Zach's Pearson Triton # 101 Pylasteki

Built a mold.

2011-07-13T15:54:00.003-04:00

I spent some time building a mold off the hatch cover on Pylasteki last week, for practice and to make a spray hood.

I've been reading a lot about mold making, and polyester based products, as I don't have a whole lot of experience outside the realm of epoxy.

I sanded off all the old paint down to the gelcoat, and faired the top with a polyester fairing compound, akin to the infamous "bondo" but different brand. I long boarded with 80 grit, and worked the lows to shape.

I then applied a skim coat of 3m's Pirranah finishing putty, and sanded with 120. The last of the pin holes I filled with Evercoat's Ultrasmooth finishing putty, applied with a razor blade.

After that, I acetone washed everything. I scuffed the surface with 80 grit, and sprayed 15 mils of Duratec Surfacing Primer, and let it sit. I used a mil gauge to verify.

In the morning, I wet sanded with 800 grit all of the orange peel. I buffed it with a power buffer (Makita 9227c) and Aquabuff 2000. I goofed, and got saw dust on the buffing pad... some swirl marks.

After that I washed it with soap and water.

A few weeks ago I took two pieces of dura-rock tile board and epoxied them together on the top of my table saw, and contact cemented a sheet of formica over the top. I used this as a mold plate by placing the hatch lid on top.

I took plasticine modeling clay and filled all the cracks against the formica, and filled the openings at the front, with clay and smoothed it out as best as I could. Then I cleaned up all the dust around, and applied 3 coats of honey wax, a mold release wax.

I came back the next morning, and buffed off the wax and put on one last coat.

With that done, I got out mixing buckets and some black CCP sprayable tooling gel, catalyst, and stir sticks. I pulled out my binks 95, and put my biggest tip in it... catalyzed the gel, and put it in the cup, pulled the trigger... and nothing happened. It is a siphon feed gun, but would not pick up the tooling gel! (Will have to make an attempt to re-create this...)

So, with tooling gel that has a 15 minute pot life, I grabbed my junker hvlp gun with a 1.5 tip, and cranked up the air pressure to squirt it through after quickly tearing down and making sure it was clean. At this point, there wasn't much pot life left. I sprayed what I could, catalyzed another 16 ounce batch and sprayed almost all of it. before it gelled up. This resulted in just over 15 mils of gel. Ideally a mold would have 20-30 mils, but I decided to proceed with the thinner coat.

Thin gel coat, can alligator, or shrink and pull loose when you lay over it with the first layers of mat. I have seen pictures, so I wanted to see if it would happen for the sake of education... it didn't.

4 hours later, I came back and laid two layers of .75 ounce mat over the part. No scissor cuts, just tearing the mat off the roll so that the layers would blend together.

The next day I came back and laid 3 layers of 1.5 ounce mat, and the day after three more. When the last three layers had hardened, the mold broke loose from the formica sheet, so I decided to de-mold the plug (the original hatch cover)

I used plastic mixing sticks, and plastic squeedgees, and in a few minutes time it was out.

Then with a jigsaw, I cut the excess from around the edges with a jigsaw equipped with a diamod grit blade. It worked like a champ, until I hit an air pocket that was longer than the blade could cut without hitting the bottom of the pocket, bending the $12 little bugger... I switched over to a metal cutting blade.

Ideally when the glass is still "Green" and hardening but not all the way kicked you cut off the overhanging edge. I left each layer alone, as it was sitting on top of my table saw, and didn't want to blow fiberglass dust everywhere.

I will make a spacer to go on the flange around the mold, about an inch thick, and round it over. When I lay up the part in the mold, it will work as a sea hood, that happens to be the same shape and style of the original sliding hatch. Lots of work to build a sliding hatch, but the education has been worth it.

Zach

Last weekend...

2011-06-10T23:00:00.003-04:00

I spent last weekend sanding off the last of the bottom paint on Pylasteki, as I'd grown tired of pulling up beside a boat that looked like that much of a project...

This week Noel has kept me busy, and a wasp nest was formed on my staging that I kept forgetting to purchase wasp spray to correct...

Yesterday after work I pulled out my outboard, and did some measuring to see about an outboard well, instead of having it hang off the transom. I spied a picture of Bo Mann's Triton on the Plastic Classic discussion forum with a well in a Triton.

Seeing as I'm in the process of cockpit and lazarette construction I figured it would be best to set aside all prior plans and design around an outboard well. A: It sure does look better than being hung on the transom!

Pictures

2011-06-01T14:50:00.007-04:00

Saturday I spent some more time grinding out old fiberglass tabbing under the old V-berth, and a bit of sanding of old bottom paint.

I put another layer of tabbing across the bridge deck, and tabbed the bulkhead to the underside of the deck at each side. I pulled down the backer board under the starboard side deck repair, and added a layer of glass to the underside overlapping into the original deck.

May 24, 2011

2011-05-24T21:01:00.002-04:00

Sunday I spent the afternoon fine tuning the bridge deck blank ( a 6 foot x 27 inch piece of 3/4 divinycell glassed on both sides with 1708 biax and epoxy.)

I cut the top of the bridge deck bulkhead off level. I cut the lower lip remnants of the back of the cabin off, and ground the gelcoat off so the flat foam panel would fit up tightly. I screwed a piece of 3/4 plywood across the back of the cabin to hold the existing fiberglass to keep the opening true.

Once the foam blank fit nicely, I rounded it over with a router to ease in the glass work.

Then I ground off all the gel coat around the cockpit sides, where the coaming boards attach so the new foam and fiberglass will be firmly attached. I left a small lip of the old cockpit seats to have a support for the new work, and to keep the side decks from deforming.

Then we went for a sunset sail on the tanzer.

Monday was a no-boat work day.

This afternoon I double checked all the past work, and finished grinding the inside edge of the cabin wall.

Then I ground out a bad spot on the starboard side deck, where in the past a stantion had been ripped out and a polyester repair was made. It was a bit of a soft spot, so while I had access I ground the old out and glassed in three layers of 1708 with epoxy. I used blue dow board foam, and a few dots from a hot glue gun to hold the backer in place. I wanted to fix this spot before the new bridge deck went on, and it made access to the underside more difficult. I will be glassing the bridge deck bulkhead to the side decks, and making the bulkhead water tight.

While the hot glue gun was heating up, I walked down the port side deck with 40 grit on an 8 inch pad sander, where I had applied fairing compound over the weekend.

Next I acetone wiped and sanded off the foam board and edge around the cockpit. I mixed up some epoxy, and painted it on the edge of the foam and all around the cockpit lip. I took the extra, and put it in a bigger mixing pot... mixed up two more little batches and added cabosil (fumed silica) to thicken the epoxy to peanut butter consitency. Then I took the mix of glue, and piled it up on the lip around the cockpit edge and smushed the new bridge deck in place. I filled the gap around the outside edge and worked out all the air, cleaned the excess and called it a day.

I also... forgot my camera.

Zach

Update: May 21 2011

2011-05-22T07:45:00.003-04:00

Over the last few weeks of afternoons I've reworked how the boat was blocked and adjusted the stands until she was level. I also put the finishing touches on the foam hull coring on the Tanzer 16.

I glassed in the foam on the top of the cabin top.

I sanded off the port side deck and applied some fairing compound.

I glassed the interior side of the bridge deck bulkhead, and tabbed it in place.

I removed the rudder, and spent some time studying pricing on replacement shafts as the bronze has gone pink. I am planning to use a skeg style lower bearing, and a full length shaft. (Pylasteki has an outboard engine, and I'll be filling in the prop aperture.) I'm also looking into replacing the rudder tube with a larger diameter, to be able to fit a cutlass bearing to take some of the play out of the system. Pylasteki's rudder is the original, best as I can tell that has been fiberglassed over.

I bought a used monitor wind vane (Thanks Tim! www.lackeysailing.com)
And snagged a Whale Gusher 25 bilge pump at a second hand store.

Zach

Pylasteki Moved...

2011-04-29T18:46:00.004-04:00

Wednesday I had Pylasteki moved from the yard she was in, over to the one where Noel lays along side to be closer to my floating work shop.

I spent yesterday afternoon blocking her up squarely as the hydraulic trailer couldn't rotate her far enough up in the bow to set her down right. This took some time...

I spent this afternoon building scaffolds to be able to work around her.

Tomorrow I have one more scaffold to build, a few saw horses to lay down the mast and a little work bench as a prep spot. My ladder is now a touch short, as the boat is now about a foot off the ground instead of 4 inches like at the other yard.

Progress!

Zach

Grinding!

2011-02-15T04:54:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I ground the gelcoat off the top of the cabin top with an 8 inch pad sander and 40 grit. I am always surprised by the thickness of the gelcoat on Pylatesteki. She has one full coat of cream colored gel over a full thickness coat of black gel, and it is hard as nails. (though cracked and crazed like a broken egg shell...)

I have decided to leave the hatch rails in place for the moment and core the outboard sides of the top, before the rails come off. I am not sure how much influence the rails have in holding the top straight and true. There is a chance that removing them without adding back something else will warp some lumps and bumps into the top.

I ground 1 1/2 inches around the new foam, and set the foam 2 inches away from the edge of the cabin top on all sides.

This way I can bevel the foams edge, and laminate new fiberglass on to the top without grinding the sides of the cabin, which requires grinding a recess greater than the thickness of the two layers of cloth that will be going back in order to fair back smooth.

I'm going to build up the perimeter around the foam with strips of scrap fiberglass to within an 1/8th inch of the template I made of the existing corners. I'll then use some epoxy putty fairing to pull the edge into a smooth slick surface in 2 or 3 coats, using the template as my spreader. This is faster than shaping the fiberglass its self into the perfect shape with a grinder or 36 grit, with less damage to the cabin sides.

The solid fiberglass edging will keep stray anchors and heavy stuff toted on deck from crushing the top skin over the foam, which otherwise doesn't take point loading very well.

I ran out of bricks (I thought 14 would be enough...) to hold the foam down to the cabin top. I normally use a heat gun to relax the foam a bit, but forgot to bring it along.

I used some of the pre-existing holes for winches and turning blocks to jab screws into the foam to lock it in place. My drill was with my heat gun... It works fairly well to run a sheet rock screw through the foam into the glass behind it when gravity doesn't want to co-operate.

I left the screw holes open, even though some glue will drool through I did not want to bond the inner skin to the outer skin, as I'll be removing the old coring and inner skin and old balsa for more head room.

Cheers,

Zach

First nice weather weekend... In a long time!

2011-02-14T08:43:00.002-05:00

Last weekend Leah and I pulled the small portlights out, and most of the hardware off the cabin top.

This weekend, I spent some time leveling the boat again.

I pulled the companionway sliding hatch off and laid a straight edge along the cabin top. The top is sagging, as the coring is rotten.

I am going to put a layer of divinycell foam on top of the old roof, and fiberglass it in place. I scribed the shapes of the existing corners on plywood, cut with a jig saw until it was close and then stuck a piece of 40 grit sandpaper on to each of the corners working the plywood back and forth until there was contact everywhere.

Late last night I made a post, with a 2x10 cut to the camber of the cabin top to wedge from the bilge, to hold the cabin top straight while I work on it.

Once the top is glassed in place, I will cut out the old fiberglass inner skin and remove the rotten layer of balsa wood on the inside to gain some head room, and room to glue up a false overhead to put a bit of insulation behind.

I glassed the other side of my cockpit bulkhead, that I installed straight to the back of the cabin and crooked to the rest of the world, and did a bit of work on Noel. Trying a new brand of epoxy, made by E-bond epoxies, so we will see how it goes.

Cheers,

Zach

Whoopsie.

2010-10-24T13:45:00.001-04:00

So today I pulled off the stifflegs from the back of the bulkhead, prepared a piece of glass to skin the front side...

And then I backed up to the main bulkhead and looked at it. Something went wonky...

So I screwed my two 3 inch wide plywood straight edges together and made a go - no go gauge to go between the main bulkhead and the cockpit bulkhead.... (Straight stick 120 some inches long...)

Turns out the back wall of the cabin is out 3/4s of an inch from one side to the other, and I used the back wall of the cabin and bridge deck to align the cockpit bulkhead across the boat.

So, I cut out my perfectly flat, perfectly plumb bulkhead that was straight to the deck but not the hull. Then I cut out the bridge deck and started getting everything lined back up as it should be.

The reason for removal: The galley and cockpit are built off the hulls line, not the decks... so if I can keep it all symmetrical and be able to use a square to define fore and aft things speed up quite drastically. Noel taught me that one long ago... If its not right, pull it out or forever hold your peace...

I went ahead and ground off the tabbing to the hull, since the epoxy hadn't post cured from yesterday... The first 24 hours its easy to work with, after 3 days it gets mighty hard...

I won't be able to goof around with it anymore till tuesday night, so back to the beginning all over again.

October 23 2010

2010-10-23T21:13:00.001-04:00

Leveled the boat...

Met a new friend named Rob today...

Fit the new Coosa bulkhead in place and tabbed it in place with two layers of 8 inch wide 1708 on the aft side, as I glassed the entire aft side, and will do the forward side... but did not want to add another sanding cycle tomorrow.

I goofed when I cut out the bulkhead... and cut the outside the line I scribed from my pattern... so it took a bit of time to fit, in addition to being 3/4s thick rather than just

I then ground out the old minibulkhead tabbing behind the rudder, and the old back stay knee...

Then I vacuumed out the interior and filled up a 6 gallon shop vac with fiberglass dust. Still have more to go but I ran out of light.

Tomorrow: Cut out the bridge deck and square the top edge of the coosa to the world... and everything. Grin.
Then, I'll take a piece of divinycell that I've already glassed, and place it on the new bulkhead leaving just a bit of the old cockpit seat as a cleat to epoxy it to. The seating height will actually be an inch higher finished, but the center of the bridge deck will go down an inch and change.

I have a piece of 4 inch wide 3/4 inch plywood that is doubled up that I use to keep things straight that take a good pull. A few screws through hold things straight, that will warp a piece of 3/4 plywood on end.

I put two pieces of 3/4 plywood 3 inches wide on the back of the coosa board to hold it flat while the glass is setting up, otherwise with foam and things glassed on only one side, it will be locked in as a potato chip. This is important if you are trying to make something that will be finished for paint, or will be a single wall thick with a door...

I was to dusty to get a picture...

Zach

Update October 22 2010

2010-10-22T20:22:00.002-04:00

So, I tried for three days to get away from Noel at a decent hour and do some work on Pylasteki without any luck.

Today, I got away around 2:00, and worked till 7.

I took out the old bulkhead under the companionway, with a 4.5 inch metal cut off wheel on a grinder by laying it flat against the hull and grinding until I saw wood dust on both sides. Then I slid a long wood cutting sawzall under the bulkhead bending it into a j shape so it didn't dig into the hull and ran it from the bilge to the deck, and the bulkhead fell out. I ground out the old tabbing with a hitachi 7 inch grinder, and a norton 24 grit grinding disc or two. It is about the fastest way I have found to remove old tabbing...

On a fiberglass boat, it is worthwhile to remove the old tabbing as it is a secondary bond to the polyester fiberglass on the boat. Fiberglassing the new tabbing that holds the bulkhead in with epoxy, on top of a polyester tab doesn't make a whole lot of sense... while it will grab the wood, foam or coosa board better than the polyester resin would... it can also grab the hull better than the old tabbing can. So... I made a lot of dust.

After that I screwed a piece of luan to the old lip of the cockpit I left to stiffen the bridge deck while working... and used a tick stick to transfer the shape of the hull to the luan.

A tick stick is a piece of thin stuff, 1/4 inch or so by 1 1/2 wood with a few shapes cut in it. A lot of people use a tick stick with a few notches, number 1 2 3 or a b c along the notches so that it can show a long mark with a 3 and a short one with a 1.

I take my tick stick and cut a few hills and valleys, squares and rounds in it so that it can only be marked one way, and anywhere on its length is unique enough to be idiot proof. With a few V notches and a 1, 2, 3... I turn into an idiot...

With that done, I laid the luan down on a piece of junk 1/2 inch plywood, and laid my tick stick on each of the lines, marking the sharp end point with a pencil. Once the marks were there, I took a thin steel rule and used it as a batten (Traditionally a thin piece of wood with a clear straight grain and no knots so it bends uniformly...) I connected the dots, and cut it out.

Then I fit it to the bulkhead plywood to the starboard side, plumb to the world, and perpendicular the centerline of the boat. With that done I laid the starboard bulkhead on the port side, and noted the changes that needed to be made, by laying a scrap square of 3/4 inch plywood about 1 inch by 1 inch and marking the spots where it sees air.

Then I took the two bulkheads, and set them side by side in the boat, and scribed the overlap. (I purposefully left one just short of centerline, and the other real long...) and cut the overlap off the long one. I then set them together, and screwed a backer block of another piece of 1/2 inch plywood over the seam.

With that done, I took the full width plywood template out of place and laid it on top of a piece of 3/4 coosa board. Coosa board is a fiberglass filled polyurethane foam board that serves as a rot proof plywood replacement. I cut out the coosa with a jig saw, and then laid it on a piece of plastic.... on top of a piece of 3/4 plywood... on top of my table saw. (The only surface I have at the moment that is flat...)

I then cut out a piece of 1708 fiberglass, and laid it over the coosa and marked it out with a sharpie and cut it, then fiberglassed it with west systems epoxy using 60 ounces...

Tomorrow I will fit the bulkhead, relevel the boat (as it is on a sand lot and shifts with a lot of rain...) and glass it in place.

Update Oct 5 2010

2010-10-05T19:58:00.002-04:00

Still not dead!

Friday I went over to Pylasteki and cleaned her out, and toted all the scrap bits and pieces that had piled up around her away. Took an hour or so to get reaquainted...

Saturday, I spent some time making a set of bomb proof saw horses. (2x4 I beam on top, with the legs set to no bevel... gives just about the perfect saw horse when built with 36 inch legs.)

Cruised up to see the babe for the rest of the weekend...

Tuesday night, I spent two hours digging my sheets of divinycell out from under a big pile of stuff for Noel, and went ahead and cut out my blanks for the cockpit sides. Then I sanded off the other 4x8 sheet. Since I didn't vacuum bag them, where ever there was excess resin it had to be ground off to yield a smooth surface.

I also priced out some 316L for building a new rudder. Around 250 for a half of a 4x8 sheet of 1/4 inch. The rudder shafting runs $18 bucks a foot... I now just need to test out my little TIG box and see if it up to the task.

All for now,

Zach

I'm not dead! (Yet.)

2010-09-05T10:45:00.003-04:00

Sad to say, the last few months have had me working on Noel. I'm getting ready to build a work shop beside Noel, so that will slow down the short term progress... but speed up everything once built. Right now I am without a work bench once again.

I'm plotting an evil plan to take a week off for another great grinder war of 2010. (One a year, isn't quite enough... twice still isn't enough...)

I've piddled a bit on Pylasteki. Pulled some putty on her top sides, and cleaned up a few things... but by and large she hasn't had the attention she needs. For the first time since May, I felt a cool breeze yesterday... so the time is coming!

I have my divinycell blanks laid up... but do need to order a sheet of 3/8ths (or more accurately, run a sheet of 1/2 inch through a planer...) and recore the top of the cabin and lower dog house.

I have some grinding work to do inside her bilge, to get rid of some of the cracked resin that was poured in to smooth out the area.

My evil plan for a fast cockpit design didn't thresh out... the tiller and rudder shaft height dictate the need for the widening cockpit that tritons have. If the tiller came across the stern, one could put a cockpit like you see on boats with stern hung rudders, it doesn't. Moments that make me say, duh.

I also snagged some stainless shaft and plate to play with (scraps) to see if my tig has the guts to build a rudder.

So, Pylasteki will have a foam cored cockpit that looks quite original, it just will have straight sides and not flex and squeak under foot.

Somewhere along the way I got engaged, so times they are, a changing.

Zach

March 24 2010

2010-03-25T20:50:00.003-04:00

Yesterday after work I cut some out the rest of the cockpit templates I had been drawing up.

Just 1/2 inch birch plywood, good enough stuff to hold a straight line without much help.

I spent some time re-leveling Pylasteki, as I noticed a little air under one of the once tight jack stands. Hazards of working in a boatyard with a sand lot... Just used a water level and marked the scribed waterline.

I'm calling the cabin top/hatch sliders level, which is pretty close to the scribed waterline. Most of the time I measure top and bottom of stuff that runs athwartship (from one side to the other) off of a known true plane... Or something that isn't going to get changed. So, while I could hang a plumb bob to see if the vertical faces on each end of the cockpit are inline with gravity, what matters more to your eye is that they are inline with the rest of the vertical lines on the boat... So if the companionway bulkhead mirrors the main bulkheads, thats what I'll build to. Otherwise with the hatch boards out bulkheads will run at a different angle than the cockpit.

Not to say that is something even worth thinking about... but if you have a boat set up in one spot and steady you can pick a bulkhead to work off of and build a whole boat that looks right, or try to trust a plumb bob and level and build something that doesn't match. The trick is to take a level, and cut a wedge off one of the bulkheads so everything is evenly out, to the center of the earth, for the entirety of the bilge.

I'd probably change my tune if I mostly built boats on land, but the big one floats... so my brain wraps around thinking the boat is in its own little world.

In other news, my 24 inch wide cockpit won't work. I had a boat in the past with straight, narrow cockpit seats... but it had a transom hung rudder. Pylasteki's tiller sprouts up from the cockpit sole (floor) and needs a greater swinging clearance for knees and other things. Because of this you have to be far enough away from the tiller to make a tight turn, but also close enough to push it over the other way past center and gybe... The close enough in side of things, means I'd need to shove the coamings in about a mile to make it comfortable to push a the tiller past center.

The reason for the Triton's tapering cockpit is so when seated, your forward knee has somewhere to be. It tapers wider at the front than the back from 26 inches to a hair over 37.... at the forward end... at least at the top.

If I were not building a blue water boat, it'd be easy to square everything off and do away with the bridge deck, gaining the clearance to make things work. But, I'm not... So, no matter how much I like the aft end of a Herreshoff Alerion 26, things will go back more stock than not.

I also fired up the pad sander and started on the starboard side gelcoat removal and stopped as the sun was setting. It's not real smart to plow around with 40 grit after dark, at least in my book... as the fairer and flatter you can keep something while chewing off the old finish, the easier it is to arrive at an end product that is smooth and fair...

In other news, I found a 6 inch pad for the 7335 Porter Cable, and a counter weight that lets it work together. Locally I can't walk in and grab 5 inch paper with a stick back, while not a big deal to order and bring in... I try to keep everything standardized so whatever works. The 5 inch pad at full tilt boogie never wanted to stay flat for me, and always had the feeling it was about to do something unexpected. Expecting the unexpected is something I try to do, but not a desirable trait in my sander.

Grinding and paint removal... done. March 21 2010

2010-03-21T19:41:00.005-04:00

Today I went from 2:30 till 7...

Settees removed, head bulkheads removed. Chainplates pulled, galley bulkheads removed... Salon shelves removed...

Then all the tabs ground down. I ground down to the first layer of mat against the hull with my 8 inch makita grinder, and made a lot of dust. Pretty much everything was tabbed in with 5 layers. 1 layer of mat against the hull, 1 layer of roving, another layer of mat and another of roving, then a last layer of mat. I swept up close to 30 lbs of dust by the old calibrated elbow... lifting the cardboard box over the side.

I removed the paint using a 4.5 inch grinder with a twisted wire wheel. (not a cup style)

I held it perpendicular the hull, and moved it up and down following the angles of roving, then held it upside down and blasted the other side of the roving. Fastest way I've come up with for paint removal... Though it has crossed my mind that it'd take all of a half hour to grind the inside of the hull smooth with 40 grit on an 8 inch... But that would sacrifice some strength, and I'm not into that even though the Triton is built sturdier than the temple mount...

As far as order of operations go, take out the shelves and top of the bulkhead and grind it all flush before removing the settees. I wasn't thinking straight when I started from the bottom up... Ended up twisting and contorting to make it all happen... cest la vie. Small boats are not as easy to work on as big ones, though a day of grinding does noticeable things.

Cheers,

Zach

March 19 2010

2010-03-19T22:14:00.001-04:00

Tonight I went from around 5:00 till 6:30 laying up another divinycell panel, and grinding off the edges/prepping the face of the one from a few days ago. Should be ready in the morning. I'm planning to mock up my cockpit in the morning out of plywood, get all my templates made and then start assembling the pieces. It is supposed to rain sunday, so I will switch back over to grinding later in the evening.

I cut out the port settee, and most of the head bulkhead. It too was full of water... I switched over to 16 grit Norton (bought another box...) and have been using Nortons hard rubber backing pad instead of the flexible black plastic ones you find at the hardware store. They will grind up into a corner and leave a rubber trail... instead of getting caught on something sharp and getting jagged. I like diamond flap discs when I'm working with all fiberglass, as they last forever... they get loaded up with wood, so cutting out bulkheads they aren't so great. The hard paper backed discs run about 2 bucks a piece... I've used 6 or 7 so far.

Made it till 9:00... then I kicked over my halogen work light and popped the bulb. Oops!

Picture will come after I'm done grinding and get all the dust out. Today I scooped up a lot with my dust pan off the sides of the hull where little avalanches were forming...

March 18 2010

2010-03-18T22:13:00.004-04:00

Last night I laid up a sheet of divinycell with a layer of 1708 on each side. It was set up and pretty this morning...

Got off work around 5...

It was raining, but not blowing very hard so I could work inside and stay dry.

I cut out the starboard settee with a skill saw and rode along side the tabbing. The face came out in pretty much one piece. Then I ground down the top tab to the plywood where I could see the seam, and got the aft end freed up off the lower tab with a pry bar. Once the ply was out I used a cutoff wheel to slice off the part of the tab hanging out... Saves on dust.

Then I cut out the aft shroud bulkhead, if she was still fitted out... The hanging locker bulkhead.

I used a cut off wheel on the angle grinder, cut through down to the plywood right beside the hull, then came back and ground it with 36 grit on the angle grinder. (4.5 in) I chopped the bulkhead in half with a sawzall to make it easier to remove. Geometry wants to hold a tightly fitting bulkhead in place. It won't be going back in the same spot... so no need to keep the old as a template.

Most of the plywood was in pretty decent shape, except the outer edge of the bulkhead. 4 layers thick in some areas, 1 mat, 1 roving, 1 mat, 1 roving... then finish cloth. Beastly strong... I went down to the first layer of mat, I'll come back with an 8 inch pad sander to keep everything smooth.

Took a dinner break, and came back to do some more grinding. I burned down the tabbing... Still have a few feet to go before its a fresh start on the starboard.

Pylasteki looks like 25 pounds of powdered sugar was dumped inside of her...

Zach

Transom and how to's...

2010-03-16T22:31:00.002-04:00

Today I took off work around 3:00 and went till 7...

I started out with a template of the stringers that will become the cockpit sides.
The easiest way I've found to start a project that hangs in space... Is to build a 2 dimensional outline that can be hung in space, defining a few planes.

In this case, I have some very straight 2x4's that are marked out in 6 inch increments from the aft end of the cockpit back. In addition to this, I have lines drawn square to the faces... so I can measure down with a tape measure or folding rule (folding rule gets a better fit) and jot down the measures on a notepad. The easy way is feet, inches, 8ths. When you go to warp a batten around something 16ths don't matter very much.

Good batten material: buy a #1 kiln dried treated 2x4 that is perfectly straight, no knots around 10 feet long... Rip with the grain... Feel around for hard spots and thin it down if there are any. Its not so important for lofting lines that it be perfectly the same width, as it is that it'll bend to your marks evenly. If you are jointing with a table saw... rip off one side, put your ripped side to the fence... rip again... then take your pass. I like around a 1/2 inch thick for big boat stuff... Rip a bunch of them, as they age some turn to hockey sticks/firewood.

From here, I marked out a piece of flat birch plywood... doesn't do you any good to make a template out of scraps that aren't straight and flat. I used a sheet rock t-square and made lines every 6 inches, then laid a piece of brown contractors paper across the plywood, and remade my lines. If it fits right the first time, I have my template for the other side... but where the paper comes to shine, is doing what I did here. See the tall section at the far end? I measured down from the underside of my 2x4's... You can either do the math to add a few inches to every measure, or just slide the paper to where it looks right... and or, find a piece of scrap that it lays over but didn't have a factory side to loft off of...

Next, take a screw and lay it on your marks... smack it with a hammer. Your mark is transferred from the paper to the plywood quite nicely. Now warp a batten around and play connect the dots with a pencil. Let it fly where ever it runs natural... this is just a template.

Take it to the boat, screw it to your bridge... now take a compass with a pencil, lay it on the hull and scribe the line. 3/4 or 1 inch is a good setting... measure it and jot it down on the piece. Go back and cut it out with a jig saw (or a circular saw like I did here... it's faster.)

If you are doing a bulkhead that has a sole that is flat... I build a carpenters square that stands on its own... a 1 ft square piece of 3/4 as the base, and two 2 foot tall by 1 foot wide pieces screwed together. Now if your floor is square you have something to align to, something to screw a piece of luan to for a joggle/tick stick...

Anyway, next up I cut the transom flat. I said yesterday I was going to loft a 1/2 inch curve into it... I decided today that flat will work just fine. A Triton's transom curves out 5 inches from square, per the plans... 3 1/2 inches at the top by my measuring. Mine was 2 1/2 inches taller than flat, so you have options. Either warp a batten around it, or take a piece of doorskin and roughly scribe the transoms curve on it. Then transfer that to a piece of 3/4 plywood that is wide enough not to lose its flatness... then come back and lay a pencil on top and scribe your line. If you like it... come back with a sharpie.

Once I scribed my line, I measured it out... 32 inches from the bottom of the heart to each corner, and 21 to the middle.

I cut the transom with a thin metal cut-off wheel (1/8th inch) on a 4.5 inch grinder. I always cut this kind of thing at an angle, where the back of the cut is much higher than the line, in case of goofs. If you try to hold it perfectly level, and things go awry you have to make it grow back.

I also advise cutting a 1/4 inch higher than the mark. It doesn't take long with 40 grit on an 8 inch grinder to turn a whole boat into dust. I came back with a straight edge and played with it till it looked right.

After that the weather started going south, so I fired up the grinder and attempted to burn off all the gelcoat on the port side. Didn't make it all the way... but total time invested hit 16 hours for the port side. She has an 1/8th inch of white, on top of the black tooling gel... It's about like firing up a grinder on a parking lot.

Warm weather has arrived!

2010-03-15T19:35:00.005-04:00

So, last fall I cut out Pylasteki's cockpit to gain access to the rudder tube and make the cockpit lockers water tight.

This had a good and a bad side... on one hand, I had access... On the other, her insides turned to be outside. So, no interior work over the winter.

Saturday I spent the day working re-working my plans. I've learned a few things over the winter as far as time savings go. I had planned on using marine grade plywood to wall off the lockers, tabbing to the hull like the rest of the bulkheads, one sheet of which walked away a few months ago. (Drat.)

Having spent more than my fair share of time wedged in to the cockpit lockers grinding out various rotten wooden supports, glassing, and generally contorting... The time came to break out the thin metal cutoff wheel on the angle grinder.

My reasons for a fresh start:
I like destruction...
My back stay chain plate knee is rotten...
The cockpit lockers are to narrow to work a sail bag through, making the v-berth the sail locker.
The old lockers gave great access to the shallow end where you can't put anything, and require standing on your head to get to the deep recess where everything falls.
The athwartship bulkhead that keeps stuff in the lazarette from sliding under the cockpit isn't structural... and keeps one from being able to stash a decent size oar in the cockpit locker.

So, aside from the plywood stiffeners being rotten, and the generally goofy curvilinear shapes of the stock pearson deck mold... I decided the day had arrived to start with a blank slate.

Since I have an outboard on Pylasteki, the rear deck and traveller arrangement were tough on the rump... My minds eye pictures an alerion 28 style rear deck with cut down toe rails that taper out to nothing. Mainly because that image has haunted my dreams since I stepped on board one at the Annapolis boat show two years ago. No puddles for water to blister off the paint, no need for 2 sets of chocks to keep paint on the rub rails in the slip.

The bridge deck has to rank of a curve, which makes water puddle up at the forward corners, making the triton a wetter boat than it ought to be. I figure raising the cockpit seats an inch will make the cockpit more comfortable, give better viability looking forward, and an inch more room above the galley sink so it might stay dry on a port tack.

So... off came the curved stern rail, and off came the stern deck. This provided an interesting visual... as the transom appears 2 inches shorter now. Also curious, my deck being from the second deck mold... has a transom that runs up almost 2 1/2 inches from straight across. The Mk 1 and mk3's are much less curved. My eye likes the curve, but I will be installing a hatch on the aft deck... I am mulling over a flat (1/2 inch rise in the middle, as a truly flat surface looks concave) rear deck to make it easier to get a good seal, and give better access to the tiller on my outboard. Sigh, Pylasteki will just look like all the other tritons in the world I guess...

Materials:

I've been wanting to try vacuum bagging, so I bought a sheet of divinycell foam. I'm mocking up the various pieces with the hopes of getting all my pieces out of 2 sheets. It will probably end up being 3... It will make a little waste, but I am going to glass the whole 4x8 sheets, and cut the pieces out as though they were plywood, then assemble with epoxy and glass tabbing.

This means I'll pre-fair the panels, paint the inside of the lockers... etc, before it goes together, with minimal time spent actually wedged inside the lockers themselves.

I'm plotting two stringers that will run continious from 1 foot 6 inches aft of the cabin top, all the way to the transom. I'll build this off site, upside down meaning the tops will be even to one another. My footwell will be straight, at this point I'm plotting 24 inches of width... same as it is down below. This may mean I need a tiller with more curve to clear knees, and regain some steering angle... I'm after the storage, and figure that wider seats will make the Triton's overly short coamings not hit the kidneys quite as easily.

Oh yeah... and it'll be lighter than stock, and I'll finally have a boat that when I crank on back stay... I don't get the feeling she's warping into a banana.

I'm a little vain when it comes to the style of Pylasteki. I really love the line Alberg drew of those coamings... pretty much perfect.

The stock cockpit seats run at the same curve as the bridgedeck, which is fine when underway... I'm going to square off the cockpit sole, minus a few degrees, not so much that its even visible. I sat in (on?) a Herreshoff named Margaret over the summer last year, she was comfortable... mainly for the flat, wide, seats. So long as she doesn't list, the water should burn off the seats in morning sun...

My bridge deck is going to be 2 feet wide, reason being... I'm moving the cockpit locker bulkheads aft to make more storage inside the boat, the cockpit was being shortened... primarily so I can run my drains overboard above the waterline, out each side in the boot stripe. If one hose pops, it won't sink the boat.

Thats all for now!

Zach

Still Alive...

2009-11-10T21:58:00.004-05:00

Noel has been taking all my time... since... August.

So, for any curiosity of what I have been up to boat wise... click here: http://83footernoel.blogspot.com/

Pylasteki's time will come once more. After the big boat is in the water, I'll be free'd up... till then it's a rush order to get the rail freed up for other jobs.

Zach

2009-08-20T23:22:00.000-04:00

So... Another week has gone by (for all intents...)

I've pulled off the stainless rubrail, and de-gooped it with a razor blade. I think there is some pre-historic silicone present... so working dillegently to remove all traces before sanding anything. Thats three nights work. The yard moved her out of the way, so I had to jockey my pile of lumber and table, tarp, cockpit parts... etc from one side to the other, and clean up my old spot of spent box fans, grinding discs, and vacuums... grin.

I've been building a staging, stacking up pallets and laying 2x10's across them I think it'll work out nicely. Really wish she was blocked higher for doing bottom work, but kind of nice for setting up staging, I'm 3 high in the bow and two in the back.

Noel has been keeping me busy otherwise... rebuilding the transom, and resheathing 30 feet of plywood and glass from the waterline to rub rail on both sides... Stepping slowly away from the skill saw... but, rotten wood is my bane... kinda stole priority from Pylasteki.

Zach

Progress report.

2009-08-13T23:41:00.001-04:00

I've removed my pushpit, outboard, outboard bracket. De-lettered, pulled off the stainless trim on the transom... and de-greased. Made a long board that takes two 16 inch pieces of air file paper out of a piece of scrap starboard a friend gave me, cut out some handles on the bandsaw and rounded them over with my router. Countersunk the screws put in one per side so the handles can rotate and turn to whatever position is easiest on the wrists.

Went to town on the transom with 36 grit paper for an hour. Pulled out some 40 grit on the 7335 for a half hour... Decided I'd try a power planer. Neglected to look at the condition of the blades before starting.... derrr. Forgot I banged a nail working on Noels decks a few weeks ago. The gelcoat is chalk. I've got a full coat of white, over a full coat of black as thick as Pearson is known for doing. (almost a 1/4 inch along the stem!) Still in the white gel, I want to take it back as far as I can so whatever cracks don't show through. Plus I figure that much chalk must weigh something.... grin. Running my hands around the hull, my port aft lower chainplate knee is a bump on the outside of the hull. Dusting on some flat black paint on the transom, you can clearly see the back stay chainplate knee outlined. I'm a little amused at the thickness, currently I'm planning to knock it back down, tomorrow I'll grab a worn out flap disc and artfully sculpt it down... don't follow the instructions for polishing stainless, 15-20 degree angle.. lay it flat and use about the same touch as a you'd sculpt styrofoam with a blow torch.... Vertical passes only so no scars running through curves are put in that can't easily be longboarded out...

Fun fun fun! Bottom paint is almost all gone. It really is amazing the difference good sandpaper makes... just have to be on the ball enough to know when its surpassed its useful life!

My previous wailings about the cost of paint and other goodies requires that I do some talking for my fellow budget minded folks. My polycarbonate came in... in case anyone wants the good stuff, track down a plastics distributor well in advance of when you need the stuff. Put in a request that they keep the remnants of a size slightly larger than what you need rather than making scrap from a full sheet. I go through Piedmont Plastics. 5 pieces of GE MR10 (Structural glazing, the stuff they use on skyscrapers... 10 year UV package, 10 year scratch) in 1/2 inch for 50 bucks a piece. The sheet is almost a thousand bucks retail. Same thing for the Phenolic... bought a hunk of 3/4 14x24 for 50 bucks. Full sheet of that would be 1700 full retail. Helps to scrounge, but you have to know what you want... and how much. Some came from Nashville, one from Sanfrancisco... If you don't care that it'll take two weeks for trucks going from one warehouse to another to play connect the dots, it'll save you a lot of money.

Saw yesterday that my backstay's upper clevis pin is teeny tiny, same size as the 1/4 inch stuff on the jumper stays.

Zach

Day... I've lost count, but my wallet hurts.

2009-08-03T20:45:00.004-04:00

What a 48 year old piece of phenolic looks like... I think. Grin. That is Pylasteki's masthead sheave, or for the non-boat speakers... the pulley at the top of the mast the rope goes over so you can put up a sail.

I'm currently in Greensboro on account of parts hunting, and machine shop time.

Today I:

Ordered 2 inch by 14 inch x .250 silicon bronze bar stock... 10 pieces. Couple spares, deciding if I want split back stays... Pulled the trigger on 41 bucks each, had another quote come back later today at 30 each. Doh.

Ordered a piece of 3/4 inch phenolic 14 x 23 inches... gonna make a new sheave and spare... $53

Priced out a sheets of 1/2 inch acrylic, 1/2 inch polycarbonate... xr10 and mr10... (Ouchie on the last one.) Probably going to do 1/2 inch polycarbonate with a UV package, and a sheet of 1/8th inch acrylic in front of it as a sacrificial scratch shield/uv filter.

Went to woodcraft... picked up some goodies I've been lusting over. Mmmm. Ouchie. Mainly a half decent compass so I can quit moaning about the inadequacies of plastic and stamped steel cheese metal.

Zach

Mast tabernacle and interior shots

2009-08-01T11:06:00.004-04:00

Yesterday...

Brian welded up the compression tube and doublers, and filled some of the holes where stuff used to bolt.

While he was running the Tig, I spent some time going over the "list" making sure that all the measurements needed were taken. After the welding was done, I scribed the arc the mast goes through by turning the plate from side to side riding a pencil on the mast. Then transferring the line a 1/2 inch further up... Picked up a plasma cutter, and gave it a try... then backed slowly away and grabbed my trusty jigsaw. Grin. I'm not that artful with something that cuts as fast as plasma...

While I was finishing up fish mouthing the tube... (see picture) he made a new set of jumper strut adjusters. The old ones were crusty aluminum and eaten away... new ones are pieces of stainless allthread.

Finished up around noon, loaded it back up on the truck (tire on the roof of the truck, tire on the back of a trailer... me in the back of the truck picking it up and walking side to side for tight corners.

I bought a bolt with a real wide shoulder, as I'm not sure if this will be my last mast on Pylasteki. I'm going to make a set of plates to carry the boom vang, so when I want to drop the mast everything will rotate around the same pivot point.

Then it was time to get started doing some glass work... except I reached exhaustion, mainly heat... 93 degrees and 80% humidity, all I wanted to do was sleep. Tried to work through it, but no dice... about all I finished was hot coating the plywood panels going into the cockpit. After that I ran over to West Marine to run some pricing on the random tidbits... in airconditioning!
When it cooled off, I went back to... sanding bottom paint. Unfit for anything but the mindless monotony, of waking up to discover that piece of sandpaper had died a long slow death and quit sanding 5 minutes ago...

2009-07-29T20:32:00.002-04:00

Smooooth.

Last nights work, hand sanded the rudder tube to add more fiberglass.

Zach

Day 17

2009-07-26T22:51:00.005-04:00

Day 17

Today I ground down my through hull patches again... This seems to be a generic way to start the day. I'm impressed with how much glass it takes to fill a boat this thick! Still have a ways to go on two of them. I'm using a really flexible batten to follow the curve of the hull, that and my semi-tuned finger tips for the vertical curvy'ness.

With that done I marked my lines on the cockpit sole and sides... and cut out the sole forward the plywood support, and leaving some meat around the top so it would hold its shape. Tritons are beasts... I can step on the edge of the sole I left (4-5 inches wide depending on the location of the reinforcement...) and it hardly deflects. I think if they'd run the reinforcements side to side instead of fore and aft, it wouldn't bow and squeak!

Anyway, took about 2 minutes to cut it out... and about 5 to just look at it and visualize where the lower water pump bolt... distributor clamp... and transmission clutch adjusting bolt... used to be. By golly, with a lift up lid right there, I might keep an inboard in a triton. Idea noted...

With that done I cut out the starboard cockpit bulkhead, and ground down the tabbing. It had 3 layers of roving... and mat. By golly, that made a lot of dust!

I then went to town cutting out the cockpit locker lid drains. These things have a crazy amount of drop to them, I'm thinking Pearson intended them to be stiffeners... but if you've ever tried to pull a fender out of a locker, or worse... shimmied inside one to take something loose from the deck... they are some kind of in the way. I do believe they'd probably still drain downward with the lid underwater though...

After that I measured down from the deck at intervals, sort of the reverse of lofting a boat... and made a template for my plywood bulkheads that will run along side the cockpit. I then cut out the wooden reinforcement on the port side, that kept the cutout for the locker lid from bowing in and out. I'm bringing the plywood up almost to the edge, as I want the thing never to squeak again when I step on it. The cockpit is the one place on a triton, besides the chainplates... that doesn't scream absolute, absurd overkill... so it must be brought inline with the rest of the boat. Grin.

With that done, I cut out a template for the starboard cockpit bulkhead... and ceremoniously tossed the old skinny one overboard.

I'm going to install my seacocks officially when I've glassed in everything. Stupid... yes. I just know I'll need an access hatch somewhere, in order to put on a hose clamp or something dumb... and the only way I know how to get it right the first time, is to install it when the rest is already there. I call it the heater core theory. Cars, they start with a heater core as the blank slate... then they put a firewall on oneside, with a hole slightly smaller than the core... then they install a dashboard to its backside... Fastest way to replace one, is to buy a new heater core and build a car around it... Nothing on this boat will be like that if I can help it!

I then got started sawzalling out the starboard side cockpit locker lid drains... and had a guy wander out of his boat around 9:30... guess he was spending the night aboard... So I quieted it down and packed up for the evening.

Zach - clogged up another set of pre-filters, and wondered why the world started spinning... Obituary reads - "Suffocated by respirator."

Day 15

2009-07-25T19:29:00.003-04:00

Today I had to make a supply run to lowes for drill bits and counter sinks, and another hack saw. (Hacksaws and 9/16ths box wrenches disappear...) Then to the bank (Ouch....) and swung by to pick up my other seacock.

With that done, it was a case of dodging raindrops and having to move inside. I cut out backing plates for the seacocks, and drilled out the hole for the sink to accommodate my 1 1/4 through hull.

After that, I spent some time dialing in exactly where I wanted the cockpit drains. I started yesterday by laying a straight edge across the cockpit seats and measuring down... establishing a horizontal plane of reference. I took a straight edge and lined it up against the aft end of the cabin top and marked the toe rail. Then hopped down to ground height, and picked up on the line vertically. laid a straight edge vertically in line with the forward end of the cockpit. Measuring back from that line I determined the location of the bulkhead inside... Then went from my mark at the toe rail, and measured diagonally to my chosen mark...

Switched sides, picked up the diagonal, and it was the same... Sweeeet.

I found out that the scribed line that shows the waterline is off port to starboard, and my painted boot stripe is a 1/2 inch different on each side... the holes however are symmetrical.

Then it was time to rip my lumber down to size for the compression posts. Gluing will be tomorrow, as I didn't have time to "make flat" on noel. Grin.

Pictures: Old cockpit drain diameter 1 1/4. New ... 2 inches. Little bit faster draining!

Next one: Location

Day 14

2009-07-25T19:28:00.001-04:00

Day... Whatever.

I'm starting to suffer the monetary cash flow issues as bank balances dwindle, and sufferage charges... I mean, transfer charges accrue. I asked the owner of the boatyard today about my being here over 10 days... evidently I've been making enough headway that he's fine with me sticking around awhile.

Today was one of those days that just hurts. I bought two 2 inch seacocks, through hull fittings, and tail pieces. I also snagged a through hull for one of my original cockpit seacocks that is 1 1/4, and an adapter to bring the hose size to 1 1/2 inch for my sink drain. Four hundred and forty four dollars later... only had one seacock in stock, so the other will be here friday. (Anyone have a source for heavy gauge stainless sink drains? Mine is chromed steel, and rusted out. boooo.)

Also ordered another chainplate to match the schaffer on the otherside. I figure I'll use the layout of the boltholes if I decide to make an overkill set... but these will match the breaking strength of the wire I've got... soo...

I laid out the location for the new seacocks... laid a straight edge on top of a stack of 2x4's from the cockpit seats over the side of the boat. Measured down to the waterline, and down to the cockpit sole. Since the cockpit butts directly against the bulkhead, I'm going to move the front end of the cockpit back 7 inches, to give enough room to leave the tabbing un-marred. I'll probably go about replacing that bulkhead in the coming days... I've been wanting to adjust the cockpit area slightly, as when fully loaded with people the sole is to close to the waterline... and feet get wet.

I'm going to give above the waterline drains a try... well, more like slap in the middle of the boot stripe, as that is 4 inches of drop, plus 2 inches at her current weight.

After that I filled up my prop aperature fairing with acetone to dissolve out the foam, then cut it in half and gave it a looksie. Fits snug, ought to work about right. I've stalled on that one as I didn't think through a hollow bit below the waterline... may fill it with foam, or see about tracking down a load of lead shot polyester casting resin... well, she does need a touch of ballast aft right? grin!

I'm getting tired of running back and forth to Noel for tools that end up there part of the day, and on mine part of the day... i keep forgetting a set of drill bits so i can get started making backing plates for the seacocks. My jig saw will start a hole, but not in 3/4 inch marine grade... at least not without a lot of patience.

At some point today I planed the ash down to 1 inch thick stock for the compression posts, while the planer was running I ran a and power plane to take the excess epoxy off the mast beam. Finished up about the same time, planed down the beam and took over to the boat. At this point hunger struck, and I about broke the cardinal rule... Don't cut expensive pieces on your project while hungry and tired. My bevel gauge quit working so I found food. Came back with a refreshed brain and cut my version 2 mast beam to fit.

At some point today I went to the marine hardware store and picked up 30 bucks of 5/16ths 316 stainless bolts, fender washers,and cap nuts... Not the prettiest way to do it, but I like smooth shoulders on bolts in tightly fitting holes with bolts stretched. Shoulder bolts never wallow out, but more than that the slots don't strip out... Practical wins out again.

I goofed in my thinking for the compression posts i haven't made yet... as I have a 3 inch wide mast beam... plus the tabbing thickness, a 3 inch post would be narrower than the beam... derrr. So I've got a little more pondering to do in my pre-cut layout. It'll be close, as I'm on the border of having enough counting saw kerf... but I guess I know where the store is. grin.

Day... 13

2009-07-22T00:07:00.002-04:00

Today I spent some time cleaning up the frozen snot drippings that happen while fiberglassing overhead and large quantities on curved surfaces. I then vacuumed the boat. It takes about 3 trips with a vacuum before shes habitable without a dusk mask...

I made a mistake. I went to the marine surplus store... and found some beautiful pieces of aluminum angle iron that were intended to be engine mounting brackets for big yamahas. The kind of stuff I feel compelled to build a boat around. Then I found the backing plates to go with them... and an anodized high polished aluminum tube 1 5/8ths outside diameter... 1 3/8ths inside, which means I can slip fit a piece of 1 inch schedule 40 aluminum tube inside of it and have a friend plug weld them together...

Then I went to fastenal, and ordered a 1 inch diameter 316 stainless bolt. 32 dollar bolt... 50 bucks after washers and stuff.

Long story short, I've got the stuff to build a mast tabernacle. Basically, a pivot point a few inches off the deck that allows the mast to rotate forward or aft and be taken down for servicing without a crane. I have high hopes of one day taking her through the canals of europe... and it'd be nice to be able to hoist and lower the mast as needed... that and I've always wanted to be able to fly the bird at stubborn bridge tenders that wish to watch sailboats do circles for an hour before they allow them passage by lifting the bridge.

Back to the boat I did some studying on the mast beam, and decided didn't want to mix any more epoxy today... So let the ideas fester till tomorrow on how to best glue everything up. it looks like I'll have to through bolt everything, as I haven't found a local source for massive wood screws as they used originally.

I went to west marine three times... cotter pins, seizing wire, spreader boots, rigging tape... pricing out bottom paint and through hulls... and to buy a chain plate. They had one schaffer 3/8ths pin chainplate. 1/8th inch thick 304... 40 bucks out the door. I'm thinking I may go that route to get the stick back vertical and sailing for a while. Not as massive a saftey factor (I like the dumb numbers of overkill) but the original 1/8th inch bronze chainplates made it 48 years. Stainless is as strong, but not as corrosion resistant... will be good for a few years. I just need the longer length to get the bolts below the toe rail on the hull.

I'm dreaming up a way to center everything, I think Ebb over on the pearson ariel board talked about it once... taking two sticks the same length with two marks at equal points. Measure back from the stem down the sides of the boat the same distance... the stand up the sticks changing the angle side to side till they cross... showing the centerline of the boat. I figure I can hang a plumb bob from the two sticks to find the center of where the mast step ought to be. Moving it forward 2-3 inches, my tabernacles bolts will pass on each side of the beam, with plates under it. Ought to be plenty strong.

I'm figuring to do some measuring of the scribed waterline and see if it is symmetrical on both sides of the boat. If it is, I'll take a square and mark a line on each going vertically, then take a flexible batten to transfer the line up to the toe rail. That way when she is trimmed as designed, her chainplates will be plumb... which means if the stick isn't raked fore or aft at all, the pull will be perfectly inline to the chainplates.

I think it'll work, but that might just be the acetone exposure...

After doing my thinking on the mast beam, I pulled off the cockpit seacocks, and the raw water seacock, and scraped out all the sealant. I made a tool out of my 2 inch piece of cold roll by grinding it to fit the inside diameter of the through hulls. They laughed at it, and I bent it into a pretzel. So, I ground off the heads of the through hulls. On the two cockpit drains this slackened the seacocks inside, so I unthreaded them from the through hulls, then I used my pretzel, and unthreaded the through hulls from the hull... after heating them up with a torch till the sealant started to bubble. After that I started grinding. I pulled out the brownout box (dimmer switch/receptical combo) and detuned the beast... 7 inch grinder with a soft pad and PSA sandpaper discs. at 8,000 rpm it would roast the adhesive of and sling the paper off. I spun it a lot slower and it did a pretty decent job at bottom paint removal. With the paint out of the way I loaded a new 40 grit flap disc on the beast and ran it full throttle for as long as my arms held out... 2 through hulls. The hull is an inch thick here, so I'm feeling pretty content to go 3/4 of the way and fill it with biax, then grind back the inside a smidge, lay down a disc or two then fill up the rest with thickened epoxy with milled glass fibers. It's not like the hull isn't fine with the holes there now! (It would take a ridiculously large bevel... 1 inch times 10 = 10 inch radius around the hole...plus the 2 inch hole... I'd be starting with a 22 inch wide piece of glass cut in a circle and working up 10 layers thick, each layer a 1/2 inch or inch smaller diameter. I don't think so...

I then cut the exhaust outlet and sink fiberglass tube flush inside. The hose to my sink disintigrated when I pulled on it, ripped in half. Yikes. I'm re purposing one of my cockpit seacocks to sink drain duty. Deciding between a real pair of 2 inch cockpit drains, or going to a pair of 2 1/2's... Cost will play a big roll, but in any case the through hulls on my 1 1/2s necked down to 1 1/4. Unacceptable for an offshore boat.

Being that I am a connoisseur of overkill, I'm pleased to note that my friend Dave shared an idea... He uses concrete grinding discs to do fiberglass work. I had a metal grinding disc loaded on my 4.5 inch grinder tonight so I gave it a try. Wow! I'd say doing the first 80% with a grinding disc, then switching over to a flap disc to smooth things out... then finishing with a random orbit or DA... gives the exact same finished product, but at a much much quicker pace than starting with the DA.

From 7 to 10:00 tonight, I ground the bevel for 4 through hulls.

Zach - Almost like a day off!

Day 12

2009-07-20T22:19:00.002-04:00

Today... I got a late start.

Did some working and talking on Noel till 10:00 or so, then refilled resin and loaded up my template to the boat. First I swung by atlantic veneer, and picked up a boat load of ash... sifting through till I found the perfect two boards. 5/4 10 inches wide and 14 feet long.

I like ash, its a nice looking wood... but its also cheap enough at 2.50 a board foot, for me to pick through and throw away anything less than perfect.

So, I've got enough lumber to make the 4 compression posts that take the load from the mast beam. Which I hope to glue up tomorrow. I'll have to figure how many clamps it'll take. I may try and do them all in a row divided by polyethelyene sheet, as I don't have quite enough clamps to do all of them at once.

I'm thinking to do 2.5 by 3 inch posts, as that is what was factory. Since I am laminating, it ought to be 20% stronger than if it were a sawn post... though I bought enough to do 4 3x3 posts. Decisions decisions, weight savings vs overkill...

If I had more time I'd consider doing something fancy like a box strut on each side of the door way, so the cross section might be larger... but the weight would be much much less. Or a pair of aluminum tubes...

Sometimes though, I take the weight weenie thing to extremes. (Grin.)

After I got my wood, it was time to get back to the boat. Test fit my template... good good. Laid glass over the pvc tube, went to Noel and cut out my bulkhead. Went back to Pylasteki and foam stripped my bulkhead. Learned from the other day, put the foam on the bulkhead not the other way around... then ya don't have to fight with it to get it centered.

I then took some time shaving here and there to get it to fit properly. My index is from the center walkway, so the port side deck is about a half a touch taller than the starboard, and the cabintop just a tick tighter angled... It's a boat, everything is hand fit, building it or rebuilding it. What looks fair, what looks right... is... Throw away your square, level, plumb bob... just keep your straight edge and bendy battens handy!

With that done, I filleted the bulkhead, and glassed it in place.

That one line, seems so anti-climatic... but here are the pictures.

Day 11 (though day 9 on the hard... grin.)

2009-07-19T23:02:00.002-04:00

Day 11...

Today I finished grinding. Got a late start, as today was laundry day... ran out of clothes. Slept in till 10:00, and awoke to a phone call... it was all I could do to get my hands to answer it.

I don't like bonding stuff to dry polyester resin and clumps of mat... so I took it down till almost all the pits were gone in the original roving of the hull. Then I laid an 8 inch wide strip of 1708 over the path just in the event I lost any strength... The port side was especially flaky, with lots of air pockets... So I want to grab hold of hull!

I put down two layers of fiberglass on each side of the starboard bulkhead. Each side on the hull got a 4 inch wide tab 8 inch swath of glass and an 6 inch tab which means a 12 inch wide strip. I had cut a 16 inch wide thinking about overkilling, but I got to thinking that the original tabbing was roving and mat of the dimensions I laid down... and I replaced it with epoxy and biax, even I at times find overkill for the sake of overkill to get over the top. Write down the date, I said it...

The deck has a double layer of 6 inch wide tabbing. I replicated the original installation and didn't put a fillet on it, as it makes sense that the beam ought to tuck up extra tight to the bulkhead without having a 2 inch radius missing from its backside.

Speaking of backsides... I've worked my ass off, literally... pants don't fit anymore. Had to drill a new hole for my belt!

I picked up two quarts of fast hardener the other day for doing the tabbing, as I had dreamed up getting the starboard locked in place... then in close succession doing the port, not wanting to wait dfor the slow stuff to set up... This was a mistake, as I mis-cut one tabs dart (had to cut a dart to get it to conform over the new stringer tube...) and didn't have enough time to correct it before the pot started smoking.

The aft side was a piece of cake to lay up, the forward side fought me a bit... melted two pots (one of them in half...) when I wet out 12 ounces of a 16 ounce pot. I should have mixed a few smaller batches... but having just done the aft side without a hitch, I was feeling ballsy...

With that done, it was dinner time. I've been going to Hardees for dinner most nights out of this saga... as its right around the corner from the boat yard. 12 minutes, and 5 bucks later I'm refueled...

I got back, and laid up the 8 inch wide strip on the port side, and positioned my PVC tube. I didn't grind back the paint quite far enough on the forward side to glass over it... So I called it quits and will check my bulkhead template to make sure everything fits. (Per my measuring it ought to... but boats aren't symmetrical!)

About it for now...

Day 10

2009-07-19T10:01:00.001-04:00

Today... Sucked.

I got an early start, but had to top up my resin and cabosil... and make a supply run to get more gloves, paint brushes... so 7:30 turned into 8:30... turned into 9:00. It rained last night, so I had to pump out the bilge (backed up cockpit drain...) and clean up the boat. Turned into 9:30...

I decided to take on the port bulkhead and glass in the PVC pipe/starboard tabbing in one shot then move outside the boat.

I had the port bulkhead out around 1:00, and the bulk of the tabbing gone at by 2:00. I used the 7 inch grinder which I have nicknamed... "The beast" as its 13.5 pounds, 8000 rpm... and 4 horsepower. I put a 40 grit italian made flap disk on it, and took the tabbing down to the first layer of mat. (I've used a half dozen of these particular disks on that grinder on Noel, so no sweat on putting scars anywhere... My dad said that when he came to the boat, it looked like it was on fire as dust was coming out of the forward hatch in puffs like smoke. I knocked over my fan and experienced a total white out...

Today was the first time I've ever tasted styrene through an organic respirator... and the second time I've found myself quite tired... and vision going funny, as the pre-filters on my respirator got so totally blocked with glass dust I was working at an altitude higher than sea level...

The bad news, is my big shop vac died... inhaled a glove, and I had not turned the set screw to tighten the filter in place... wound up in the fan. Got the glove out, but no motion... must have popped an internal fuse or fried the motor. I use this big shop vac to suck up most of the dust, by grinding in directions toward the hose... when its not trying to tear my tyvek suit ioff me... So I had to vacuum the boat three times, for my own sanity. I stepped on my sawzall, which was hiding in the dust in the bilge... then I couldn't find my 4.5 inch grinder...

I'm somewhat messy, though not dis-organized... but one thing I can't handle is a heavy layer of dust coating everything, as my mind works visually... Don't think straight when the world is shielded... Probably why I'm not much for snow. (Grin)

That was the relative success.

I shot myself in the foot. I did the bulkhead removal prior to sanding the fillets I did on the starboard side. The epoxy work I did last night blushed worse than I've ever had it, and I mix 5 to 10 gallons a month... you could have used the hull as a slip n slide... if it were not for the razor sharp peaks of thickened mix here and there... so it took a while as my scotchbrite became smaller and smaller, and the chunks coming off larger and larger... till finally it was blush free. Epoxy when it cures has a tendency to have the free floating amines in the mix float to the surface, leaving a waxy like substance that nothing will stick to... Luckily it dissolves in water and gets somewhat easily removed with scotchbrite.

Since... I started hand sanding my fillets almost 24 hours after they were done... the epoxy was well past green, and nothing soft about it. I spent three hours cleaning them up, as my little ridge had re-amerged as a slightly smaller little ridge. I also had to get rid of the waves that were in it, having not yet mastered the art of vertical, curved, acute corners...

Effectively, my day was done at 1:30... though I didn't leave the boat till 10:00 pm. A frustrating day, but tomorrow I have a little more grinding to do, and then the glass goes in.

Zach

Forgot my camera.

Day 9

2009-07-17T23:42:00.001-04:00

Today my dad came down and helped mix epoxy… Though I had him wait… as I had to do some prep work. A lot… before getting the bulkhead in.

I used the angle iron to hold things in place. One about level, the other running up hill, in the event that my plywood had any bow to it or wanted to float at an angle…

If you look real close I have a 5/8ths thick wood block supporting the weight. I used that to draw lines on the hull by laying a sharpie on the plywood on each side. I then pulled the ply back out, and unrolled my ¾ inch thick weather stripping down the middle.

With the weather stripping in place, I epoxy coated the edge of the plywood and dropped it in place. I popped my wooden block just barely under one side of the wood and clamped everything square.

I then put two 20 and 3/8ths long 2x4’s down the passageway and squared up the opening till they hung with no support in the gap.

I took a straight edge for the last time to see that it was perfect… and we started mixing thickened epoxy. I wrestled with the idea of using milled glass in the mix, but decided that if things get to flexing enough that its needed I have bigger problems… so cabosil.

It was a new experience for me, putting a fillet on a surface tighter than 90 degrees, on a curve… with a pipe in the middle. Normally I use a piece of 1/4 th inch polyethylene cut on the bandsaw to whatever is needed… raked at an angle smaller than 90 on the wall side, and dead flat on the floor side, 4 to 6 inches long. Held at an angle less than 90 in the direction of travel it cleans up for you as you go… nothing really to sand. This time I made a little tool out of luan, and broke it into shorter and shorter lengths. The front side was 3 fingers wide, with my ring finger doing the job of cleaning up the pass as it went up hill… The aft side worked best about 2 inches long.

With the fillets in on both sides, I started glassing the aft side of the bulkhead with a 4 inch tab (8 inches wide piece of glass) and discovered that glass doesn’t lay smoothly around the radius of my sewer pipe. I’ll have to cut a dart on each side for it to lay over.

I discovered however… that my fillet on the aft side wasn’t quite large enough to cover the outermost edge of foam. I thought it was smooth, but it wasn’t… making it impossible to wet out without a bubble forming along the corner of the foam… So I took the 64 inch long strip back off, and tossed it on the scrap pile. After that act… which always feels satisfying… I added more meat to the fillet by rotating the angle against the hull allowing more goooo to pass under the fillet stick.

(Wipes sweat off brow…)

Casualties: Burned up shop vac.

Innovations: 3M Paint and rust remover, looks like a black spider web of really abrasive stuff that you chuck in a drill… Works beautifully to sand the inside of fillets, and inside corners of the cabin top. It has enough guts to clear out fiberglass too, which I discovered trying to use it to remove paint from the hull… whilst it smoothed out the roving. I’m running it in a right angle drill. Sweeet tool of the day.

Finally toasted my 36 grit flap disk. Swapped it out for an 80… Don’t think it is going to last as long as the cutting speed reduced quickly from new. Though the reduction probably seemed more severe, as the new 36 grit flap disk acts about like a plasma cutter to steel…

Zach - My arms are getting tired of grinding overhead... Need another cheeseburger to continue.

Day 8...

2009-07-16T23:49:00.004-04:00

I did some yachtrodding... Or at least pulled some hotrodding tricks out working on the boat.

Once at the boatyard, I glued up a stack of polystyrene sheet with 3m 77 spray adhesive. (Not recommended for longevity, but long enough to make a form...)
I took my stack and cut it out to fit the prop aperture. I used a Stanley Surform plane... (Same one I use for planing end grain of plywood, and working with luan....) and worked it down to a shape that was fair to the keel, and the same thickness as where the rudder rests.

I then took a 1/4 inch off, everywhere. Which wasn't quite enough... and covered the thing in biax scraps. The last time I did this I was making car parts, and had to cover the piece in Mylar as I was working with polyester resin.... and 1.5 ounce mat. The surform works, but an autobody file (big cheese grater) works wonders. I also built an electric hot wire to do it, but all that stuff is stashed at my folks house 250 miles away.

I cooked some polystyrene., but the outer shell is there. I'll probably end up filling it up with acetone to dissolve the foam then troweling in a putty of thickened epoxy with milled glass fiber and grinding it to fit where needed. The alternative is to cut it in half, and glass it as two clam shells, stronger, but more work for what is really just a glorified fairing.

I took a wooden dowel, 1 inch in diameter, and wrapped in aluminum foil (Used it as mold release in the past... Crinkled up, didn't let go of my half round. You see, the aft end of my keel has a fairing strip running each side of the rudder shaft that I want to replicate, as I' haven't decided when I rebuild the rudder if I'll use a 1 piece shaft and a massive gudgeon, or keep something similar to the stock setup. I tossed the aluminum/epoxy composite form (Hehe...) off to the side in the junk pile. I then took some waxed paper and wrapped said dowel...

I used wax paper as the release to keep my foam hunk from getting glued to my new table. Didn't work... epoxy got hot enough to melt to the wax paper... I sliced off the edge on the bandsaw to keep from grinding wax into the part.

(That wasn't chronological...)

While I had the fiberglass out, I laid another layer of 1708 biax over the starboard side. I did the starboard side while she was floating, and only got one layer down before haul out. I was stuck in first gear, not wanting to grind through the glass, but also wanting to rough it up... I spent 15 minutes with a random orbit going nowhere fast, before going out to the truck and getting my grinder with worn out brushes. It has a soft 6 inch pad... a thing of beauty, takes adhesive backed sand paper discs... I held down the switch, and spun the pad... and she worked. In the first minute I did more with that 40 grit disc than I did in the previous 15... I got almost done, until she would run no more. The rest I did by hand chasing down shiny spots along the corners and resin lumps. I did the whole 8 feet in one shot. Mixed up 16 ounces of resin, brushed on a hot coat, unrolled the fabric and got to wetting out. Once I got that on, I hopped off the staging, mixed up another batch... Stirred with one hand, and rolled what I wet out with the other. When everything was wet, and the excess pushed all the way aft into a puddle on the gel-coat... I put up a tarp and hung around chasing air bubbles and excess resin out. My tarp didn't cover the forward foot, so I have a few bubbles... I'll grind that back and do it again when I rework the chainplates.

Yeah, it'd be fine to have a dime sized air bubble... but that just bugs me till I fix it.

With that done, I took a piece of oak dowel and popped out the cutlass bearing. It was held in with marinetex... sweet. I took a piece of adhesive backed sandpaper and slipped it around the dowel to ream out the stern tube. After sufficient sanding, I ran an acetone soaked rag through till I was satisfied it was clean. I mixed up some tickened epoxy, and took a small piece of dowel and a little bit of glass. I wrapped up the external part of the stern tube (bummer, as I already sized my ear shaped aperature filler... have to modify it...) in glass. I slid in the dowel till it stopped, on the shoulder that indexes the cutlass bearing. I packed it full of epoxy, and put my little disc of fiberglass over the end of the hole. I don't want whatever I do as far as the engine-dectomy goes to be overly permenant in the event I want to put an inboard in the future. I'm not going for a "Never had one" rather a buttoned up "blank slate."

At this time, I noticed that my four ounce pot of thickened epoxy was smoking... and decided I might have mixed a little bit to much.

After that it was lunch time. (Around 3:00...)

I did some grinding on my through hull patches to get them started fair to the hull. I need to cut a new batten to follow the curve... but as with everything I do, I went way thick on the first few layers so there is plenty of meat to start with. If the weather holds I'm going to get rid of the rest and swap out my sink through hull for a seacock. (I want to move my cockpit drains above the waterline... lately i've been thinking of a redesigned cockpit....)

I got back, and started fitting my bulkhead. I took my length of steel angle iron and cut it into two 3 foot pieces, and ground down the ends so there would be no sharp parts. (don't want the boat getting hurt.)
I took 2 of my big clamps, and clamped them to the port bulkhead, and used spring clamps to hold the starboard floating free in the air... perfectly aligned with the starboard bulkhead. I took my 5/8ths blocks (don't cross cut stuff that skinny on a table saw.... Caboom... hit with a pile of toothpicks. (Grin)

I measured down the hull to my reinforcing stringer, and measured down my bulkhead template, took my compass and pulled a curve. I took my jigsaw and cut it out, then dropped it in place. I went around the stringer with my compass set to a 1 inch radius, marked it, and followed the contour under the deck, which had a 1/2 inch clearance at the cabin top, and 1 inch at the deck height.

I took this information, and cut another. I took my 1 inch radius marked out for the stringer, and made a few concentric rings from its center in half inch intervals... Cut the smallest, second one was the charm. Bulkhead dropped right in place with 5/8ths clearance the whole way up. The deck was a little tight, so I took a paint stirrer and held it to the edge, tracing a line 1/8th inch plus a pencil... 2 passes with the jig saw and it was perfect. (Imagine french chef making kissing noise)

My new beam set up rock solid... I pulled it out of the jig tonight. Another thing out of the way.

The inch and a half piece of flat bar I'm going to grind down to fit my through hulls, and turn with two crescent wrenches. Doesn't take long to grind, though don't lean on the grinder so hard that it anneals the steel... grin. If she turns purple, ya got to hot! I learned my art of grinding doing sheet metal repairs... Done my share of finding air on the other side of fenders and such... it takes light touch or everything in the world goes wavy, and thins out. Fiberglass is cooool, cause it has layers to tell ya when to stop.

That's about it for today. Tomorrow I'm satisfied to cut out my marine grade BS1088 3/4 plywood and turn them into a bulkhead. I'm crossing my fingers that the work done with the starboard pattern will transfer over fairly nicely to the port side, as it is on the chopping blocks too.

All for now,

Zach

Day 7

2009-07-16T00:08:00.002-04:00

Day 7...

Today I pulled the bubble gum beam out of the jig. My two test batches measured by volume kicked off... one melted the mixing pot. I've deduced... that there is some junk keeping the piston from giving a full squirt of hardener. I've decided I'm never gonna use mixing pumps again if I can help it...

Since I had a beam that acted and felt like the real thing, I power planed off the excess glue on the top and two sides. Then I ran it through the planer, and took it over to Pylasteki for fitting. I goofed following the sides of the cabin top... and it had next to no spring back, so my extra arch in the center touched the deck and not much else. I noted this, on the beam with a sharpie... Then set it aside.
After that, I went to lowes and bought two pieces of angle iron, and a flat piece of bar stock. It hurts me when I do this, as theres about four cents worth of steel in that sentence, and 20 dollars soon parted. My bulkheads were plumb, and square... So I'ma gonna use the port one as a jig for the starboard one, with blocks spacing out the gap between them while it hangs in "Foam space" around the outer edge.

I then had to go spend some time on Noel looking over quotes for hydraulics and new shafts...

I borrowed a three jaw gear puller, and went over to Pylasteki and pulled the shaft coupling, turned the rudder all the way to one side and slid out the shaft with the prop still attached.

Returned tools to rightful owner (With free 1/2 inch socket lodged forever on the end of the puller...) and got to work cutting out my bulkhead pattern, which is exactly 5/8ths smaller than the pattern I made yesterday that fit perfect. 3/4 inch squishy foam... figure it ought to be about right for proper "stiction" so it's neither wagging around in foam space, nor 11 pounds of potatoes in a 10 pound bag.

With that done, I went over to Pylasteki (Notice a trend here... the two boat yards are around the corner from each other..) and pondered my PVC pipe installation. 4 inch sewer pipe, split long ways in 10 foot sticks. I twisted and warped an 8 foot piece in under the V-berth to see how it'd lay to the hull, and chopped off a 2 foot length. Set that aside, and found the perfect line that intersects the underside of the V-berth, top of the settees... and prepped the surface for glass. (Grinder > Random orbit sander with 40 grit> Acetone > Hot coat of epoxy...> I took one of my 64 inch long, 8 inch wide strips of 1708 biax tabbing and laid it to the hull. Then I took my PVC pipe, and hot glued it in place on my marks, mixed up a bunch of cabosil thickened epoxy and did a fillet... then put 3 layers of 1708 over it, staggering outside of my projected bulkhead tabbing.

Somewhere in here I went to lowes again and bought more clamps (Can never have enough clamps... reminds me of metal working... but somehow i don't think vice grips fit the bill...) a sheet of foam board, and a 6 foot folding table...

With that done... I collected my resin, gloves, acetone, and sander... loaded up the truck and went around the corner to Noel, where I adjusted my mast beam jig with my new findings... and prepped my "Good ash" by sanding with 60 grit till it was smooth, with no scalloping or burnish marks from the planer. I cut out my polyethelyene sheet, wide enough to put a wrap and a half around the stack... then wet out with 20 ounces of resin, everything but the bottom of the bottom board. You see... Noel is sitting on an incline... which I probably should measure... But while wetting out and flipping boards, the top two on the stack float slowly down hill, an inch or two every ten seconds... The marvels of a work surface thats that far out...

After that, it was a half hour ago and I took a shower.

Goodnight.

Zach - Tomorrow, I use a compass.

Pictures: Part of a PVC stringer.
No Prop
Bubblegum Beam, new beam waiting to cure
How to cut PVC without it binding up... fences aren't square.
Bevel board... Lay bevel gauge on it, read off. Ooooh yeah.

Day 6

2009-07-14T23:51:00.003-04:00

Day 6...

Cut out starboard main bulkhead. Ground all the tabbing off the aft side on the hull, but left the little leftovers on the front side to serve as a visual indicator (fancy speak, eh...) for my template.
Fit my pattern I cut out in, and used it as a story board to fix the couple spots I missed with the paper template. I then got the passageway (door frame? no door going back in...) to an 1/8th inch all the way around... plane down here, plane down there... then pondered... "Self... aren't you going to put a foam pad under this bulkhead?"

It was at that point I decided I wasn't going to cut a 96 dollar sheet of plywood undersize by the wrong amount... today. (Grin, gotta leave room for future expectations!)

I glued up my trial mast beam. Used mini pumps on west systems... slow hardener. 12 hours later it was bubble gum. Mixed up a test batch, kicked in three hours. Decided I'd try again after dark... hardener came out of the can creamy, moisture. I need to figure out what the cause of the moisture is, as the drum at the boat yard is a new one... I blamed the last dregs on my side deck bubble gum a few weeks ago....

Though it is perhaps possible that it's the cosmos way of telling me not to spend time and energy making stuff with poor materials.

After that discovery it was time for a shower and dinner.

Went back to Noel afterwards to check on my test batch, that kicked... and decided to rip my 4 inch PVC down to size. 2 fences on a band saw, and a line drawn on the top following the text did the trick. I didn't run the fences parallel to the blade, 4 1/4 at the front of the table and 4 1/2 at the back... dropped the top guide down just close enough to the top of the tube to have some clearance... and went to town. If this evil plan works out, I'll use PVC pipe in a way other than directed... grin.

With that done, I headed over to Pylasteki and tested out my new carbide scraper. Read about it on the forum somewhere.... quite nice. A decent workout, but not a whole lot of dust, and it peeled off T.P.S. without melting it.. grin.

Zach - Has had one of those days...

Pictures: top 2 are a trick to transfer lines on large radius circles. If you've ever played with computer models, you know a radius can be broken down into a lot of straight lines... so a straight line smaller than whatever width that would yield a polygon that has a smooth curve, will follow the curve. I hate compasses (Have I said that before?) for doing anything but making small circles, so here you add the width of the scrap piece of wood (nice to have a scrap that was cut on a table saw on a few sides) and a carpenters pencil. Hold the two together, the pencil can float side to side a little, as your tool is a triangle... 2 points rubbing on the outer line. With that short of sides on the triangle, you can't measure the difference without breaking out a steel rule that is finer than folks use for wood working.

Curved spline thingie. Blew a pay check on it and a few other things at Woodcraft the last time I went. Not so hot for doing small boat work, but big boats its nice to have a 72 inch batten that holds its place for you... I'm using it as a weighted spline here, broke my skinny batten the other day.

(I will hang my head in shame and admit that my mind works in decimals better than fractions, and that I planed the stock for my mast beam with a dial caliper in hand...)

Day 5

2009-07-14T00:00:00.001-04:00

Day 5

I started out my day doing some work on Noel till about 10:00.

Then went to Atlantic Veneer (NC locals... They stock Marine Grade plywood... BS 1088...) and bought two sheets of 3/4 Marine Ply. 96 bucks a sheet... and 14 board feet of ash. I planed it down to 3/8ths thick, and ripped two strips 6 feet long by 3 1/4 wide out of it. I've got 31 board feet of ash invested in this mast beam, as you can't get flat cut lumber... but you can cherry pick straight vertical grain pieces out of boards. With my wallet much lighter...

Then I went back to Pylasteki and did some vacuuming, then measuring. I'm widening the passageway through the main bulkhead by two inches. My shoulders get stuck going through, without the door frames on. Stock it is 19 3/8ths wide. Wandering through lowes the other day, I saw a roll of thick brown paper... 35 inches wide. The stock bulkhead measures 36. I took a straight edge and marked off an inch with a sharpie... and taped it up. Last night I ground off all the tabbing on the hull and bulkhead on the forward side... minus the rotten spot where the wood behind it is missing, there it is just down to the mat... Then I took an exacto knife and trimmed out my pattern. I cheated... Grin.

The boat tapers from the bow out to amidship... The forward side is tighter than the aft side of the bulkhead... So I wanted the pattern off of the forward side of the bulkhead to get a tight fit.

Once I had this... I folded it up and stuck it in a trash bag... and raced back to the truck to go to the hardware store and get a jelly roll of 2 part epoxy putty. One of the holes I filled on day three, wasn't... and in the deluge turned into a solid stream of water. I had to practice some boat builders yoga to keep the paper dry while folding it up. I ran back to the boat, and filled the hole... and tapped the starboard chain plate up and out. Pylasteki is blocked funky, she is sitting a touch bow down, so there is water sitting on the chain plates... I will need it dry there for tomorrow as I cut out the bulkhead.

I then went back to Noel and unloaded my sheets of plywood, and one piece of 3/4 inch press board underlayment.

I took my luan fishbone... and laid it on a sheet of 3/8ths plywood. I then played connect the dots, as the largest gap was about 3 inches... and did away with the need for bending a fair curve with a batten.
I cut it out with my jig saw, set as fast as it'd go. I try to shave my pencil lines, but leave them on the piece... Meaning a Stanly sureform plane will take off the high spots, and I don't often have to wish for anything to grow back.

I laid it up against the bulkhead and decided it was ok. You might have noticed that the new pattern is pictured on the front of the bulkhead rather than the aft side... I'm moving the mast forward a smidge, and doing some interior redecorating. (grin)

Once I had my pattern... I went to the band saw and made a block 2 and 7/8ths wide, with a lip on one side... My carpenters pencil out of the handy dandy sharpener has the lead an 1/8th inch away from the side... with some repeatability. I don't much care for trying to hold a compass 90 degrees off a curved surface, so this is an easy one to transfer a line... Worse yet is having to sharpen said pencil in compass, and radically change the radius, tough to erase a line off a dusty piece of scrap plywood... grin.

Why did I have to redraw the line? Well... The new beam will be a smidge over 3 inches thick... but my jig goes on the inside of the curve... which is a smaller radius.

Then I cut out my pattern and made a 3/8ths thick mast beam. Weee. If I tab it in real good it'd do...

Then I took my paper pattern out, and laid it on a piece of junky AC 3/8ths. It was at this moment I discovered I only needed one sheet of 3/4 ply for both bulkheads. Oops. Well... If I screw both up I've got spare lumber. Grin.

After that I carried my saw horses down the stairway to heaven as the florida bow thruster guys called it... It's the most rickety stairway in the history of sawn timber... and ripped my underlayment into two pieces. I don't have a flat floor or work space resembling plumb, level or anything else... So I have to create it when I need it. The great thing about press board it is that its flat. Always, until you get it wet and turn it into a pile of mush... 2 pieces screwed together it doesn't wobble around. I then carried my saw horses back up the stairs, and my half sheets... Then laid a piece of 3/4 ply (not marine grade... it's my work bench!) on top of the horses, followed by the underlayment. Noels deck is curved, with about 6 inches of rise in the center over 16 feet. She's sitting on a railway at the moment, so her stern is running way down hill... but it does that anyway in the water. I sighted down my saw horses and shimmed them till they were inline... then lifted, prodded, pushed and fiddled with the stack of three sheets till my 8 foot straight edge had 6 feet of flat. I then screwed the three together, and transferred my lines from the pattern.

After some goofing around, I discovered that my 53 inch wide beam was evenly divisible by 9 inches. Well... close enough for it to click that I could use 3 1/2 inch spacing anyway. So I marked it out and adjusted the curve slightly till it looked right, and started screwing down bits of 2x4. 2x4's have gotten junkier lately, as I had to pre-drill the holes... so they didn't explode... I think I'm becoming a snob for higher grade materials. Once I had a few down I decided to test out my clamps. This is where I goofed. I bought two pounds of 2 inch screws, not 1 pound of 2's and 1 pound of 3's... So my blocks wanted to shift.

That was 7:10... So I went to lowes. 40 minutes or so round trip driving. Had dinner... and bought some 4 inch PVC sewer pipe, as I've been dreaming of adding some longitudinal stringers to Pylasteki... that don't stop and start at the bulkheads.

Back to the boat I unscrewed all the 2 inchers, and added the 3's. I did a trial run, and ripped my scrap pieces of ash into the same size as the real deal... I figure I'll glue up the junk and give it a try to test for spring back and fitting before using the good stuff. First laminated beam I've done, so I want the one going into the boat to be right.

I then assembled and disassembled my rig, till I had the right clamps in the right places... and added 2 blocks to keep the ends tight. The secret is to put the big motha's on the outside, and the wimpy ones in the middle. Start out with the clamps all the way unscrewed, and slide them till they are tight. The outer edges get re-adjusted to take up the slack, as there is more curve than they have threads.

Day 4

2009-07-13T09:11:00.004-04:00

Day Four:

I started out today with the threat of impending thunderstorms... So in a clear patch I glassed in the three through hull fittings. It was only about 85 degrees, and they were in the shade with slow hardener.
2 I did pretty much in one shot. 6 or so layers thick... Start off by taking a 2 inch wide chip brush (cheap if you buy them bulk...) and wet out the bevel you ground in the hull a few minutes before you get started. The key to getting a lot of layers to stay together is to wet them out in something flat... I use a paint roller tray with a plastic liner. Wet out each disk, flip over and hit resin on the back side. Stack them up three or four deep, and roll them out in the pan, lightly. You want them gooey when stacking, and once rolled act like a cohesive layer. Drawing out your circles with a sharpie helps too... as wet out glass is clear enough that it is hard to see without a mark.

Now stick them to the hull with a gloved hand. Those sleeve covers help to keep the epoxy from drooling down your elbows... Roll out one corner, from the center up or out. Work from the left and right, so drips don't hit ya... You should have a fair bit of drool... you've got enough resin to push the air pockets out, and once the excess resin is out, you can hit it with acetone and wipe it up.

I goofed, and forgot to tape over the backside of 2 of the holes... so I've got one that I did pretty nicely, and one thats a 1/4 inch tall mound coming inside the boat... If I had been on my toes I would have done it from the inside out, as there would be less fairing to do afterward. Shrug...

When that was done, I took a vacuum to the inside. I donned my respirator and tyvec suit... There was so much dust it was starting little avalanches sliding down the sides of the hull.

After it was slightly less dusty, I got started removing the mast beam. I pulled down the front block, that the mast step bolted to. Then I unbolted the beam from the bulkhead. Well, the bolts snapped off... then I tapped them back through with a bent screwdriver and a hammer. (What ya think this is a high budget operation do ya... drift pins... sheesh. Grin.)

The mast beam came off in two pieces. I did not pry hard enough to crush any wood or damage the paint... I believe I may have been sailing with mast beams, plural, and not singular... Though there was a nice steel reinforcement that someone added in the past carrying the load.

After that I pulled the curve of the cabin top. I use luan plywood, or what are known as door skins... as they have one good side, and wind up on real crappy hollow core doors. I run them through a table saw into 2 inch wide strips. Generally I have a stack of strips that I have cut down into 2 and 4 foot lengths... along with a load of small cross cuts 2 and 3 inches long. This beam needed one 53 inches wide, and a lot of long pieces... Joined with a hot glue gun, and glued lighty to the bulkhead. See picture... No math required, no tick sticks... and the pattern has enough points of contact to pull a smooth curve. Sweet! (Thanks go to my friend Matt who shared that idea with me...)

I then went over to Noel and finished planing a bunch of Ash from half inch down to 3/8ths. It started out 13/16ths... I've been working it down when I get the chance. Only been planing one side though, allowing nature to induce some curve in the direction I want to go. Planning to do a dry run one day before the final gluing, and wet them down nicely so they'll take the curve even more... I don't like to work hard.

I took inventory of my clamps. So far I've bought nine of them to do the beam... Noel has mostly sawn frames, so I haven't had much reason for more than two or three... Ouch. This will be an expensive piece of wood...
Then I went to lowes. Twice. Supply runs... Thought I had a big piece of fiber board, but didn't... and had some ideas that you'll see tomorrow...

After that, it was back to the grind. Literally. I ground out the old tabbing on the front of the starboard main bulkhead. Still on my 36 grit flap disc... It ground out the V berth tabbing, 3 through hulls, did 1 side deck recore... and continues to look like new. I started out using my cut off wheel to get to plywood, as I always feel antsy about grinding near the hull into places I can't really see.

I ran into a load of barney powder. Purple thickened polyester resin... I have no idea what they added, but by golly it almost glows in the dark.

All for now...

Zach

Day 3

2009-07-11T22:17:00.001-04:00

This is day 3 of my 10 day Grinder War of 2009. I have 10 days on the hard to fix everything that can't be done in the water... easily.

No before picture on that one...
Day 3... The saga continues...

So the weather report says today was my last sunny day.

I took advantage of it, and set up staging on the port side to recore the side deck.

Started up at 8 am, finished around 7:00pm... Cut off the top skin with a circular saw, snipped the edges it couldn't cut with a cut off wheel on the grinder. Peeled off the top skin. Pulled out the balsa, routed out the stuff under the lip. Fired up the Fein Multimaster with a scraping blade to get rid of the solid balsa at the aft end and under the edges.

Once that was done, I prepped the inner skin by grinding off all the old balsa remnants, and working sand paper under the lip on top and bottom. This is the most tedious part of the process... as you continually find another sliver of wood and have to resort to fishing a chisel or 5 in one tool under the edge to get the last of it...

Then I ground the bevel on the edge around the edge so that the new glass would have the same contour as the old deck, and there would be no hard spots to flex. I'm still on my original 36 grit flap disc... looks the same as when I started.

After that, I vacuumed everything and wiped down with acetone. I took out my sheets of end grain balsa coring, and cut them to fit with a fillet knife, notching the top by pushing down till the blade left an impression, then rotating the blade so it splits along the grain.

After that I cut my fiberglass to shape. 2 layers of 1708 biax, 8 feet long and 17 inches long at the wide end... but you have to start out with one almost two feet wide to follow the contour of the hull. I've never had luck starting with a straight cut piece and pulling it into shape... it always wants to bunch up somewhere or form a bubble that never wets out, so I make some scrap.

Then I cleared everything out, and started mixing pots of epoxy and cabosil filling the gap around the deck. I used a silicone spatula... sweeeet!

Once that was done I went back and took a chisel to any lumps that ended up anywhere so the balsa would lay flat.

I wet out the balsa with my cheapo 2 inch chip brush that I keep in a little bit of acetone... Gotta fill up all the joints in between blocks of balsa to get full strength and rot resistance. As each piece was wet out, I mixed up a pot of thickened epoxy with cabosil, and used a notched spreader to give some goop for the balsa to bed down in. I then went around with my fillet knife and trimmed any balsa that contacted the now filled gap...

More thickened epoxy went in around any gaps...

Then a layer of 1708... and another...

1 gallon and 11 hours on a 2 x 10 later... and she be done!

Zach

Day 2

2009-07-10T22:52:00.003-04:00

Day 2:

Finished up on Noel at Noon... Had the mast pulled at 1:00.

Once the mast was down, I cut out a 12 x 24 inch section of the top skin. The inner skin was cut on each side of the deck beam by compression on both sides, I taped the crack to keep from gluing the old beam to the skin. I tacked a nail to hold down the junk inner skin flap (technical terminology...) and propped up the skin on both sides until it was in a fair curve. I pulled out the balsa core, routed out the punky stuff (starboard side) and cleaned up the good balsa around the peremiter. I packed the gap full of thickened epoxy (cabosil) and proceeded to lay in 4 layers of 1708. When that had kicked and was starting to cool off, I laid down 4 more layers. 8 layers is just a touch under 13/16ths of solid fiberglass and epoxy. Heavy, but compression shouldn't ever be an issue again...

I pulled out the through hulls in the head. One was a ball valve threaded onto a flush mount through hull fitting. (boo hiss on ball valves) Since I'm flying solo... I unthreaded the backing nut, gave it a whack with a hammer to generate some clearance and slipped in a sawazall... The other was a 60's Pearson special... solid 13/16ths or so block of mahogany, fiberglass encapsulated over a fiberglass tube/mound with the sea cock smushed in to the polyester resin and stuck forever...

I used a cut off wheel on my angle grinder to cut through the fiberglass around the edges. I used a chisel to clean off the area around the bolts. 3 came out, 1 broke. Then I used my chisel to wedge the old fiberglass off of the wood. Once it was free on one corner, I put a pipe over the end of the through hull, and performed a ABYC (American boat and Yacht Council) test... to see if I could hang my body weight off of it without it breaking loose. It did...

Then I used my sawzall to cut the rest of the fiberglass off of the block, and a chisel to clean out the wood. I changed my angle grinder from a cement cutting disc (They last forever on fiberglass...) to a 36 grit flap disc, and cleaned up the inside... Then went outside and ground down both holes prepping them for glass in the morning. I've got it in my mind to set up a wet out station and do all four at once, wetting out on the bench and carrying over to the hole... my glass is all pre-cut, did that earlier this week.

Also got the old speedometer fitting out. That little plastic booger was really in there. Wouldn't budge... so I cut off the flange on the outside, cut off the guts on the inside... and cut the tube into 4 pieces. I'm not sure what sealant was used... but it took almost as long to clean that out as it did to remove the fitting.

Then it was 10:00 pm, and I decided the day was done.

Zach

P.S. I love my full face respirator and carbon filters... beats the heck out of the N95 and P100 cartridges I've used on a 3m half face up till now.

Day 1

2009-07-10T08:03:00.001-04:00

Side Decks... Impending Haul out.... Main bulkheads...

2009-07-08T21:51:00.003-04:00

The benefit of working late, is the occasional after dark money shot. Yeah, I had to lay down on the dock in a boat yard... covered in fiberglass dust... eaten alive by no-seeums... the things we boat nuts will do to satisify the voices inside our heads...

So... You may have noticed that I start and stop projects devoting 100% on each one for the moment... a day here, a week there...

Pylasteki gets ten days starting tomorrow. She will be hauled out, 9:00 am impending no set backs...

Starboard side deck is done with the exception of the last few inches of old balsa... did it floating, so had to have somewhere to rest my foot to reach the middle... Not suggested, but I wanted to have the cabin top stay stiff while I pull out the bulkheads. Yeah, a pain in the lower back but it can be done. I put in a 2x4 prop under the cabin top to keep it from going anywhere with my weight laying on it.

This is a lot more fiberglass than it looks like:

I spent the afternoon cutting tabbing for my bulkheads, and discs for through hulls, and the 12 x 24 inch stuff is to go under the mast.

How to cut Bi-ax fast without a mess:

Cutting Bi-ax... Stand farther away from your rotary cutter (Fabric store = Walmart) than you think you need to. Look at the cutter, not where it was, or where it is going. Pick a line of stitching and follow it... Set up side lighting from the left if you are right handed, so your hand isn't casting a shadow on where it's going.

Go back and cut the little stitches holding the piece to the rest of the cloth, sliding the two apart just wide enough to slip in scissors. Pick it up from the stitched edge, at least a few inches away from the ends... and roll starting from that point back towards the end, and then roll it up just barely tight enough that friction holds it put. To tight a radius and ya end up with wrinkles... to loose and it flops out of the roll and is hard to deal with.

Alrighty... Wish me luck, I've got 10 days to prep and paint the bottom, fill 4 through hulls (well... maybe 6, depends how adventurous I'm feeling) Replace the main bulkhead, laminate a new mast beam, redo the coring under the lower dog house, and figure out how I want to move the chain plates outside.

Pictures and such as they come... Epoxy mixers and helpers would be spectacular, if theres anyone out there in driving distance to Beaufort, NC.... grin.

Zach

Deck Recore Episode 94

2009-06-30T20:29:00.003-04:00

So... I have been working late on Pylasteki now that the great light in the sky stays up a bit longer.

Things I have learned: It takes 10 times as long to ungoop an almost cured epoxy job as it does a fully hardened polyester, or epoxy. I resorted to a 7 inch grinder with a 24 grit backing disc... which without the layer of epoxy slime would have ground through the inner skin in a half second flat. About an hour and a half later... I was back to the polyester inner skin. The corners took more time, as well as chiseling the mostly hardened but not really filler all the way around the edge.

After a few nights of cleaning, scraping, and de-gooping... I was ready to go. I hot coated the inner skin with epoxy and let it start to set while mixing West Systems and cabosil (fumed silica) to make a slurry that would just barely sag in which the new balsa was beaded in.

My friend Todd who runs the boatyard around the corner was showing off his silicone spatula technique for fairing out microballons... but by golly the 2 dollar one I picked up fits the corners of 1 and 2 qaurt mixing buckets like a glove. Less waste, and its the perfect tool for gooping in corners/filling up the crevass (southernese) left between the edge of the fiberglass and the balsawood. The tighter the fit the less epoxy you use... I use a filet knife to cut the balsa.

Then I laid down a sheet of plastic and loaded down some weight on top of the balsa. I came back the next day, pulled up the plastic and knocked off the blush (scotchbrite plus water) and cleaned off the peaks that form when you lay crinkly plastic on wet epoxy. I then ground down a few obvious high spots on the balsa... wiped everything down with acetone, and went to town glassing.

I'm using 17 ounce biax on this, the first two layers have no mat backing... the third will be 1708, as this is the last of my un-backed stuff.

Innovation: My glass cutting bench is on Noel... which is now up on the rail, making it a hundred yard walk with a 20 foot ladder in the way. I cut the glass in situ... using a rotary knife that they sell at fabric stores. I love this thing... Rolled it around the inside of the toe rails and cabin... with the plastic button laid up against each. For the second layer, I cut the toe rail side, then slid it towards the cabin top a 1/4 inch and cut the cabin side. Sweet... No torn tattered edge, and a perfect fit right off the bat... Err... with the exception of forgetting to cut the dart off of each end. (more on that later...)

I had a real tough time rolling out air bubbles in this piece, generally they roll out easily... but on this I had to mix up a little more resin and pour it on the bubble and tap it in with the straight edge of my squeedgee. Frustrating... I think I like the mat backed 1708 a little better, once it is wet out life is good. (Innovation 2... with a silicone spatula you can spread the leftover resin onto a large squeedgee and wipe it off back into the mixing container.

The leftover darts are something I came up with reworking the deck on Noel... pre-spatula. If you grind a round hole through the old glass, and cut a new square of cloth... you've got a place for the leftover resin to go. Once it is wet out nice, instead of letting it puddle in the center, work the excess to a corner or two (Depending if you eyeballed it or weighed the cloth...) When you come back with a grinder it takes a half second to make the 3 corners disappear into a poof of glass fiber. The resin filled one takes 15 seconds, and you are flush to the surrounding surface. I dig ways of doing things that take less time on the finesse side... (Ever tried to cut a circle out of biax with dull scissors? Yeah...

All for now.

Zach

Dunked the dink...

2009-05-07T01:09:00.002-04:00

Well, I lost a filter for my respirator overboard... and in a snap decision grabbed dinky and tossed her in the water and gave chase.

That lasted ten feet or so, before the bow transom started wanting to separate from the sides... I used the pink stuff (bondo) for those fillets, rather than the bondo-glass I used for the sides and bottom. Still a little exciting that my wee little boat floated and didn't spontaneously explode like it probably should have. (I had not fiberglassed the joints... and no frames...1/4 inch luan... )

So, having ceremoniously dunked my dink... I decided it was time to put her back on the cabin top and see how much bigger I can build her next reincarnation. She is a mere 32 inches wide, to easily slide through the back hatch of my vw bus...

I hoisted up the boom almost to the end of the track, and spent some time pondering boom to head clearance, and boom gallows placement. I'm wanting a gallows to have something fixed at the aft end of the cockpit to attach an awning to... solar panels and to make reefing and hoisting and furling sail a little easier single handed.

I was about to button Pylasteki up for the night when I noticed that the amount of space for dinghys grew. By raising the boom, my boom vang went from nearly touching, to almost a foot of clearance at Dinkys bow rail. Hmm...

I'm thinking I'll build a full size tortoise, and maybe a nymph (both Phil Bolger designs) and see which one fits best. The tortoise clashes with the lines on

Anyone out there done a removable transom? It's a bit tight with a boat over the companionway hatch. Grin.

Zach

P.S. In other news, there is a Triton out of the water at another yard... so today I spent some time with the owner, and made a full scale template of the rudder and prop aperture. Weee! Exciting, as I've been mulling over this area of the boat for a long while.

Patterned out the new sole.

2009-05-02T09:12:00.009-04:00

Cleaning out the new balsa...
Look Ma, no sails. (Sigh... Trying to arrange a mast plucking ceremony sometime this week so I can redo the mast beam and bulkheads...)

Pattern - 12 inch wide half inch plywood, strips of 1/8th inch plywood... glue gun. Priceless.

New sole template. 6 feet standing head room to the lower doghouse...

The template is stout enough to act as a temporary sole, so I no longer have to wander through the bilge. I made a pattern by measuring from the line of the old sole down two inches in the rear. The width of the bilge at that point was 12 inches wide, so I ripped a piece of scrap plywood to size and laid it in place. Since it was only supported on the ends, I took a junk 2x4 and ripped it in half so it would be light enough not to cause the ply to sag. I nailed it in place to the underside of the sheet, so it would not bow along its length.

I set my bevel gauge to the angle of the hull where it tapers down sharply at each end by laying the handle against the stock end of the plywood (a known flat surface) and laying the adjustable angle against the hull, on the underside of the plywood. Since the underside of the plywood is where it'll rest on the hull, it yields a tighter fit than trying to eyeball a cut of something you can't see. Marking the pivot of the bevel gauge, I laid it on top of the plywood marked it and cut my line. Cutting templates in the bilge of a boat requires a sharp handsaw... I like a cheap japanese style pull saw, less dust (Super skinny blade) and it doesn't tear the crappy plywood that is so tempting to use for patterns.

I laid a straight edge across the settees, and measured down to the plywood to keep the sole parallel to the settees. Measuring from the ceiling down to the sole, it too is parallel. By measuring along the line perpendicular to the settees, to prove that the sole is level athwartship to the other known planes. Since Pylasteki is floating, "level" is relative.

Since boats don't have straight lines in nature (grin) I still had to mark the curve. My friend Mark had told me about using 1/8th inch plywood and a glue gun, so I decided to give it a try....

To mark the curve I ripped 2 inch wide strips of 1/8th inch plywood, then cut them into 2 and 3 foot lengths, along with 3 and 4 inch lengths. With a hot glue gun I found the straight shots on the forward and aft ends could use the long strips, just laying against the hull. For the more curved areas I used the 3 and 4 inch strips, 2 inches apart touching the hull on the 2 inch side. It's a pretty elegant solution, instead of a tick stick (which the 12 inch wide strip of plywood would be the story board...) and marking the lines twice, once on the story board and once on the new template, the 1/8th inch plywood is the template the first time out.

So I pulled my template out of the bilge, and laid it upside down on another scrap piece of 1/2 inch plywood, which I ripped to 19 inches wide. I laid it on the floor and marked my line and played connect the dots with a straight edge. Since my largest gaps were 2 inches, over 8 feet the curve was smooth. and I didn't need to fool with a flexible batten like I would have with a tick stick to make a fair curve. I used a jigsaw to make the cut, when making templates I leave my pencil line on the part, as its hard to make it grow back once cut... grin. A small Stanley surform plane does quick work on shaping plywood without the curves flattening to much, and works faster than a block plane... though it wasn't needed.

I like it, Thanks Mark!

Called up West Systems (The brand epoxy I have been using throughout the project...) and have an answer: If you mix up the resin and hardener, and it turns creamy colored you have moisture in the hardener.

It will still kick solid, if you have enough mass for it to exotherm and cook the moisture out... or if you catch it early on, wet out the area and then hit it with a heat gun.

Cool. Know for next time...

Pulling up the balsa, yielded a cool tool find. I headed back up to Greensboro for an evening to grab sails, and some interior trim that I had stored up there... and swung by Woodcraft. I blew my paycheck (always seems to happen...) and bought a Kutzall Carving disc. http://www.woodcraft.com/product.aspx?ProductID=148408&FamilyID=1846

It flies through fiberglass, and moves balsa like its not even there... What it doesn't do, is high traction nonskid. Noel has some of the toughest stuff I've come across. It wore the underside of this thing smooth... in 6 feet. (oops. expensive 6 feet!) So far it's chewed up to Four zirconium 40 grit flap discs... of the 7 inch variety. I don't think it's sand, but whatever it is... it's tougher than any aluminum oxide fiber backed sanding disc, wearing one smooth in minutes!

Making snow, and a Do over!

2009-04-27T22:26:00.007-04:00

A sticky situation... well, not sticky enough.
My hardener got contaminated somehow... I thought perhaps the night time temp cooled off to much for it (slow hardener) as it took two days to set... but was still somewhat pliable and didn't offer as good a sound report when tapping it over as the rest of my work on the bow.

Did two other test batches, same result... it comes out of the pump clear but when mixed up it goes cloudy. Any ideas what caused that? It was from the last dregs of an A sized drum, so maybe the stuff separates, aged out, or moisture got to it... whatever the case, I got some new stuff man... the good stuff.

Whatever the cause, I'm redoing it. I figure that anything worth doing is worth doing to the best of my abilities... lest it always be a curiosity of it's about to blow up or not. Rather spend the time here now than wish I did half way to Bermuda...

The glue failed, not the balsa. In most of it, its dead slick on both the underside of the skin and the top of the balsa. In a few places it grabbed hard enough to shred the mat out of the top deck skin... Good, but not the balsa shredding goodness I want.

In other news, I made a lot of snow. I'm entertaining building a water tank in the bilge, given I can find some FDA approved lining goop... I ground out the last remnants of the engine stringers to banish the last drop of oily goop from my boat. She did smell all lemony fresh, now I'm back to needing my respirator for the foreseeable future. Picture = post vacuum cleanup for the initiated. For the initiated... About 4 square feet, 4 plies thick of solid mat. The bilge was full of dust to the prop shaft, and an inch thick up to the rudder tube... I was sporting the look that suggested I had just molested a box of powdered donuts. (grin)You may also notice that the starboard settee is missing a piece. I was curious to see how much space there is under there for additional storage, not a whole lot... but a few wedge shaped bits of foam glassed in and there will be a nice home for a pot or tea kettle that there wasn't before. I'm not going to go back with drawers, it'll be a cabinet door for better utilization of space. Still have some work to do on that front, as the bulkhead the galley bolts to is rotten... as is the cockpit bulkhead. Water + Non-marine-grade plywood = mush.

Zach

Aft end of bilge... The tight squeeze.

2009-04-22T19:32:00.003-04:00

Yup, there was some more goo to clean up where the engine once rest... the thick gooey kind. Lower bilge goo has had soap introduced, causing it to settle in to a muddy clay like substance. The stuff under the engine stringers (where the dust is in the top picture) was plain old engine goop...

After: A wee bit cleaner... the hose in question goes to my sink. I plugged it even though its above the water line (we are still floating... grin.) as its disconcerting to look over and see a water column!

Another two hours... she almost does not smell like a boat any more... nah! Grin.

Zach

Round three...

2009-04-21T22:22:00.007-04:00

Bilge... Round Three!

Today was round three of the Bilge cleanup.

The first round involved putty knives and scooping out goo.
The second round involved peeling up most of the loose resin sealer that Pearson put in.

The third... Stainless steel wire brush, and a bottle of Simple Green.

Spray a 6 inch wide stretch of bilge, scrub until bubbly goo forms... wipe off with wet paper towel. Repeat... Switch sides. Work from top to bottom, and knock loose any dry crud so it doesn't stick in the wire brush...

Repeat.

3 hours later, I had made some progress! Then, it was dinner time, and time to do the laundry. Hehehe... (sure beats 5 gallon buckets and a garden trowel like on Noel...)

More to go before its ready for the new sole... getting close!

After:

Is'dat a shiny spot I see?

Windlass.

2009-04-19T01:13:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I stopped by a marine consignment shop, and nearly tripped over a 15 pound toadstool that looked like it had just been pulled out of a mud bank.

On closer inspection, it's a bronze Simpson Lawrence vertical windlass that takes a winch handle...

I'll be curious to see how it works. I've been pondering installing a set of sampson posts on Pylasteki (been working close to shrimp boats a bit to long... my fashion sense seems to be at a new low...) but it does seem like an easy way to take a vertical windlass that requires sitting down on deck beside it... and turn it into a horizontal one at a reasonable height.

Anyone recognize what model it is? Looks like it takes 5/16ths Chain, but I'll have to take it up to the local chandler to see what variety fits best.

Zach - Gotta love old bronze.

Wind... and lage pieces of fiberglass...

2009-04-16T20:31:00.008-04:00

Hello out there in cyber space! (Obligatory "Faces in the Boats" picture...)

Today was prime epoxy weather... 60 degrees, supposed to be warm over night with no rain.

So... after:

Except the wind was blowing 25 knots... Dusty stuff mixed indoors, as there would not be a spec left in the containers after the lid was open. (Imagine trying to scoop smoke, and its about right...)

Doing a mad scramble through the forward hatch between batches, it was quite a workout! The stock hatch is a mere 18 inches wide... ow. Now don't spill any goo! (No shirts were harmed in the making of this post...)

Large piece of fiberglass: 4 foot long piece that is now under my tool box!

Anyone want to help mix epoxy?

Zach - Likes the wind for grinding... stand upwind of the cloud, and come away almost itchless.

Regroup!

2009-03-28T22:51:00.003-04:00

Hello out there in cyber space...

Pylasteki still floats. Oh yes... Though not much progress has been made as Noel has taken the lead. The bilge is clean, though not quite fit for paint. The loose junk I had been shuffling from bunk to bunk while trying to move around on board is now safely stashed in the garage.

Yes, she still smells like a boat... but hopefully I'll win that battle when it comes time to pain the interior.

Preliminary 3 month goal:
Finalize the glass work on starboard fore deck.
Haul out and mad thrash to remove the shaft, glass over some through hulls and recore the side decks.
Remove mast... inspect. (Add thoughts of fear here...)
Replace main cabin bulkheads with new marine plywood tabbed in with epoxy.

Go SAILING! My goodness, in July I will hit the 2 year mark.

Zach - Life gets in the way of living.

Lost my backdrop.

2009-01-09T11:01:00.006-05:00

Yup, the lovely pink background that frames out the picture at the top of this page is gone! Oh, and you thought that boat was afloat... Sneaky camera angles. (Grin!)

Disappeared... Well, after a few days of listening to a back hoe running and making waves. Who would have thought a back hoe could be used as a wave generator? Its interesting measuring a boat that doesn't rock to any rhythm. More random than the local rock radio station! (Which is saying something...)

Besides the scrap pile, the view isn't all that bad! There are a lot worse things to be doing than fixing up old boats.

Zach

Asteki... Stuck on the bottom.

2009-01-04T18:53:00.007-05:00

Well we've been having some insane tidal shifts, and that coupled with a sustained 20 knot breeze, blew all the water out of the cut. Asteki was left sitting high and dry. An unplanned careening... of sorts. Generally when the keel is showing, and she's heeled over... there is a sail up.

It would have been a good time to clean out some through hull fittings, and swap the hose to the sink... if Dinky was painted and ready for the water... Oh yeah, and had some oarlocks. Grin!

The next night, I was on board working... when she touched bottom. 6 feet off the dock, and 6 feet down... luckily I was only captive for two hours huddled beside my little electric heater. Brrr!

As you can see Pylasteki's name had to be shortened slightly when I installed the outboard bracket while floating in Coinjock, NC. So... while still called Pylasteki, her stern reads Asteki. Sigh... another thing on the list.

Zach

Ever feel like the floor got yanked right out from under you?

2008-12-19T22:15:00.003-05:00

Well... The weatherman lied... again. They told me bright sunny skies, 65 degree days and 55 degree nights. Prime epoxy working conditions... Or not.

Fog! Rain! Wind!

So... instead, I removed my sole.

Inside a boat, what you walk on is called the sole. Some boats have floors... which are supports that span from the top of the keel (the boats backbone) to the underside of the sole. Confused? Outside, what you walk on is the deck... unless you are standing in the cockpit (where you steer, lounge, and make big knots of line) then its the cockpit sole.

The sole on Pylasteki, flexed under foot, and was a little stinky. It extended all the way back to the engine stringers, and all the way up to the main bulkhead. This meant that when I overfilled the crankcase on the Atomic 4... it peed on my cabin sole. It also meant, that when in rough waters, and the oil was sloshing around in the engine... it'd pee on my cabin sole. To solve the "Oil on walking surfaces" problem, I put an absorbent rag under the starting battery… which meant that my boat was on the rag. That is just a tough connotation, as boats are demanding enough... (Grin)

*Atomic Fours do not have front main seals, instead they rely on being run on a steep incline so gravity drains the oil back into the oil pan. It also means the dipstick reads "wrong" there is no full... as that depends how they are sitting. Sitting pretty = leak no oil.

"While I was in there" I used my Multimaster to cut the fiberglass tabbing loose from the old engine stringers. (Still in serviceable condition, if any of you out in cyberspace need a stringer for an Atomic 4, I’ve got one.) I was not looking forward to this job, before the multimaster came into my life. Back in the old days, I would have had to bend a long sawzall bade sideways so it ate only the stringer and not the hull. A toothy bi-metallic arc... the more you try to influence its direction, the further off course it goes!

At the moment I'm thinking to go back with plywood and fiberglass, after dropping the height two inches. (Old Head room = Zach + shoes - 1/2 inch.) That way it'll be low enough to be provide headroom, and if I ever want to strip plank teak and holly or some other exotic wood... there will be room. I'll have to get over the "Lighter is faster" mantra, and realize that 7 miles an hour, is still slower than riding a bicycle. Sigh... once a gearhead, always a gearhead.

But before that… The Bilge! Front half is cleaned up as whatever sealant Pearson put in peels off easily leaving only slightly slimy laminate below.

Zach
No pictures - Forgot about them till I was heading home.

The Deck Recore Continues!

2008-12-06T11:35:00.012-05:00

The weatherman lied this week.

I was told by the magic box, that there would be no rain and 55 degree days and nights. Prime weather for epoxy during the time of the year where broke boat owners, have trouble working on their broke boats. So, I took a circular saw and angle grinder to Pylasteki. (Camera was out of batteries that day, so you'll have to imagine the funky super hydrated balsa wood...)

While I had the grinder out, I faired out some of the high spots in previous months glass work on the port side of the bow. The wind was blowing quite nicely, so I had the pleasure of standing up wind of the dust cloud! I use a flap disc on an angle grinder, to do most of my grinding and sanding. They last almost forever when working fiberglass, but take an artistic touch or your boat will disappear in the dust cloud.

Next, I pulled out a Fein Multimaster with the flat scraper and enjoyed easy removal of the good balsa strips. While it would probably be just fine to leave the firmly attached balsa in place, I figure that replacing everything with new end grain will yield a longer lasting and better quality repair.

If you are wondering what the big deal is about balsa wood: Well, it is used as a stiffener. If you want something stiff, you make it thicker. If you want something light... you make it thinner. If you want both stiff and light, you cut something in half and hold the two pieces as far apart as you can and let the height difference, and rigidity of whats doing the holding apart take over. If the two skins of fiberglass don't move relative to each other, they act like an I-beam. Stiff, light, and strong. Nevertheless, I haven't found the reason why the stuff smells like socks.

The way balsa wood soaks in a little resin... just like celery standing in a puddle of food coloring dyed water. (Probably the best use for celery...) When the resin cures, it has become one with the wood. So in order to get the well adhered, non-stinky balsa off the boat it takes patience, putty knives, chisels... Until the Multimaster was invented. Doing the work of twenty men, it vibrates quickly with a harmonic hum. Where it comes into its own, is that two inch wide ledge that has to be left to give something to fiberglass the top skin back down. Otherwise, one is stuck cleaning it out by hand, step by step... inch by inch...

I am impressed... with this spectacular piece of German engineering.

But all good days must come to pass, on the next:

It rained. I'd like to state for those thinking about boat projects... that filling the holes left by hardware bolted to the deck with caulk works to keep rainwater out. At least until, you've cut a 2 foot wide four foot long hole in the top skin of the deck. I woke up to rain drops pitter pattering against my window... Luckily there is plenty of work to be done, some of it even pays...

With the leaks mostly stopped, I decided to try out the saw on the Fein, and cut out the primary head bonker on Pylasteki. I've performed a partial bulkhead-ectomy on two of the semi-structural bulkheads. The partition between the head and hanging locker are largely removed. Mainly because my shoulders had a habit of getting stuck between them as I walked by. - Insert more deranged blathering here -

The Fein, allows you to flush cut by laying the blade against something smooth and remove anything that stands proud. If you click back to earlier pictures, you'll notice that my jig saw can't do that... and I was forever banging my head on the leftovers.

I like uninterrupted horizontal lines on boats. So the visual in the cabin suits me... it adds a lot of volume so she feels larger!

I had a few minutes, so I fired up the grinder. On previous sections I'd done my beveling after epoxying the top fiberglass skin down. So I've been curious if its any easier to grind the bevels before putting things back together. Fiberglass is like an ogre... err... an onion. It goes together in layers, and thankfully on my boat Pearson alternated between mat (kind of looks like a shag rug woven out of a hairball...) and cloth which has similar pattern to burlap, except it is smooth and less itchy. After resin has been added, and it has time to harden the consistency is that of a bowling ball. All that means, is that when I am grinding, distinct layers appear. I keep the bevel the same angle and width by keeping the layers evenly spaced.

The bevel is required so the new fiberglass does not just bridge the gap and build up a high spot. By grinding down to a knife edge (you can see through the edge!) there are no hard spots to bend and crack. The boat believes it is whole once more. I start with a wide piece of fiberglass and work to skinnier strips alternating corners until I've built up a thickness higher than the surrounding glass. I use biaxial fiberglass, which I cut into strips of various widths. The name changes to "tape" when you start talking about long strips. They sell premade tape by the roll, but cutting custom widths makes for less expense. Biaxial fiberglass has bundles of fibers running on 45 degree angles from each other, rather than 90 degrees. It has two layers of bundles, going on opposite 45's. Rather than being woven together, the fibers are held in place by stitches. All this adds up to mean, that it is one of the lightest, strongest materials to use in fiberglass repair. I do like my overkill!

I worked into the sunset, mixing up epoxy with cabosil. Cabosil is a trade name for Fumed silica powder... it is a bulking agent. So light, that a cardboard box full feels empty. The property which I use it for, is that it makes things thixotropic. If you have ever mixed up cornstarch and water to a thick enough consistency that it acts like a solid... but still almost pours like a liquid, you have played with thixotropic. Cabosil allows epoxy to be mixed up into a putty, that stays where you put it. Put a dab on the ceiling and its not going anywhere. Mix it up thick enough... and its not even going to sag.

Only trouble... its like rock candy after the resin hardens. Take a hunk of epoxy filled with cabosil and smack it with a hammer, and it shatters. So, I use milled glass fiber, tiny strands of fiberglass. It looks like dust, but it makes things very strong.

Once the pot of goo was mixed (takes a while...) I filled that two inch wide gap around the edge of the deck, and edge of the cabin top full... and grabbed my camera.

Such a colorful back drop makes it hard not to wax poetic, even if the topic is dealing with fossilized snot!

So you want to buy a boat.

2008-12-05T21:46:00.005-05:00

So You want to Buy a boat.

Get a survey! From a SAMS/NAMS certified surveyor, no matter how inexpensive the boats purchase price, there's a whole lot of expensive stuff on board to go wrong. It's cheap in the long run, maybe 2-3 gallons of epoxy

I had a survey done on another Triton, prior to Tim Lackey (http://www.northernyacht.com) pointing me towards Pylasteki... Didn't have one done on her 'cause I'm dumb, and didn't follow my own past experiences with boats. I still would have bought her knowing what I know now... but it would have been nice to have the head start finding some of her problems. "Gee, you won't be sailing for the next year..."

Here's a story I went through while looking at a (Free) Cheoy lee Bermuda 30 project that wasn't much more than a fiberglass hull. There are some pictures later on of the interior construction... essentially a wooden boat deck on a fiberglass hull, with an added infusion of steel angle iron. There are some boats that fit the old adage "just because you can don’t mean you should" and Free is to much to pay for what you get. http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f47/cheoy-lee-bermuda-30-a-3062.html

If she has a wooden mast, under that paint you don't know what’s rotten. If she has concrete and cast iron ballast, there’s a good chance of water damage and other fun stuff.

I think a lot of us dream big... and the difference between dreamers that just dream, and dreamers that get stuff done: A lack of a social life, and love of instant gratification. You will be married to this boat, it'll crawl inside your brain and take up residence. Your priorities will change. The way you live your life will change... if it is to ever get done. (I blame Tim, a little tiny bit... Blame may be the wrong word, as there are few things I'd rather do than work on boats. So... Thanks Tim!)

The costs: If you can't drop the boat in your back yard. If it doesn't have a trailer, it costs money to get it dropped in your back yard. It has to be moored somewhere, or a plot of dirt rented at a boatyard. Then you have to drive to the boat, so tally up the hours both ways, and add in gas prices. Next up... the literature to learn the methods required to repair her. Now if you don’t have the tools, add those too. Now ponder materials costs. For the most part, you can't drive down to Lowes or the hardware store and pick up anything that will give a long lasting economical repair... Deck screws, solid copper wiring, sugar pine and ac plywood don't make the grade.

Nothing. Nothing... is square. Every piece on her must be hand cut, hand crafted, eyeballed, measured, and massaged to fit. Every piece of nautical equipment is slightly different... and must be massaged to fit properly. Do this while standing on your head, wedged into the most contorted position possible. You can't get to anything. Everything must be disassembled. Then "While I'm at it..." you put it back together the stripped screws and rotten wood you found have to be replaced... that bit of corroded wire, and rusted pipe clamp have to be fixed. Eventually something that should take an afternoon has monopolized three weekends, and 12 lunch hours, 7 hours of driving... Then when you get to the boat you forget a widget, and tomorrow you will be finished with it. Except "While I'm at it I need to...."

You've got to source everything prior to doing the work, or it'll take forever. If you don't have a tube of miracle goo, 27 1/4 20 stainless machine screws and 33 sanding disks and be able to produce them in a minute and a half, it'll take you forever. Catalogs coming out your ears... are stacking up all over the place. Pictures, loose sketches... books. Oh gosh, the books.

So: Plan. Everything takes 2-3 times longer (of actually working) than you think it should. Everything will cost 2-3 times more than you think it should. You will do one out of every 3 jobs, 2-3 times getting it right while the learning curve happens. You'll be driven to anger, to tears... and no one in your life (Except your fellow boat owners...) will understand why at dinner you smell like a chemical factory, have a nervous itch, take cold showers and often look like a space alien with respirators, ear muffs, eye glasses, latex gloves, tyvek suits...

100 dollars a week on boat parts is a small number during the buildup of this project. The materials are expensive, there’s a lot of scrap (Curves!) and a lot of potential for screw ups. Then there’s shipping. Can't get it here, warehouse doesn't have it, gotta order it anyway... cheaper online... P.S. Jamestown Distributors. Then there’s the markup, 30% retail so you find it in a catalog and wait for it to arrive. Speed = Expensive. Speed = finish the project. The longer it takes, the more it costs... work fast. Power tools baby!

It'll be to hot, then too cold. Rainy... windy... You can't paint because the humidity is too high. You can't finish installing the ____ because the paint hasn't dried... This all means that in order to make efficient use of your time you have to juggle multiple projects at once. Wiring, plumbing, rigging, engine, structural... and we haven't even started making things look nice.

The car blows up, you have to fix some other project with your new found skills. You take a week off that turns into a month... catch the flu, acquire a significant other... have to work another job to afford your boat habit.

If you made it this far, you have the bug. You will end up with a boat no matter what you do. What are you waiting for! Buy it! Send pictures... (Grin)
If you don't have time; hire Tim so he can send us pictures! We need more boat porn in this world! (Sorry for whoring you out Tim, but it had to be done... Grin)

The bilge.

2008-11-27T21:57:00.002-05:00

Welcome... to the Bilge.

The bilge on a boat, the down low. Where all the refuse of the ages ends up, as it drips, falls, crumbles, or oozes to its eventual resting place. A friend calls this goo, "The Funk of The Ages." Proper nomenclature is paramount in all things. Gravity helps all this "Stuff" collect in the valley between the two sides of the hull, where it ferments... and turns into "Bilge Goo - The Funk of The Ages." A song well known to the sailor.

Pylasteki's bilge isn't all that funky, at least in comparison to others I've shoveld out. The shear difference in scale is enough to make one thankful of small boats. Forget the lower operating costs, reduced bottom paint, and ease of docking. Speedy bilge cleanup is the best part. It will simply be a task of days, instead of weeks.

Nevertheless, such jobs are thankless no matter the scale. No one can quite express what it is like to carry buckets of goo, and well composted wood forth from a belly of the beast. It is a job that must be done, to be understood. Walking the dock, with "The look," everyone that has done it... knows from wence you came. A grimace, and well wish... and back down the hatch with you!

That isn't all. No... Boats have had engines for several generations now. Unless you are one of those lucky sailors, whose boat has never had an engine tucked in its neither regions... Those of us who have done engine-dectomies, still have decomposed dinosaurs to clean up after.

Those oil drippings do eventually mix with water... sort of. It turns into an emulsion, which floats around until someone shoots soap in the bilge.... Instead of floating on the top of the water, it then settles out... and deposits an even coat, of never drying soap scum on everything. Fantastic! Its like grease... thats wet! Icky. (At the writing of this, my eyes are crossed and I'm sticking out my tongue. That visual, describes what it means to clean a bilge.)

The look involves:
Smudged clothing. Particularly the pockets... knees.
At least one smudge, across the forehead, and or tip of the nose...
Hands outstretched, away from the jeans and any other object that needs to remain clean. (Even a Rabbi's blessing cannot clean something from the bilge.)
One if not both shoes... will have bilge droppings on them.

To my fellow bilge rats, I would like to qoute Theodore Roosevelt

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly.... who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” T.R.

Do not fail in the bilge. Do not fall in the bilge. While it would be quite difficult, if not impossible to fall into Pylasteki's bilge... those timid souls that never start off to conquer the "Battle of the Bilge" (Props to Rachel for that name...) don't know that.

Zach - Shamefully, with no pictures of the progress... Camera had dead batteries.

Cold!

2008-11-21T22:18:00.002-05:00

Brrr!

This week has been a chilly one. In the 30's and windy! This morning it was blowing sleet at 20 knots, icy BB's...

Went down and did some cleaning up on Pylasteki. Pulled up the tape covering the stantion holes, and sail track mounting holes and filled them with a shot of caulk to keep any water from entering the core.

I noticed that my starboard side deck needs to be reglassed... the top skin is totally shot. Bummer. If I'm going to do any sailing in the spring, I need to get her hauled out so I can finish those side decks...

I stopped by another boat yard that has a travel lift to check on pricing. Yikes! 200 to haul out, and 200 a week on the hard. Or 420 for a month and a half... plus a dollar fifty a day for electrical service. Guess I'll be skipping lunch for a while! Where I am docked now, is geared more towards shrimp boats, with fixed docks that are about eye level at low tide. The railway's spacing between cars is longer than my keel, so while not impossible... I'd have to weld up a cradle before pulling her out.

Sigh! I'll probably end up borrowing the painting barge for a few days instead. Power tools, floating platforms, and cold weather... all in a days work! 400-700 bucks buys more materials.

After the decks are solid I'll be dropping the mast. It really shouldn't be as big of a stumbling block as I'm trying to make it, but I have a way of coming up with the most complicated solution for the easiest of problems...

In other news I saw a sailboat with no keel! The underside is shaped like a scallop shell. Weirdest thing I've seen in a while... and thats saying something. (grin) Going to call on it tomorrow and see what the heck it is. Camera was out of batteries...

Zach

Water tank removal, and water closet ponderings. Warning: Bathroom humor below.

2008-11-09T19:22:00.005-05:00

Got back from the coast Friday. I've inverted my working schedule... instead of putting in a 30 hour weekend, I figure I'll starve down at the coast and put in a 30 hour week working on boats. One boat or the other is going to see some progress, come heck or high water. (Grin!)

Over the course of an afternoon this week, when I wasn't pondering the location of shower and head on Noel, I wandered over to Pylasteki and pumped out the bilge. Floorboards afloat... I felt like such an abusive boat owner. High water I guess. (Went to the Annapolis boat show, then down to Hilton head. Life gets in the way of boat projects. Whining ends here.)

I need to glass over the vents on the lazarette, as they allow a fair bit of rain water in...

I pulled the water tank out, and was quite surprised that it came out without having to cut anything! (Else? Grin) I then wandered over to my plywood scrap pile and grabbed an appropriately shaped wedge to set my head on. See picture above... For my non-boat lingo speaking readers, a toilet is called a head when it is on board a boat. In this case it is a head, on a board. Proper nomenclature allows for the hilarity of the english language to stand out...

Speaking of standing, one of my primary reasons for moving the head forward to the V-berth is the limited crouching head room in its old location. In its new location one can stand up while relieving themselves (given the proper anatomy to do such things of course) all the while with a very relieved expression on their face. I expect the next time you see someone standing up through a hatch... anyway...

For information purposes to my fellow Triton owners... I'm 6'1 and 190lbs... 32in inseam...
Plenty of seated head room. Who knows if it'll take a 5 point racing harness to stay seated while sailing... (Grin)

*Photo in black and white, because... well... there is nothing else romantic about this dialogue.

Zach -

Back burner...

2008-10-05T15:47:00.003-04:00

Well not really the back burner... but I have been trying to find pots that fit my sea swing stove!

Spent a few hours this weekend cleaning out Pylasteki and tracking down water leaks.

I've come to the realization that it is going to be quite difficult and uncomfortable to recore the deck while sitting on the side decks. Triton owners and those familiar with them will know that the 18 inch, tapering to 13 inch side decks don't leave a whole lot of room to sit down while working... and the barge at the boat yard is almost as long as Pylasteki! Dinky is small enough that I'm not fond of hanging over the side with power tools...

I'm going to give it a try from the inside. The inner skin is fairly thin on my boat, so it is not self supporting without the outer skin... meaning it needs a lot of support inside to hold onto the camber of the deck. I think it'll yield a stronger installation than what was stock. However, I'll need a tyvec suit (green house) and swimming goggles... lest I become a resin head.

Anyone have tips for fiberglassing overhead? Did you do two stages, the first with the balsa wood and after it cured, a coat of fiberglass? It'd be a real trick to vacuum bag it, but I'm not certain how to seal it around the toe rail.

Thanks for any thoughts!

Zach

Weekly update: Hanna, and finger painting.

2008-09-08T15:52:00.003-04:00

Reinstalled the bow cleat... yippee.

Battened down the hatches for Hanna and tied up boats. Doubled up the lines on Pylasteki, and crossed my fingers. She sure looks small around all the barges and shrimp boats! No damage... so all is well!

Sunday... Painted the new fiberglass to keep it from degrading in the sunlight. Way to hot to do any real work.

Heading back down this weekend, going to recore the starboard side of the foredeck and see about rigging up a window A/C unit in the companionway to do the side decks from inside. The sun is hot, and the wind seems to stop on the weekends. (Grin)

Switching gears from storm evacuation, to some other forms...

Lately I've been pondering airheads... well... composting toilets. http://www.airheadtoilet.com/

At the moment I have a pile of lavac parts, and will need to figure out a holding tank... move the through hulls and replace some seacocks. Pondering going the airhead route as it'd be 2 less holes under the waterline. No tanks, dip tupes, pumps, or maintenance items (sanitary hoses...) all around more streamlined installation. Anyone have experience using one? (Comfortable seating height? Really big grin!)

Zach

Another piece of deck done...

2008-09-02T12:12:00.004-04:00

A hundred degrees and 95% humidity with no wind. I'm pondering doing the side decks from the inside... with a window air conditioner going! It is quite nice working late at night, so long as the mosquitos keep away... They are guerrilla fighters, making surprise attacks as they come to suck your blooood! Difficult to defend from while wearing gloves coated in sticky goo... Slap! "Well that was smart..."

But... it is jump proof. Stiff, and pretty fair. I've got a good bit of fairing work to do yet, but for the most part things are looking up. Next weekend I'll switch over and do the starboard side past the main bulkhead, put down a little paint to keep everything protected from the sun.

Scientific approach to goo usage...
2x4 foot section of deck requires:
10 pumps of epoxy to fill the gap around the perimeter.
40 pumps of epoxy, from filling the gap around perimeter, painting it on to the fiberglass surfaces and balsawood... and mixing up the thickened goo to bed the balsa into on top and bottom surfaces.
Between 15 and 20 to do 2 layers of biax around the edges to fully wet out, and remove the excess.

Between 60-70 pumps. Or between 48 and 56 ounces of mixed epoxy per 2x4 foot section, prior to fairing.

I am using 105 Resin, 206 slow hardener. The Mini-pumps deliver .8 fluid ounces of mixed epoxy (Hardener and Resin) for one full pump stroke from each container.

For a thickening agent, I've been using a mixture of 407 fairing filler and cabosil to bed down the balsawood. Around the perimeter I've been using 403 milled glass fibers and cabosil.

*I used a few ounces more than this, as I ran out of hardener half way through one batch... set it off to the side, and ran out of resin in another. Bummer... Then of course, had to prime the pumps! Sad, but no sense making bubble gum consistency epoxy!

Tips:
The best weight I've found to hold down the top deck skin... a few 6 gallon potable water jugs! Tall and skinny they put a lot of weight down on a small surface area. Anchors, and half empty paint cans/tool boxes and bottles of antifreeze just don't quite compare any more. (Grin)

If you cut the deck skin loose... make certain that you grind it a little smaller before putting it back down. Otherwise you may find yourself fighting with a corner that jams when you put weight on it. Bad time to have a fire drill. I fooled around with grinding everything before gooing it down, and decided to do both sides at the same time with my grinder. It is fairly straight forward, as the top skin is finishing cloth and mat in alternating layers. For strength of the bevel I would prefer to have a little bit larger lip around the edge than what the circular saw provides... but in the end biax is so much stronger it probably doesn't matter.

When you have the top skin off, do some looking around. I've had a few spots of delamination under the stantion posts, as well as some dry mat (Look for yellow/brown/orange glass) that was not fully staturated when new, no sense making a bond to something weak. Then a little bit of time spent smoothing out the plank lines and high spots makes it lay down flat... My tennis shoes looked almost new after that. (Grin)

I cut my own biax tape, and use a sharp fillet knife on a big piece of plywood. Fairly straight forward, but will be investing in an Olfa rotary knife from the fabric store before continuing. It probably is mis-spent labor, versus buying premade tape...

A tarp with a pole of some sort across the bow with two guy wires running down to the stem head, and a loop for the jib halyard is something I'll be working on... My tarp as pictured was merely a psychological aid! (Grin)

A box fan hooked to the jib halyard so it cannot fly over the side is quite a nice addition on windless days.

Update on Flap Disks: I am still on my first Dewalt flap disk, it has no noticeable wear... I don't think I could get as much done without it, and for sure would be spending a lot more on sand paper. I think I've gone through three sand paper skeet so far on the deck recore. That is it... I am impressed! I'm going to pick up a cheap grinder, as I get the feeling that all this glass dust is not very good for my good one... I hate sacrificing quality tools... sigh.

Zach

Behold... a deck is made stiff.

2008-08-25T15:44:00.005-04:00

Before.

After cutting off the top skin.

After digging out the wet balsa, and removing the well adhered stuff.

Semi-finished product. Prior to picking up the pile of sticky gloves. At the moment she is tied up with two bowlines around the bow chocks and tightly looped down under the stem. The dock lines are tied to each side of the loop created by the bowline, and the spring line is tied to the port side dock line. We spent a few minutes figuring out how to keep her tied up without a bow cleat!

Thanks goes to my good buddy Rob, for helping out and itching along side me as this project happened. (Whose shoes are pictured in the first picture...)

This weekend, we removed the bow pulpit, and bow cleat. Then cut the top skin off of the foredeck with a circular saw, and chiseled and peeled, and scraped off the wet planks of Balsawood. Planks, not end grain... interesting! The planks tapered around the edges of the deck, and at the base of the cabin top. We then cleaned out under the edges and packed the edges full of thickened epoxy and waited for it to kick during lunch. Cabosil and ground glass fibers, as I'm not a fan of cabosil alone in epoxy for gap filling, just a little to much like rock candy. Then we cut the balsawood to fit with a fillet knife and smushed it into place using thickened epoxy. By this point the top skin had been cleaned up, all the dry mat (lots...) ground off of the bottom wiped with acetone, and weighted down. 10:30 Saturday night...

Thanks to the Capt Rob of the scallop boat Doris Jean of Point Pleasant, NJ for loaning a 500 watt halogen light which made it all possible, and kept moral high by providing a steady stream of jokes and stories. Hope our paths cross again soon.

Sunday morning was enjoyable. Stepping onto the deck at 9:00 was reassuring, as it was stiff even without any fiberglass! A mad dash of grinding, fiberglassing, and threatening anyone doing a rain dance to have their feet removed with a random orbit sander. (Well not really, but it makes for a better story! Grin.)

Three layers of 17 ounce biax is in place on the deck, and nearly flush. I did not add any fairing compound to the top, as I'll be removing the crazed gelcoat prior to paint. We left the fiberglass tape a little wider than it needed to be (Thanks for cutting it Rob!) and figure that whatever overlaps higher than it needs to will disappear during the fairing process with the gelcoat.

Note: Three sides are glassed in, I'll be back thursday and will be adding fiberglass reinforcing inside the deck core where the duct tape currently resides. We brought the new core back to the start of the cabin top for that purpose. The other side will be done the same way, with hopes of adding a little strength, and never having any space bigger than 2x4 feet rot from water intrusion ever again.

Note 2: A few supports were placed under the deck to retain the camber of the stock deck, rather than let it relax and become a flat deck.

Dinky was also placed on deck. I will remake her a little wider, but the boom needs to be raised a few inches. The boom vang also has some interference, and the lines led aft will either need a cover made over them, or a rack to support Dinky to keep them running clear.

Zach

Dinky the dinghy.

2008-08-21T16:16:00.003-04:00

Meet Dinky, a shrunken down frameless interpretation of Phil Bolgers Tortoise. 4 inches less beamy. (32 inches wide...) and an 1 1/4 shorter than the plans call for. Two pieces of 5/8ths ply on each end as sacrificial transoms, a piece of cardboard between the real transom and the heavy ply. A hand full of 32 inch long scrap nailed in with finish nails held her form until the glue set up.

Going to take her down and set her on the cabin top of Pylasteki and get some perspective of a dinghy like object, and how big a hard dinghy will fit!

Have a little bit of glassing and painting to do before the dunking of Dinky...

Rob, Thanks for the help tacking on the bottom.

Zach

Ewww! Balsawood smells like gym socks!

2008-08-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

I bought a plastic boat to get away from rotten wood. Ha!

My starboard bulkhead is rotten from a leaking chainplate. I did some excavation work and here are the results... Started out with a crusty spot about the size of a quarter. Both the outer plys were in great shape, the inside varied from dust behind the fiberglass to thoroughly separated charcoal chunks. The more I dug around, the more rot was found. Finally I hit fiberglass and air on the other size, but only in a space about the size of a penny. Yikes!

She sounded the same hammering around all the bulkheads... Maybe next time I buy a boat I'll break out the drill for some core samples! Nevermind that, just chalk it up as learning. Still would have bought Pylasteki, no choice! I think boats choose their next caretakers, not the other way around... Almost like cats, except in this case... the boat is Alf.

Oh my... What a lovely water tank you have. Well not really, its a leaky fiberglass tank that used to be buried behind three pieces of plywood. Screwed, nailed, and fiberglassed in place. Everything came out in reusable shape, except for a few screws and a batten or two. I like not having to co-ordinate my stepping/head banging motion to enter the for'castle/v-berth/pointy end... (To many styrene fumes this weekend... )

Now I can get to most of the fiberglass tabbing on the bulkhead, but not all. The little shelf on the starboard side came out after much head scratching and contortion. (It is times like these when being short is a plus...) Cut the fiberglass tabbing off the top side and went to pulling. Found that there were a few well placed screws. Hmm... Out came the hand saw (Gotta love a Japanese pull saw...) and soon the shelf was in bite size pieces. Shoulda made a pattern before doing that, but the port side is still there! Hope the hull is symmetrical, enough... (Grin)

In other news, New Balsawood smells like gym socks. On the drive down I kept wondering what the offensive odor was in the car... It wasn't me, this time. However, after some deductive reasoning and sniffing around, I've come to the conclusion that balsawood... smells funny. With four hours and change each way to enjoy the aroma, I'm wondering about this... Why does this wood, smell like a stinky old tennis shoe? It just seems wrong...

In addition to demolitions down below, the stantions are off the cored part of the deck. As well as the jib and genoa tracks. This is an interesting job to do alone, with no vice grips. If you take a thin strip of duct tape and loop it through the box side of a 6 point wrench, you can jam it on the nut, run up on deck and lock the wrench against the hull before it falls off. In theory anyway... (Grin!)

Only had to drill out one screw! With no lifelines I questioned my sanity... sitting on a 13 inch wide side deck, legs hanging over the side, pulling up on a genoa track, pushing down on a drill... Saying, I hope it doesn't pop loose suddenly! In the voice of Billy Crystal... "Your only mostly dead... No swimming for you!" (Princess Bride)

Most of the Jib Track bolts snapped off... The other side was a repeat performance. I was elated... that the sheaves were toast and I never tried to use them.

Curse Pearson for the wood screw into the galley bulkhead! I had spent quite a few moments looking at my rotten galley wondering how water got there. Now I know. The bow rail is still in place, because until i finalize the Dinghy design (Mark 3 at this point...) I can't get off the boat without it, unless I fancy a swim. The rail provides that last hand hold to hop down onto the starboard chock. This is a picture documenting high high tide. The tri-monthly nature of my fiendish boat demolition/refit causes this event to be under the cover of darkness more often than not...

Hey man, moooove that barge, I wanna go sailing! It has been almost a year since my last sail. I am going through withdrawals. Boats are floating around my brain... sketches are coming out my ears. (In a metaphoric sense... they are overflowing...) Crosby Stills and Nash, Jimmy Buffett and Bob Marley are emitted from my radio. Nevertheless, She's looking pretty sweet without all the deck ornaments... Wonder when someone will invent invisible lifelines? Or I acquire the ninja skills to carry a a live drop cord aft without fearing for my life...

Even that lens flare/ghost is checking her out... Yes, the bow pulpit is tweaked and it bugs me too. The docking prowess... 3 pilings and a concrete bulkhead wall. Dock lines are never long enough!

Ah yes the Styrene, I've discovered the joys of polyester resin for making molds. (VW bus intake manifold construction...) In a spare moment, between the rest of the demolition I took a moment to pop some molds off the aft deck to delete the hump behind the traveler, and the mount for the stern light. Lots of work to gain room for a water tight hatch to the lazarette... but she ought to be smooth as a babies hind quarters. I'm contemplating pulling a mold off the stern light mount and making two, for bow lights. The stern rail is a continuous curve, that nests perfectly to the toe rails. Perhaps that is a topic for another day... So much to do before the paint job!

Signed... a very tired,

Zach

Drawing...

2008-08-10T19:37:00.005-04:00

Galley Forward? But only... if the port lights are askew. (Grin)

Wild and crazy thoughts...

2008-08-09T21:55:00.003-04:00

I have a theory about creativity. Perhaps I'll call it Zach's Theory of Creativity, the least creative name possible. It goes like this: Have a really wacky idea and balance it with logic. Why won't it work, Why can't it work... and Why things shouldn't things be done that way. The WWW's. If it passes those hurdles: Talk yourself out of it before you do something dumb. Failing that, beg for help.

I'm begging.

The last few days the cogs have been turning. I must by start by saying: One of my hobbies (obsessions?) is shaving grams off of bicycles. An ounce here, an ounce there, it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things... but once you get started the world needs speed holes. (The only people more obsessed with weight reduction than bicyclists... NASA, Ultralight hikers, and the bulimic.)

This has been drilling my brain:

Why is the chain locker always in the very tip of the bow? 200 feet of 3/8ths BBB weighs 340lbs! (Yikes.) Then we slap an anchor or two up top, and a windlass right behind them. Stack a few chocks, and a roller or three out there too.

Then the cruising sailor builds a water tank, under the v-berth. Down low, often below the waterline. We pile steel high in the tip of the bow, and drink the tank dry thats down low. Hmm.

How to switch the two, and still keep the use of the V-berth. Drink the center of gravity lower... My dear readers... have any of you seen such an idea implemented? If I build two canvas pipe berths..... Nah.

Zach

Rough sketches

2008-07-31T11:37:00.003-04:00

Still a rough sketch, but starting to see some progress...

Update... The journey through the valley of thinking, reading, contemplating, and vacuuming.

2008-07-29T21:36:00.006-04:00

The updates have slowed to a crawl as I reached a point of not knowing how to proceed. A spending spree at the bookstore yielded such classics as "Skenes Elements of Yacht Design" and Gerr's Boat Strength along with a few thousand pages of other lesser works. I've been trudging through these calculating and pondering Pylasteki's future as a cruising boat, and what the priorities are for her performance after refitting.

Form follows function, but in order to hit the mark... a goal must be set.

With the somewhat recent (Last month... gosh time flies!) discovery of a rotten main bulkhead, and cracked main beam I've decided that the deck must be recored pronto. The idea being that she'll hold her shape with a strong deck. So, on that front I have 8 2x4 foot 3/8ths thick sheets of of balsa coming in UPS ground. I'll have to support the underside of the deck, and add a few layers to the inner skin as it is quite thin in places. (Grinder marks up in the bow... and the side decks weep water through dry spots where the laminate wasn't fully wet out on the side decks. Ugh!)

Spent a few weeks reading, researching and calling... bouncing between foam and balsa. Then I got the idea of making a stiffer deck with thicker variations of the two... finally decided Pearson got it right (enough) and to go back with stock. This as you might guess, goes against most of the fibers in me... if I'm going to work on something I want the end product to have improved in stiffness/strength/weight or speed from what I started with!

As I've been reading and pondering boats... a little bit of economic stuff slipped in to the reading list. I read Jay Fitzgeralds books, Seasteading and Wind and Tide... I learned about www.oarclub.com and started reading some more. Interesting stuff! Somewhere along the way I heard about Dimitri Orlov... a Sailor/Writer/Political activist that has an interesting, albeit out-there view of the future. I read his article "The New Age of Sail" http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dtxqwqr_23grsfpp and was compelled to buy his book "Reinventing Collapse." Good read, gets you thinking... really hope he's wrong!

What does all this have to do with Pylasteki? With oil prices skyrocketing, I'm less than excited about the potential price of swings of resin. Up to this point I've used West Systems epoxy exclusively for her refit. Miracle goo, except on the economic front... and that nothing but epoxy sticks to epoxy. So... I've been reading and researching I've come across Vinyl Ester resin. Vinyl ester resin will stick to polyester resin, better than polyester does. Deflects twice as far as polyester before breaking. Gerr's guidelines are almost exclusively based on Polyester boats... and Allan H. Viatses Fiberglass Boat Repair deals almost exclusively with Polyester too. I've still got my thinking cap on, 5 gallons from US Composites for $172... I can add some kevlar up in the bow for the same price as going to epoxy on the deck recore. Hmm...

Yes, its less expensive, but if the deck rips off at the polyester toe rails before the vinyl ester fails... but mainly I want to keep the boat repairable into the future with three choices instead of one. I'm going to borrow a big vacuum pump from work and vacuum bag the deck to try to conserve on weight, though I have not found a consensus on the topic of Mat being required in vinyl ester laminates. Some purveyors of goo say yes, some say no... I'm no fan of mat, but if it makes the bond between the balsa and skins better I'll be using it! (Don't remind me of the fairing nightmare involved with an 1/8th inch lump... hopefully the whole deck is rotten so it'll be uniform in strength and height!)

In the non-thinking arena, I spent last weekend cleaning out Pylasteki. Stripped the v-berth of all cushions and woodwork which had been congregating up there. Vacuumed out as much dust as I could find from previous sanding and demolition work. Then spent a few hours with my tape measure, and straight edge working through how to proceed. Thanks goes to a friend who keeps a watchful eye over her... a blue shop rag found its way to the cockpit drain, and filled her up to the floorboards with rain in a storm last week. I am seriously questioning running all the water that hits her deck down through the cockpit! Good for collecting rain water... but a few more days of rain and I'd have had my first salvage operation...

I have a conundrum... The boatyard where I'm working on her just parked a hundred and twenty foot barge directly behind her. Parked quite literally, with the lift gate firmly planted on the bulkhead wall! So... I'm wedged in place with an 83 foot coast guard cutter tied up behind me. The space between them would be wide enough to run through, if it were not for the anchor cables criss crossing the space... So I'm in a wee bit of a jam.

It'd be smart to replace the main bulkhead on the hard with the mast down. So far I've been doing all the work afloat (RIP screwdriver, hole saw, bungee cords, and random fasteners.... glad flipflops float.) I'm contemplating adding external chain plates while she is floating. Building a wooden frame between the toe rails and hoisting the mast up to take the load off the deck... replacing the main bulkhead and and V-berth. Oh yes... its all tabbed together and impossibly tight to grind and glass in new without tearing the boat apart. Tim, you are a my Idol... can I borrow your boat shed? (Grin)

In other news, I've been spending the night hours digitizing Albergs line drawing of the hull into Solidworks so I can stress test her and see where bulkheads, stringers, hat shaped stiffeners and other goodies ought to go. I can really appreciate the work that goes into lofting a mold that is dimensionally accurate. The more you know, the more you realize you don't... a few of these curves have made smoke come out my ears... and crashed the computer trying to crunch them...

Paralysis by analysis! I want see the South Pacific... and with the price of transit through the Panama canal... Gotta build her strong enough that she can take care of me! Gotta have the priorities in line, drowning gives entirely to much time to reflect on losing the boat... Really big grin!

One pile of boat parts, and a rotten bulkhead.

2008-06-09T14:24:00.005-04:00

Well...

The scope of this project just became more in depth. The bulkhead that carries the load of the mast is rotten on the starboard side from a leaky chain plate.

I'm working through the sketches and design deciding whether or not the bulkheads aft of the head and hanging locker will go back in place. If they do, they'll be a few inches further forward to keep a functional galley... and a Zach sized sleeping berth! I like the original layout, I'm just two inches taller than Alberg intended! (grin)

More on this later.

CAD Design....

2008-06-01T14:30:00.002-04:00

Working on the interior layout 230 miles away, utilizing a CAD system. (Cardboard Aided design.)

I brought the icebox home a few months ago, and have pushed my engine stand and stack of car parts out of the way to build the mock up for Galley Mark 1. Intended to replace the heavy stock icebox and galley unit with two symmetrical units. Goals: Lighter, with more storage space and rounded corners. Potential cons: May look like a clorox bottle.

Thanks to Rachel for the idea of removing the bulkhead aft of the head and hanging locker, in my quest for both a usable galley and long enough sleeping berth! Symmetry will be the bonus, and the icebox will go back to its stock location. Cubbie on the port side has been scrapped, and something else will go in its place.

Revelation: With no inboard engine, the battery box under the ladder can have a toe kick! The ability to stand almost, not quite under the companionway!

Sea Swing Stove, and plans.

2008-04-10T12:28:00.004-04:00

Hello Everyone.

A new update in the realm of parts hunting. Grabbed an ancient Bremer SeaSwing stove off ebay, with a 2 pint kerosene Hipolito burner.

One of the parts that I'm missing, is the bulkhead mount! Anyone out there in cyberspace have a picture of one? Hopefully in a few days the parts to complete the stove will arrive, and I'll be ready to put it all back together. Force 10 wouldn't even talk to me about parts for the gimble, so I'll need to find one used or fabricate one.

Heading down for the weekend to check on her. If the rain doesn't hold, I have hopes of of finishing up glass work and measuring the decks to figure out how many sheets of core will be required. Will also be installing the secondary manual bilge pump (Henderson Mark V) and reconfiguring the side deck drains. In a moment of "just get it done" thinking, I grabbed 1 1/8th hose, and through hulls... forgetting about the goal of using the decks as a water collector. Inch and an eighth Y valves are hard to find... but so is one inch clear hose. Grr. This is the third attempt at this job, but doing things right the "first" time sometimes means reworking until things are perfect.

Glass Work Continues.

2008-03-25T16:59:00.002-04:00

Took some pictures of the work so far. I'm delaying grinding off the 27 layers of paint and massively thick gelcoat of the deck until after the bow is recored, since she's afloat keeping the sun off the less than UV stable bits is important.

Top picture shows the two holes in the aft end of the cabin, the top had a speedometer (standard Horizon) which was disconnected by a previous owner. The lower hole had a teak block secured by four screws and was just an eye sore. I'm using west systems epoxy and biaxial glass for these repairs. I cut a ziplock bag into squares, and tape it to the surface so epoxy does not run all over the inside. A piece of stiff cardboard taped securely on top of the ziplock bag keeps things flat. This accounts for the reason why the upper hole is a brighter white than the lower, it still has cardboard backing it.

In the second picture you see where the gauges once lived, as well as the temporary cockpit drain to keep her form turning into a bathtub before I core the cockpit sole. I glassed a layer of finishing cloth to the inside of the cockpit locker, and beveled the outside edges of the holes and filled with cabosil, final fairing done with west systems 407. Since these are vertical, the chilly temperatures have given me flashbacks to a geology course where we discussed slumping for two weeks. Thickened epoxy runs down hill. I am using the cream colored paint above the gelcoat to keep everything smooth.

The shifter hole was ground out to a bevel, and filled with alternating layers of finishing cloth and biax cloth brining it up to flush. 407 filler was used to bring it up to the level of the blue antiskid. Its probably the strongest part of the cockpit sole.

Picture three shows where the fuel filler used to reside. This job consumed 5 sand paper disks on my random orbital sander. I haven't found the right sander to bevel this, and am pondering standing on my head and glassing it upside down from inside the locker. Not even my mouse sander will fit in this area and sand it any less than flush. (Flying sandpaper pads look a lot like skeet.)

Picture four shows where the icebox lid was. It has eight layers of biax, with a light cloth in between each to fill the weave. When I pulled the ACE hardware bag from the underside it left the ACE brand in red... I supported it with a piece of plywood to keep the underside flat. It is slightly thinner than the surrounding glass, but withstands my 190lbs jumping on top of it. Its probably the strongest part of the boat... grin.

Making Snow Part 2: Learning

2008-02-23T22:02:00.005-05:00

It had been raining on and off, and a pang of Radar Love sent me back down to check on Pylasteki after three days. The tape that was over the port deck drain had come loose... and the cockpit drains seacock was not open all the way. The bilge was almost overflowing.

The past few days were spent grinding, glassing, and experimenting with other varieties of west systems epoxy. Finished glassing over the bilge blower vent and power outlet holes as well as the shifter... though the fairing is not yet complete.

The wind blew all the water out of the creek, which combined with a full moon made the tides a bit interesting, she took to the ground in her slip while I was on board... about four feet from the dock, and standing on deck about eye level to it. Lunch break was a can of tuna and a few crackers sitting on the high side of that starboard tack... much to the amusement of others in the yard.

The temperature was varying between mid 30's and the lower 60's. I had a gallon of resin and a little can of hardener that had been refilled so many times they were one uniform color... sawdust. After a few days of working with this stuff I made a run up to the hardware store and bought 12 ounces of 407 filler, as the cabosil was slumping a bit on the sides of the cockpit and I was hopeful it would stay put. Beside the 407 was a can of "Fast Hardener" eureka!

No pictures this time either, I need to replace some plywood in the galley before I have a sink to wash up to keep the camera from looking like the can of resin!

Making Snow.

2008-02-17T16:19:00.002-05:00

This weekend was productive.
The electrical system has been cleaned up further, a few pounds of excess wire have been removed. The electrical panel needs to be rewired, as the last guy used 18gauge for everything and didn't crimp the connections to withstand a light tug, the wire pulls out of the crimp. (The battery is disconnected.)

The cracked fiberglass cockpit drains were cut out. I used a hole saw and cut through the top to avoid having to hacksaw at odd angles. The holes were then filled with West Systems epoxy/cabosil mixture and relocated slightly inboard for the flanges of the new "Through-hulls" that are acting as drains. After coring the cockpit sole, they will be flush. The radiator hose that was in place, has been replaced with Shieldflex exhaust hose.

The instrument cluster has been ground down and the new glass cut out and prepared for wetting out, but rain and thunderstorms cut the trip short.

I picked up a Henderson Mark V pump to use as a bilge pump and have been studying mounting locations. The existing hoses (3/4) and outlets are not large enough to fit the pump (1 1/2) which will be remedied on the next trip.

Pictures next time! To much dust and rain to bring out the camera.

Zach

Brrr! Winter Wonderland.

2008-01-19T15:55:00.001-05:00

Went down to check on Pylasteki and pump out the bilge.
Snow flurries and cold rain meant no work outside, though inside some more solid copper wire came out and so did the old bilge blower. Strangely enough some of the bare wire was not corroded and shiny as new... though the insulation was ancient. I must say that access to the blower is much easier with the ice box out of the way. The last attempt was made through the cockpit locker, which involved emptying its contents... and sliding by 200lb 6 foot tall frame in feet first. Its a tight space!

A little re-arranging, and noting that bilge pump replacement is inevitable, as the piston pump pumped its last pump today. Its passing will be mourned, but a larger capacity diaphragm style is in the future! Do any of you guys and gals have recommendations for placement, so it can be operated with a hand on the tiller?

No pictures for today, as she is in dire need of a bath. Though a wash down on a day like today would have made both the boat and me into icicles!

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T21:52:00.001-05:00

Lately no work has been done to Pylasteki. The bilge has been pumped out, and the lines checked... but no real progress has been made since the icebox removal. Varnish was bought and forgotten, tillers are still in need of work.

I'm seeking ideas for hard dinghy's, hopefully plans for one that would fit on top of a triton's cabin top. I'd really like to build a stitch and glue starting around the new year.

Stay warm! Merry Christmas!

Zach

Progress Update: Galley, be gone!

2007-12-02T19:41:00.000-05:00

She's sitting like a 70's muscle car. Tail end way up high, front end way down low...

The galley was in the space shown in the left picture, and the terrarium (icebox) in the right. aft.

This weekend gave some progress. Slowly but surely her inners are piling up in the forepeak. Its amazing how many parts go into the making of a boat, spread out on the dock its a shocking they all fit.

Pearson performed marvels of engineering on these boats. The icebox slid out the companionway (after the removal of the channel for the drop boards) with hardly any room to spare. (Drop me a message if you need the Icebox for your Triton. I'll wait awhile before taking it apart for measurements, and planning for the redesign.)

Exhausted.

2007-11-19T17:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I heard about some theft of copper air conditioning unit today... and would like to reflect on the heft of the jacketed exhaust system of a Triton. 37 pounds worth of heft. I bet that air conditioner is somewhere in the same scrap yard...

With the sudden windfall, I was swayed for a moment to put the proceeds towards a water lift muffler on the atomic four... snapped out of it when I realized I'd have to climb back inside the cockpit locker to fit it.

Claustrophobic moments are caused by places like the cockpit lockers of Pylasteki. I wedged myself in an attempt to remove the crusty bilge blower with snipped wiring. The beverage terrarium (its not an ice box!) will have to be removed before the fasteners are accessible.

Thanksgiving will prevent any work from getting done on board, but I'm still scheming up interior designs. Focusing on ventilation and cost effective ways to install a water tight forward hatch. Bomar and other extruded aluminum hatches are beautiful, but out of the question from a cost standpoint. The original teak and plexiglass leaks, and does not inspire confidence under foot. The sharp lip bruises ribs when the deck is plunging up and down during sail changes. Offshore I wish for the confidence that anything on deck can withstand breaking seas, so as Pylasteki is refit, she is refit with long distance in mind.

School is keeping me busy, as well as a few other projects... Thanks for all the comments, I'm glad to know Pylasteki has a loyal following and the correct pronunciation of her name! She won't stray far from her racing roots... where parts can be made lighter, they will. I do need to sell the 170% Carbon Fiber Genoa! It's a physically big sail that doesn't stow well.

The wonderfull world of ideas and new parts.

2007-11-14T17:31:00.000-05:00

So... I've got a week before I can make it down to do any more hands on work on Pylasteki.

I've been working hot and heavy on a new interior layout. While I'm not a giant, the length of the berth allows my head... and feet, to be in contact with wood grain laminate. Its not that I hate wood grain laminate, though it is a bit faded, the ability to stretch and lounge to the fullest is what will make Pylasteki a floating home.

I've decided that the ice box will give way to the port side berth. I'll build a new ice box on the forward end, similar to the layout Dan Spurr suggests in "Spurr's Guide to Upgrading Your Cruising Sailboat." On the aft facing side of the icebox, a small countertop will extend over the berth with a canvas pouch for navigation tools and to the center a chart table will hinge. With any luck a somewhat usable table will come forth, without requiring the door to remain. (My shoulders wedge between the door jams, the trim is incredibly wide at almost two inches! I've removed the forward trim, and can now navigate through without leaping with my arms stretched out in front of me.....)

The galley countertop will be extended, full width across the boat giving a cubby for a sleeping bag... I haven’t figured out why so few boats are designed without a locker for bedding! A duplicate shelf will mirror the galley cupboard for symmetry. Currently the radio, and electrical panels are in the galley cupboard... My momma always told me not to play with plumbing and electricity at the same time... so the electrons will flow from the other side of the boat.

New Parts:

A new water tank will go under the cockpit sole and the area where the area where the engine once sat will be converted to stores. I’m trying to decide whether or not to glass in the deck plate in the cockpit sole. I'm following the K.I.S.S. principle, that the fewer holes there are, the less deck leaks I can have! The prop shaft is coming out, along with the the infernal stuffing box... maybe the threaded scar on my arm will go away with time... I am going to glass the propeller aperture and fair it into the hull, in hopes of some drag reduction. My outboard can be hoisted clear of the water, and that alone is worth a few tenths of a knot! Pylasteki is a sail boat!

If I can build an easily worked water tight deck hatch for a locker in the cockpit sole, I will. With cushions in the cockpit, reefing a sail or dropping sail before docking… it is difficult to manage. Dock lines and sail gaskets need a home that can be reached without turning your back to the tiller. The lazarette access will be glassed over, and a water tight hatch will go on the aft deck.

Going back down the hatch, I’ve got a hankering to place a bulkhead compass above the new icebox so it can be seen from the port berth, or observed by the galley slave. (I am the galley slave, though I am accepting resumes.)

The Winter Plan

2007-11-05T23:35:00.001-05:00

Pylasteki has some issues.

She needs a deck recore. Thats a job that will be for spring.

She sheared a key way on the shaft coupling, and ended up with an outboard. I like the outboard, as it sips fuel, and I can set it in the cockpit to work on. Reverse actually works, and docking is much easier. A few weeks ago I pulled her engine.

Then I removed the kitchen unit, and the fuel tank. What an awkward job, it required a lot of contortion and finger pinching. Now I have two cockpit lockers, a cause for celebration, though not quite as much joy as never having to check the oil on the Atomic Four again. Much to my amusement, no matter how many times I tried to start the engine with a funnel in the oil fill she never would start. Who says boats don't have souls? I had some help getting the Atomic Four out, a fellow at the yard used a fork lift and I guided it up out of the hole. Sure wish I had a forklift for pulling car engines...

I found some rotten plywood around the kitchen, so that will be fixed on my next trip down. I've removed the jacketed exhaust, engine wiring, gauges, and shifter linkage from the boat. She sits much higher in the back with all the weight removed, I will take a picture on the next trip. I rather like the lines, as her overhangs are even more accented!

When the fuel tank came out, so did a hunk of cockpit drain, so they need work. I'll be using plastic fittings! The side decks will drain into the cockpit through four 1 inch fittings, and the cockpit will drain through two flush mount 1 and one half inch drains. While not as elegant as the original design, it will be bullet proof and allow for capturing rain water.

Lastly, I'll pull the icebox and glass over the deck hatch. A cooler will do the trick in the mean time, and I'll gain a bunk that will fit my frame without touching on both ends!

The rig, and cosmetics will be a job for next summer, when I aim to move aboard.

The trip.

2007-11-05T22:59:00.000-05:00

I bought Pylasteki in Annapolis, Maryland. I sailed her down the Chesapeake sound, down the Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW) and in to North Carolina. It was both an adventure, and a learning experience. I learned much about Atomic Four engines, and how to make them tick. I learned about transmission adjustment, and the joys of docking under sail. In addition to the mechanical, there was the lesson of dehydration, and the fright of having my jib on a collision course, much like the bow of a big white hulled ship! I learned that radio checks are no good if the guy a few slips over gives them, and the joys of navigating creeks at sunset. (Thanks Carleton!)

Along the way I met many friends, people stories and knowledge that are shared kindly. Along the way, I learned that sailors are tight knit group that help each other out, when they run aground and out of gas at the same time. Sometimes a boat just wants to take a break, and lets you know by springing leaks from less than obvious sources. (Thanks Billy!)

I met many people, and learned a whole heck of a lot, about myself while single handing through a Navy firing range… and about my family who at times were along for the ride. My Mom and brother were on board the day she tried to sink, and she was on board when the keyway sheared on the prop shaft. My dad drove countless hours to drop off an outboard, and help mount it on the transom to get out of Coinjock. Carter for diving and checking the prop and shaft in snake infested waters. My cousin Rob was on for the trek, Coinjock to Belhaven in a weekend, after helping asses the engine on Saturday… a 3am arrival in the Alligator river marina after beating across the Albemarle all night! He was also there when I cast off the dock lines before eight (and breakfast!) somewhat lacking sleep to make another night time arrival in Belhaven. My brother was around the last days of the trip, and helped tie her up at her new home.

Welcome

2007-11-05T22:46:00.000-05:00

Hi, I'm Zach.

This is my blog, it is about my sailboat. She is a 28 foot, 1961 Pearson Triton, I'm refitting her to go cruising! Her name is Pylasteki, pronounced "Pla-sticky" as far as how she earned the name, I'm not sure. Its unique and suits a plastic boat well, though it is hard to spell!