Commander 147

[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.