Volvo hood
Volvo hood
Mae West said it,
Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
Ebb
sorry to be late joining the choir here. Nice toe rail, and I really like the shape of your hard dodger. do you have a sketch of the complete design with the bows & canvas? just curious...
cheers,
Bill
Thanks Bill,
Naw, I started with a think piece. An arc that is slightly flattened in the front. When I had the arc idea more or less set I made two out of stacked and grabber screwed plywood pieces. I knew I had to have the same exact arch because if they are different you put a twist in the finished surface. And a somewhat DEarched front because I knew I had to work in a flat hatch. The plywood arcs were tacked together and carved to fit the separate frp lamination going over the companionway. And carved to come more or less to a point at the end of the cabin. Struts were then permanently put in to join the two and 1/4" masonite cut to fit. I use Office Depot (or is it Staples?) white posterboard. Use a lot of it to make full size patterns.
After the layup I had to disassemble (destroy) the mold form. To keep the epoxy from sticking to the wrong stuff I use mylar film, twoside carpet tape, painter's film and saran-wrap (both polyethylene.)
I kept the windscreen as low as I thought practical. And aesthetic. It still looks huge to me! I don't know yet if I really lucked out on the glass hatch for the front. It just fits - in theory. Maybe I'll give the factory a call, right now! They said they make the hatches on order!
It's pretty subjective. I wanted a strong green water hard dodger. Windscreen and pram hood is a compromise. A low entry dodger was out of the question. I'm assuming a good soft dodger maker will be able to solve the folding part of it.
Last edited by ebb; 08-15-2006 at 07:46 AM.
As I took my trailer measurements off of EBB's boat, I could not help drooling over the nice toerail and the smooth 'brand new' feel of the decks...
If I make it back to the SF Bay area soon I want to be Ebb's apprentice. I could use some of those skills on C155. Too bad I did not know about the nice work going on there at the time!
Thanks Rico.
If I were young again and knew what I really wanted to do (which I didn't), and had some guts (which I didn't) I would find a master shipbuilder and make myself indispensible. Masters know how do do things quick. Masters know every trick and jig. Masters know the 'dance'.
338 shows what a certain amount of enthusiasm can do, and endless hours reinventing the wheel. Masters don't make mistakes. When they do, they know how to go seamlessly on to the next mistake. Amateurs know how to screw things up, sometimes pretty royally. And amateurs often lack persistence.
Appologize for no pics. Just by way of a report.
The estate shop (where I wirk) has a $4000 set of Festools built around the biggest vacuum they make. The System, and it is a System with a cap, is an installer' /remodeler's dream. Remodeling in an upscale house usually means removing all the furniture and taping/drapping plastic on everything.
You can trundel this vac and a stack of modular boxes containing your selection of tools (saw, sander, router) all clipped together into any room, plug in, open the boxes and start right in. Well, it's almost that good.
There is a kind of annoying germanic precision and hardness and hardedge personality to this extremely expensive set of tools. There is no funky to this grey and green clip and formfit tower of power. All tools have the dust and chips sucked up right thru the tool. Hardly any of it gets away. The sander I used you grip by the barrel - I can't get my mit around it, what do smaller hands do? "Ve vill hav NO Komplaints!" I really worked the tool - NO heat buildup. Vac going for hours - NO heat buildup. There's a huge bag in the vac - time to change it, finally?
NO complaints from the fine dust and glass. Opened up the vac to check the bag - the inside of the vac is compleatly clean, the huge bag doesn't need emptying yet!
Took the vac and one of the 5" sanders, the most powerful, but not the 6" that Jamestown and everybody else has been 'discounting' recently down to the boat and went to work without a mask INSIDE. What a joy!
No clean up! 5 minutes with the Makita grinder the dust is in every nook and cranny of the boat, and in the hair, up the sleeves, between yer toes, down the back.
It was difficult and time consuming but I used 24 and 40 grits disks to remove the gelcoat on the decks adjacent to the coamings. (Coamings removed.) This is where I had the epoxy fail on me. That's personal! So I took it down to the green. Actually blue, the mysterious blue first coat Pearson sprayed on some of the gelcoat befor they glassed. This narrow alleyway of deck has a 'reverse camber' in it, a sunken look, that's why I decided to level it - this is also where there is no balsa core. From the end of the cabin back is 'solid.'
Seems radical removing the gelcoat rather than trusting some dewaxing solvent. But I don't yet know what the problem is? Why didn't the first attempt to level the deck stick anywhere? Wax IN the gelcoat?
I'll do a small test today.
Last edited by ebb; 12-12-2006 at 06:11 AM.
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