Build log for Darts #4 & #5

The end

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 11:32:02 -0700

Dart #5 on its trailer. Ready to be drug over to Betts’ to get its barrier coat painted on its bottom. As far as I can tell, this is the last of the Left Coast Darts.

Why?

I find that although we can develop a product, we have no ability whatsoever to market it. In other words, we just can’t heard sheep. Sadly, neither does anyone we know. So, I took the first offer that came and sold off the Dart tooling. Anacortes Rigging bought them for a song and hauled it all off. I wished them well and washed my hands of the deal.

Here’s a quick rundown of the last build process. Dart #5.

Last time we screwed up the deck and had to chop it up. This caused some slow down. Actually we just stopped and went on to other things like developing quadcopters. Long story.

Here we have #5’s hull in the mold and ready to go.

Keel skins stashed in the corner, ready to go..

Trailer frame, ready..

FIrst order of business build a new deck.

Tim/Tom can do this in their sleep now. I’m barely involved at all anymore.

Tom looking for leaks in the vacuum bag.

Tim mixing resin.

Shooting the deck.

Deck’s all complete. Ready to pull and install.

Footrest mold being waxed.

Deck, out of the mold. Next is to flip it, trim everything and do final cleanup of the part.

Flipping..

Trimming..

Hardware going on..

Meanwhile, footrests getting molded.

Hull coming out of the mold.

Hull came right out. Nicely seasoned molds now.

Deck being fitted.

Final fitting of the bulkhead tops.

Glassing and blending the hull to deck seam.

Keel being assembled.

Keel back from being epoxy coated.

Assembled trailer with keel set in.

Dart #5 ready to mate with its keel on the trailer.

So, as we’re wrapping up Dart #5, I drove over and dropped off some of the last bits of tooling and took a farewell picture of what we spent so much of our lives developing.

Go back then switch gears

Fri, 23 May 2014 16:13:41 -0700

We were building the deck, everything was going along just swimmingly, then disaster hits.

Deck being shot. This is where our world starts to unravel. The mixture of the resin to initiator got messed up and a bunch of un-initiated resin got into the part.

We crossed our fingers that things would be ok. But, when the bag came off, it was obvious we were in trouble.

Instead of monkeying around trying to patch up an unknown deck, we opted to just cut it up and start over fresh.

And that’s what we did.

Time to take a little break and reassess what we’re doing.

We licked our wounds, and played around with the Quadcopters for a bit to take our minds off things.

And then, everything changed! Suddenly we found ourselves in the commercial crabbing boat business?!

Here’s the story.

Crazy time

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 13:33:35 -0700

I got sick over thanksgiving. Long story short, looking to see if I had lung cancer they found I had a super enlarged thyroid gland. I’m talking knocking my throat out of alignment and growing under my rib cage. On top of this, I’ve had a bad hip all my life and for the last three years its gotten to the point that I’m pretty much one lagged. Never being one to go near a doctor or anything like this.. All my worst nightmares rolled into one.

The hip was so bad they moved me to the front of the line because they thought it might actually fail if they didn’t get on it quick.

I first went under the knife for the tumors. When I woke up they said I was clear, everything was benign. (Whewh!) I was so happy the rest of the hospital stay was like being on vacation! Next was total hip replacement. This one is still kicking my butt a bit. Today’s the first time back at work in months. I’d drop in now and then for maybe 5 minutes at a time but its been a long road. Specially when I knocked my new hip joint out of the socket and had another round of 911/ambulance & hospital excitement.

All that being said. Tim/Tom have been building Dart #5 While I lay about at home in bed. (Thank the maker for a great crew!)

Trailer bunks being built up.

Interior pretty much complete..

Well, not really complete. Here’s Tim putting in the glass inside here and there. LIke I always say the glass around the keel trunk is the thickest and so of the nastiest to get installed correctly.

All the glass work is complete and its all been painted.

Battery plate installed. Where’s the battery guys? See? I’m not there to point all these things out.

I should have finished this up before going to the hospital.

Accessory plate installed. At least I completed this one before taking extended sick leave.

Deck mold all shined up..

Gelcoat going on.

Skin-coat. As I type the core is being finished up and the in-deck wiring is getting ready to be installed. We ran out of, or misplaced, our roll of 16 awg black wire so this is getting held up a little. I have to pick up a roll this evening.

Deck #5 ready to be bagged and shot.

This blog is being written over a couple weeks. I”m still not 100% so I don’t get a lot of time for doing this.

Then there is the 3D printing and other oddball stuff..

Painter’s Pyramids. Toss ‘em on your table and now you can lay down flat stock for finishing.

Train whistles. (We didn’t come up with this one, but it is our best seller so far.)

Tried a Dart hull, but I scaled it too small. Next time it’ll be bigger. This is the actual 3D file we used to have the real Dart plug milled.

Straw filters. I’m sick of sucking up lemon seeds when drinking Ice tea. So one night I modeled these and printed up a handful of them sized to fit restaurant/bar straws. Handy little things.

Then, of course, there is the Quadcopter development. This is mine..

Facebook link of this machine Flying.

Tom’s..

Tim, testing his in the shop. This is before getting the s-ware sorted out so it was -really- unstable. I was laid up in bed while this was all going on.

Tim/Tom assembled their machines then dropped them at my house for me to do the s-ware and get the controls dialed in.

Right before going in for surgery I’d set mine up for flying it with goggles. (Wireless video link) FPV.

Oldest daughter modeling the goggles. I -thought- this would make flyin’ much easier.

Oh my lord! What a ride! Imagine being plunked into the cockpit of a fighter jet with a cardboard tube to look through.

Allie got some video of the first real test. 43 seconds of complete panic and loss of control.

Facebook link to the 43 sec flight & crash.

Its been a steep learning curve for all of us..

Tim’s machine. Lost control and it just left the flying arena. Had to go looking for it in his truck.

Tom’s. Same deal but it didn’t go quite as far.

This is an issue with their overabundance of performance. One slip and they’re just gone.

What I was able to salvage from my last little “testing accident”. Again it was a case of too much power and not enough time to think.

I had no idea how far up I’d gotten ‘till I saw our building looking like a toy below. Then I dropped too far too fast to save the poor thing.

We’re working on a GPS hold function to counter this. If it decides to do a hyperspace jump, we can flick on the GPS and stop it in its tracks. But, I can only work out stuff so fast. I think its close to being testable, but I’m still printing a new frame for my machine to test with.

New upper body..

Some fresh arms and legs.

What else? Tom made up a really cool fiberglass “12”. Its colored glass fabrics with clear gelcoat, all infused.

Would people want something like this? We’ll see.

Meanwhile..

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 17:04:01 -0800

What the liner looks like coming out of the mold. Or actually coming off the mold ‘cause its made on a male mold. You don’t really realize how big some of this stuff is until you see it in unfamiliar orientations.

Checking for voids and things. Tim/Tom tap around all the edges to see if there is any bridging that we missed. If there is, you can hear either a hollow or a crunchy sound as the gelcoat cracks and whatever is behind crunches. Crunchy is bad, very bad!

So, what happens is Tim or Tom will run an obvious stick over the edges for me to see. Knowing I’m sweating any crunchy sounds. Meanwhile, hidden, their other hand is crunching the ragged gelcoat edge. Just to see how freaked out I”ll get. You gotta’ watch these guys every minute!

So last week we shot the hull. This week its all about stuffing it all full of wonderful boat parts. Here it is with the bag removed and the peelply and plumbing just starting to be pulled off.

And here we are another fine Dart hull ready to fill with fun and frivolity.

Bulkhead #1 getting tabbed in. By this time, the inserts for the bow sprit are already glassed in. There’s the solid block that allows us to drill through the cutwater for the tackline. And another solid block that the fwd sprit bold will pass through.

Also there is a solid glass plate doubler that helps spread the forestay loads. That’s glassed in there as well.

Bulkhead #3 goes in. This is the main bulkhead that everything else will key off of.

Endless smoothing and sanding. Well, it seems endless..

This shot was taken pretty near the end.

Bulkhead #2 getting prepped to go in. When we attach a piece of green angle with plexus, we tack screw it to hold everything in place ‘till the glue kicks. Then we pull the screws out. Notice the screw holes are being puttied up? Details! Its all in the details!

Liner’s all prepped and ready to go in. The perimeter is taped so as to not get any glue dripped on it when its pressed into the hull.

Keel trunk. Mostly prepped but not trimmed yet. That will happen later when the liner is getting installed.

Bulkheads 1 & 3 are in. Green angle is on, nose and under bunk gelcoat is on, walls are smoothed. Ready for the liner to go in. That’ll be next week.

And as for the quadcopter we printed last week? It went through a big re-design and ended up looking like this. No camera yet, but it has all the other bells and whistles.

Gyros, accelerometers, compass, barometer, gps and a processor to tie everything together. You would not believe the effort it took to figure out all the bits and come up with a set that worked together. And get everything “talking” to each other.

Does it fly? Heck yeah it flies! I think it could lift and carry a full grown cat!

Its actually pretty scary. I chopped my hand up when I experienced a little software glitch while working on it. I’m way more careful with the machine now.

Sadly some of us need to practice our RC flying more.

But at least printing out replacement parts is easy!

That’s it for this week.

Dart #5

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:40:45 -0800

The hull mold is finally gel and skin-coated. In the composite boat building world I guess you could say the keel for Dart #5 is laid. In fact, we all celebrated and went out to lunch.

First layer of glass is in, core beginning.. The kids came by to have a look.

Core complete this morning. As of today, core is now over $5 sq.ft.

Ouch!

Chain plate doublers.

Second layer of glass is going down. The hope is to have this complete by tomorrow and start bagging the hull.

Other things going on at Left Coast..

We picked up a 3D printer.

Its really handy for printing tooling fixtures, alignment jigs...

The above fixture is used for for making up these sail track slugs. How to align the holes to be drilled in the middle of the round bar? Jam it into the fixture, clamp it down and drill through the holes.

Pretty slick!

Printing the alignment block.

But what’s 3D printing really good for?

Printing R/C Quad-copters!

These 3D printers are a kick!

Maybe we’ll print out a Toy LC Dart?

Meanwhile back in Dartland Tim/Tom are finishing up dry-stacking the hull.

Peelply and breather going on. Getting ready to bag and shoot.

Rolling out the bag material. This stuff is huge! We actually cut it down the center so we have one for the hull and save the other for using on the deck later.

The nightmare that is bagging begins.

Almost complete..

Notice its bright outside?

Starting to pull vacuum and chase down the last few leaks.

Dark outside, this is early the next morning.

Tier one is open, resin starts flowing..

LIttle later the resin is getting to the second tier of feed lines. Now its time to clamp off the first feed line and open the next ones.

Different angle as it passes the second tier of feed lines.

Coming up on the third tier..

Third tier is open, first and second are closed off.

All done. Total time : 1hr. 15min.

Its after lunch now and Tom’s checking the temp. Its up to 80 Deg. This shows the reaction is all working.

This is good! By next week we’ll have Dart #5’s hull ready to work with.

And that’s exactly whats going on. Bunk liner #5 comes out of the back of the shop. Time to finally de-mold, trim it up and get it ready to install.