Commander 147

[Chance]

Jerry,
As usual you continue to place the bar of excellence out of my reach. Very beautiful work your bestowing on Destiny! I have never worked with veneers, but know about quarter sawing and the pieces you veneered look fantastic.
Your rate of accomplishment is noteworthy too.

Question: In one of your earlier post of your potable water tank, I noticed what appeared to be cork sheet isolating the monel nickel tank with the hull. I know you added this isolator as it is not a Pearson touch. What is the actual material and did you do this to account for bit of slop between the tank sides and hull, as built by Pearson?
Also, is that a plastic (marelon) water deck fill fitting with integral vent? I like the idea of an integrated vent, but wonder how well the material will hold up to UV?

[Commander 147]

Thank you for the complement but I for one do not believe working with veneer is out of your reach. You have the self discipline to do the job well. And small pieces like these are really easy to do. Large ones really require a vacuum press to get them well bonded without bubbles. These I was just able to put clamps around the perimeter to hold everything flat.

Like your use of a roller to spread epoxy resin evenly I use a rubber roller to spread glue (Titebond III) to the surface of the plywood. Then I lay the veneer on top and a piece of waxed paper which is followed by a piece of scrap plywood. Then just clamp it up and let it dry. Really it is very easy.

As far as the cork spacers you are absolutely correct that I added them. They serve two purposes. One as spacers to make the tank fit snuggly and two as a cushion to eliminate wear from the tank rubbing against the hard plastic hull. I used 1/4" thick layers of cork and contact cemented as many together as were needed (usually 2 but one location needed three) at each location to get the tank to sit solidly without movement. I also held them in place with contact cement between the hull and the cork.

For the deck fill for my water tank I have attached another picture that tells the rest of the story. There is a brass or bronze cover (not sure which) that is chrome plated and it is the only thing exposed on deck. The marelon is all below deck with the exception of the very edge of the top. it is exposed around the perimeter of the chrome cap.

[Chance]

Jerry,
Great detailed photo. That was great foresight or is it insight, to isolate the potable water tank from making contact with the hull. Here's an off question for you. Have you ever used an oxygen displacer (like argon) to inject into the can of your favorite paint or varnish finishes before placing the lid back on? I just order a small pressurized can of argon to do just that. Don't know if it will help, but I hate getting that skimmed over hard layer from half empty cans of spar varnish.

[Commander 147]

Chance

I have not tried the Argon yet but it seems to be heavily promoted lately and I am planning on trying it soon. I will be interested to hear your comments after you use it.

[ebb]

Used the wine preserver type that comes in a tall aluminum wine bottle sized can.
Won't recommend it. Maybe good for getting the heavier than air element into an opened wine bottle
but I think the stuff comes out at too high a pressure for displacing air in the top of a varnish can.

When varnishing and having the can opemed and closed a number of times,
trying to keep the varnish from skinning was a failure.

There is a fairly new product with a tricky name aimed at paint can people.
If I saw it I'd get it to try. The argon can't come out at too much pressure to be useful imco.
It'll just get blown out of the can.

[Commander 147]

Ebb

Good to hear actual experiences with these products. Thanks for chiming in.

[ebb]

Found it on the System Three store site (Bloxygen Left Over Finish Preserver - System Three Resins, Inc) with a little write up.

We just used argon to tent some historical vehicle wool floor mats that were being consumed by clothing moths.
Our reasoning was that the bugs couldn't live without air for X number of days.
We sucked the air out of the Banana Bag with a vacuum cleaner and then slowly re-inflated the plastic bag with argon from a welding supply bottle.
And argon as the most inert gas on the planet wasn't going to react with anything historical in the process.
Or poison anybody riding in the car after 'treatment'.

Don't know about displacing oxygen in a fairly full paintcan with argon. It seems to me it would have to be somehow fogged on to be actually effective, rather than using the supplied straw.

Anything is better than marbles!
And much safer than using propane gas from yer torch!

[Commander 147]

System three's website must be down cannot get it to come up. Even tried the link from a Google search.

[Commander 147]

I have a moisture meter for wood. The way the meter works is you input the specific gravity for a species of wood and then when you lay the meter on the wood it will tell you the moisture content of the wood.

So today after doing some fillets down below I decided to start tackling the deck issue. I looked up the specific gravity level of balsa and it was .17. My meter only goes down to .30 so I set it at the lowest setting and thought I would give it a try anyway on the deck. Well the meter read 20% moisture everywhere I placed it on Destiny's starboard deck near the cockpit so I though it would not work correctly on balsa.

Then I started drilling holes in the deck and as soon as I would reach the bottom of the top skin with the drill bit it would fall through and bounce of the bottom skin. Oh NO!!!! Well I started cutting it open and here is what I found.

Let the games begin.

[ebb]

...'let the game begin.'
Be interesting to see how you wrestle* with this one!
Mike Goodwin called it tunafish.
Think it a bit better to deal with rotton tuna balsa fish than rotton plywood that others get into.
Count yerself lucky!
Haven't had to do A-338's deck YET.
But it does look like if you do it in sections at a time'
it's not too big a deal. Big costly!!!!
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ______

*Collegiate and Olympic wrestling is great sport to watch. I do mean watch.
Here are some takedown moves you'll have use on your deck:
double leg - single leg - high crotch - duck under - standing switch - stuff the head - head lock - and the front head lock. Got that?
(taken from wikipedia)

[Commander 147]

I guess I'll take a break for a few hours and let it cool back down some before I grind the edges of the cutout down to a bevel. I got the first section this far and found some not so rotten balsa. So I'll do this section complete and move onto the next section. I get in and out of the boat here so I want this area solid again as soon as possible.

[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!