Not to much progress to report... 

The fairing compound is sanded out and the worst of the low spots circled to be filled. 

The boat yard I am in has turned into a salvage operation, demolishing a big old fishing boat on the railway beside me.

They blew a hydraulic line on their excavator and sprayed hydraulic fluid all over Pylasteki...  I am seriously considering going with an enamel and being done with the paint job aspect.  Cutting torches everywhere and soot on everything...

So, I am waiting until things get cleaned up a bit and I can go back to work without dodging back hoes and scrap metal!

It's the age old... Hurry up, and slow down...

Zach

Editors note/update: Don't roll sprayable fairing compound. I always forget exactly how much sanding it takes to get the roller stipple to go away. Added about 3 hours of sanding. I ended up using 60 grit hookit on a 5 inch random orbit sander, and 40 grit on a 16 1/2 inch long board, and 80 on a 3M flexible Marine fairing board to get it blocked down.

I borrowed a set of hands to wrap a wooden batten around the hull to address whether or not my question mark areas were high spots or the edge of low spots, marked them and will spray her with another coat or three of fairing compound. She has an 1/8th inch low from the stem to where she starts her turn, just aft the chain locker bulkkhead. There is another low about where the forward large portlights are where the hull goes from round to flat that needs a bit of love.

Those holes will get an extra pass for each coat sprayed. The whole boat needs to be build out a bit more than a 1/16th to get past the high ridges left by the old bulkheads and stringers that telegraph through with each sanding. The goal is to stop sanding when you see the previous coat start to show its self, add another coat and average out the surface. When you hit harder paint, or fiberglass through soft primer it makes a halo, the high spot never gets lower, but digs a low spot all the way around the high.

Until the whole panel is one color, its very hard to get the last of the ripples out.

Zach

Sanded out...

I forgot in my last post to mention why I'm fairing the hull, putting the cart before the horse with as much deck work as I have to do for the cockpit and deck.

First, the toe rails have some old damage on the starboard side I need to repair, where the shape has a bunch of wiggles and gets wider. The top surface of the toe rail isn't fair either, on either side so I'm going to build it up, and block it back down with a long board so it is fair and true.

I'm going to fiberglass over the hull to deck joint on the outside, and want to make sure I am low compared to the faired hull, and don't have to float out the top half of the hull, or grind half the fiberglass I put on back off. This was an oversight on my part, as the bulkheads were originally installed in the boat before the deck went on. The deck was tabbed to the hull, around the bulkhead tabbing. I should have tabbed the deck to the hull where the bulkheads sit to keep things water tight and avoid having a path for water to get to the main bulkhead.

Second, I'm going to have an outboard well on Pylasteki, and it is difficult to sand out and fair up to a hole, so I'm pushing the boat to finish primer, so I can scuff it and shoot top coat and not have to try to fair up to the hole.

I finished sanding the first layer of Awlgrip Hull Guard Extra down smooth with 80 grit on a 5 inch random orbital sander. I pulled a skim of awlgrips pink fairing compound in the worst of the lows, old docking scars and pin holes, stress cracks that I opened up.

It was blowing 20-25 yesterday, so I rolled on a coat of sprayable fairing compound on the hull. I'll be sanding it with a 5 inch random orbital, followed by a 16 inch file board with 80 grit, and the occasional wooden paint stirrer with sandpaper stuck to it. The fin along the counter, under the transom, I'll sand out with a piece of styrofoam shaped roughly to fit the curve and push in towards the fin at an angle in a cross hatch pattern. 5 inch orbitals don't sand inside corners very well, and hand sanding puts in grooves... Just have to make a board to fit the shape and not sand inline to the inside corner.

The process is to sand off the roller stipple and get a smooth even thickness coating, then to use the 16 inch file board to identify the holes (low spots) if the material is thick enough, I sand evenly over the whole surface until the sandpaper starts to scratch the low spots. If I start to burn through to the white primer, or hit fiberglass at any of the high, high spots (where a hard spot along a bulkhead or stringer might be) I will apply another coat to build the whole surface out evenly.

If it sands out, I'll spray a coat of high build primer over the hull and sand it out to 220 grit, followed by 545 and topcoat.

Making somethings shiny is easy, making it fair takes leveling the surface to average out all the imperfections.

I do prefer to spray primer, but I've got nearly 250 feet of a run from where my air compressor is sitting on Noel, to Pylasteki and not quite enough air line to make the run.

Zach

Sanding...

Since the last update I have been sanding.

I've faired in the lower cabin top, which wasn't exactly straight forward. The mast had crushed the shape out of the inner skin of the deck. I put the new main bulkhead in, which held the inner skin in the, not an arch, shape. So, it took a few days and cycles of puttying last week to slick everything out and get it right. Not to count that the back edge was an extra 2 layers of cloth thick over the bevel to get back on to good glass, meaning that once it was round it also had a slight taper.

Normally you can use a long straight edge as a batten and ride it on both ends of a surface to pull a layer of fairing compound so long as the two edges are right. In this case, neither the front nor the back had the right shape or even the same shape. Normally you can use a thin flexible batten and wrap it around the curve, and pull from back to front, so long as the center of the curve is straight... not the case either, as the front end of the cabin top was well low.

This took a varying array of putty knives, and flexible long boards to work out, as battens and sreeds did not satisfy the eye. This was all together more trouble than it was worth, given it will be under non-skid... but at least the non-skid won't have any low spots.

For non-skid I am planning to use kiwigrip as it sounds interesting!

In between puttying and sanding cycles on the cabin top and side decks, I've floated out the main cabin with fairing putty, so that it is possible to sand with a 5 inch random orbital, which is about the limits of what I'm after. As smooth as decent sheet rock is good enough for me. Pylasteki did not have a molded headliner, instead the inside finish was the hand laid fiberglass as it came out of the mold. This was good enough for the first 50 years, but when you want to strip all the old failing paint you can't, really. At least not without tipping the sander up on edge and digging the paint out of the low spots.

I bought a quart of Petit Easy Cabin Coat, as it is supposed to have a good resistance to mildew and you can recoat it with out sanding. I haven't used it before, but I am tempted by both those factors. First though, I'm going to apply a layer of Mascoat Insulative Coating, a ceramic loaded paint that reduces the emissivity of a surface. Emissivity is a fancy word, meaning that heat doesn't transfer as easily through the material, reducing the formation of condensation. I haven't used this before either.

I left the main portion of the house roof alone, other than stripping the paint, as it will be repainted and insulated with reflectix. The same goes for the underside of the side decks. I'm going to put a few furring strips up, and use some 3M scotchlock, velcro on steriods, to hold up a liner. I haven't decided if this will be a sheet of thin varnished plywood or white formica.

Sanding continued:

I've started getting the hull ready to paint, as prime painting season is coming up soon. The ideal 80 degree days with 70 degree nights, for a few weeks. I'm going to get all the outside topics knocked out and get started on building an interior.

I finally got the last of the stress cracked gelcoat off the hull. This has been a long term project, as it is about as interesting as putting cotton balls in pill bottles, but much more serious. The smoother you remove it, the easier the paint job is to get fair.

I used an 8 inch pad sander with 80 grit 3m gold stickit discs and sanded both sides of the hull smooth. Then where ever the guy who sprayed the gelcoat in to the mold, sprayed two passes over the same spot, I dished it out with a 5 inch disc sander. Horror of horrors, as this is a slow speed grinder, that quite easily can turn something smooth into one big grooved up mess. However with care, and a very light touch you can take off only what needs to go, and come back and sand the slight ripples out with a random orbit sander.

Then I started dishing out stress cracks along the boot stripe with a dremel and a ball burr as I didn't grind the gel coat off this area, as there is a pretty decent transition from the bottom of the boat to the topsides that I didn't want to have to re-fair. A boot stripe with wiggles and bumps just doesn't look all that great.

After they were dished out I painted the hull with Awlgrips Hull Guard Extra, with a 4 inch chip brush and a squeedgee. It did not look very good, but I used a plastic squeedgee to force the primer in to the pin holes in the bare laminate and did not reduce it until it started getting to thick to work with. I had not used Hull Guard Extra before, as it is relatively new in the Awlgrip Lineup, I normally use 545 as a base coat but my Awlgrip rep talked well of it. No sanding needed to overcoat for 6 months, adhesion promoter for pink putty! I like that, because sanding the grooves and shiny spots of the lows is hard on your finger tips. Pylasteki is the test subject... Seems to be a common theme.

I am sanding off the brush marks with a random orbital sander and 80 grit. I'm going to lightly pull awlgrips fairing compound as a skim coat over the whole boat to fill more pin holes and dished out stress cracks. Hopefully Sunday I will be able to spray the hull with a few coats of sprayable fairing compound, to long board out with 80 and 120. Then a coat of high build sanded out to 220 followed by 545, and top coat.

I am going to spray her snow white, with a good bit of flattening agent in it. I don't want her to look quite like a million bucks for the world tour, but the foundation will be there for a 15 year paint job that is 2 days work away from being a mile deep. I must say, I'm almost tired of shiny boats.

That is all for now,

Zach

March 24 2012

Monday:

I used sheet wax to build up a dam around the hatch opening on the lower cabin and laid up a tapered wedge of fiberglass to make a flat pad for the hatch to sit on.

The stress cracks above the portlight got ground out. Dremel with a ball burr through the gelcoat and filled. I started filling the lows in the interior, on the underside of the deck.

Tuesday:

I built some staging to go around the back of the boat. 8 foot 2x4's. I cut a 28 inch drop, and a 54 inch piece. One rung 24 inches off the ground, 28 inches wide. The top 24 inches wide... Cheap easy and stiff.

After that I added some more fiberglass to the hatch flange.

Wednesday:

I ground the gelcoat off the starboard side of the boat. Everything except the underside of the counter at the transom.

Thursday:

The sun had eaten my old epoxy fiberglass work on the deck from 3-4 years ago. For peace of mind I decided to redo it, to not have to think about if it was still strong enough...

I ground the fiberglass off the starboard side deck, and replaced a some coring that I didn't do a few years back. The piece of divinycell went from the cockpit up to the aft deadlight of the main cabin, and resin coated the exposed balsa coring.

Leah came by for a bit and helped sand the old paint off the toe rails.

Firday:

I finished grinding the bevels around the outside edge of the deck, water washed and sanded the epoxy coat. I wanted to jack a bit more crown in to the deck at the front of the cabin, so that under foot it would be stiffer. The camber of the deck makes it stiff, when you step on it the arch tries to flatten... When that arch is upside down it isn't doing its job.

When I laid the core a few years ago... I used a tool box to weight down that section, and it made a low spot. I screwed a 2x2 strip of pine, to the underside of deck and stacked paint stirrers in the middle by eye until the side deck had shape. I then ground the screws that were sticking through the deck off flush.

This cracked the coring along the center of the arch, so I ground out the crack and filled it with epoxy, let it gel and cut a strip of fiberglass for the side deck.

After that, I mixed up a batch of slow epoxy and started laying three layers of cloth. I air rolled it and worked all the excess resin out, and continued to roll until it had gelled. After that, I applied a quart and a half of Adtech Proseal to seal the weave of the cloth.

Zach

Update March 18, 2012

I took part of the week off of Noel, to do some work on Pylasteki.

A few weeks ago I recored the cabin top the traditional way, cutting off the top skin digging out the core and replacing it with divinycell foam topped with 3 layers of 17 ounce cloth.

I used pocket hole screws to hold an assortment of boards up to the underside of the cabin top, forcing the skin straight and flat where it wanted to sag down in the center.


I cut the bow deck out from just ahead of the cabin top up to the stem as I wasn't pleased with some of the first glass work I did on the boat, reusing the top skin to recore. It wasn't stiff under foot. I ground a 2x2 foot section off before picking up the saw and dropping the whole deck overboard.

It will go back as a water tight bulkhead at the chain locker and a deck accessed hatch.

Saturday and Sunday I cut out the chain locker bulkhead, and ground the tabbing out. I took the stem head fitting off, and tried to remove the bow chocks. The nuts on the underside were glassed over, so a saw will be needed.

Monday I sanded the paint off the inside of the cabin and underside of the deck. I brought in my rudder and ground the paint and glass off one side and started inspecting it. I need a new rudder shaft, and pintles and gudgeons. The hole in the gudgeons is about a half inch larger diameter than the pin. The bronze rudder shaft has gone pink, not pitted badly but on a blue water boat I don't want anything in the back of my mind that might be on the edge...

Tuesday I ground the old epoxy glass work I did on the port side deck. 4 year old work that the sun got the better of. Epoxy and UV light don't like each other much and the thin coat of paint I put on was long gone. I cut a template for the new glass out of tar paper, and cut three layers of cloth for port and starboard sides and laid glass on the port side. The glass work was probably fine, and was still solid and stiff, but for the time and cost of a gallon of resin I didn't want to think about it half way through the gulf stream...

Wednesday I sanded off a portion of the paint on the deck, and started faring the side deck. I removed the deadlights, and cleaned the old sealant off.

Thursday I started recoring the lower cabin house. I sounded it out, and drilled some test holes. It sounded dull on the port side and had some wet balsa in the center where the old pad eye was for boom bang. I cut around the line of the old non-skin. The skin popped up with no effort, the first layer of mat that bedded the core to the deck was dry except for two 2x4 by 2 foot sections that ripped some of the good balsa core out.

I ground out the bad balsa, and laid a 22x26 wide piece of divinycell foam in the center where it was in poor shape. I screw laminated this down with fender washers to pull the foam down into the glue after perforating the foam with a board that looked like a spike strip full of nails.

I made a template for the new glass work, tar paper again, and cut three layers of cloth. My new hatch takes a 24 11/16 x 24 11/16 hole, so I scooped out the balsa to the edge, but left the old hatch to retain the shape of the deck. I only put two layers right up to the hatch hole, as I'll be glassing in a drip edge on the underside, and building up a flat surface for the hatch to sit on. Directly behind the hatch is my solid glass pad that spans the bulkhead to accept the mast step, which I'll be building up level and flat.

While grinding the bevels around the edges I found the bad glass work extended up into the round of the front of the cabin, the top 3/16 of the 1/4 inch laminate was in good shape, but the lowest layer of mat directly against the core was dry. Grinding the bevel for the new work, meant half the bevel would be lying up against dry junk. I ground up into the fillet, and 1 1/2 inches into the solid face of the cabin just under the forward facing port lights. I hate grinding into fillets, as it goofs with the paint work and makes things more complicated. I'll end up pulling a 3+ inch radius fillet to cover the tabbing, and hopefully be able to float out the difference without changing the style of the boat to much...

With that done, I spent some time doing glass work inside the cabin where I found some old repairs to grind out in the cabin top, and cracks in the lower skin of the deck. After that was laid up, I acetone wiped the side of the hull and ground out some of the last of the gelcoat on the port side, up by the stem head fitting.

Then I went down and ground two of the through hull fittings I had glassed over previously and brought them flush to the hull.

Friday:
I ended up working in the morning. It looked like it was going to rain at any moment after the dew burned off (around 11) so I went out and water washed the epoxy, acetone wiped everything and sanded the lower cabin top. Then with fast hardener I laid the first layer of cloth down, and went back to working on Noel. That afternoon I sanded off the semi-cured epoxy and laid the next two layers.

Saturday:

I water washed and sanded out the glass work on the lower cabin top feathering out the edges, and worked out some of the highs and lows. With that done I started sanding off the paint around the cabin. Normally I leave the old paint beside the new glass so that the film of resin that sticks around, even after acetone wiping, gets sanded off and doesn't take any of the substrate with it. I'm sanding with 80 grit, though it takes awhile longer than 40 grit to get through the paint, you can do less damage with less scratches to fill later on.

I did not apply any putty, as the dew point and humidity was on the verge even before sunset rolled around. Epoxy and dew don't get along.

Sunday: So far, its been foggy wet and rainy. I've got some things to work on, laying up blanks for the bulkheads and foam for the foredeck.

Pictures to come, my camera died midway through so they don't include the "good stuff" of destruction.

Built a mold.

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...

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

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

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

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...

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!

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.)

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

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.