Boom!

Build a boom, they said. It would be easy, they said.

Well, that was about all it took for me to take on that little job. How long can it take?

Started it about in the first week of November, still about halfway through it. I can blame part of the time on the winter here. It has gotten dark and cold:

and the darkness makes it a bit difficult to get going in the morning. The cold makes it expensive to heat the shop, at over $5 per gallon of heating oil. I have a wood stove as well, but wood is getting very difficult to find here.

But here are some pics of the project:

Building the form on an old strongback I had from building a kayak:

Using sitka spruce for the stringers.

Then two layers of 3mm luan mahogany epoxied onto the sides:

And some shaping, then 1mm of carbon uni-directional epoxied onto corners, inside and out - and some 17 oz. biaxial fiberglass over the carbon on the outside corners:

Turn it over for getting carbon on inside corners:

Glue up the two top skins, but don't yet glue to boom body:

So that is up to date for today. I'm also cutting out the sheave cheeks from G-10 1/4" fiberglass sheet and getting ready to install them. First I will coat the inside of the boom with 6 oz. fiberglass cloth to give good weather and wear resistance. I'll need to figure out a way to do some blind coves with the carbon uni to join the top - still struggling with how to do that, as there isn't much working area. I'm thinking I will screw the cheeks in as a unit (2 sheaves per sheave box) by gluing them into a unit. The sheave pin will extend to outside each side of the boom, giving some strength. I may add a second pin just for some more strength to holding in the sheave box. There will be a pair of boxes at each end for reefing and outhaul. (total 8 sheaves). Pics when I have them.

Catching Up - some paint

Been awhile since the last post about painting. Blogs are hard to keep up for some of us. I often wonder why I even attempt this, and have not really answered the question for myself.

Last post was about beginning to paint the interior. I did nearly finish that job - still needing to paint the bilge. Shipping things to Nome is always a problem, and proved to be in trying to mail up some bilge paint. The package got lost in the mail for a month, then turned up as "not able to mail to my location", so I lost the postage (considerable), but was refunded by my supplier. I had successfully ordered some xylene based epoxy paint thinner, which I know is haz-mat, so figured this paint (quart sized) could therefore also be mailed. But no.

So I may just use some house paint available locally here - there is some hardy floor paint I may choose. Most bilges have oil and diesel exposure concerns, whereas I shouldn't have that problem. I don't have an engine inside the hull(s), so no petroleum products should hit the bilges.

There will be interior touch-up paint as I drill holes for plumbing and wiring runs, which was the last thing I started doing (drilling the holes) before the cold of winter hit. Now, at -15 F., I'm avoiding the boat.

A pic or two of where I left it:

Also did a bit of preliminary application of primer on topsides:

Starting to paint! (Interior)

So I've started putting on primer. I'm using some old System Three epoxy primer that I had from 1994, so it takes a fair bit of mixing to get all the solids in suspension again. But otherwise it seems fine. I'm about to run out of it though so I bought some of their current product, which is gray in color so it will be different working with it.

No idea it would take so long working around all the stringers, bulkheads, and coves. But it is taking a lot of time. Trying to give 2 coats, as I'm not real confident in the thickness of my under coats of epoxy and I want to up my chances of waterproof-ness.

I'm definitely finding some of my areas of amateurish-ness in coving.. lots of little pinholes and areas of roughness.. but I have to keep forging ahead or this boat will never see the water again. I fix what is egregious and what is easy to fix.

Sanding more and more

Just to say I did something today on the boat, I sanded on coves (what joy - and not as well as I would like but someday need to get this swimming pig in the water) and installed the dagger board inspection plates. Starboard hull ready to paint inside after a cleanup, and ready to start sanding on this side.

Prepping for primer

Mucked out the starboard hull so I can scrub off any amine blush (byproduct of the epoxy) for a pre-paint sanding. Also need to fill some areas with thickened epoxy to smooth them out, such as the weave of fiberglass roving that remains a bit rough. Then sand that smooth. Then primer. Then sand that. Then paint. Rinse and repeat on the port hull.

Still at it.

New

Still at it. Been smearing fairing compound here and there.. phenolic microballoons, cab-o-sil, and epoxy mostly after running out of my stock of West's 410. Got the pads for the lifeline stanchions done, got foam toe-rails installed, winch pads done (just have 2 for now), and net attachment pvc bonded onto hulls.

Now I'm about ready for primer.. need to sand the old primer down first. And I'm pondering my steering. Thinking I would like a car/track on back beam with rigid pipe from that to each rudder. Haven't figured out how I would do it yet though. Easiest was a connecting bar across the top of that back beam, but with my aft hatches now that conflicts - wouldn't be able to open them. Also the tiller arms from the rudders would have to stop at the beam since I'll have a corner stanchion thing there the arms would conflict with. So..

Composting head

Starting to build my own composting head for the boat. Easy enough to buy one, but they are upwards of $1000, if I include shipping. I had some less than optimal 34 oz. triax fiberglass in stock so cut three layers of that and wrapped them around a bin to shape the front of the head. Then I'll use plywood sides, bottom, and top. I have some composite (thin luan and foam) I could use for the top or bottom to save a bit more weight. Here's progress so far:

Glassing the rudders

Turned out that those glue lines in the foam laminations for the rudders proved troublesome. When fairing the blades, it was just too difficult to not sand too much of the softer foam either side of glue lines. I would recommend going for full thickness foam so one wouldn't have to have glue lines - if doing something similar to this.

So what that means is I had to do some fairing after I got the fiberglass skin on. Following are some pics of that process.

Here are the supplies: Triaxial fiberglass (has a diagonal manufacturing defect, plus some unfortunate foldes that caused a bit more fairing afterward), some peel ply, some release film, and breather cloth.

Here it is (the glass) draped over the blade dry. I was just fitting it. I epoxied it up on a table and then worked it onto the blade wet after this pic:

Here it is vacuum bagged up:

And Ta-Dahh!:

That pic above shows how I cut back the foam on the trailing edge so the two sides of glass would bond together well. That area was then faired with structural bog. I also had some small wrinkles on the leading edge so had to correct that with some layers of lighter cloth.

Then a layer of bog to fair the blade:

And sanded down:

Then I wanted to square the top end to the kickup rudder cassette so had to use some bog and a piece of mylar to separate the cassette and blade:

Then a couple coats of epoxy and next step will be some sanding, then primer and paint.