Thread: Another OZ MK2 PDRacer build in Sydney "Wood Duck"

OK, that's the deliberately-cut holes plugged and the "worm-holes" filled, except for the one that straddles two types of wood, the latter only being half-filled (and which will be trimmed once the filler has set a bit firmer: need a nice clean edge though, so it can't be too hard). Filler was the sieved WRC sanding flour mixed into the remaining BoteCote 2:1 after glueing in the plugs. It will be interesting to see what the WRC filler is like once the foils are finished: at the moment it stands out summink shocking. I also took the expedient of whacking in some 2 ounce cloth into a 300-ish mm long depression in one of the WRC staves caused by heavy-handed (read careless) belt sanding. This won't fill in the entire hole by any means, but it's a start: less resin will be needed and there will be less likelihood of there being a more opaque strip of resin there. And I don't want that dip there.

Here are some photos from today and yesterday:

1. Far end of foil propped up by bass-guitar blank protected from the Multi-stand's "teeth" (clamp) by some scrap plywood. I will one day get around to making this instrument: the wood is New Guinea rosewood (Pterocarpus indicus); darker strips at each end are shellac end-grain sealing to deter splits while seasoning. It should be seasoned by now: I've had it for over 13 years! There's the hull of the boat patiently waiting sanding and paint - not too far off, I hope!





2. Worked-on end of foils board sitting on 4x2 in drill press vice. Chocks were actually a hindrance so were not used. Clamps were moved further in towards the chuck for subsequent holes





3. Half-inch straight-flute bit poised to remove one of the original plugs from the first attempt to plug various holes





4. One half-inch hole and a pile of chips. The lighter-coloured chips are from the underlying 4x2 pine support





5. Hole with chips cleared (blown) away: worm-hole to the front, and some grain tear-out from the first hole-plugging attempt visible on the left





6. Clamps moved as close to the drilling area as possible without fouling the quill downfeed (on the right) or where it couldn't go any further because of the vice head (on the left)





7. Overview of the entire board on its supports. Note the patchy appearance of the boat's foredeck: a result of a number of separate patching - and sanding - sessions. Also note that the clamps are sitting on offcuts, not the deck itself - to reduce the likelihood of yet more patching (and sanding) sessions...





8. Another view of the drilling set-up





9. All holes on one side of board plugged...





10. And all holes on the other side of the board likewise plugged: there's a plug in the foreground but it is quite well camouflaged ;)





11. Plugs glued in place with neat resin; brush to be used later on in proceedings (see next photo); resin container tilted to stop resin spreading out too much; board up on blocks so that glued plugs clear bench





12. Other side of board: plugs glued in; "worm-holes" filled with WRC-flour filler, and filling of dip in part of one WRC stave started using 2-ounce glass cloth and brush-stippled resin. Dark/light contrast a preview of what the whole thing might look like when finished...


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I'm leaving the glue and filler to set up over night, and I'll sand it back tomorrow morning. Hopefully I'll get the remaining "worm-hole" - in a paulownia strip - filled in later this evening, if the WRC filler has set sufficiently to allow cleaning up. In the meantime, I've dragged out the spar blanks and am starting to set up to get them down to the 37 mm maximum width before further processing. They are currently both about 42 mm square (in cross-section, that is ;).

Additional note: or probably sanding down this arvo - the resin, while set at 9 am, is still a bit too green to sand. So I'll get on with other things like cutting cloth, working on spars, sail, etc. while I wait. Looks as though the main covering will be done tomorrow.

Right, well, got the filling completed after dinner, plus added another strip of 2-ounce cloth onto the WRC stave dip. Hopefully it is much less of a dip now, and will require minimal resin to fill. I can still see the grain of the underlying wood, so that is a good thing. A few other holes got spotted with resin along the way, too. I'll sand everything off in the morning.

Here are some snaps of what have I done:

1. Heap of paulownia sanding-flour: the result of five minutes' scrubbing at an offcut with a new piece of 120-grit "Sahara" paper on a cork block - much more than I really needed in the end





2. The final foils hole to be filled: the region in the WRC stave has already been bogged up, and the interface line made sharpish using a chisel to pat it flat. I'm hoping that the paulownia filler will also deal with the ring around the plug, but as it isn't very deep, I'm not holding my breath. And I'm a bit concerned about the aureole of resin around the patch; but I can't do anything about that now, other than hope that the glassing resin coats will smother it





3. The final hole filled: it looks rough - it is rough! - but I'm hoping that it will turn out OK once I've sanded off the excess. Fingers crossed...





4. Second strip of 2-oz. cloth in the stave "hole". I'm also hoping that the amount of resin needed to create a fair surface again will be small. Fingers crossed - again...





5. Close-up of one of the four WRC plugs on this side of the board: it seems to have been taken from the wrong stave offcut, as it is a lot darker than the surrounding (also resin-soaked) wood. Bother!


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Last thing I did after packing up for the evening was to bring the scissirs and the roll of 6 ounce cloth upstairs - there is more room to cut; and it isn't covered in a thick layer of sanding dust, besides.

One of the project is first year high school (now Year 8 in South Oz - where I went to school, or Year 7 here in NSW) woodworking was to turn a bowl from a block of WRC. The first attempt met with disaster (sound familiar? I still haven't improved!) as I dug the cutting tool in at the wrong angle at one point and patoing! Two pieces of bowl instead of just one. I think Mum still has the second and successful attempt somewhere. It was finished with beeswax while still on the lathe, and seems to have been a great finish for this timber (and application). Why am I rabbiting on about this? The fun with the plugs and the various holes in the foils reminded of it, although the actual foil-shaping didn't quite as much, oddly enough. The point is that I should have remembered earlier what a tricky wood WRC is to work with, and taken steps accordingly to be more careful than I was. Well, I will when I get to the Goat foils and Goat/Eureka inwale spacers!

I may get to glassing the foils tomorrow, but I suspect that I my only get as far as doing the tips with bias-cut pieces. You never know, things may go smoothly with little to do fairing the board off and no more blunders: but I wouldn't bank on it!

Judging by the initial sand of the glass patch, I won't be getting to the full overcoating of the foils until Sunday. The resin is still far too green to work: the paper is clogging rather than cutting, still. Not to worry - I can fine-sand the ends of the boards and glass the tips, plus other stuff that needs doing. And I don't need to slim the spars - I had already done that at the pre-scarphing stage :).

Fine-sanded (if you can call 180-grit fine - I do ;) the board tips, filled various holes in the side of the board that didn't get so treated yesterday, then glassed both tips.

I have some photos to prove the above claims, appearing soon...

One thing I noticed with my Oregon 19mm board is that it floats. Enthusiastically.
And my original hold-down shock cord hasn't enough tension to keep it down.
Need to re-jig that before next outing.

Your WRC board - 1/2 the weight & 20% more volume, will probably need to be held down by brute force.
If that is insufficient, I may be called upon to supplement it with ignorance ...

Lookin' good Bloke.
AJ

Hi AJ,

Drill the bottom up the middle and fill it with molten lead?

The brute force in my case will hopefully be supplied by the 6 mm shock cord that I acquired a while ago... Thanks for the nice words about the foil - it is fortunate, therefore, that you can't see it in its current blotchy state ;).

Cheers,
Alex.

OK kids, here is the latest happy-snaps what did I took this arvo/evening...

1. Pre-glass priming, photo 1. Check out the twinkly stars ;). The wood looks quite nice with the resin on it, dunnit?





2. Pre-glass priming, photo 2. More twinkly stars for you :). That tip could have done some more sanding, and not just to remove the rather-too-deeply-scribed (er, gouged) centreline: the paulownia strips could have been cleaned up a bit more





3. 6 ounce cloth slapped on: starting to work the resin into the cloth. 6 oz. takes up a lot of resin, but it gets taken back somewhat with the toilet roll. Note the 45 degree bias-cut of the cloth. Still had a difficult time at the forward end of both tips persuading them to stay flat, though...





4. Resin-saturated cloth with the excess resin removed with the toilet roll: stops the cloth from floating up to the top of the resin, and thus allows said cloth to stick closer to the wood :)





5. Toilet-rolled bottom of tip. Once the resin had started to get a bit tackier, I managed to iron down the wayward bits at the forward end of the tip, that are currently waving about a bit in the breeze here





6. Couple of air bubbles under the cloth that I hadn't seen when doing the coating. Saw 'em in this photo, though, and immediately went and squashed the truant cloth back down again...





7. The other tip, glassed: this was the first one to get done. With the arrival of more wintry weather (right on the nail - end of first week of May) the resin is taking a while to set up. A long while...





8. Tip with the bubbles pressed down again. I had another go at the forward part of the tip, but it is a tight curve for 6 oz. cloth and the fibres keep springing back up again. The tip looks a bit like a (rather short and fat) banded snake here, what with the toilet-rolled cloth resembling scales a wee bit. Maybe a moulting banded snake...





9. Finally managed to nail the forward tip corner - a bit; I'll probably find tomorrow morning that it's sprung up again. Compare with the first photo of the tip with the glass just gone on: the wood-grain is a bit more visible


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Tomorrow: sanding back the cloth-strip fill on one of the staves (and any further tweaks necessary), careful sanding back of all the messy filler that I've plastered on over the last couple of days, trimming of the cloth on the board-tips, and final clean-up and sanding prior to the major glassing event scheduled - hopefully - for Sunday.

I think my schedule's slipped again, due mostly to a late start and Saturday sport. And partly because because, on sanding one of the patches, I found that I hadn't filled the hole in it in enough. But mostly the former.

In any case (says he hurriedly), the resin porbably wouldn't be in a sufficiently cured state for sanding until late tomorrow or Monday morning.

I've been cutting the spars to length and marking them out, but have stopped to ask a question, before it's too late and I've shaved too much off the "wrong" ends. Normally it wouldn't matter which end it which from the shaping point of view, but because both spars are scarphed up from pieces of timber with quite different densities, it probably does matter which end (i.e., the denser one) is the forward (mast end). Denser material at the aft/outboard end is going to result in a boom with a more energetic head-cracking capacity. Not that I intend to get myself whacked by the boom, but you know about good intentions...

So, to the question: which end is the mast end on the lug rig: the shorter or the longer taper? I'm assuming that the shorter end is the "mast" end, but thought that I'd better check.

Probably gratuitous, but here are some more photos from today's sessions:

1. WRC stave depression sanded back: darker areas indicate unsanded resin and therefore remaining dip(s)





2. Depression filled up with resin. Hopefully this is the last attempt to sort this hole out...





3. Another view of the resined depression; lots of sanding dust about the place, too (although I did dust off the depression first, with a paint brush set aside for such purposes)





4. View of the whole board: various bits sanded back, and some re-filled - again, hopefully for the last time. The bench is in desperate need of a tidy-up...but not yet


Follow this link to my Flickr account - a fairly pointless excercise, unless you want to see these photos at larger or smaller sizes. Up to you, I guess...



I'm not at quite the point that I'd hoped, so I'm probably a day off where I had intended to be yesterday, although I did put up a comment about potential hiccups then. More accurately, misjudgement of how long the remediation of the dip in the board would take. As can be seen from the photos, the dip was relatively large, on account of having not taken enough off that side - and too much off the other: I wasn't keeping tabs on which side I was on, as I oughta...

More tomorrow.

Gawd, hes unstoppable, insatiable, incorriagable ... daft

Keep it up, the entertainment beats free to air television

Richard

ps. I reckon you're right with the taper question but you'd trust my opinion on that at your peril

Heh to both ;). Or all :). Regarding the spar directions, I also want to keep the stress on the scarph-joints minimised...having the mass of the outer boom reduced should help that.

Cheers,
Alex.

Congratulations and welcome home, Jessica! What a triumph - what an achievement. And I was one of the doubters at the beginning, too...

Welcome back to OZ indeed.

Actually, I thought it was hilarious - the presenters kept getting half-way
though setences declaring Sydney her "home" or "home port", realizing their
(repeated) error, & changing tack.

Anyway, an incredible act of extended discipline for a youngster, one she
can be proud of. If she tackles all else she does in life with the same
attitude, she will do well, be it engineering, mothering, lobbying or entertaining.

I envy her her courage and tenacity. And her sailing ability!

On with the motley... I've spent most of the day doing all the final cleaning up and sanding: including rasping off the excess glass at the tip that those who have already made the foils (or know the instructions) will have realised that I'd overdone by around 25 mm. Anyway, the Perma-Grit plate took care of all that in the usual short order :). The resin patch in the dip in the foil was in fact the final one. After several sheets of 120-grit paper, I got it faired: the resin was still a bit green and I was impatient to get it sorted. I did keep leaving it and coming back to it between sessions on the other blobs and the board tips.

The board was finished off with 180- and 240-grit paper on the cork block, wth the LE being the last to be finished off, with hand-held 240-grit paper. The whole boartd was then wiped down with (dry) clean paper towels, then vacuumed with a relatively new brush attachment. Took a break to check up the instructions on the mounting of the board for glassing - an unusual step for me ;). One screw each end, 25 mm into the board, 50 mm from the LE, then clamped between two sawhorses - or in my case, the two Triton Multi-stands.

I did try starting to plane the short boom end-taper 'tixt clean-up sessions, but the Mutlistands couldn't stand up to the force of the planing, and therefore didn't provide a sufficiently stable situation for careful planing. So that little oproject will be moved over the the bench once the foils have been glassed. More later, with happy-snaps.