Monica come's out Despite my recently acquired NVQ3, an influx of work meant I was unable to present at the mould removal this time, PJ said it went rather well and both mould and Monica are doing fine. PJ keeps telling me what a good job I made of it, despite using up about 1/10 of his stock of resin brushes (am I really that heavy handed?). strangely she looks just like her twin sister "Gabriela", having determined to build two boats as sister yachts it has just struck me that this may not be such a good idea to have them completely identical, in competition, we will probably change some of the detailing on the sails so we can tell them apart!
PJ has put a lot of work into finishing the hull for me which is very much appreciated, and the project has stalled slightly whilst he made a bunch of bearing Goosenecks for our Wee Nip one design class (too many pies not enough fingers!) The carbon angle was a success and so PJ is producing some more for the internal bracing across the hull, we are hoping we might persuade Capt. Ewart to allow us access to pour over his Rococco hull to see how the workings are configured.
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Happy days the final coat of carbon and the edge detail was completed by me today, it was the usual mixing, dobbing, and rollering I say usual but this is my first carbon hull. The edge detail is a bit tricky but we think we have it cracked now, or at least we know what to do next time, I guess if we were to make any more we could change the way we were making it to a bit of a cleverer method. In between offering advice and helping me with my work on Monica, PJ hasn't been idle he has made the carbon fibre angle to carry the bottom of the mast We bought a metre of 20 x 20 aluminium angle from a local DIY store and PJ made up a length of carbon angle 480mm long by laying up two layers of carbon and clamping them between the aluminium angle.
He cut this in half and clamped it back to back with another carbon layer between and an additional layer of the bottom. keel bulb progress Inspired by yesterdays progress with the hull I set to this morning and sanded the keel bulb plug to shape. It is our intention to make it in two halves and encase those in a cabon fibre shell. If time permits today I will make a casting box to fit it.
All I have to do now is find a crucible big enough, fire up the furnace and see what happens, all this might be a bit premature however we need a weight to see how it sits on it's projected waterline and this seemed as good a way as any. Another Cheeky Girl gets underway in earnest Tthe first layer of carbon is on, resined and drying in PJ's dining room (Mrs PJ will be pleased when this project is over!)
We have the second layer to put on tomorrow, we are trying a slightly different technique around the top edge this time we will see how it goes! I bet you are all glad the pictures loaded up fine this time. One thing we did manage to photograph is the keel weight plug which we started to manufacture today, I had Merland copy shop in Northampton (they are great) copy the plug detail 5 times onto A2 paper so that we could use it to make a half set of shapes.
The line to cut was highlighted in the pink marker, so I didn't cut to the wrong line and then using Pritt stick (or at least Morrisons cheepo version of it) we stuck these to 1/4" (6mm for you youngsters) balsa. As I am in the middle of making my hull at the workshop at the centre of the universe I took advantage of PJ's facillaties and used his equipment to cut out the shapes, these were then glued together using waterproof pva and clamped. Back to the Cheeky Girls Gabriela & Monica Unfortunately we had a bit of a mishap, after a short break from the Romanza project during which PJ made a foriegner, and managed to cover everything in the dreaded red dust, finally I got to start to play with the mould on Monday. At this point there should be a nice series of photographs with me with my tounge out concentrating on cleaning the mould, rubbing release wax into the mould, painting the mould with a coat of blue gel coat and then finally puttting on another coat today...... ..........unfortunately when we were loading them onto the PC they somehow got lost so you will have to make do with this picture of the cheeky girls instead!
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AuthorI am Footy skipper turning his hand to the Six Metre class Archives
August 2015
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