Rough Fit for the Caprail Complete

Time has never been on my side and this weekend was no different.  March is my favorite time of year for many reasons, but there is never enough time to fit it all in.  The warm sun brings everyone out to enjoy the last days of winter instead of simply trying to survive without losing fingers and toes to frostbite.  The sugaring parties are in full swing and are usually accompanied by strong homebrewed concoctions; the downhill skiing is as good as it's been all year, and I feel obligated to get out with the family for what may be the last cross country skiing of the year.

Sadly, Magic is most often the brunt of my time constraints, but I'm out of epoxy and need to get more before I begin the next step, so I didn't feel too guilty straying from the job at hand.  With that said, I was able to finish cutting the caprail (except for the transom) and got all the scarf joints fitted and tight.  I'm really happy with the result so far, I'm amazed what pretty wood does to the look; it makes Magic start to look downright 'yachty' again.  I'm also pleased to report that I had exactly zero 'oh shit' moments and made no expensive kindling for the woodstove (except for the pieces that I actually planned for).

I have to get another 1.5 gallon epoxy kit this week and I swear this will be the last (I have told myself this many times before).  Once I pick that up, I'm going to glue up the scarfs and then begin tapping the caprail to fix it to the bulkwarks.  Then I'll start fitting the rubrail using method A (see last post).  I decided on this method because I think it will have a better look overall and there will be no vertical seams.  My reasoning that I could replace the rubrail should I bump into something hard if I installed it using the original method (method B in last post) just didn't hold up.  I'm pretty sure that the rubrail on the boat was original and there is no reason to think that this new installation won't hold up for a long time to come.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

My slow plod toward the finish line helped me complete a big milestone this past weekend.  As of 6:30 last night I officially sealed the entire deck from the elements for a long time to come.  The last push began late last week when I sanded and prepped the aft and starboard side decks adjacent to the cockpit.

On Friday afternoon I cut and laminated biax glass for the pushpit mounting points and the backstay (4 layers for each).  I followed up with thickend epoxy to level it to the surrounding core and let that cure overnight. 

The next day I started by cutting and fitting glass for the aft deck area. At this point my 1708 biax cloth supply was running very low so I opted to gather up all the remnants from previous layups and use them for the first layer.  The first layer looked like quite the jigsaw puzzle, and combined with all the edges and odd corners on the aft deck, there was a lot of extra fitting work before I even began the layup.


For the second layer I used part of my remaining supply of 50" cloth to keep the seams to a minumum.  Once I had everything cut and fitted I layed both layers up at once with 3 - 16 ounce batches of epoxy.  I had a little leftover once everything was saturated so I thickened it up with aerosil and leveled out a few low spots (the previously laminated pushpit mounting points).  I covered everything up with plastic and sandbags and came back the next morning to find a nicely cured aft deck.


Prior to the first lamination of the pushpit and chainplate mounting points, I wrapped the backstay chainplate with a few layers of blue painters tape, followed by a layer of clear packing tape. This allowed for roughly 1/16" tolerance around the chainplate so once I re-bed it, the chainplate won't cause excessive loading on the deck when the rig is strained. I'll pack the area around the chainplate with butyl tape and chainplate cover to keep the water out. Once everything cured, it was a bit of a job freeing up the chainplate, but I'm really happy with the result.

With the aft deck complete, I only had about 7 feet of starboard side deck to complete and I had enough free time to tackle it yesterday. It was a fairly straight forward lamination except I added an additional layer of biax cloth to the already solid glass winch pad area because even with 6 layers it was still a little below the surrounding core. I let that kick for a few hours then did the final layup yesterday afternoon in 2 sections (more jigsaw patterns for the first layer). Again I had some leftover epoxy that I thickened up to level out a few low spots. I sand bagged the area and let it set up.


I know I'm no where near completed, but this is a big time milestone in my head at least.  Next steps are to start sanding the new sections flush to the old decks and to fill in any low spots so the final layer will sit flat and minimize the amount of fairing needed.  Of course all of my estimates for time are off, but I'm getting there.  So far I've used a little over 14 gallons of epoxy and gone through 30 yards of 1708 biaxial glass.  I know I could have gotten by with a lot less of both if I were more efficient, but it's a learning process.

I ordered another 12 yards of biaxial cloth today and will get started prepping for the final layer.  I'm looking forward to this because once the prep work is finished, the last lamination(s) will go fast comparatively.

Woohoo, decks.

A bit dirty eh?

Cored!

Yay! It's all in.

I finally finished laying in ALL the core today.  I'll have to go back and look, but I think I used 16 2x4 sheets (I have 2 sheets left).  I know I'm a long way from done (at my rate it will be years), but getting the core in was a big step. The bad news is that I won't be able to do any more work on the boat for about 2 weeks because we are going to Bar Harbor for vacation. The good news is that we are bringing my 17' O'day Daysailer with brand new sails and have rented a mooring for a week at the head of Somes Sound. The Daysailer is a really fun boat that will get up on a plane with a little wind and really bomb around. I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, I had run out of the 7.5 gallon batch of System 3 epoxy I bought last April with the starboard and stern core layups. I decided to go with Progressive Epoxy for my next order mainly because Merton's Marine is about 2.5 hours away and my truck doesn't exactly sip fuel. I don't like switching product brands mid stream, but the reviews on Progressive Epoxy are favorable, it uses the same 2:1 ratio, and the price is a bit lower than what I could get System 3 for. Add in the fuel costs to go to Merton's and I saved quite a bit (Progressive distributor is 20 minutes from my house).

I'm a bit sad to see all the core in because now that I have done the vast majority of the boat, I am getting pretty good at getting it layed in and making sure there are no voids along the sides and under the beveled edges with thickened epoxy. I'm also getting much quicker at it now that my technique is better and I am using tools better suited to the task. I found a really cool flexible plastic trowel-ly thing at Home Depot that I am really loving. It has roughly a 10 inch flexible edge and comfortable grip and on the perpendicular side it has a 5 inch edge. It works great for this and I expect it will be very good for wetting out the biaxial glass once I lay that down. For the whole port side, I used 132 ounces of mixed epoxy bringing my total to about 8.5 gallons used.  The Progressive epoxy seems good so far, much clearer than System 3 and has a good pot life (medium hardener).  One note: not bad, but different is the hardener for System 3 is more viscous than the resin.  The reverse is true for Progressive.  Once the resin and hardener are mixed however I couldn't tell any difference in viscosity from System 3 to Progressive.  I guess I can't give a solid review of the product until I report back in 5 years that everything on the port side held up, but so far so good.

My new bestest buddies.

Chipping Away

With the high temps in the low 60's over the past few days, I couldn't allow myself to squander the good layup conditions so I have been carving out a few hours here and there to get some core layed up.  Of course even using my work estimation algorithm 3x + 2.754 where x = my estimated hours, the area around the cockpit has lots of curves, cut outs, indentations, and generally annoying things that cause my progress to go even slower.

When I tore up the mess aft of the cockpit, it appeared that the old recore job had replaced the top skin, the core (with plywood), and at least part of the bottom skin.  Unfortunately, the bottom skin was not very sturdy and appeared to be some sort of matte that was very porous and not particularly strong.  There was also an old deck blower vent from when the boat had an atomic 4 that I didn't want anymore, so I decided it would make sense to reinforce it with a layer of 1708 cloth prior to installing the core.

I left the section directly aft of the locker opening to give a little rigidity to the structure while I was laying up the core.  Otherwise I ran the risk of the entire deck sagging under the weight of the sandbags while laying it up.  I could have reinforced from the underside, but thought that this would suffice (it did). 

After I cut out the cloth, I did the same with the balsa core then taped up all the deck holes from the underside and mixed up a 24 oz batch (16 resin, 8 hardener).  I wet out the deck then the cloth and layed it in.  When I was satisfied that it was fully saturated, I wet out the underside of the balsa and then added Aerosil to the remaining epoxy in the pot and thickened it up to spread.  I layed the balsa in, seated it and then mixed up a 20 oz batch and added Aerosil to make a peanut butter mix that I used to fill the gaps under the existing deck flange and around the balsa.  Finally I covered it all with plastic, followed by sandbags and let it kick.

The next day I went back and cut and ground out the area aft of the locker opening and repeated the same procedure as above.  While prepping this section I pulled the backstay chainplate and made sure that there were no issues with the area where it attaches to the stern.  It appears that the chainplate isn't original because it seems to be a different type of metal and not as thick as the shroud chainplates.  It doesn't look like stainless steel, nor bronze.  I don't know my metals very well, but it almost appears to be galvanized.  In any event, it looks to be in good shape, but I think I will be replacing it to be on the safe side.

Yesterday I only had about an hour (my son set his watch to keep me honest), so I set to work on the starboard side along the cockpit to see how much I could get done.  I ate up a good 30 minutes prepping the area with the grinder and sander to ensure a good smooth mechanical bond to the bottom skin (this area still had the original skin intact). 

Because the winches will be located in this area, I decided to do a solid glass layup on part of it to accommodate the large loads it will be subjected to.  Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure exactly where (or how) I will be mounting the winches - the old winch bases were rotting and I am considering using bronze pedestal bases like these.  So I cut out 6 layers about 2 feet long and cut them to the shape of the area in question.  Next I cut out balsa to fill in the remaining area forward of that.  I laid everything in place to see how it fit and at that point my son popped his head up from the ladder and told me my time was up.  The next few days are going to be busy, but I hope to get this section laid up before the weekend (no work this weekend, going to NY). 

I'm reaching the point where I can break the core job up into smaller manageable pieces that I don't have to spend as much time on.  It also works out fairly nicely because I am doing this after work when the temperature is on the downslope so I don't have to worry about the epoxy outgassing.  Ultimately it may take longer, but given how busy my life is right now, it's tough to block off full days.  With that said, I think if I were able to get one full day in, I could probably get the rest of the core in.