Welcome to June.
Our first project of this month was to be better members of the space, so we got both boats hung up
We've done a lot in the last few weeks. Lets start with the masthead.
The masthead for Dan's boat is made from four peices of aluminum bolted together, with a pulley in the back. This is to replace the missing masthead that, somehow got eaten by time and perhaps a Grue.
Like many things on this boat, it was made mostly through eyeballs and luck. The curved plug that sits inside the mast, was done by tracing, lots of "getting it close" in the bridgeport, then sanding to fit. It... is just about perfect.
A prolific maker friend of mine, also asked to come help on the boat.
She came by to help do some of the taping of my boats corners. She also helped with dan's boat. I'd forgotten how.. weird the boats look without paint. We mostly work on the boats thursday evenings, and sometimes we throw in a weekend night.
That weekend, Dan and I came in to do a "big project" for the boats. In about three hours, we made me a sail.
For lack of a lofting.. loft.. We did our layout in the alley behind the shop.
After layout, we moved into the sewing room at PS:1.
A prolific maker friend of mine, also asked to come help on the boat.
She came by to help do some of the taping of my boats corners. She also helped with dan's boat. I'd forgotten how.. weird the boats look without paint. We mostly work on the boats thursday evenings, and sometimes we throw in a weekend night.
That weekend, Dan and I came in to do a "big project" for the boats. In about three hours, we made me a sail.
For lack of a lofting.. loft.. We did our layout in the alley behind the shop.
After layout, we moved into the sewing room at PS:1.
Following polytarps instructions, on.. our own materials, we built the sail. Here we're putting edge reinforcement into the sail.
Beware, the crazy man with scissors near your sail...
The sail ended up costing something like $30, all told. With enough materials to build a second sail, easily.
I'm sure the second sails worth of materials is going to get used, as we discovered later, some of this sails shape isn't quite right.
Progress gets real slow, when you get into the finishing stages. This was the night we started fairing my hull.
To do the fairing, we'd first sand down the most proud bits of fiberglass, then we'd mix up a microballoon heavy batch of epoxy, and use that as a fairing compound. When I say heavy, something like 50% balloon.
Dan insists on doing these jobs right, here he's sucking the excess fiberglass dust off before we lay on a layer of epoxy peanut butter.
Beware, the crazy man with scissors near your sail...
The sail ended up costing something like $30, all told. With enough materials to build a second sail, easily.
I'm sure the second sails worth of materials is going to get used, as we discovered later, some of this sails shape isn't quite right.
Progress gets real slow, when you get into the finishing stages. This was the night we started fairing my hull.
To do the fairing, we'd first sand down the most proud bits of fiberglass, then we'd mix up a microballoon heavy batch of epoxy, and use that as a fairing compound. When I say heavy, something like 50% balloon.
Dan insists on doing these jobs right, here he's sucking the excess fiberglass dust off before we lay on a layer of epoxy peanut butter.
A few days later, we flipped the hull, and did the same to the bottom.
Yes, this is Dans happy face.
After doing all the fairing, we then needed to sand it all down again. All told, we put something like 2-3 pounds of fairing compound on each boat. At least half of that came right off again in the next step before painting.
Sanding.
And then cleaning the dust up.
The reward reaped by doing the fairing compound, and sanding, is a boat that looks like this, after a coat of paint.
All of the sudden, all that underlayment, wood glue, fiberglass, microballoons and epoxy turns into a coherent boat.
Remember how we made that sail a half a page ago? (and like.. 4 weeks in real time..) Well, we had to do something to get that dopamine rush.
We carried my boat around the corner.
And viola! Sailboat! My bag is ballast to stop the boat from sitting on it's nose. :-)
Sadly, this is a 90% done, 90% to go type day. But it really did feel good, and got us some energy to dig into all the parts we had yet to do.
For instance, my mast needed a collar to sit in, so it wasn't working against 1/4" underlayment.
And my upper deck needed it glued on, then sanded.
Now, I need to point out, Dans hull is getting most of the same treatments mine is. When one hull is getting paint, the other is getting sanded, etc.
My upper deck, painted, and a whole bunch of gravity clamps holding down my sole reinforcements.
And a final shot, as we put that boat up in the rafters that night.
Paint makes the boat look.. so complete.
We also took another shot at cutting out the keel and rudder.
Dan is getting better. And closer to what we need for this.
But we're not quite there yet.
More updates soon. We're not far from going in the water.
Paint makes the boat look.. so complete.
We also took another shot at cutting out the keel and rudder.
Dan is getting better. And closer to what we need for this.
But we're not quite there yet.
More updates soon. We're not far from going in the water.
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