Building Shesha, a Hunter Valley GIS, Australia

[callsign222]

Just to clarify, In the pic, the red line represents the seat as per plans. The blue line represents the extended seat. 25mm or approx 1" wider.

Attachment 132300

Don't do it.

You are going to disrupt the balance of life on Earth. 2012, CERN, or woodeneye and the extension of the center seat? I wouldn't take my chances.

If you look in last week's New Scientist (Feb 27th-March 5th) there's a picture on page 32-- that's what will happen to your boat.

For all that good and green in this world! Think of the children! Oh the humanity!

[woodeneye]

Don't do it.

You are going to disrupt the balance of life on Earth. 2012, CERN, or woodeneye and the extension of the center seat? I wouldn't take my chances.

If you look in last week's New Scientist (Feb 27th-March 5th) there's a picture on page 32-- that's what will happen to your boat.

For all that good and green in this world! Think of the children! Oh the humanity!

I take it that it’s not a biggie then J

I try not to pick up any publication with “Scientist” in its name, because they tend to affect some people in weird ways.

[jmk89]

Bruce

FWIW, I would do it. It's your boat. If it doesn't work out, you can cut it off later!

[Boatmik]

Just to clarify, In the pic, the red line represents the seat as per plans. The blue line represents the extended seat. 25mm or approx 1" wider.

Attachment 132300

The seat is the crew area ... so extends their space!

There will be no problem with balance.

Best wishes
MIK

[MiddleAgesMan]

I agree with both of the above posts. Callsign is correct about the impact on the universe (25mm is HUGE!) but MIK knows his stuff, too. After all, what could a tiny little bitty INCH do to change the design?

[woodeneye]

The bottom and centre case are now installed.

Attachment 132344

More pics and commentary here

[callsign222]

Man! You're really cranking along!

[woodeneye]

It was quite a busy w/e for me in the garage.

The bottom was joined during the week. I used a staple at each side to prevent “drifting”. My usual car batteries provided the clamping force.

Attachment 132351 Attachment 132352

I took Friday night off and settled in to watch the opening rounds of the RL season with a Coopers and a glass of red (not simultaneously!)

Kim worked on Saturday so I got myself an early start at 7am and finished off bevelling the chines and the bottoms of the bulkheads. The blue steel bars came in handy once more to make sure the angles were right so that the bottom ply edges would sit flat.

Attachment 132353 Attachment 132354 Attachment 132355

Bulkheads 2 and 3 were a couple of mms low, so they were corrected with a mix of micro-balloons and epoxy and then faired level with a plane and keyed for a good mechanical bond to the bottom. By levelling the BH bottoms first, you can screw the bottom down firmly, knowing it will stay flat.
Attachment 132356 The whitish “cap” is the fairing mix. When the bottom was fixed the filler disappeared from view.

The bottom was dry fitted starting at the bow with just 5 screws along the centreline, one each in the bow, bulkheads and transom. To line up the hull and pull it square, I aligned the bottom centreline with the centrelines marked on the bulkheads. The boat was perfectly straight all the way to bulkhead #3, and then it went skew to side. It was a decent pull with one hand while peeking through the transom’s tiller hole at BH3 and driving the screw with the other! Thank you to the inventor of square drive screws as this would have had potential for disaster with Phillips heads. The transom was easier to align with the bottom as it could be aligned to the outside centreline marking, although it required a heftier shove to move it into position. A quick sighting along the tops of the bulkheads while sitting under the boat confirmed that the hull was in perfect alignment with zero twist. Wow, that was an amazing and satisfying moment!
Attachment 132357

So GIS builders, don’t worry if your hull isn’t as straight as you’d like as it can be wiggled into shape at this point

Attachment 132358 This pic shows the 10mm misalignment between the transom and the bottom. An easy fix as it turned out!

After that I predrilled all the holes at 200mm centres which needed to be at an angle to ensure they didn’t break through the chines. I thunk up a quick and dirty little ply and pencil template to mark my lines for screwing into the chine logs. I also used it as a guide when drilling the holes to get the angle about right. It worked like a charm.
Attachment 132359 Attachment 132360 The lower edge of the ply is held against the side panel. It follows the side curve and quickly scribes the screw line.

Gluing the bottom went well and was done in three sections. I was a bit dirty on myself for making the epoxy mixture a tad too runny, so that the squeeze out ran down the sides. By the time I had finished screwing it down the epoxy had gone off too much to make cleaning up easy. I was in panic mode at this point but managed to clean up most of the bits that will be visible, but I have a little bit of sanding to do. It will not be pretty looking into the hatches though!
Attachment 132361

The next morning (a late and relaxed 9.30am start!) I planed down the edges of the bottom ply to within about 3mm of the sides and also removed all the temporary screws before turning the hull over. The Goat is dead easy to turn single handed because it is so light. It can even stand on its side while unsupported, so you can walk around to the other side and lower it down. This boat has hidden talents!

Leaving about 3mm of the bottom edge protruding for now will give the chine some protection when turning the hull, as I do this with the roll method mentioned above.
Attachment 132362

Checking the hull is square with the two steel tubes. It was perfect
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I was extremely happy and satisfied with the fairness of the chines which really was all due to the extra care I took when planing the chine log bevels and the bulkhead bottoms. I think seeing this part of the build turn out so well has been the highlight so far.

Time then for something a little exotic to celebrate! A cold one of these went down so nicely at lunch time.
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I spent in the afternoon fitting and gluing the centre case. Up until now I’d not fitted the cleats to the top of the casing as I was tossing up whether to go with the Paulownia or Hoop pine cleats. I decided on the Paulownia, so these were installed as well as the bracing gusset.
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Well, that’s pretty much all I did. I had plenty of battle wounds to show, like dried epoxy stuck to me all over, including my hair. But I don’t care!

[woodeneye]

Man! You're really cranking along!

I can get most of the weekends to work on the boat, which is great. I try to do a little bit each day too, even it's just sweeping the shavings off the floor or putting tools away and getting some order back!

[woodeneye]

I've just realised that the inwale timber is 15X45. It is ages ago since I ordered my timber, and I missed this when my order arrived and it contained 19X45 hoop pine for the inwales timber, ie. the same as the gunwales. Bummer, plaining them down to size is going to be a PITA!

[woodeneye]

Monday, March 22, 2010

I had another productive weekend working on the boat. Also, Russell from Storm Bay Sails in Tasmania contacted me to say my sail was ready to be shipped, so that will be arriving this week. That is exciting, even though I am still a couple of weeks away from a trial fit of the rigging.

The first pic shows the mast partner (top) and mast step. The mast step is a somewhat substantial construction when compared to the lightweight design of Storer’s other components. This is understandable given the load it carries for the unstayed rig. The step is comprised of a 3 layer composite of 6mm ply and two layers of 20mm Hoop pine, so the whole thing is 46mm thick and very strong. The middle layer has a slot cut in it for drainage which you can just see as a dark shadow in the picture.
Attachment 132864Attachment 132865 The partner will also derive a lot of strength from the ply deck once it is glued on.



These next two pics show the rear buoyancy tank with the Paulownia 19x19mm framework all supported by little ply gusset thingies. I deviated from the plans slightly (which have a single fore/aft centre strut) as I want to put a hatch in the middle near the rear of the tank for access to the transom gudgeon bolts, and as the Paulownia is super light stuff anyway, it won’t have much of an impact on weight. The structure is super strong and seems to have already contributed extra stiffness to the hull. I also did the same for the bow structure. The rear seat is fitted, but not glued.
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The centre seat is also fitted, but not glued on. However the frame for it is complete and all epoxied in place. Yesterday morning when I fitted the seat on the frame, I could see a glaring error. The side cleats for the seat were too high at the front which caused the seat to dish somewhat, so I was not happy at all. It is only when the seat top was made that this error became obvious. I had followed Mick’s instructions, for measuring the cleat line, but it didn’t work for me and they did not align to the same level as the centre case.

However, removing the Paulownia side cleats to correct my error was relatively easy. It involved splitting the cleats with a chisel and then planing and sanding off the remaining timber and epoxy glue. In the picture below you can see all the epoxy dust lying on the chine log from the exercise. The mechanical epoxy-on-epoxy bond is extremely strong, which is good to know! The cleats were glued onto the sides which had been washed and then sanded with 120grit. I was rather hoping they would just pop off along the glue line with pressure from the chisel point, but NO WAY, it was well and truly bonded, and they simply would not split along the glue line.

After I had made new cleats, I re-fitted them using a different method to achieve alignment with the centre case. This I did by clamping the centre seat beam cleats to the seat top and after setting the seat in position, placed a straight edge/level across the seat top and marked the new position of the side cleats where the seat touched the sides. This worked very well, was dead easy, and all is hunky dory and level now!

This seat is 25mm wider than the plans show and now covers the end grain of the spacers in the aft section of the centre case. More bum room for the crew too. (Mick was a bit more polite with his words recently!)
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At the moment, I’m halfway through shaping and fitting the top of the front buoyancy tank, which has also been framed up. Then the insides of the tanks will be coated and the tops glued in place.

The next major task will be to fit the gunwales and inwales. I’m really looking forward to this part of the build.

Still no screws in the hull! Amazing

[woodeneye]

When I sight down from the sheer to the chine at BH1, there is a definite inward kink from the top of the bulkhead to the sheer. This disappears when I remove the clamps holding the temporary gunwale. It is replicated on both sides. By the way, this was the case with BH2 as well, but unstalling the side arms fixed it, so that the issue is now with BH1 which has no side arms.

Attachment 132991 Click pic to blow it up and see my note.

The kink is only induced by the pressure from the temporary gunwale pulling in the sheer. The plans call for the installation of the gunwale and gunwale cap before installing the inwale spacers and the inwale, but I'm wondering if maybe I should reverse the process and add the inwales first? Perhaps installing the inwales first will spring the sheer outward to prevent this problem?

Or is the problem that my Hoop pine gunwale timber has too much tension and I should use some other timber? Or another solution, maybe I should install side arms similar to BH2 to ensure a nice smooth curve? I'm sort of leaning this way, but not really sure, so would value some advice.

Has anyone else had this problem?

[callsign222]

So basically, you have a "kink" from the top of BH1 that goes UP to the sheer, and the kink is inward, into the hull? When you say "kink" I'm thinking distortion, and un-fair. Is this true, or is the gunwale just drawing in the sheer?

Just from my memory, when I clamped on the gunwales, they drew the hull in a little tighter around the sheer, kind of like tightening a belt around the boat, a little bit. A tensioner, if you will. Everything stayed fair, however, and it made for a nice muscular look in the bow.

[woodeneye]

So basically, you have a "kink" from the top of BH1 that goes UP to the sheer, and the kink is inward, into the hull? When you say "kink" I'm thinking distortion, and un-fair. Is this true, or is the gunwale just drawing in the sheer?

Just from my memory, when I clamped on the gunwales, they drew the hull in a little tighter around the sheer, kind of like tightening a belt around the boat, a little bit. A tensioner, if you will. Everything stayed fair, however, and it made for a nice muscular look in the bow.

Yup, it's a kink due to the gunwale drawing in the sheer and the fulcrum is the top of BH1, ie. not fair in the vertical.

[woodeneye]

The front tank top(or should that be for’ard tank top, aaarrrgghh!) has been fitted. I found this was a slow process of test fitting, shave, test fit, shave and so forth about 100 times before the top finally just dropped into place. I managed to spill some DNA onto the ply tonight when my finger caught a bit of razor sharp, dried epoxy on a clamp. Ouch! This was only the second instance of drawn blood during the build. I previously cut myself on some dried epoxy when making the dagger board, so please be careful of the dried pox. It bites! Anyway, I hope it’s a “Good Luck” omen!

This is how the Goat look looks now. The seat and tank tops are not yet glued, just fitted, because the insides now have to be epoxy coated to seal the timber before they are ready for that step. Note also that the screws holding the sides to the stem will eventually be removed once the tank top is glued down and the gunwales/inwales are installed. Those components will then transfer nearly all the stresses from the sides away from the stem.