PJ goes a measuring PJ had a trip out to Bournville to witness Geoff Raygada's six metre hulls being measured, the premis was that he could glean as much information about what we need to do for the Gabriela & Monica Romanzas. The whole trip was well worth it & Bill Green was most helpful in giving us information which will aid us with our builds, PJ took a number of pictures whilst Bill was going about his tasks and these have been collated into a brief pictoral guide into what happens at measuring, hopefully this will be helpfull to all you prospective builders out there. Geoff Raygada had this to say ......... thanks to Bill and Peter for a very interesting but freezing day out. I certainly learned a lot about 6M's , even if it was the hard way! To be honest the few jobs required to get them both to measure were quite simple, 10 mm off the top of the rudder to keep it below the waterline and the sail trimming required to make Bad Moon legal were very easy and I was lucky that I did not have to move the sail numbers , although it looks slightly odd as the number now touches the leech. They were stuck like sh... to a blanket and would have been a real pain to change. The jib trimming and new eyelets were no problem either.
0 Comments
A couple of nose jobs Back in my halcyon days I played about using latex to make "squish moulds" for custom made scaletrix car bodies, don't worry I am all grown up now! Anyway this experience of playing in rubber goods meant I became the prime candidate for producing the bow bumpers (yes we finally got there!) on our hulls. Some of you may remember us cutting the front off the hull sometime back, I think it was last year, well we didn't throw it away instead we stuck it onto a piece of 1/8" balsa, did a bit of fettling, made a plaster of paris mould from it and with a bit of easy mixing, the purchase of some latex & pigment now have two bow bumpers for the Romanzas. Gabriela on the way I will be starting to make my hull "Monica" next week hopefully we will be able to produce some photographs as we go along to give a better idea of the process this time.
Time Taken 10 hours material costs £150.00 As you can see from the inset picture the mould has been separated and masking tape layed over the entire side, the outer limits of the mould are marked on and then the entire piece can then be peeled away and stuck over a large piece of card or paper to produce a patern to cut the carbon fibre cloth to.
Neat huh! As we are building sister yachts and PJ is heading towards making the first one out the mould, his yacht will be named Gabriela. When he hasn't been breaking the Ice off of Mrs PJ's water features, PJ has managed to do a bit more on the Romanza plug, as you can see he has added the return lipping, he has also given the hull a good polish with release wax getting it ready to produce the first hull.
Looks like we have a hull mould PJ has been working hard over the last two days smoothing over the inside of the hull mould before we make a stand to sit it on and the top flange to complete the hull mould, prior to seperating the hull from the plug he drilled through the two halves so that we could get an exact fit when bolting the pieces back together.
I get to play too.... I was eventually able to get back to the Workshop at the Centre of the Universe, and powered by Prednisolone I went for my NVQ1 in applying three layers of chopped strand mat.
PJ made some feeble excuse in that he needed to get the previous half off the plug asap as to why he had rushed on without me, so all that was left for me to do was get the thing and the bench and some of me covered in resin and cloth. Previously Mrs PJ was once again called into action for her moving expertise as the three gel coats were completed. I won't get my NVQ certificate until PJ has removed the mould from the plug and all is well, I have been banished from the workshop for this process, my NVQ qualification not being enough to allow me to witness the separation. Romanza has one half of a hull mould...not much left to do now then! As you can see the fence has been removed and one half of the mould is almost complete and ready for the other half to be built against it. Discussions have been had as to how to do the deck particularly regarding the edge details.
A number of people are now following the blog and we are always pleased to receive your comments, whether they are here or by email. We are also indebted to Mrs PJ who was getting a bit fed up carrying the hull in and out of the house during the cold weather, she is most relieved that it has turned a little warmer lately. A bit of moulding PJ has been busy putting the first three coats of gelcoat on the starboard side of the Romanza Plug, I am not sure how long each coat took but with the weather so cold the drying time is extended so this has been a long process, hopefully I will be able to put in an appearance early next week and lend a hand.
Let see if it measures up In a mince pie & coffee fuelled frenzy of abhorations, we managed to do some check measurements on the Romanza, using the Six Metre Rules and the details contained on the plans and a certain amount of intuition (ok guess work!) we managed to check a number of the plugs vital statistics.
All of which you'll be pleased to hear checked out ok! Well they did second time around when we got the LWL right! PJ was most pleased to re-acquaint himself with some of his apprentice tools from Avro days, which hadn't seen the light of day for some time to assist and so we now feel confident enough to move onto the next process, making the mould. My panic that we hadn't built the stern correctly was unfounded, unfortunately PJ had already spent too much time adding 20mm and reshaping it to make it an exact fit for the plans, if we had done this process first I don't think we would have bothered! (Sorry PJ) cost £1.99 mini mince pies time spent 4 hours |
AuthorI am Footy skipper turning his hand to the Six Metre class Archives
August 2015
Categories |