Building the Hull
July '98
Building The Mast Stump
Fitting out the mast stump was a lot of trouble. What Bloodaxe
presented me with was a large carbon tube, with a couple of s/s
rings bonded into the top for the lowers and a section of s/s
track bonded on the front with carbon straps top and bottom,
and filleted over the rest. They also gave me 4 pieces of solid
carbon as bearing surfaces. My mission was to shape these to
their precise shape and locate the inside the stump - the lower
two some way down the spar. What I eventually did was to shape
them so that they wound up with about a millimetre or two of
clearance (somewhat less than a precise interference fit). I
then covered the spar in parcel tape, located the bearing surfaces
in place with plenty of candle wax to allow for my clearance,
and finally put plenty more candle wax around the outside. I
then slid things into place and located some holes for self tapping
screws in each bearing from the outside of the stump. On with
plenty of stiff epoxy (microfibres for strength, silica for viscosity),
on both the bearings and in appropriate places inside the stump,
and fitted the bearings - still waxed to the mast - in place.
Now the self tapping screws went in, hopefully breaking the seal
on the wax and giving the bearings full clearance and glued firmly
to the inside of the stump. Once cured plenty of heat melted
out the wax and I was (just) able to remove the parcel taped
mast. Finally an improvised sanding tool (steel rod with a slot
in the end and 200 grit sandpaper) was used to make sure that
the mast slid freely up and down the stump. Marks out of ten
for "fiddlyness" - about 12!
I made the prodder from some carbon tube that I had left over
from other jobs. Its really too light, and it bends under heavy
load, so may have to be reinforced at some time.
4/7/98
Getting there slowly. Beware everyone, involved in similar
project, these last stages seem to take enormous amounts of time!
The boat is back from the spray shop, but its a bit of a disappointment.
The finish isn't quite as good as I would expect a professional
shop to achieve, although its was by no means top price, so I
guess you get what you pay for. The big problem is my fault -
I favour two colour paint jobs with two shades of blue fading
into reach other with overspray. The only trouble is that the
two shades I picked out are so close together that the effect
is, to say the least, rather subtle... Of course they looked
farther apart on the colour chart. Maybe next time.
Bloodaxe have the mast stump and other associated work largely
complete. I've now got most of the fittings on the shell. The
last couple of jobs have been to build the boom, which is cut
down from an old Cherub wing mast. Its reasonably light, [1999
note - too light - I broke it!] and, more important has cost
me very little money and cured the "how long is that thing
going to be cluttering up the place?" domestic discussion!
Next spar construction job is the prodder, and I'm currently
undecided as to whether that should be carbon or aluminium.
The current job is to arrange breathers for the buoyancy tanks.
Modern epoxy/foam sandwich boats are (or should be!) totally
airtight. This can lead to appreciable build-up of air pressure
from a cold morning to a baking hot afternoon, and the Moths
(which are very lightly built of course) have taken to putting
air breathers in the tanks to stop this happening, and I've done
the same thing. The trick, of course, is to route them so that
they don't let water in. I've chosen to locate the breather tubes
primarily within the tanks rather than outside so that they can't
get damaged, and all I've done is glued fine (4mm exterior diameter)
flexible plastic tube in an appropriate route. All the other
tanks vent via an inverted U shape tube into the left front tank,
and that tank vents to the outside world via a run that starts
just about on the floor at the centreline, and then runs up to
the underside of the foredeck, and from there along the top of
the foredeck and out through the front bulkhead near the gunwale.
I hope I've got this right - the idea being that there is no
situation in which the entire length of the tube is likely to
be under water, and in any case the small diameter of the tube
and the air pressure within the tank should prevent significant
ingress.
21/6/98
The mast stump is well on the way at Bloodaxe. There are also
spreaders and so on for the rig to do - lots of odd bits that
I really ought to do myself, but I haven't had a lot to do with
carbon rigs in the Cherubs so I'm steering clear of it a bit.
The sail should be more or less complete by now at Caws.
The boat isn't back from the spray shop yet - they had an outbreak
of flu which has not done their scheduling *any* good at all.
I've got insurance arranged now, so I can tow the boat back from
the paint shop without my fingers crossed... In theory we should
be just a few weeks away, but the last few "little"
jobs have a habit of taking far longer than you could possibly
believe...
3/6/98
Rig
It was time to make some final decisions about the Rig
today. Caws Sails, the sailmakers, have
one of those "every job has a small hold on" slots
in the schedule, so I needed to make my mind up fast to hit it.
29/5/98
The Mast has now been delivered to Bloodaxe, who are also
doing some extra stuff on the wings and painting them, while
the hull is at the local spray shop. The only bits with me right
now are the rudder stock (1.1kg, but very strong, possibly overbuilt[1999
note - it wasn't - I broke it!]) and the mast step, which has
a positive bush of Ronstan blocks sprouting on it. The light
is beginning to appear at the end of the tunnel I think. Two
small but tricky details to sort are Insurance - companies tend
to look in askance at a non-class dinghy - and a cover for the
boat, which could require a little more though than the usual
restricted class measurement form!
I've decided on a name for the boat, it will be "Angua
von Uberwald". She's a character in a series of books
by a gentleman named Terry Pratchett. Most of my boats seem to
get named after vaguely SF or Fantasy female characters of somewhat
positive temperament (Halo Jones, Angelina deGriz) and this one
can be variously:-
· A stunningly attractive blonde
· An elegant bitch
· A she-wolf
· And trying hard to resist the temptation to rip your
throat out...
In short she's a were-wolf. Somehow it seemed appropriate...
All I need now is the foredeck art, she's supposed (in Wolf form
which is what I'd want - I'm no fan of the hackneyed fantasy
"All Boobs and Leather Accessories" style of artwork)
to look something like a Wolf/Afghan Hound cross, which I actually
find difficult to imagine, but then TP is a cat person... The
foredeck will be International709 Lauderdale Blue ( a vaguely
slightly greener than Royal blue sort of colour IMO), so I was
thinking white lettering and white line art would look neat.
19/5/98
The boat should go off to the Spray Shop tomorrow. Not really
ready - had another panic weekend at work, but at least the overtime
should pay for the extra work the painter will have to do...
Bloodaxe have been doing some final work on the wings for me,
but the mast *still* isn't with them, though it has *really really*
been promised for this week. Reminds me of an old story - "the
only boatbuilder who ever finished anything on time was Noah,
and he was an amateur!" (Sorry Andy). Another delay is insurance
- the insurance company want some kind of survey... Good grief!
3/5/98
Sanding Bloody Sanding (How Long, How long must we...). OK,
that's enough of the rock music references. Actually Springsteen
has featured high in the play list for this boat for some reason.
Anyway, I digress. Lots of filling and so on. I brushed on a
thinnish layer of filler on the bottom of the hull, and it still
hasn't quite gone off two days later, so sanding it off is expensive
in glasspaper. I've got the boat booked into a sprayshop for
the 18th of May, so that's a pretty major target and project
milestone. After that I have to fit the hull out and then its
time to stuff the rig on.. As of Friday the mast hadn't yet got
to Bloodaxe, but is promised for this week, and of course until
we've had a good look at the mast there's not much that can be
done towards the sail. There's some more thoughts on this on
the Rig Design page.
11/4/98
Still progressing slowly with all the little jobs. The first
coat of paint is on the outside and (as of this morning) the
decks too. The first coat of paint is really good for showing
up all the deficiencies in the filling and fairing work, so no
doubt there will be more of that. The foot rails in particular
have been loads of hassle for that, partly because I didn't make
too great a job of laminating the heavy bi-directional glass
that covers the foam cores that they're based on. Should have
some shots of the gantry and the interior with the toe rails
in soon, assuming the photos I took yesterday come out.
19/3/98
All these little jobs seem to take more time than you can
possibly believe... I knew that I suppose, but you never quite
remember. The gantry is complete now - I had to do some re-thinking
round the transom because I failed to observe rule one of gantry
design - make sure its attached to an extremely solid bit of
the boat. Rather perversely I re-engineered the boat rather than
the gantry, and there is now a three by one inch carbon beam
across the transom top from topside to topside... The rudder
stock is very nearly finished, and seems to be bearably light.
I've started gluing in the foot rails, and after those I think
that the only structural job left will be putting in the mast
step, which I may well leave until after the majority of the
painting as it will have fittings on. Apart from that I need
to put a few more holes through the flares for ropes, toe strap
anchorages and such like, and then start fairing and painting.
Andy had already done a lot of that, so its going to be mainly
tidying up after the stuff I've put on - and desperately trying
to tidy up my work so its not too glaringly obvious which bits
I did and which bits are Bloodaxe's.
21/2/98
Lots of work over the last few weeks, but its all little bits
and bobs that don't show up well in pictures. I've also lost
a few shots with some kind of developing or camera fault which
is annoying. The wing mountings are complete, I've more or less
finished filling and tidying up round them, and am now well into
building the rudder gantry and the rudder stock. There's another
delay coming up though, because its the UK dinghy show soon,
and I'll be putting together some material for the Cherub Class
stand. The promised "outside" pics are now up on the
Picture Gallery page. I've just ordered
the mast and all the gear - this latter is quite a substantial
hit in spite of the fitout being fairly modest. Maybe the real
reason why Lasers aren't allowed proper blocks and have all those
loops and eyes is to save 50 quid off the suppliers costs:-).
I've also updated the graphic further down this page. The rig
is more accurate I think, and the drawings are bigger.
5/2/98
A Minor milestone reached tonight I think - I've just glued
in the bearing surfaces in the wing beams. There's still a lot
of odds and bits to do round the beams, ensuring all the surfaces
are covered, filling in round the pivot points, a little bit
of local reinforcement and some trimming to make sure they pivot
freely, but basically that part of the job is rapidly approaching
completion.
Last Saturday, with the first of the wing brackets in position,
I took advantage of a dry day to take the boat outside and get
some photographs from different angles. These will appear at
the end of the next batch of film, probably another week or so.
I've also started on the rudder and tiller, which will be a daggerboard
affair utilising my Cherub rudder blade. The core is all done
now, its a matter of laminating up the fibres and the final assembly.
The next job after the wings will probably be to construct the
rudder gantry. The other big job, which I must confess I'm putting
off, is the edges of the wings. The inner edge just needs a glass
tape capping, but the outer edge needs a fairly solid beam. In
addition this beam will be what I end up sitting on, so I really
ought to make it nice and wide for comfort. The last jobs will
be fitting out, rigging - I'm going to make the boom from an
old Needlespar wing mast I have lying around, whilst Bloodaxe
are currently looking at options for the mast, and painting.
I'd really like to get the paint done professionally - its not
a great talent of mine, but of course its shaping up to be exactly
the wrong time of year for that. Fitting out doesn't look to
be too onerous a job - one of the lesser advantages of a single
sail rig I suppose -with the exception of the toe straps, which
are going to be a nuisance to get a decent anchorage for.
18/1/98
Its been pretty slow progress the last ten days. Unfortunately
the need to work in order to pay for the boat has got in the
way! I lost all last weekend and a lot of evenings - I'm having
to build a new external email gateway for the organisation in
a bit of a hurry! The evenings are a particular nuisance because
I have to make a pretty early start if (as the domestic authority
insists) I am to turn the electric heater off overnight. The
wing beams continue, but they do now all have their main structural
carbon on (the last two are curing in the garage as I write.
The brackets and hinge points for the wings will be next, which
is one of the more obvious potential failure points. These are my notes for how
I currently plan to build these. Right now I'm off to mix up
a good size batch of filler and coat all the wing surfaces ready
for final smoothing...
5/1/98
The heater in the garage broke down today. It was a little
electric fan heater I bought when I was building my last boat. With all the epoxy and glass
dust that must have been through it I guess I can't complain
too much. Fortunately I was working on a small piece that could
be wrapped in plastic and brought in the house to cure, otherwise
it might have been pretty awkward. My advice is *now* that you
should always have an alternative source of heat in case of failure
if you're working in the winter...
This morning sailing at my Club got called off - forecasts of
80mph gusts... It was certainly pretty unpleasant when I got
there, but I was ready to take the boat out. However it seems
I'm the only one in the Club who has an old mainsail with points
for a couple of slab reefs put in!
2/1/1998
The trouble with all these little jobs is that you spend an
hour or so doing some work, then have to stop for the day while
it all cures. I'm currently making up the wing beams, with unidirectional
carbon on the top of each beam to take the main tension loads.
Three tops completed so far, the next should be tomorrow. The
tops of the wings are having about 6 layers of unidirectional
carbon - it actually varies between 4 and 6 across the beam due
to the width of the unidirectional carbon tape. There'll probably
be only four layers on the bottom since the loads should be less.
Spent some of the spare time today drawing up the boat a bit
more. This drawing should be clickable for enlargements.
And if your browser doesn't support that type of image map or
I've got it wrong, here are direct links!
27/12/97
This has been the first day I've really seen some progress,
what with Christmas and the requirements of the rest of the household
to box in pipes in the kitchen and build gates to keep dogs out
of certain rooms.... I made up the basics of the wing beams yesterday
- a block of 30mm foam with a layer of 200g carbon then a layer
of 200g glass on each side, and then cut out the actual beams
from that and shaped them up properly. The laminate will provide
the sides of the beam, which are not that heavily loaded - the
real load will come top and bottom where there will be several
layers of carbon. I got some peel ply with the "bits"
kit from Bloodaxe, which I've used for the first time, and I
must say it eases the job considerably.
Today I glued the beams on the wing panels which Bloodaxe vacuum
bagged for me, and have made up some right angle section carbon
beam which will provide the brackets for the wing pivots. This
is curing as I speak much compressed with clamps and B&D
Workmate in order to get as good a resin ratio as possible. You
don't need a great many tools to build foam boats, but an almost
inexhaustible supply of G cramps is just as useful as it is for
a wood boat. Apart from that the main tools I seem to use are
surforms, various power sanders, a Stanley knife and a jig saw.
Oh, and most important of all, an electric fan heater to keep
the temperature up.
This Page seems to be getting a bit long, so I've split it in
two, with the dividing point at where I picked the shell up from
Bloodaxe. The earlier diary entries are
at this page.
Building the Hull
Building the Hull - Earlier Entries
Hull Design
PlusPlus Mk 2
Rig Design
FAQ
Picture Gallery
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