I'm back guys... sorry for the delay... I've been working on the boat all day long...
Ok, back to business...
With the deck floor in place it was time to make the covers for the fuel tanks. That piece of wood is helping me visualize where the cover will end.
On the Stbd side the same applies, the cover will overlap with the fiberglass-covered-foam that encloses the two PVC rigging pipes.
Some detail as to where the cover has to end. The idea is to take as less space as possible.
Back to the port side, on this picture you can see the space left around the tank, is not much.
The mold for the Stbd tank cover, this is a very simple mold, if you can call it a mold. It's actually just two pieces of melamine with a sculpey-made radius. Notice how I draw the part on the mold, this is a trick, as the resin
will soak the ink and the drawing will be transposed to the finished part, this way I can use these lines as my guides to cut the part to it's final shape. It really speeds things up.
This is the finished port tank cover, still in the "mold". I didn't have much space for the tank covers and for this reason I didn't want to make them thick. I used some of the Luan that I had around, two pieces as you can see to give some bone to the parts.
Here are the two tank parts cooking.
Here is the port fuel cover gelcoated.
Here is the stbd fuel cover gelcoated.
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I couldn't make the angle of the rail bases fit my boat, the standard angles (45, 60 deg) didn't work for me, so I had to fabricate some round wedges that would help me modify the angle on the bases. I made a wedge strip... here it is
Here I'm cutting the round wedges for the bases....
Here you can see the bow rail installed. In some bases I had to use 2 wedges. In this picture you can also see Ruben taking off the antifouling paint. I live 30 mins from La Salina ramp, there is no reason to leave the boat in the water. You can see one VHF antenna is also installed, Shksp 8900. The supports for the anchor roller plank are also installed, they were drilled from the inside of the boat, as well as fiberglassed in place. That anchor is a manson, inside I have 35ft of chain and 600ft of 7/16 rope. I haven't installed the windlass yet, it's still waiting it's turn on my shelf.
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Now for the engine cover. I didn't realize I don't have many pictures of the mold or the fiberglass process. So these will have to sufice. The engine cover is the centerpiece of the deck. It was designed to provide maximum-deck-space-allowed, in other words it was done as small as possible to cover the engine and to hold the noise reduction-aluminum-covered-foam. I was aiming for 1/2 inch minimum clearance around the engine, that's only on a couple of areas around the engine, as you probably know the engine is not a box, so 1/2 inch on those
4-5 spots around the engine was good enough. The engine compartment is quite big so there was no need to provide extra room with the cover. I also wanted my deck to be leveled, no steps, just the engine cover.Here is the mold with 4 layers of fiberglass, then the cabosil goes in to fill the gaps and hold the divinycell.
George applying the cabosil generously throughout the part.
Another view, notice how I used balsa wood on the very edge, all around the part, this was done to control the height as this area will hold a gasket.
Everything is ready and the next couple layers of fiberglass will begin.
First layer of mat going in.
After the part cured and was taken out of the mold, a problem was noticed on the adhesion of the core to the fiberglass, there were areas where the fiberglass was not glued to the divinycell, this is not a common thing but this was not my first time solving this problem. You notice it very easy because the part has a different color in the area, and if you press hard against it you can bend the fiberglass and make contact with the divinycell. There is a technique to fix the problem but it takes a lot of time. I had to make several (a lot) of small holes (1/8") every few inches apart in the areas where we should have had more cabosil but we didn't, I'm saying here that this happens when you don't have enough cabosil, or you don't press hard enough on the divinycell, this creates voids, cabosil voids that need to be filled up. So I prepared a batch of not so thick, syrup thick cabosil and used a syringe to fill the "gaps". Then after you're done you have to make sure the cabosil is not leveled with the fiberglass skin or it will shrink into the part and you'll have to cabosil-it again. I leave about 1/8 more cabosil on top of the hole. After all it's cured I come back and sand everything up to make it flush.
Don't be skeptical, this technique works, and works very well. You end up with a part that is as strong as any other one. You are welcomed to come and jump on my engine cover to find out for yourself.
So here is the engine cover all cleaned up and in place, let's take a look at how all the pieces of the puzzle come together.
The part that is between the door and the engine cover is the cornerstone for the engine cover because it rest's on the side deck's lips, so it's like a lid, but it also has a lip of its own that merges with the lip of the port/stbd deck sides to complete an all-around-lip-support in which the engine cover rests. For this part I used 1/2" divinycell core on the sides, and 3/4" divinycell for the middle section of the part. You can see in the following picture exactly how this looks, here the part has just been sprayed with gelcoat.
The part is the one on the top, you can see how it has like two flaps on the sides, these are the ones that rest on the lip of the deck-sides, you can also notice how the middle section is thicker, this is because of the 3/4" divinycell. A view of the other end of the part.
In the following picture you can see the two divinycells.
In this picture you can notice the lip and also how the middle section of this part is "fatter"
Here is the engine cover being gelcoated
Each side of the boat has two fish boxes, one rectangular and one special-shape. Here are all the hatches being gelcoated, sand was placed in the gelcoat for the non-skid.
Here you can see all the not-so-big parts being gelcoated at the same time. The swim platform supports are there too.
Here are the two port-side hatch covers.
Here are the two stbd-side hatch covers.
Here is the "cornerstone" part besides the big fish-box hatch cover so you can make a size comparison.
Josh out
. So far today I've layed about 200 sq ft of 1708 and about 5 gals of epoxy, well 4.75 not counting the quart that got cooked because I wasn't working fast enough..... I hate 1708!!!!
and it stops with a dick joke.
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