Rudder shaping

More work on the rudders. After getting the stations on, it was time to fit the foam I had previously layered up with epoxy. I cut them to fit between the stations and when the pieces were clamped together, I could use my drill press to start some holes for where the shaft will be. Then I hogged the rest of the foam out with a knife and file, finding high spots by using a piece of sandpaper wrapped around a piece of aluminum tube.

Then using some thickened epoxy where the shaft lays in the foam, and regular epoxy over the rest of the mating surfaces, I glued them up using clamps. Decided against a vacuum bag just because clamps seemed good enough and quicker.

After the foam was on, I jumped right into shaping. I had shurform (not sure of spelling) tools from Stanley tools. One with a roughing type plate and one with a grit encrusted steel plate. I first had to glue on the bottom station to aid in developing final shape of the bottom of the rudder. To speed up shaping, I used a 9" sander/grinder to remove most of excess foam, the random/orbital sander to get down close to the stations, then the Shurforms to shape closer to final. The glue lines in the foam laminations proved tedious to work down, since they were so much harder than the surrounding foam. It is difficult to not lose to much foam either side of the glue line. The shurform with the grit plate worked good across the glue line after taking a file to get most out of the way.

Rudders taking shape

I've been making some progress on the rudders. After roughing up the stainless shafts with my hand grinder, I added some spiral wrapped layers of biaxial fiberglass tape, and vacuum bagged it on where the blade of the rudder will be.

Then next step is affix the stations onto the fiberglass sections. I drew centerlines on the stations and then using a level against the front and back stations, marked the centerline along the shaft with a pencil. I wanted the keyway already machined into the shaft to be in-line with the stations, so I could take care of any Ackermann geometry in the tillers. My centerline on the shaft and the the stations turned out to not be accurate enough to use alone, so I got them as close as I could in position and checked alignment by putting a straightedge along the tails of the stations - making sure they were all aligned with each other. I think I am pretty close to being in line with the keyway. Any slight variation can be dealt with in the tiller connection to the cross bar. There I plan to have (on the tiller arm) an offcenter bracket pivot point where the cross member joining the two tillers connect. A future picture of that will clear up any muddiness in my description.

I tabbed these stations on with pieces of biaxial after a small cove of thickened epoxy. I did this after the epoxy I used to fix the position of the stations was set up.

Work on rudder shafts, rudder cassettes, and some various hatches

Found a local guy who could cut the keyways for my rudder shafts. That solved a problem for me in that getting the shafts to Anchorage and having a shop cut them there would have been about 5 times the expense.

So I've roughed up the shafts prior to wrapping them with biaxial fiberglass where the blade will be. I've also started working on the rudder cassettes - squaring off the bottoms of them and filling some repair areas and pin holes from old glassing job.

I've also been giving hatches last coats of epoxy, and in the case of a couple outside ones, I vacuum bagged on some fiberglass cloth, using the vacuum mainly to bend it around the edges better than I've been doing.

Previous to this, I did some work on hatch frames:

Cockpit benches, first hatch frame.

So, a few months have passed since my last update. In that time I gave the inside of the hulls a final coat of epoxy, which I will now have to sand enough to paint. I've glued in the galley countertop, fixed up a spot for a cooler (though now I may have to modify it as it may be too tight to open a lid of a cooler that sits in the created space).

I've drilled out for the mainsheet traveler track. The inside of the main beam it rests on had a lot of work inside - reinforcement biaxial fiberglass for the track fastening, hole patching, and paint. Really hard to paint in the space so hope it lasts.

Glued on the cockpit benches that will house the two gas tanks. Did some work on the hatch openings - framing them and coving in the the frames (for the forward two hatches.. still need to glue in the frames for the aft hatches). Cut some plywood that will go under the stanchion bases to help level them out.

That is close to what I've gotten done. Winter has arrived so the boat shed is now too cold to epoxy in, unless I can get some good heat going. I did add some small amount of insulation in the walls and plumbed in a oil burning stove (which won't see much use at nearly $6 per gallon for heating oil). My rental house had the hot water go out so I spent several days on a plumbing/electrical remodel there.

Next step is to build the rudders. Kurt is designing a boom that can be home-built for this boat design, so I may also have that project. Otherwise I can sand inside the hulls for paint, as well maybe as the outside. No paint until summer though, or late spring.

Here's a shiny pic of inside the hull after a coat of epoxy:

The aft mainbeam all patched up:

Gas cover/benches installed:

Hatch frame:

Getting inside ready for paint

Been spending my time sanding rough epoxy areas and smoothing out the coves. I'm ready to call it good enough, though if I felt I had more years in my life I would do it a bit better. Sometimes you just have to weigh what is important in one's life and let the small stuff go. So there will be a few rough spots. We (me and my unskilled help back when first getting this boat going) didn't know how to get a good, smooth cove very well so there's some messes which I've cleaned up best I'm going to do. I'm better at coving now, but it is an art I wouldn't say I've mastered.

There's also rough edges where biaxial knitted fabric was used to join structures, and some small voids where the peel ply didn't make complete contact with the fabric, that someone with more time and drive would perhaps fair out. My rationale is that it adds weight to smooth it all out, so can live with some bumps. Trying to get it at least where a person could wipe it down with a cloth without catching said cloth on roughness.

So here's a pic of the hull I've been working in lately. This is the side that suffered the most damage when the barge broadsided it. The port side should be somewhat quicker to do as it had less damage (which means less patching, fairing, sanding). Also I've already done the worst of it on the forward part of the hull. The port side still needs an icebox/counter added which I've yet to construct. And possibly a provision for an electric fridge/freezer in case I can someday afford that.

Cabin is committed

Decided to go ahead and glue on the cabin while in the more or less controlled environment of the shed. That means I'll have to do a bit more surgery on the wall than I had planned to get it out, but C'est la vie!

 

Water tanks and cockpit mod

Now working on getting the cockpit closed up and ready for primer. First pics are prepping the water tank and storage area before closing it up. Then starting to close it up.

Here's gluing up the benches: