We’re not perfect. Bonding the two skins of the first rudder had some issues. Now and then, when you’re putting things together, there’s issues. Issues can be dealt with but it takes time and on this build we’re trying to run at “production” speed. We decided to put the rudder aside for now and make up more rudder skins.

Tim packed up two skins, bagged and shot them. While the second skin was being shot the inlet hose twisted and pulled the bag up on the first skin. Vacuum was lost and the part was basically air injected. You can see the result on the left. Air throughout the entire skin, we’ve never seen anything like it before.

Strike two.. So to insure that it doesn’t get used by accident, I had them chop it up and toss it.

Tom’s been having no end of amusement over the rudder deal ‘cause he’s been doing keel skins without issue. Steve, Tim & Tom have all worked together on and off for something like thirty years. You would not believe how hard they are on each other. Tom’s telling Tim he’s jinxed and not to touch his keel skin molds.

Then Tom shot a wood cabinet panel and the infusion didn’t complete. This is just an unheard of problem. These are some of the easiest to shoot parts we have. The problem was corrected by reshooting the tail end of the part and everything is fine, but to have something this easy fail? Tom is now wondering if the entire shop is jinxed or..

I let Tim touch his cabinet mold..

Personally, I think they are getting their comeuppance for giving Gavin too rough of a time while he was here. Gavin’s now at college, where he belongs. :)

Oh yes, and on top of all this. The box of 1700 glass we’ve been waiting for. The one that showed up right as vacation started. The one I crashed the RC plane into? The roll of glass is junk! Its missing threads all through it. We can use it for internal laminates and it’ll do fine.  But, what we use most of it for is surface layers, like the outside layer of the hull and the interior liner. It won’t work for this. So, we’re yelling at vendors and supposedly in a week or so its supposed to be replaced.

We’ll see..

On a happier note Steve’s back and he’s doing woodwork.

Wooden things being clamped and glued together.

Wood being pre-bent in the top left corner. Finish laminations in the lower right. Parts from the laser/water-jet cutting people have also arrived. The aluminum bits for the compression post in the lower left corner. I need to finish those up, but its tough ‘cause Im lazy. The solid glass keel tops in the center of the picture and switch brackets. Lets look a little closer at those..

Remember the “last mold”? We talked about it earlier. These are what comes out of that mold. This has been Tim’s project and they are a big improvement from the earlier version.

Here’s a picture from build #3. You can see where we use this bracket. Its for mounting the main power breaker for the Dart onto the battery mount. And it does a great job of covering the connections.

Along with everything going on, we’ve been working on what started out as a small change in the keel opening. We needed a smidgen more room fore and aft for the keel. We’re talking 1/16” each end. this change is now rippling through all the parts that come in contact with this change.

Its getting done and its going to be an improvement, but it takes time.

Cabinet templates. Tim/Tom are making up the wood/composite panels and Steve is starting to build up the trim to assemble ‘em.

Guy’s also working on shop infrastructure. I’ll leave that for another time.

Work’s going on. But we’re at a point that it feels like we’re going nowhere. And there’s not a lot to see, just small parts. The hope is to start on a deck pretty soon. That’ll be neat to watch.

Tom keeps telling me I have to remember to get some solid 1/2” core for that.

Monday, Ill have to get that on order..

And, Chris Winnard of Ullman sails called me yesterday. He’s the guy that won the Windermere & PITCH regattas up here driving Dart #2. Chris tells me that he has a potential customer that would like a Dart, but the kelp cutter is a deal breaker. Sigh.. So, I finally caved and told him, if the guy would commit, we’d develop a keel cutter for his boat and offer it as a Dart option.

I’ll have to put my “engineer cap” back on..