A Deadly Visit

While I'm not fond of rodents taking up residence on the boat, I was a bit disturbed that a little mouse met such a gruesome death.  I did some pre-fairing on the starboard deck last night to get ready for the 3rd layer of glass and the little bugger must have stumbled across the fairing just as it was hardening up and got stuck.  When I came back this afternoon he was part of the boat and removing him was somewhat unpleasant.

Once I took care of the mouse I laminated 8 feet of the third layer on the starboard deck.  We'll be heading down to the Vineyard for Labor Day weekend but will be back Sunday so I should have a good chunk of Monday to get more done.  With any luck I'll be able to work my way back to the aft deck and get the entire starboard side complete with the third lamination.

Come on Irene

Queue bad karaoke version of Dexys Midnight Runners... Nevermind; probably means nothing if you didn't grow up in the 80's.  Anyway, Irene has fizzled out and left behind a mess, but fortunately Magic and the boatshed made it through unscathed, despite a few scary moments.

I was never too worried regarding the structure of the shed in the predicted 40-60 mph winds, but the forecast for 4-8 inches of rain dampened my spirits (pun intended).  I don't live in a flood prone area but when we get that much rain and some wind, we generally get a bunch of downed trees.  The forest on our property is predominately Eastern White Pine and some are quite mature with crowns in the 100 foot range, so when they come down, you know it.  There aren't any big ones near the boatshed but there are a few maples that could make a mess of things if they came down on it.

I checked on the shed a few times during the day and all was well, not a drop of water on the boat, so there wasn't much to worry about.  We lost power all day so sanding was not an option and I went to bed around 10. I thought the storm was over because the rain had stopped and the wind had died to nothing.  Unfortunately, at around 1 am or so, another wave came through with much more force that what I had seen during the day. The winds sounded like a jet coming through and the first sickening crack I heard was a very big willow tree coming down on our garden shed next to the house (although I didn't know it until this morning).  The tree delivered a glancing blow that shattered one of the rafters and ripped a bunch of shingles off, but the worst thing was that the tree came to rest on top of our vegetable garden.  Direct hit, it literally turned the garden into tomato paste.   I heard several more loud cracks coming from the direction of the boatshed but knew there wasn't anything I could do.  Quite a helpless feeling.

With the exception of the garden shed that took the willow beat down, we lucked out.  A decent sized silver birch and a giant white pine (~2.5 feet diameter) came crashing down about 50 and 150 feet away from the boatshed respectively.  I'll cut up the birch for firewood and let the pine lay where it fell, but my first order of business is to clean up the garden shed mess.  Hopefully, I can get this cleaned up quickly and I can get back to boatwork.

The Third Dimension

My decks - not to scale

Or at least the third layer on the foredeck.   Despite my sander troubles (the repair shop found another part broken and part is on order), I managed to get the entire foredeck sanded, pre-faired, and glassed up over the weekend.  Overall the whole process went pretty smooth but I did find 2 small (quarter sized) areas that were resin starved.  A little disappointing, but not a big deal.  I'll have to grind those out and refill before I move on (I can't go any further until the sander is fixed anyway).  Not perfect, but a whole lot better than the peat moss decks that I used to own.

I broke the job up into 3 sections: the bow, port foredeck, and starboard foredeck.  I could have done the whole thing at once, but it was fairly warm in the shed (high 80's) and I didn't need any big batches of epoxy kicking before I had time to spread everything out.  Also, I have just about enough sandbags to cover each of the areas (not all at once).

The process generally followed:
1. Pre-fairing each section and letting it cure.
2. Sanding pre-faired section.
3. Cut glass to shape so it lays flat over all the flanges and right up to where the bulwark starts to curve upward toward the toerail.
4. Mix 24 oz epoxy and coat pre-faired section and lay glass on with some of mix.
5. Saturate glass with remaining mix and make sure the everything is laying flat.
6. Cover in plastic, and lay sandbags over layup.
7. Wait.

Below are some photos of the progress.  Unfortunately, I'll be idle until the sander gets fixed, but should be able to crank out the sidedecks pretty quickly after that.  Once I get the third layer on the rest of the decks, I get to go back and start the real fairing process.

Prefaired

Glass Cut

Layed up with plastic sheet

Sand bags to weigh it down

Bow complete

	Foredeck prefaired	Glass cut

Third lamination complete with original deck camber

Good Things and Bad Things

I got a call yesterday morning from the service desk at the repair shop to tell me that the warranty repair on my 6" Rigid sander was all set and I can come pick it up.  Fantastic, it took a full month to sort out the warranty issues and I wish I had it a day sooner, but not a big deal.  So I drove down to Manchester at lunch and picked it up and when I got home I went straight to the boatshed to try it out.  The 5" DeWalt is really more of a finish sander and just wasn't up to the task of sanding down some of the crappier parts of my fiberglass job.

I started up on the bow and sanded down the fairing mix I had slathered on the day before and the big sander made short work of it.   Sweet.  Smooth as a baby's bottom (with a little diaper rash);  The last layer of glass will go down nicely and should make the final fairing much easier.

Since I was having so much fun, I decided that I would tackle the rest of the foredeck that hadn't been faired.  I was thinking to myself: "Wow, this sander rocks, it does more in 5 minutes than the DeWalt did in 30".  It really cut down the ridges and resin squeeze-outs like they were butter and got the deck down to where I would need only a thin skim of fairing compound. 

About 20 minutes in though, I noticed that the sander started losing power and speed.  I thought that I might have bumped the variable speed control, but it quickly became apparent that there was something very wrong with the unit.  I kept at it and fiddled with the speed control adjustments and the rotational axis a bit, but eventually came to the conclusion that the sander was still screwed up.  Damn!  

So it looks like I will be headed back down to the tool shop again to hopefully get this thing fixed once and for all.  I hate the thought of going back to the DeWalt because it is just sooo slow; I may have to spring for a new sander (probably not a Rigid) if this repair job takes another month. 

Am I done yet?

Um... NO!  Not even close.  I ordered another 12 yards of 1708 biax cloth (from ebay) for the final layer yesterday.  It should be here sometime late this week, so in the meantime I decided to start cleaning up the existing layers of glass so that the third layer lays flat and will minimize the amount of fairing at the end.  I started up forward and found that there was a lot of resin lumped up in ridges from where I put the plastic and sandbags when I did the lamination.  It was clear that I wasted a lot of epoxy here and consequently, I needed to do a bunch of sanding.  I only had 15 - 60 grit sanding disks for my 5" DeWalt (my 6" Rigid is still in for repairs) so I was only able to adequately sand about 3 feet from the bow before I ran out of disks.

Since there were a fair amount of imperfections in the form of little valleys caused by laying down the plastic and sandbags when the layup was done, I vacuumed everything up and wiped it down with acetone and the mixed up a 12 oz batch of epoxy and thickened with a 50-50 mix of Aerosil and glass microspheres.  This mix should provide much better sandability (is that a word?) to the job once it cures.  I troweled it out on the prepped area and spread a thin layer over everything to fill in the bumps and valleys and called it a day.

Hopefully the 6" Rigid will be fixed soon (especially since I have over $100 in sandpaper sitting on my bench), but in the meantime I will need to purchase large quantities of 5" 60 grit disks.  The glass job gets better as I go aft (on the job training, I can see my improvements), but there are still a few resin ridges here and there.  As much as I despise it, it might make sense to break out the angle grinder for the really high spots so I don't spend a fortune on sandpaper.

Just keep on movin on...

Bad picture, but the white section is actually fairly flat.  Flat enough for the third section of glass anyway.

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?

Moving Aft

Getting close now.  Last night I layed up the port side adjacent to the cockpit including the winch pad void (see starboard-side-core-check post).  Now I just have the aft deck and starboard side cockpit areas before I can start sanding to prepare for the third (and final) layer of cloth.

I need to pick up another 3 gallon batch of Progressive Epoxy this week before I go further though.  I am pleased with this epoxy; it's easy to work with, reasonably priced and it's only about 20 minutes away so I can pick it up myself and not deal with shipping costs.  With any luck I should have the entire deck cored and covered with 2 layers of glass sometime next week (Cabintop already has 3).