

After reading some tips on Bjørn Thomassons (master strip plank builder and kayak+canoe designer) website, I tried a new metod for grinding off epoxy last night. With a coarse cleaning disc in the angle grinder, it was very easy to remove any epoxy from the hull panel. They moving on to the belt sander and the sanding pad in the drill. Without having to sand off the epoxy with the beltsander, it was much quicker sanding the hull. I also used far less sandpaper!
One needs to be really careful with the angle grinder though. 100% concentration all the time!

Tomorrow night I hope to get time to use the longboard a bit on panel #5. Otherwise, it is ready for glassing on the outside. One learns all the time..

Belt sander back in action..

2009-01-03T23:30:00.003+01:00

Frode and I visited the shop where we bought the belt sander last night. We got a new one after some light arguing where the clerk wanted the original box and a bag for the dust. In the end, she accepted that she could just take what she needed to return the sander from the new box. Her alternative would be to have the sander fixed, so she choose a strange position to be obnoxious.
Before we left, we got 108,- norwegian kroner from her, since the sander now had dropped in price?? We did not understand it, but choose to not argue, accept the money and the new sander, and leave the shop.

When it rains, it pours..

2009-01-01T22:52:00.002+01:00

First the skil saw, and tonight the beltsander overheated or burnt out. I dont know which, but at least it dont run when I press the button anymore. funny how you dont notice things like smoke coming from the sander when you wear goggles and a respirator..
Anyway, panel #5 is now sanded 50%, and I can do the rest with the disc sander. We definately need to get the beltsander back to life though. Great tool!

Mr. DeWalt needs a rest, and some new parts.

2008-12-30T22:03:00.003+01:00

Tonight ripping strips was on the program. Frode came over and together we ripped enough strips in an hour to build two new panels. We did not finish the job though as our very nice and smooth deWalt skilsaw busted a bearing or something like that. Afterwards we did not dare to use the saw as it vibrated and made really bad sounds when powered on. Saw goes in under warranty tomorrow (new years eve), but we dont have high hopes for when it will be returned. Good that we now have enough strips to build panel #6 and #7. The flipover of the stations in the mould and stuff like that should have us occupied while waiting for the saw. We can also use the time to make progress on the beams.

Even the best plans..

2008-12-29T23:07:00.003+01:00

Tonight I had made arrangmentes with Omar so we could cut some more planks. Alas, his son got a fever so he had to stay at home. Sometimes even the best plans dont work out.. But we did get to transport panel #3 and #4 to his place so they are out of the workshop. It takes 15minutes to re-seal the door to the workshop after opening it, so it is something I try not to do very often.
I also got to pull the staples off panel #5 tonight. Easy and fast work with a horseshoe plier and a deft hand.
To finish off the evening I filled all the "knotholes" in #5, and gave the seams where the epoxy from the first brushing had seeped through a new dosis. Probably not neccesary, but it is nice and reaffirming to se perfect glue lines when sanding.

For tomorrow night, sanding or cutting planks, depending on wheter I can get help and what I feel up to.

1060 staples a panel..

2008-12-26T21:38:00.002+01:00

After working 1060 staples loose tonight, my right hand is a bit sore. Timecount, 2 hours.. If I keep this up, I will have the same right hand as Hellboy ;-)

Panel #5, glued.

2008-12-26T12:14:00.002+01:00

Here is a pic of panel #5 on the mould with gunwhales laminated and planks glued. All done in 3 hours last night. I must say I much prefer to work with wood over messing with epoxy. I am not big on painting eather :)

Anyway, panel #5 is a solo project, and I must say that the result is the best so far. Not becouse Frode and Omar is no good, but becouse working alone seems to result in better concentration. Not many gaps between planks on this hull.
Now there is some filling of knotholes to do, pull some staples and sanding, then panel #6 kan be started. Once panel #6 is off the mould, we can flip the stations around. Whohoo!!

Gunwhale woes

2008-12-26T12:05:00.004+01:00

After a comment by a friend, I began to get some nagging woes over how we have done the gunwhales. I had the opportunity to talk with Phill Brander before christmas and check this out amongst other things. Turned out we have goofed up a bit and need to adjust our gunwhales a bit before assembling the hulls

Phill, here are the photos you asked for, showing the inside of a hull panel and the gunwhale butts.
Here is the inside of panel #4, with the electric stapler in the foreground. The electric stapler is a "must have", as each hull panel requires about one thousand staples!

Quality control is important

2008-12-21T10:48:00.002+01:00

I went down to the workshop at 0200 tonight (I like to stay up late, but get really tired the next day) to check on our laminating work. I am really happy that I did. Two massive airbubbles/areas where the glass had pulled off. Both about 10cm long and 4cm wide. This was two hours after we finished laminating, so the epoxy had not hardened yet. Some quick work with a squeege and it looked good again. This morning the epoxy had hardened substantially and it looked good.
Going over the lamniate again after some hours have become routine when not using the vacuum pump. Usually I find some small air bubbles to remove and stuff like that.

We are rolling..

2008-12-21T01:51:00.002+01:00

Feeling good about progress lately. Panel 4 glassed on the inside tonight (note to self: never allow fillets to harden partly before putting on the glass!).
Panel 5 is on the mould, lacking just two planks and the gunwhale before it can be glued. Perhaps we get panel 6 off the mould during christmas so we can flip the stations over. That would be a major milestone for us!

Frode and I did a major decision today. We are cutting our time spent on "strip plank bulkheads" and go forward with plywood bulkheads instead. We have a lot of hours invested in our special bulkheads so far, but enough is enough now that we can get BS1088 gaboon/okume ply. Even with all the hours invested in BHs, there would still be many-many hours to go before they were done, and the result would not be spectacular due to many different reasons (our building skill amongst them). So, next task is the get the beams started, and then it is the foils. Hope Florian gets the CNC macine running!

Building times

2008-12-17T10:02:00.001+01:00

I did some quick estimations today on building time in strip:
Planking 5 hours, when done alone.
Sanding the inside and outsite 2 - 3 hours.
Glassing inside and outside 3 + 3 hours

5 + 2 (3) + 3 + 3 = 14 hours for one half hull panel. Scary stuff!

Some days I wish

2008-11-22T20:40:00.002+01:00

Some days I wish we were doing something like this instead.

http://a-class.org.nz/daryl.htm

Faster, and you can pop out a lot of hull panels relatively quick. If only I had access to a suitable CNC mill..

What do you get..

2008-11-22T17:43:00.003+01:00

What do you get when you let the boys off to play with the chemistry set without supervision? You get a mess to clean up :-)

Frode and Omar was to glue the rest of the bulkheads at frodes place last week. Turned out they had a small mix up when measuring the epoxy. It is suppsed to be 100 parts resin to 32 parts hardener. Suffice to say that 50 parts hardener to 16 grams resin dont promote a good result. Frode have to clean the parts, do some sanding and try again.

What did we learn? Mark the tins for resin and hardener with a big marker! I feel partly responsible as I did not mark or leave instructions on what was in the unmarked containers, but as the tins was very different, I knew what was in them.

Looking for materials

2008-11-12T22:49:00.002+01:00

We do a round trip looking for good materials to cut into strips now and then. Here is a pic of Frode scouting in the racks at one of the warehouses.

Winterizing.. aka: The tin hat society

2008-11-12T22:40:00.004+01:00

Tonight Omar and I spent a few hours winterizing the workshop. The single pane window was insulated with some layers of cardboard cut to fit and an alu foil on top. The port to the workshop was more of a challenge. The bottom now have a rubber gasket fitted. Since the port is made of solid wood, we stapeled some tarred paper on the inside, and topped it off with alu foil. The difference in temperature and lack of drafts was immediately noticeable. Hopefully this is enough to see us through the winter with good and stable epoxy hardening temperatures.

Great fun working with alu foil :-)

Carbon fibers arrived

2008-10-10T08:16:00.002+02:00

Yesterday there was two big boxes at my front door when I came home. The carbon fiber supplier had shipped the stuff really quick.

Of couse I had to open the boxes to check out the stuff. One roll of weave and one roll of uni, both 100cm wide. This is 400gsm so it is pretty stiff stuff. Wonder how it will be to work with.. Need to be very thorough with the wetting out.

Carbon fibers

2008-10-07T17:53:00.003+02:00

We managed to strike a good deal on carbon fibers locally. 36kgs of carbon weave and unidirectionals are on their way. The retail price of 36kgs of high modulus carbon is horrendous, but with the deal we got we can afford to do foils, beams, rudder system and spi poles in carbon. That is good as we need to save all the weight we can if we are to hit min weight.

Back on the sandwagon..

2008-08-22T10:45:00.001+02:00

Sanding hull panel #4 now. Busy nights with the beltsander, rotary sander and the torture board..

Our first youtube video.

2008-07-08T01:25:00.003+02:00

On my latest business trip to the US I bought a small "Digital Hero GoPro3" camera. This nice little unit have a waterproof housing, adapters to mount it to helmets, bicycles etc. and can shoot still pictures, time lapse pictures (one pic every 5th second) or movies. Last night we got to test it out, and it is a good little unit for what it does and the price.
So here we are, Omar and I, laminating and installing a gunwhale first, then gluing the hull panel together. The film was done with the time-lapse function which later was processed into a film. Gives a pretty good impression of what we are doing in a short time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7h7_lFcSBc

For those interested, the video was shot from 1900 to 2200, and as you can see it was still lots of sun outside. One of the benefits of living at 63deg North.

New digital scale!

2008-05-17T23:34:00.002+02:00

Omars father, Albert, pulled some strings and got us a really good scale for cheap. This scale is a precision instrument and gives us measurements down to 1/10 of a gram. Testet it tonight, and after programming it it was really excellent and consistent. Went on to glass the outside of the hull panel lying on the mould. Good stuff!

Dont trust digital scales

2008-05-14T22:08:00.003+02:00

I have had a cheap digital scale in the garage the last couple of years for measuring epoxy by weight. This weight went "bananas" some weeks ago and started incrementing its values by itself. Not something you want to happen when measuring epoxy and hardener.

Frode got the mission to buy a new digital weight to measure epoxy. First weight he got did not count one by one gram but jumped from zero to 6 or 8 grams instead of incrementing by one as we added epoxy. We thought this was just a one-time problem and had the weight replaced. Tonight we was supposed to glass the outside of #3, but the digital weight was not reliable! Bugger!! Shop will have the weight returned as it was supposed to be a high quality and very accurate product, OBH Nordic in stainless steel. For the next scales we will do some tests in the shop before we accept the product. Will bring a cup and a bottle of water and check both how it updates and how accurate it is. The shop staff will probably not like it, but if they want us to buy an accurate product we have to test it first. All good things are three is a norwegian saying. Hopefully weight number three is good.A clear wood finish is good looking. Too bad about all the knots, even if they give a kind of "rustic" look. Fortunately the knots dont mean anything strengthwise. This hull is sanded, pre-coated, washed and sanded again, ready for glassing. We use 165gsm twill weave for glassing. Light but strong enough. Twill weave reduces the amount of epoxy needed to wet out the weave and "fill" it. Every gram counts in the end :-)

This photo shows how we laminate the gunwhales. We have a stringer running the length of the mould (almost) with notches at each station. The strips are wet out with epoxy, thickened epoxy added and then secured to the mould with screws and a few clamps. Works quite well.

Grrrrrrrrinding..

2008-05-08T19:35:00.003+02:00

Last night in short: Belt sander in action and sanded down the outside of shell #3. Finishing it off tonight or tomorrow night. Glassing in the weekend (with mask, ref. the Epoxy safety thread on catsailor.com), hopefully both the inside and outside. Gaining speed..

Time for some light humour

2008-05-02T19:30:00.002+02:00

The "On the wire" e-zine had a lot of good stuff. Here are two of my favourite fiction stories from the archives to lighten the mood a bit.

The worlds fastest Hobie16

No car required

Repeat until done.. The sequel..

2008-04-28T22:37:00.003+02:00

Still planking hulls etc. Some small modifications to the mould which I'll do some pictures of "real soon now" to make laminating the gunwhales easier.
Tonight we stripped a full hull panel in 3.5 hours. Well, we miss two strips from a full panel, but anyway, we are getting faster and better! The new plane I bought really makes a difference when it comes to fitting the planks.

Hopefully we can get going on foils and crossbeams soon. Foils will be foam/carbon and crossbeams will be solid carbon. Interesting stuff!

More about ripping strips.

2008-03-28T17:57:00.002+01:00

It have been too cold for epoxy work here the last week and a half. With temperatures down to -10 degC outside the garage is seldom above 10degC. So to use the time we have ripped some more strips. We still think the handheld circular/skil saw is the perfect tool for an operation like ours. Virtually no setup time, no need for a large room to rip the strips, good quality on the strips dimensions and no broken strips. We rip strips of two sizes, 19mm and 38mm and only full length. We can sort through the stock of two lumberyards so we pick the best planks available, which usually are pretty clear grained and with reasonable amounts of knots. To save some time we stack the 19mm planks on top of each other and secure them with some screws. That way we rip two strips for each run with the saw.

Besides ripping, routing more bulkheads and some housekeeping we also weighted the first hull half with the inside glass in place. We weighted it three times and it was between 8.4 and 8.8 every time. We are pretty pleased with that.

At least the skiing is good..

2008-03-23T19:17:00.005+01:00

We have a spell of cold weather now during easter. The temperature in the garage is down to 10degC and it is snowing big time, so using epoxy is a no-no. If it dont heat up soon all we can do is work on ripping more strips and routing the inserts which makes the bulkhead parts fit togheter.
At least the skiing is good. Frode, friends and I visited the mountain "Kirketaket" on saturday. Walking up on our splitboards and snowboarding down again. Perfect off-piste "powder" conditions! Not very common during easter, but very nice. Too bad we did not get to pull off hull #3 as planned these days instead.

Here is a link to information about the mountain we skied on: http://www.kirketaket.com/index2.htm

Glassing, filling and sanding..

2008-03-19T09:16:00.004+01:00

Just some quick shots this time. Inside of hull half #1 is now glassed and have become super-stiff. Compared to the wobbly panel we dropped into the female mould it is now very rigid and stiff. Will see if we can weight the finished panel when the infernal snow stops dropping down on us.

First the building crew. From the left: Frode, Omar and Rolf.

Frode filling some low spots on hull half #2 with epoxy and sanding dust.
Frode will get the job of doing our foils when he is done with the bulkheads. He have done some quick calculations and the sum of all joins he is to make with the router is arund 200. He is very grateful that he was about halfway before he began thinking in that direction. Never think about how much a project is, just split it up into smaller jobs and do it. Dont think.. Do it.. (Phill Branders advice as well)

Omar also filling some low spots. He really enjoys our building nights, learning lots of new stuff but also having a good time. It is his first building project except remodelling work at home. Respect! He have earlier sailed on a monohull, but have only sailed a cat once, so he really is in for a steep learning curve when we launch. I am certain he well do as well on the water as he does in the garage.

We had an unannounced guest in the garage this night. Trond Nordam, kayaker and kayakbuilder dropped by to have a look at the progress and methods used. I think he was suitably impressed with what we were doing. Trond have buildt a CLC Chesapeake 17 plywood/glass/epoxy kayak so he was very interested in the techniques we used for these boats.

Repeat until done.

2008-03-13T19:00:00.003+01:00

We have now come to the phase where we dont have much new stuff to show every night. Now it is more about repeating things we have done earlier. Last night we sanded the second hull panel and did some more bulkheads.

Sanding with the belt sander is fast, but need a careful hand to not cut too deep. Especially tricky in the areas with a lot of curvature. Sanding a hull panel takes just about 2 hours with the belt sander and 40grit paper.

Unfortunately I have some low spots to fill on this panel. Good thing that we dont lack sanding dust.

Better and better every time.

2008-02-27T22:10:00.004+01:00

Stripping three quarters of a hull in one evening, while working mostly alone. Not too shabby. Feels like some real progress now. Frode certainly likes to see what looks like boat parts begin to fill the garage.

Amazing how much faster we came to this stage the second time we did it. Can it be done faster? Certainly!
I have a japanese dozuki saw with a 0.3mm thick blade on order. The company, Clas Ohlson, takes its time to deliver. Not happy with them just now. While waiting for the saw, I plan to put in a heavy duty sanding session with a drill and a flexible sanding pad on friday. I filled some poor planking last night, and the epoxy had not hardened enough for sanding tonight. At 15 degrees C the epoxy takes its own sweet time to finish off, much like Clas Ohlson in fact..

A good evening in the garage.

2008-02-25T23:31:00.004+01:00

Female mould set up and the hull in place. Strips for the next hull half and the bulkheads ripped, and I even got to clean out and organize a lot of stuff in my workroom.

Tomorrow evening I hope to fill a few cracks where I was a bit overeager with the block plane when fitting strips and do a coat of epoxy. Then it is sanding with a rubber backing plate on the drill on wednesday and perhaps glassing. If the epoxy isn't quite there yet, we will begin stripping the next hull half.

Frode continued with the bulkheads after setting up the female mould for inside glassing. He have really began to produce those with some speed and precision!

We set up a couple of worklights over the mould last week. Under the 500W light the hull have distorted a bit. Looks like the wood have dried out and twisted a bit. I put on a moist towel tonight in the hope that it adding some moisture will fix it. If not, I'll put on some lead weights when filling tomorrow night.

Here is the simple jig Frode have made to route the insets for the different parts of the bulkheads.

Not just F16 building.

2008-02-24T01:05:00.003+01:00

Rolf is not only working on the cats, he also have a kayak to work on. Tonight he put on the deck on a plywood hard chine kayak. Hopefully it is ready to go out of the workshop monday night! All that is left to do before it can go out for outside storage is putting epoxy on the topside of the decks. His wife have approved storage of the kayaks under the roof of the porch if they are hoisted up to the rafters. Will do!

7.7 is the number..

2008-02-24T01:03:00.001+01:00

First hull half came off the mould at 7.7Kgs. We still have to add glass on the inside, but that should not be more than a couple of Kg. Target weight for a hull is 24Kgs, so we have to be careful with what we put into the hulls!

First hull half comes off tomorrow!

2008-02-19T23:39:00.002+01:00

Just finished putting on the second coating of epoxy on the glass, the filler coating. Tomorrow the first hull half comes off the mould so we finally get some weights and find out how we are doing. Exciting times!

It's glassed

2008-02-18T22:33:00.003+01:00

No updates for a while on the bulding, but we have not been idle. Tonight we finished glassing the hull half, and glued some parts of the bulkheads together.

We put on the glass at +-45deg to the planks. It does mean that we have an overlap on the glass between sheets, but it should give more strength and stiffness. Pretty interesting stuff, just hope the sanding will not be too bad.

Also a boon to be able to put on the glass in several small operations instead of one large. I hope to have time for layer two of epoxy tomorrow night, and then it comes off on wednesday for inside sanding and glassing. Perhaps we are able to put the hull on some scales and get a rough weight estimate. Inquiring minds all over the catsailing world wants to know..

5mm strips glued together to form the basis for bulkheads. We will use a router later on to shape them to their respetive stations in the hull. Should be a really lightweight replacement for full plywood bulkheads.

Multihull article

2008-02-15T12:55:00.004+01:00

Article about our project in a norwegian sail magazine. To read click here.

Sanding, and a pre-coat

2008-02-11T22:47:00.000+01:00

Friday I was down in the basement filling a few dents and low spots with thickened epoxy. For thickening I used fine dust from all the sanding we have done. Today I had the pleasure of sanding down the hardened epoxy. Some cunning work with the belt sander saved considerable time, but it is risky business! I worked a lot with a belt sander when I did the Quattro 16 catamaran, so I have a feel for it, but it removes a lot of material really fast! After some longboarding I went over the hull with a random orbital sander with 120grit paper for some minutes to remove the scratches from the 40 grit paper on the longboard. Well, it says 40 grit on the paper but it feels more like 60 grit to me. Frode found a bargain on sandpaper in a shop, and it does the job.
After sanding and cleaning the hull half, we applied a pre-coat of epoxy. The idea is to apply a very thin layer of epoxy to the hull and let it soak in before the glass is put on. That way the wood will soak up less epoxy when putting the glass on, saving considerable weight. We used a new hardener for the pre-coat. This hardener results in a thicker epoxy , so it will not penetrate so deep into the wood. At least that was our theory, we are very, very, excited to check out the results tomorrow! Either it worked well, or we have a large sanding job on our hands..

Today Frode worked mostly on the female mould where we will put the hull half for inside glassing. Things are going forward, and we will only become faster with more experience. E.g. today we found out that you fill all lows first, then sand the hull to shape. Saves you from sanding one extra time to sand down the filler.

I also did some photos with a decent camera today, as compared to the mobile phone cameras we ordinarily uses. Phill, the designer, wanted to see what was up to in somewhat more detail. Feedback was "furniture", which was great to hear, but we know where the faults are :-D

First hull half sanded to shape..

2008-02-07T19:18:00.000+01:00

No updates for a few days now, but we have been chugging away on it. First hull half is now sanded down to shape and Frode have produced lots of bulkheads.
Sanding was no quick affair, but we expect to improve. Breaking out the beltsander was a good move, tought we were hesitant at first to do so. The hull half now need a little thickened epoxy in the holes and dimples left by the staples and we'll fill a few low spots. Then a quick sanding with 80 grit on the longboard and 120grit for a few minutes and we are ready to glass! Hopefully I find time for this during the weekend so we can start a new hull half next week. Those slow days are gone now!

W V D

2008-01-29T21:35:00.000+01:00

Not much getting done this week. The W. V. D has hit us..

2008-01-23T22:56:00.000+01:00

Number one..

2008-01-21T23:54:00.000+01:00

Still a lot to do before it is a hull half, but the first half is planked. Planking is way esier to do than anticipated. The work with strip planking is obviously setting up for it. Stripping is just zen.

Planking the first hull half

2008-01-17T22:34:00.000+01:00

It was our first planking session in earnest but with a respectable result in our opinion. Next hull will be even better!
Tapering the strips to a tight fit was a bit slow, so another of Bjørn Thomassons techniques will be tried there. Using a thin bladed japanese saw to saw the strips to shape. Then sand some if needed. Just need to track down such a saw in our little town..
We had some trouble shaping the bottom of the bow area, but the next one will be better. Then we will taper the bottom strip well before it is put in place. doing so with the rest of the bottom strips as well should make this heavily curved section easier to plank.
Using a plane to make tight fit between planks in the bottom was surprisingly fast and easy.

Frode also put some time into doing an experimental bulkhead. We are not sure tought.. Opinions anyone? There will also be some strips going across like an X over the bulkhead.

A well spent evening.

2008-01-14T22:00:00.000+01:00

We got the wide strips for the hull sides ripped, set up the bow and secured no less than four strips. That is real progress!

We are becoming experts at ripping strips with the skilsaw. Fast and easy. Next time we will have to do some hard decisions and start beveling the edges of the strips going into the bottom section.

We will have to re-check bulkhead 300 with Phill. Is it supposed to go in at position 300 and is the bow supposed to be hollow?

With the current setup the bow will be hollow, and I have a hard time trying to imagine Phill designing it like that.. Hopefully we will know before wednesday, when we begin stripping in earnest.

Back on track!

2008-01-10T00:16:00.000+01:00

There has been much debate and even indications of controversy over wether to rip strips on a table saw or with a handheld saw. I have been pretty confident that we wanted to use a handheld, while all professional woodworkers and people at the lumberyards have insisted on table saws. Now we finally know..

Last night we ripped three 8 inch planks into strips. We did not count them, but in the end we had rather many strips. Using the handheld saw, we had some ruined strips last time we tried, but this time we found the trick. Using the right techniques ripping strips was straight forward and an easy feat. The key was to focus on the guide and watch it so it did not work out from the plank.

Then it was just a question of pushing the saw forward. In the end, we controlled the saw 80% with the hand on the guide and 20% actually on the saw. If we pushed too hard, we got too much friction and made it harder for ourself. Bjørn Thomasson in Sweden was right all the time. A table saw is not neccesary.

Another key element for us was having a helper to catch the strip when cut off the plank.

These planks were quite wide and thing, for the bottom with lots of curve. One problem with wide planks is the natural sideways curve they will have. You will have to decide how to use the handheld saw when cutting the strips, to make the cut straight.
Next time we will rip some 2inch planks for the sides.

Using the NBC mask for protection was great. No dust in the nose, throat, lungs or eyes. Definately reccomended but perhaps not worth being drafted for

Ripping..

2008-01-02T22:58:00.001+01:00

We are finally ripping some wood. We had just two hours due to family comittments, but got to do an extension to the table for ripping and rip some strips. Using a circle saw demands a certain technique so we did produce some unusable strips in addition to the well shaped ones. We will only get better.. And you bet we are careful about where we put our fingers while using the saw!

As you can see from the pictures, some of us dont like dust and at least try to take care of their hearing. While others prefer "no-cost" duskmasks and the higher volume range on their stereos. ;-)
Yes, the mask Rolf is wearing is standard military issue. It supposedly protects against chemical, biological and nuclear warfare so epoxy dust, vapours and wood dust should be no match. Thanks to the norwegian national guard for sponsoring at least some useful gear.

Spruce, meet Mr. DeWalt

2007-12-24T13:51:00.000+01:00

After a few false starts we have learnt a lesson on tool quality. Cheap circular saws are cheap for a reason.. A blade 0.5mm off axis will over a 4000mm run mess up a 5mm plank. That is where Mr. DeWalt enters the stage.. In the basement, ready for some heavy duty runs once christmas eve is over (we celebrate christmas eve in Norway, not christimas day)

Done setting up stations, we hope.

2007-12-06T22:18:00.000+01:00

Here Frode is clearly realising that we are getting good at this. At least we hope we are getting good at it. It looks fair, and we hope the end result will be fair as well. Next time we will be able to do this a heck of a lot faster! Next time we will be much more careful when we mark and cut the stations as well. One millimeter here and one there can spell trouble. CNC cut stations would be fantastic to work with!

Now all stations are up, except station 5 and 30. They should be quick work next building session. We have experimented a bit with handheld circlesaws for ripping the strips. So far the two cheap chineese saws we tested have not been straight. Even a 1mm offset between the frame and the blade spells disaster when ripping. We are now trying to borrow a decent saw so we can rip some strips next week. If we can't get a good saw, we will have to fall back on a table saw. We might have to do so anyway if we dont master the technique, but if first time kayak builders manage..

Aligning stations.

2007-12-03T22:40:00.000+01:00

A fickly job which takes lots of time. 5mm her and 2mm there, or you get a "not so good looking" hull. Wonder how much we can take of this before we begin putting planks on.. Tonight we got some new lessons in the art of aligning stations. We quit when we started suspecting that our fairing batten was unfair. At least it felt unfair to us (pun intended).
An australia sailor claimed that strip planking was the devils building method. I begin to wonder if he had a point after all..

New stapler gun

2007-11-26T23:56:00.001+01:00

Just had to try the new stapler. It seems to do the job attaching strip plank to the frame. Rolf also received the new saw blade at last, so we can start cutting planks into the desired thickness. We also managed to attach profiles to the work bench. Now, everything looks bright for the future. Knock on wood!

Generating traffic

2007-11-26T14:31:00.000+01:00

Happy to see that so many of you, from all over the world, find this page. We will try to describe how we build three 16 foot catamarans. Perhaps this will motivate others to build as well? Remember to bookmark this page and come back often. Site will be updated on a regular base and perhaps evolve into a good resource for all who wants to build or sail a Formula 16 catamaran.
Enjoy!

Getting stuff done..

2007-11-21T22:10:00.001+01:00

At last some progress. We now have all stations cut and faired, including a notch for the gunwhale. We even got the stations set up roughly and put on a strip. Looks quite fair even without fiddling with the stations. Hopefully most stations will fit right in.
Today we also plotted the station missing from the full size plans Phill supplied. X-Y coordinates and fairing the station afterwards takes time. Note to self: Never start building from a table of offsets, if time is a concern!
To get some more progress and get to the fun part, stripping, we are going to do two sessions a week, for some time. Next time, we will set up the stations properly, and hopefully be ready to put on the first strips next week (just need to cut them first. Two weeks soon, since the sawblade was ordered, and it's still in the mail)!

We began talking about the schedule today, and we migh look at getting some ply for the decks, just to save time from strip planking the decks. Something to concider..

Woodastic, it's fantastic

Insurance..

All the mistakes..

Shaping deck supports..

F16 bridle fitting..

Carbon beams.

Elvis has left the building..

Bulkheads and gluing the panel seam

It has been a while.

Panel #10 planked..

Out of staples!!

Progressing slowly..

Cutting planks..

Panel 9 glassed on the outside.

Panel #9 pre-coated

Panel #9 planked and glued..

Panel #8 glassed on the inside.

Panel #7 done, and then some.

Glassing panel 8

Panel #8, take 2

Ok...

Quick fixes sometimes works..

Quick fixes.. fingers crossed

First epoxy mishap.. *bugger*!

Panel #8 planked

Panel #7 glassed on the outside

Planking #7

Test beam made in glass.

Gahh, compressor woes..

Compressor exploring..

Gunwhale mould in position.

Cutting planks..

TADAAAAA

Inside of #6 glassed.

Another hour..

Sanding the inside of #6

Progress on #6

#6 is pre-coated

#6 roughly sanded.

Staples pulled on #6.

#6 glued.

Panel #6 planked and filled

#6, just two more planks to go..

More planks fitted on #6

Inside of panel #5 glassed.

Some light sanding and planking.

A quiet weekend

By popular request.. the mould.

Done sanding the inside of panel #5

done glassing panel #5 on the outside.

Done sanding panel#5

Belt sander is too slow, enter the angle grinder!!

Belt sander back in action..

When it rains, it pours..

Mr. DeWalt needs a rest, and some new parts.

Even the best plans..

1060 staples a panel..

Panel #5, glued.

Gunwhale woes

Quality control is important

We are rolling..

Building times

Some days I wish

What do you get..

Looking for materials

Winterizing.. aka: The tin hat society

Carbon fibers arrived

Carbon fibers

Back on the sandwagon..

Our first youtube video.

New digital scale!

Dont trust digital scales

Grrrrrrrrinding..

Time for some light humour

Repeat until done.. The sequel..

More about ripping strips.

At least the skiing is good..

Glassing, filling and sanding..

Repeat until done.

Better and better every time.

First epoxy mishap.. bugger!