Commander 147

[Commander 147]

Well, last night around 6:30 the temperature dropped to 88 degrees so I went back out started to grind around the perimeter so when I lay my glass down over the new balsa core the top of the deck will end up at the same place it was berfore I started and everything will look fair and smooth. About half way through I looked up and the shelter was one big cloud of fiberglass dust. This morning when I went back out there everything was covered on a thick layer of fiberglass snow. It took me 2 hours to clean it all up so I could work again.

Once I got everything cleaned up I installed the tiller so I could sit on the cockpit seat and decide where I wanted to put my genoa winches later. I decided the most convienient place for them was just forward of the deck scupper drain. That area will not have any balsa it will get built up with layers of 1708 (I have lots of small pieces left over from other work) and epoxy.

Then I took some finishing cloth I had and wet it out over some holes in the bottom skin for the deck where hardware had been previously. I needed to plug the holes for the balsa install and that was an easy way to do it.

Yesterday when I dug out all the wet balsa (or as Ebb says tuna) I dug out under the perimeter of my cutout also. So now it was time to pack that area back in with thickened epoxy. It took 36 oz of epoxy with cabosil in it to fill the perimeter edges.

There is a very wide variance in the thickness of the top skin of the deck and also of how thick the gap is for the balsa core. In some areas the top skin was 5/16" thick and in other areas it was 1/8" thick. And in some areas the core gap is 3/8" and in other areas it is 3/16" thick. As Ebb says I will need to do some serious wrestling to make this all come out looking good later. The game is only in the first quarter for this project.

It looks like some of Florida's imfamous Love Bugs got into the epoxy in the second picture and could not get back out.

[ebb]

I know you're not giving compleat details like certain persons. But
it's important imco that the surface you are putting the thickened epoxy into
has been "primed" with UNthickened first.
First meaning: just befor you put the buttered pieces in
and maybe stuffing the under-excavations with thickened goop.

Just my opinion.
I think you want squeeze-out where ever it happens. 360!


Jerry, You do unbelievably BEAUTIFUL prep work. Really, never seen anything like it.
I don't know how the hell you do it.
Prep is 95% of the finished job! Maybe 90%.

One more prejudice. I think epoxy gel is made 10 times stronger with the addition of 1/4" chopped strand. Years ago I heard somebody call it 'mishmash.' If you don't want to deal with the hair, even milled fiber will double the strength of plain cabosil and epoxy. Micro balloons add no strength.

Sorry, there may be somebody looking in who's just about to do it himself.
It's not easy having three things going at once: liquid - gel - mishmash.
But that's rassling.

Hefty makes 2 1/2 gal zip-slide bags that will take gallon cans.
Keep the A and B cans cold in the fridge until you get to the jobsite with the cans in a cooler.
At 88degrees you'll gain at least 15mins of extra time!

[Commander 147]

Ebb

The first batch of epoxy I mixed was used to wet out the finishing cloth and then I used a 1/2" brush to wet out the area I was packing epoxy into just before I added the cabosil to the rest and started packing it in. And I did keep pushing the thickened epoxy in until the stuff came back out at me all the way around. I'm confident I got the area completely filled. I also considered mixing in some microfibers in the thickened epoxy but I did not have enough here to do the entire job and my thought was that the packing was not doing anything structural where I was putting it. It was just filling a gap so I proceeded without it.

I do appreciate your input. Someone needs to keep me straight...Lord knows I can wander on my own. :-)

[carl291]

Jerry, I bought some milled cotton fiber a couple years ago from fiberglass coatings in Fl , it was grey colored and lumpy and not very uniform at all really pretty crappy stuff to mix. I bought a couple more pounds of it this spring and this stuff was bleach white very uniform and dry feeling. Very nice stuff to mix in, kind of like silica. Don't know why the difference in quality but it is great to work with. I could never do the size area your doing all at one time, I work too slow and pot life "cooks" my goose. nice work!

[Commander 147]

Thanks Carl

I have bought a pretty good bit of stuff from Fiberglass Coatings, in St. Pete. I occasionally need to go down to that area and I always stop in to get whatever I'm running short of when I do. I get most of my fillers, green squeegees and glass rollers from them. They are pretty friendly and knowledgeable people.

[Commander 147]

Well we are finally getting a few days where the weather is not carzy hot and it makes working on Destiny a lot easier to do. So I'm starting to get the first area of the recore back together again.

The first picture shows my fastener boxes weighting the balsa core down while the tickened epoxy I set it in cured. First I wet out the bottom skin of the deck with unthickened epoxy and then the bottom of the balsa core itself. After that I tickened up some epoxy and troweled it on the bottom of the core with a 1/4" notched trowel. I flipped it over in place and pushed it down first by hand and then with a rubber roller to get it to seat properly. Then I set the full boxes of fasteners on top to hold it in place while it cured.

The second picture is how I made the pattern to cut the 1708 biax with. The sheet plastic was clear enough that I could see through it to draw the edges of the pieces of biax I needed to cut.

The third picture is how it looked shortly before I put the glass on top. I filled all the edges around the balsa core with thickened epoxy and faired it out so I would have a smooth transition for the glass that would go on top. The area in the center that is solid glass is where the winch riser will bolt through later. I put in 10 layers of 1708 biax in that area which brought it up close to the top of the balsa core and then faired it out with thickened epoxy to make it flush with the balsa core.

The forth picture is right after I finished putting 3 layers of 1708 biax on the top. Near the aft end of the work the deck was originally so thick that I will probably have to add a couple more layers in the middle to keep the faring compound thin when I fair it out later.

[ebb]

But Jerry you wrote the book!
Interesting that you chose balsa. Wood rather rthan plastic.
Imco endgrain balsa will conform to the minor deck camber easier than closed cell pvc foam will
But also, you could say, the balsa breathes which may help disapate air that gets entrapped
when laying it in place.
I took a little good balsa out of what I did and found that polyester in the original composit had penetrated the balsa very well - which you won't get with foam. With epoxy that isn't an issue.
Sweet water won't find its way into your job for at least a 100 maybe 200 years!

Carl's placing of too much weight outside on his Ensign recore is a good cautionary tale!
Commander's may be different in that the inside glass layer of the composit is not as thin as I found on A-338. The inner layer after removal of dead balsa and cleanup
would be too bendy to take any weight on it at all!

Not every boat has this problem.

[Commander 147]

Thanks Ebb

I think one thing that has helped on my project is that I filled the toe rail and then laid up 1708 biax and then a layer of finishing cloth on the underside of the area I'm recoring early on in my project. That stiffened it up significantly. Also the way I modified the bulkhead at the aft end of the chain locker made a huge difference in the stiffness of the bow area. So I'm pretty comfortable that all of the areas I'll be recoring will support the process pretty well.

As far as the balsa goes, I really wanted to go with the same material that was originally used. On the cabin top where I recored areas for reasons other than wet core (like hardware reinforcement and the new mast step I built) the balsa was in great shape and just as strong as it was when new. I think if you properly protect it from deck penetrations it will last indefinitely.

[ebb]

Jerry, That's indeed a gudun! Slot cutter on the trimrouter.
Don't want to hiccup undercutting that hole, you must have nerves of fiberglass.

Most if not all trimrouters are 1/4" collet.
And you had to have used a cutter with the bearing on top of the blade.

And you had to have first cleared the hole out with a topbearing plunge cutter inside a pattern.
(think that's how aye would have approached it! ) Holesaw?

Catalog time of year....
a current MLCSWoodworking.com, don't recall ordering from them....
BUT they haven't got anything like you must have used there. Nor does an old Eagle catalog.
So you must have a Whiteside or one of the big boys. Can't be Freud, Bosch or Grizzly.
Just found an old CMT(OrangeTools), but their topbearing slotters are all 1/2" shank.

So, tell us what the bit is........pulease!
What's your trim router? ( I have a Bosch with a catchy name(?) It has an alternate opensided base that has come in handy for close work (get to SEE the bit going round!). But with a slotting cutter?)

[Commander 147]

Ebb

I have had these slot cutters for so many years I don't even remember where I originally bought them. So here is a link to Freud's assortment of slot cutters some with 1/4" shanks and some with 1/2" shanks.

http://www.freudtools.com/p-191-slot...tter-sets.aspx

Most router bit manufacturers make similar bits.

The bearing for the one I used is just below the nut in the picture of it. The bearing rode on the edge of the lower layer of glass.

As far as the trim router it's an old Porter Cable (I know they are not your favorite brand) that I have had for several years. Amazing how often I use that thing.

Actually I did the main hole with a hole saw and the smaller hole (that allows the vent portion of the deck fill to go in) with a drill bit. I just happened to have a hole saw the exact size I needed. Years of collecting tools has given me several options for most jobs.

[ebb]

Jerry, Loved the old PorterCables, still have and use a couple D-handle routers.
My crabbing came about because I really liked that mini Portercable beltsander that came on the scene, what now, two/three years ago?
It looked like a PorterCable. And initially worked like a well designed cord hand tool should.
It all must have changed when BlackandDecker bought out PG, don't know.

All my working life BlackandDecker were the worst by experience and worst by rep.
Somehow that cheapside B&D got into the inside of that real nice beltsander. Other guys on tool forums complained about it.
It was a $100 tool - I choose to let it expire when it broke down, not to fix it. Beltsanders are a kind of tool that don't breakdown.
Maybe they eat belts, don't track, get hot - but they don't die! Screw BlackandDecker (EVERY B&D is made in China), not in my shop!
Don't know how long the routers have lasted without incident, brushes maybe replaced, but I don't remember that - 30 years?. They're round tops.

Thanks for the expo on the bit.
litlgull has criminally thin inner glass layer to her deck composite.
So I'm saying that Ariel's could use your method as well.
Like you say, if you happily find solid balsa in a hole, I figure (not having done it) that you wouldn't need to clean out the wood all the way to the glass (if you couldn't) because when you fill the donut with epoxy and choppedstrand the bit of balsa bottom of the ring will soak it up if not already filled with ancient polyester. And would work pretty good, too.

The top bearing 1/4" slot cutter just doesn't exist. Live and learn. I've got some holes going in the deck. Great tip!
What you have in that photo does show a nice beefy cutter. I've got a bottom bearing slotter with a set of interchangeble bearings, hope there's a 9/16" capable in there - sounds good.

[Ariel 109]

Looking good Jerry. You'll be sailing that baby in the not too distance future I bet.

Ben

[Commander 147]

Thanks Ben

While I still have a lot to do for the first time since I started I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I can't wait.

[Commander 147]

I've been trying to figure out the best way to modify Destiny's mast to allow for the halyards to be internal and at the same time replace the large original sheave at the top.

What I came up with and what I am in the process of buying parts for now is not a very expensive change but I believe it will be a significant improvement.

I'm having 2 new cheek plates made out of 16ga. 304 S.S. per the drawing below which will allow me to pin two new Harken 6062 sheaves between them one for the main halyard and one for the jib halyard. The two 1/4" holes in the new cheek plates below the new sheaves are for two 1/4" bolts that will have spacers between the cheek plates to help maintain the spacing between them.

This is the link for the new sheaves.

http://www.harkenstore.com/uniface.u...?409Z56LC4EMX2

Also I made progress on the deck recore. I glassed over the balsa core for the second section of the recore this weekend. But before I did that I made replacement chainplate plugs out of UHMW plastic so I did not have to try and lay the glass around the chainplates. I inserted these temporary plugs in the chainplate slots and cut them flush with the top of the deck prior to laying the glass. This kept the epoxy from filling the slots for the chainplates and still allowed me to easily lay the glass in place. The second picture below shows one of the plugs in place before the glass was layed down.

I can pull them now and when I finish fairing this section I will use my Fein Multimaster with a flat blade to cut up through the glass. Then I will use a router with a v-groove bit to widen the slot and create a caulking recess around the chainplate.

The last picture is after I layed the glass. I was really disappointed when I went out to look at the job this morning. You might be able to see my issue halfway between the forward lower chainplate area and the the upper chainplate area. Somehow I ended up with a bubble about 2-1/2" in diameter in the glass. I don't know if I had a low spot there that I did not get faired properly or what caused it but I did not see a problem while I was laying up the glass and it was not until I went out to look at it today that that I saw it. Now I will need to grind that area back out and redo it.

[mbd]

Hey Jerry, bummer on the bubble! But, I wonder if this is an appropriate timefor the "drill and fill" method? You could drill 2 holes and inject resin in 1 until it comes out the other. You know you have good material and no moisture in those ares.

Also, I'm curious if you're planning on doing something like this before you paint your decks and replace the hardware?

http://www.pearsonariel.org/discussi...128-Mount-Pads