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.
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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 Back to the W@CotU for some xmas Romanzaing, by the time I arrived PJ had removed the plug from the strongback and we had to cut the excess from the forms, at first we tried with the trusty dremmel however it was having a bit of trouble getting through the 1/4 ply so we went for a bit of careful work with a padsaw. (look how careful I am being in the picture!) Happily PJ is left handed so I did the right hand cuts and he did the left.
We separated the "stickwood" from the pieces cut away and used them to add to the top of the remaining forms inside the hulls, fixing with supaglue. We would have just fitted the hull straight onto a 1/8 board fixed to the strongback however the deck is curved so we added these as supports inside the hull and then screw fixed the board on to them. The stern piece was added with a bit of fettleing that was required to make a nice fit. We then set about making the fence, firstly we roughly marked out the hull shape on another 1/8" board and cut this so that it would fit over the hull on the centreline, then I scribed the shape of the hull onto the board and carefully cut out to the scribe line to get a close for fit. Then supports were made to hold the fence onto the line and enable us to make the first half of the mould. The fence will then be removed and the second mould half will be made against the first. Cost - some more free 1/8" ply I can't remember where this lot came from!
time spent - another six hours. PJ managed to spend almost a whole day taking off the first 13mm (1/2" in old money) of the Romanza plug bow, we had a friendly reminder from one of our club members to do this although, despite all appearances, we hadn't forgotten honest!
Actually most of PJ's day was spent standing in for one of Santa's helpfull elves transforming his and Mrs J's abode into a winter wonderland, not sure the bells on his shoes are appropriate but he just won't take them off! Oh almost forgot the nose needs shortening because the first 13mm needs to be made of an elastomeric compound! He tells me he spent all day but he still found time to do his hair! or was it the scotch? I can't take any credit for the progress made from the last post, PJ has been busy in a Scotch fuelled extravaganza of glassing & rubbing down and then finally painting with grey primer (only one shade not 50). As you can see the Romanza plug is starting to look brilliant.
She is still on the board and no doubt PJ will continue to fuss over her untill I turn up to get in the way for the next part of the process, making the mould. |
AuthorI am Footy skipper turning his hand to the Six Metre class Archives
August 2015
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