Today I have a huge sense of accomplishment, I have finished taping in the last two bulkheads. All the bulkheads have now been taped into the boat. These were D and E which are the two just in front of the keel and fore and aft of the mast. These need to be extra tough as there is a lot of pressure in this area when under sail. The mast is keel stepped (through the deck onto the bottom of the boat) so there are pressures in all sorts of directions in this area. To help with this I have added one extra layer of glass tape between the bulkheads to tie in the two bulkheads and give a bit more strength and stiffness. It was amazing to see the extra layer of glass soak up the excess resin in this area. I put it on and within 2-3 minutes it was almost wet through. So what does this mean??? Potentially I had a resin rich layup. I had squeegeed the layup after a few minutes to remove the excess but clearly it was not enough. Looking at the rest of the layups they looked OK so I am not too worried, nothing has broken and it will only add a few extra grams to the boat. How do you solve that, you spend a bunch of money on peel ply and cover every layup in peel ply. This is a dacron fabric which will soak up the excess and when you pull it off it leaves a keyed surface that does not need sanding to prepare for secondary bonding. A time saver but extra cost so it will be sanding for me.
The red fabric is an old gazebo top to keep the heat in as it is getting a bit chilly here in the UK and I need to boost the temp a bit to ensure proper cure of the epoxy.
Thanks for visiting
Cheers Jay
No comments:
Post a Comment