Narfi's Life after EU: Chapter Four - FS17 a 17ft V-Hull Powerboat

July 25, 2018

Got this far on the stringers in 3 sessions.

1. Laid the stringers interlocked with the bulkhead/formers and glued the stringers down between bulkheads.

2. Removed formers and finished gluing the entire length of the stringers and started the fillet radius shape.

3. Tonight I finished filling and shaping the fillets, esp. The areas with gaps between hull and stringer sagged some and needed touching up.

Downside of doing it in stages and not glassing right away is now I need to sand a little before applying the glass tapes.

Was winding down at work this evening when power went out. Jumped on my Honda and tore over to the powerhouse arriving about same time as the other guy here who works on the engines. (We only really do monitoring and oil changes, professionals come in for all line work and technical stuff) Alarms were loud and both generators were shut down. There was a false indication in the new fire alarms which in turn shut them down for safety.

We got everything up and running in a few minutes, but waiting on the designer and installer to let us know why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again. I guess that's just growing pains from having a new powerplant and electronic controllers village was probably offline for less than 15 minutes.

 

July 28, 2018

Stringers glassed in.

Ran out of paper cups and only had one brush.... did the first stringer then went to my work and checked out 4x 2" chip brushes and borrowed a couple paper cups from the break room.

Hopefully amazon boxes get here Monday with more that I had already ordered.

Bulkheads next.

 

July 29, 2018

Trimmed all my formers down to fit flush with the tops of the stringers then used them as templates to cut out bulkheads. I got all but the front one spot welded in before time to go inside for family time.

I went back and forth on rather I should start with the motor well bulkhead full height or just to the stringers and finish the floor first. I ended up going full height and have it glued in as well.

No pictures, but hopefully tomorow.

 

July 30, 2018

Fillets done.

 

Ok, caught my backlog of pictures up to date :)
Life got in the way a bit more than planned so I am a few months behind schedule with this build.
I had planned to be getting ready to launch around now, but looking like it will be late late fall or next year before it will be done.
One bite at a time :)

 

Aug 2, 2018

Landon helped clean up getting ready to glass in the bulkheads.

Then I spent the rest of the evening cutting the tapes and laying them down.

I didnt get any pictures during, but here are the results.

 

Yep! each step accomplished feels good.

 

August 4, 2018

Started fitting the floor supports.
Hopefully finish fitting tomorow and sand the rough sides a bit then coat all remaining bare wood under the floor. Then coat the bottom sides of the supports and glue them in.

 

August 5, 2018

I didnt show the intersections yesterday. I cut the corners out with a utility knife to make room for the glass and fillets in the corners.

You can see the difference between sanded and un-sanded. No one will see it, but my assumption is that it required less epoxy to coat it if sanded smooth first.

Coated everything with epoxy, bulkheads, stringers, as well as bottoms and sides and ends of the floor supports. Then spread thickened epoxy on top of the bulkhead stringers and a little along all of the grooves of the supports.

Then laid it all in place and it fit well and felt good. I still clamped all pieces together to keep them level with each other and then layed packing tape over everything and layed a bunch of lumber and weights on it to keep anything from popping up till its cured.

 

August 8, 2018

Got the parimater glued in.


What is normally done around the bow area? Is a parameter glued in there as well or is the sole just cut/sanded at an angle to fit?

 

August 9th, 2018

Sounds like everyone agrees with my initial thought then..... I will justglue the sole down there with a little extra glue.

Glued in the motor well sides tonight.

Waiting for a good sunny hot day baking in the tent to pour the foam and this weekend doesnt look promising.

Been thinking about having Landon make a time capsule to bury in the foam under the floor.

 

August 10th, 2018

Cleaned all the lumps and bumps off the tops of the floor supports.

Was going to glass tape in the motor well side panels but ran out of time.

 

August 11th, 2018

Taped in the motor well side panels and cut out the first three floor panels.

 

August 12th, 2018

Finished fitting all the floor peices.


Poured the first 2gal of foam.

Then poured two more.

Was 95f in the tent when I started and 110f when I was done with the 4th gallon.

I layed out pixie paper cups and poured 6 cups of each part at a time then would quickly mix 1cup part a and 1 part cup b quickly and pouring before or as it started expanding, scraped quickly and repeated again and again using the same bigger mixing cup the whole time.

I was worried I wouldn't have time to mix and pour but I had time to walk to other side of boat while mixing and still pour before it grew out of the cup.

How long should I wait before I can cut the tops off? Was expecting rain and cold today and all week but the sun came out and I had to take advantage.

 

August 12th, 2018

Not sure when it will be warm again so decided to just get it all done. Borrowed a hand saw and cut the tops off everything and threw them in the remaining compartments and poured in the remaining 2 gallons along with the time capsule.

 

Thanks! Ill keep plugging away one bite at a time until the temperatures are too low to safely use the epoxy. Unfortunately that time is coming sooner than I would like :/

 

August 15th, 2018

Did a couple hours of prep work, nothing really picture worthy though.

Finished trimming the last couple high spots on the foam.
Sanded down the floor supports one last time.
Blew out all the sawdust.
The plywood got some dirty snow blew under the tent edge last winter so the corners are kind of dirty. I quickly sanded the dirt off for all the floor panels and gave them a final fitting.
The time capsule wasnt quite situated square in the foam and one edge sticks above the supports. So I marked that panel and sanded out a relief on the underside until it could sit flush.

It all looks nice and clean sitting there. Ready to epoxy and glue down.