Again with the clamps

New Direction

It's a bit of a hassle when out cruising, constantly having to follow the weather. How ironic it is to have to find "weather windows" to complete fiberglass projects. I did get the last of the hull glass done, but none of the fairing. I decided today was the day to more on and began cleaning up the gunwales and cutting the deck curves in the forward bulkheads. My current plan is to putter away for another week on the decks and bulkheads; then move the other hull inside.

Demo

Things are on hold a bit as the weather has turned warm, but with frequent showers and high humidity.  Don't want to glass the inner hull side in this weather.  Things are looking better over the weekend.  Took part of today to begin the demo work of the masonry planter box in front of the wall section where the starboard hull will re-enter the shop.  Not sure who is going to put this all back together when the boat is done? Maybe I can sell the house to someone looking to build a catamaran?

These Are The Days

Actually this was Sunday or so, but just got around to posting it.  It's days like this when you can see some real progress is being made! A close look will reveal a small amount of planking is missing on the outboard side near the bow.  This is the are where the forward netting beam will slid thru during assembly and I thought it easiest to glass it all up later as well as cover the and reinforce the end of the glass pocket the alloy tube will fit into.

Glass

Haven't I done this already?  The weather had been quite cool for the first part of November and I was getting quite worried about getting the second hull glassed before "winter".  The last few days have been rather warm and it looks good for the next week and the other side! In talking with another builder about cool weather glass work, he said "I preglassed my panels"  Sure (I said), I glassed the INSIDE of my panels, but what about all those screw holes (on the outside)?  I happened to know he used screws on 4" centres.  He said "no problem" I just glassed over the butt joints and filled the screw holes with filler.  Yikes!!!  I have done this and seen it done when removing teak decks on fiberglass boats and you always end up with the screw heads showing and eventually bleeding thru as the materials expand and contract.  You HAVE!!! to glass over all screw holes to tie it all together.

Keystone

I dry fitted the FINAL hull piece today.  Richard promises that the second hull goes faster than the first one.  In my case; I think this one has gone a bit slower, but there has been a lot going on lately.  Still looking to be on track with my original guestimate time frame of finishing this hull by around Thanksgiving.

A Few Details

On the first hull I laid out the stringers to lie under the forward forward bunk edges.  This worked OK, but not great.  I decided to glass in this ledge to hold the bunk top as this will also be the owners cabin bunk and supporting 2 people.  One pic shows a finished, but not trimmed down flange.  The other pic shows the piece of MDO plywood cover in packing tape I used as the "mold"  I may make the keels from solid fiberglass so experimenting with this type of thing some more is helpful.