Small part wrap up?
Small part wrap up?
The keel trunk mold has been updated. That took a lot of work. Tom rebuilt the base and strengthened it. Then reshaped the upright. He reset everything so it came out more true. And lastly re-smoothed everything, gel coated and polished it. Turned out pretty slick in the end.
Here’s the keel trunk mold getting white gel coat sprayed on it for its first part.
Skin coated. They decided they wanted to make sure it had a resin rich skin for holding back water, so it got skin coated 1oz mat, a layer of 1700 and a second 1oz mat.
I was out sick all last week so this was going on while I was at home. This one part is the focal point for many of the forces on the boat, so I don’t mind overdoing it a little. As long as the strength matches up with the glass around it when its mounted.
Dry-stacked and plumbed, ready to be bagged..
Shot and ready to pull off the mold.
I can hear Tom grinding on it now.
While this is going on the interior wood panels are still being made up. I think they are all finished up now though. And it looks like Steve’s finished up the last of the molded wooden trim pieces as well.
Rudders seem to go on forever. Tom tells me we have all the skins completed and we’re starting to glue the halves together. Later this week and next week were talking about pushing though the rudders and getting them out of our hair. We have two we need to ship out to customers and the poor guys have been waiting a while now.
Grinding rudder skins.
Flat stock. Our version of plywood is 1/2” core sandwiched between two layers of 1700. The nice white table we shoot it on was toast. We bought a new table top and Tom spent the last couple days rebuilding the table. One of the problems was it was no longer flat. Now its flat with nice new non-leaking table top.
And the piece is shot. Tomorrow or the next day we can de-bag it. Then there will be a sheet of 1/4” core & glass plate for the wire way cutouts.. One small one for in front of the keel..
Last week the Vectorply rep came by to see what the deal was with our roll of 1700 glass fabric. The one that was missing strands. Vectorply are the people that make the stuff. He was all appalled and we were promised a replacement roll from a different batch.
Tom talked to the rep today and found nothing’s happened with this.. The rep’s at the plant in Alabama or wherever they make the stuff. When he showed the plant manager what the glass looked like, the plant manager told him “Too bad. Its all going to look like that.” So they are all back there fighting about the roll of glass. We’re stuck. All we can think is, “Can we get a break anywhere?”
This is the kind of stuff that drives you completely batty.
But anyway, these our our problems. What’s next?
We’re hoping to finish up the rudders and get the two shipped. During this time we can makeup the second keel trunk. Then, its on to interior liners with bunk lids. After that? I believe all we have left is hulls & decks.
We’ll see..
Wednesday, January 23, 2013