Sunday, January 2, 2011

First Tack Welds

The two steps that I tackled today was to glue bulkhead #7 and floor support #4 to the centerboard trunk and to create the tack-welds.

Bulkhead #7 was no problem since I hadn't stitched it in completely to allow for the temporary screws.  I masked off the edge of the trunk and the mating edges of the bulkhead to keep squeeze out to a minimum.  That part worked perfectly.  I then finished the stitches and all went easy.


Floor support #4 was another manner.  It was lightly stitched in and wouldn't pull out very far which made it difficult to get epoxy behind it.  In the end I prevailed and while I was there I created the fillets for this floor board on the C/B trunk.


Now that everything in the lower hull is in final place I started to do the "tack weld" step.  The idea behind this is to run thickened epoxy between all the stitches.  This glues everything together so that most of the stitches can be removed (crap... I just got them all in!!!).  These tack welds must be made small enough that they will be completely covered by the final structural fillet.


My first attempt at the "pastry bag" method was a minor disaster.  I cut the corner too deeply and thickened epoxy gushed out much too quickly to create the small fillets.  When I realized this, I immediately transferred the unused epoxy to a new zip lock bag and cut a much smaller hole.  This time it worked perfectly and created fairly nice tack welds.  I smoothed out and cleaned up the areas where I didn't get it quite right.


I repeated this process and did about 1/3 of the boat before I had to stop and take the wife to dinner.

I'll let this dry and get on it again for the next session.

Hours this session: 6
Hours total: 106
Hours remaining: 296

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