Farr 3.7 Building in Southern California

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Showing posts with the label decks

Deck sealing complete

- October 15, 2018

After three coats I felt okay about the deck but not the floor. Some parts of the floor were good and others pretty dry. So I sanded it (an the sides) down and re-coated it. Took a moment here to consult with my boss. Then concluded that the floor looked pretty good and now the decks needed some work so I sanded them down and applied another layer.... Much better! This was the roller I used in the end, expensive but produced a much better result than the standard foam rollers.

Deck sealing in progress

- October 10, 2018

Plan is - three coats of 105+207 UV resistant epoxy, then paint the side walls (white I think) and varnish the decks and floor. Will use foam grip pads and avoid needing grippy paint finish. Just got two coats down. Lovely seeing the wood grain come out. Before doing this we (because the kids love it too) didn't do much sanding in the garage for a couple of days and I vacuumed and moped the floor to try and reduce the dust levels. Rolled and tipped the epoxy. Still not completely happy with the end result I get but once the varnish is on it will be fine. And the wood grain sure does pop!

Glued the decks on.

- September 20, 2018

Started work early today and skipped a lunch break. Took three 15 minutes breaks to slap on sealing epoxy coats to the undersides of the decks then stopped work early to throw them on. Gluing took longer than expected, mainly because the foredeck took a while to get the edges weighed down. Lots of bricks and some rope and then duct tape. The tape was the real solution. Backtracking a little, before strapping the decks down I needed to make a decision on chainplates on or off. I did a few trial runs at putting the washers and nuts on through the access panels. It's tricky but I was able to without being on the deck so I left them off when gluing the deck. During my trail runs I did drop the spanner inside the boat and found how hard it will be to retrieve with the decks on.... so lets not do that! Okay. Back to the decks. My better half is away so I had the kids, soon as they were read to and on the way to sleep I was getting those bricks off and putting the ...

Carbon under the floor, floor glued to boat

- September 17, 2018

Laid down some carbon on the floor this morning. One more coat of epoxy this afternoon (the third) then plan to glueing in place tonight. This was the first time I've used CF cloth and I approached it as if it were glass. As this section won't be seen I didn't vacuum bag it or even use peel ply. In fact I even used 2nd grade cloth, where you can expect small runs that are visually apparent but don't reduce strength. Future applications are going to be stricter. I found the carbon hard to handle. Fragile around the edges and prone to movement. In the end I used a roller technique always pulling away from my original wet out. Once wet I squeegied hard to try and get it to penetrate. It seemed quite hard to get the epoxy to penetrate the cloth. Just as with a glass application I taped the edges and cut away the excess when the epoxy got to the tacky stage. The floor is placed over a wood spine and clamped at the edges so that its roughly matching the sha...

More couldn't wait

- September 15, 2018

Did a rough cut on the false floor this morning.

Self presents and couldn't wait

- September 14, 2018

The ply came this morning, I was expecting it on Monday so this was a pleasant surprise. As I had one last task on the hull (adding doublers to support the forward end of the side decks) I churned through that and this evening cut out the deck pieces. It's still going to be a few days before I can seal the undersides and glue them down but nice to have them nearly ready to attach. The other thing that I've got my fingers crossed over is I think I can make the false floor out of one sheet of plywood with no scarf joint. The ply sheet is just over 8' in length and I *think* I'll have a half inch to spare.... The other present that came today was my carbon. The tube that's going to connect the hull sides looks sick!

Shout out to Forest Plywood