The pilot house will have the captn's seat, of course, along with another seat area on the starboard side. On the port side I will have a spacious bench for 3 people, chest type so I can store stuff in it, space is precious.
I figured I won't use a tall pedestal for the captn's base as I would waste the space under the seat, so I built a mold to make this fiberglass part that will also be the extra seat on the starboard side. The mold is in the inside of what you see in this picture, I fitted it on its destined spot to make sure everything was going to be ok.
Making the radius for the corners, for this I used sculpey. You can see the part will have three doors. Putting everything in perspective, letters help me identify where the core pieces and the fiberglass parts go.
After 3 layers of fiberglass the core goes in... it gets soaked...
More progress on the layup, here I'm adding the core that reinforces where the midget pedestal (captn's seat) will be, this is 3/4" marine plywood. With the corners rounded so the fiberglass will conform to it. Same thing was done everytime the fiberglass was going to wrap up the core, regardless of the core used.
After finishing the layup process here is how it looked... By the way, It took about 12 hours to complete the layup, a ton of radius.
Here is Luis, better known as Brad Pitt, cutting the fiberglass excess.
The part as it came out of the oven.... the mold...
The part cleaned, not sanded yet, and placed inside the pilot house.... looks good...
Will get back to the captn's-seat part later on.
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Removing the tape(s) on the transom and getting ready to do the layup on the outside of the transom... what a weird shape...
Here is how it looked after 8 layers.... finished doing this stage...
Here is Brad Pitt doing some sanding on the roof and finding out that a thick layer of cabosil + bubbles takes a long time to fair out. Luis, George, two other guys and myself did the sanding for the whole project, it took a lot of man hours to bring it up to the smoothness that was needed before gelcoating the whole thing.
One side of the pilot house, you can see how the surface looks much better now, its ready for the gelcoat. The best way of "preventing", if such a thing exists, this sanding problem is to keep the cabosil paste to a minimum, but you have to put enough in to cover the cracks between the fiberglass. There is really no way around it.
To reconstruct the engine compartment I used hollow fiberglass stringers that were filled with two-part foam after they were installed. Here is a mold for the stringers
I never get to be in the pictures, because I'm the camera man, but I do have just a handful of pictures that show my skills...
The layup schedule for the two main stringers (going directly on the hull), 1708, mat, woven roving, 1708. Here is one coming off the mold.
Here is one stringer tabbed in. Notice the holes that were used to fill the cavity with the foam.
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Another little project, the bench/chest for the pilot house.
Here is the mold I made out of melamine because it provides a better surface and the part comes off the mold in better shape. Those foam pieces are the cores used on that areas
After the first layup here is how it looks
George and myself working late at night finishing the bench layup.
The following morning, here is the part as it is coming off the mold.
Another view of the part coming off the mold, you can see how the surface is really smooth, that melamine really works...
After fitting, or trying to fit the part in and a lot of cutting here is how it looks in place.
The bench was then taken out and the door or hatch cover was cut out of it, then it was placed back in the spot it was before and used as a "mold" to make the lip that will hold the lid in place.
Josh out...
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