Spent today prepping the second float half for laminating. A rundown of what happened :

Yesterday dad cut the foam away from the keel batten, cut the foam against the deck flange, and faired the inside of the hull half – said it took him about 1.5-2 hours. This meant today while he faired the last few bog joints, I taped the deck mold wood (much better this time, I might add!)

and installed the keel foam in place, leaving a few inches higher to bog for a seal on the vacuum bag (also did the same at transom and bow)

(you might see where this is going already)

After discussing our thoughts/plan on sealing the deck flange for infusion with Ian, his thoughts are that it is structurally OK, but still states :

Sounds like it may work, but demonstrates why I am not so keen on infusion for hulls – just creates too much work!

… and I tend to agree to a point – it does create extra work, but I really enjoy the process and having already bought the special hardener and resin for the job seems stilly to try and do it the other way as the first half went. I also really like the quality of the bulkheads that have been coming out, and not having to struggle with air-bubbles is nice!

So, in preparation for this, I cut around 20′ of DBM1208 to make the first layer of the deck-flange

and laid it into place, with a few strategically placed Raptor staples to hold it from popping up close to the curve

It was then wet out in short order (man, this DBM sucks up resin, but it makes such a nice looking and smooth flange, I can tell already! 300% better than the previous with just the knitted fabric that kept coming apart with resin pools from not being able to squeeze it out)

With little else to do because of the low temperatures (low 40*F all day, and only a small heater in the garage) , I glued together the last of the stringers needed for both floats

and finally remembered to take a picture of the bow web that we glued together weeks ago

With any luck, tomorrow I should have all fabric layers, peel ply, RDM and resin channels in place. Then we will see if things were made air-tight and infusion is possible. At any point up until doing the actual infusion, I still have enough hand-layup hardener to do this hull half (need to order more soon, as I didn’t anticipate on going thru this amount so quickly). I will also try and make time tomorrow to cut the chain-plate piece into the two separate pieces and weigh/photograph them, as a few people have asked. I am going to deviate from the plans slightly here – Ian says to cover the top 3″ and sides with a light cloth before cutting them apart. I am going to cover them with cloth after cutting apart, that way the cloth is covering the inside surfaces (from cutting apart).

Depending on how the material layout and bag creation go will dictate when I might attempt to infuse this hull half. It’s either going to be a spectacular success or a spectacular failure. Either way, I’ll be there with the camera or maybe even the video recorder. 🙂

Hours worked: 8.5 hours