Better and better every time.

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.

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.

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..

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!

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

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

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

Sanding, and a pre-coat

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..

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!