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

Whew! What a slog! That's the first coat of resin soaked into the glass coat on the foils board, then removed again. Well, most of it - just enough resin left to allow the cloth to stick closely to the board, using the toilet-roll method. I didn't take any photos until the end of the three-hour session (even using a squeegee and roller to move the resin about), and they appear below with the usual commentary. I probably won't get back to the board until tomorrow arvo at the earliest, as I have to take the car across to the other side of town to get it serviced. It depends on the mechanics as to what time I get back, including whether I hang around or go back again the day after, etc., etc. And, of course, what time I get going in the morning too ;).

Photos:

1. Glass overcoat on the foils - first coat of resin. Unfortunate flash reflection in this photo, but it does allow you to see the coarse weave of the 6 ounce cloth. I've realised that the dark region in that filled WRC stave is actually a darker ring of wood that the sander cut down into





2. Another view of the newly-glassed board, minus the flash. Half a roll of toilet paper on the floor there. The board looks rather spotty - I think I should have gone over it with a microfibre cloth to remove any remaining dust before applying the resin. Too late now...unless I sand the glass off and try again - which I'm not going to do! It may, of course, be natural variation in the timber anyway. At least I remembered to put down some plastic sheeting under the board, and just as well: there was a veritable waterfall - or resinfall - at one point, as I wasn't quick enough with the squeegee





3. Extra bits added to the support jig to hold up the board while coating: simply a couple of pieces of wood clamped to the support arms





4. Close-up of the glassed-and-resined board, showing various fill-holes and plugs. Note the slight halo-effect around the plug on the RHS. It's more visible without the flash. Crease in the cloth was rather hard to remove - it's still there. The weave in the cloth is also highly visible here too






5. The foils board with fringe trimmed back. Not completely away, though, as I need a ledge to help build up the TE, which got planed down too thin in some spots





6. The other side of the board. This side looks a bit better: not damaged, for one thing. Some of the blotchiness in this photo is dust on the lens reflecting back the flash


Follow this link to see the larger versions of these snaps, and get a good close look at the faults...



It's early days yet - at least two more coats of resin to go, plus umpteen varnish coats as well, but I must say that I'm not as happy with it as I was before I put the cloth on it. It's too blotchy - part of which might be the rather old cloth that I used. Anyway, we'll see what it looks like after some more coats of stuff, followed by vigourous sanding. I know I'm sticking my neck out with that little whinge - no doubt there will be at least one comment saying that I'm being too fussy. Mea culpa: I know I'm too fussy, it's the nature o' the wee beastie ;). I trimmed off most of the excess this evening after the resin went rubbery enough to not stick to the scissors.

Wish I'd seen the waterspouts off the coast this arvo, sounded really interesting. Telly didn't show them either. Lucky for Ms Watson that she got in ahead of them! Doesn't sound as though anyone got in the way of them on their way through, which is fortunate.

And now, as they say in Monty Python, for something completely different. A bit, anyway.

It's amazing how a simple rounded edge immediately and magically transforms a rectangular piece of wood into a spar! Having got the boom sanded on four side (after planing and sanding the tapers the other day), I zipped it across the router table four times with the new CMT 0.25 " bearing-pilot round-over bit, and voilà!, one boom :). Attacking the ends with the Perma-Grit block and squaring and rounding the edges finished it off nicely. All I have to do now is tape the ends, coat with epoxy, drill and fair holes, varnish, and done. Put like that, though, it doesn't sound quite as quick, does it?

Photos:

1. One boom, one yard. Boom shaping is finished: yard has had its stations marked on two sides but that's it





2. Close-up of spar-ends. This is the clew-end of the boom





3. Another close-up of the spar-ends. The oregon has come up quite nicely. If you look closely at the yard blank, you can see various hieroglyphs noting the spar diameter at that end (unlike the boom, the yard is round in cross-section)


Follow this link through the sylvan glades with deer with pretty autumn foliage - and grizzly bears - to see more photos in my Flickr account. Hang on a mo, I appear to be in the wrong hemisphere...



But I've got the right season. There has been a literal waterfall coming though the kitchen roof all day, with much moving-about of buckets and mopping of the floor. Will have to get up on the roof when the weather dries up a bit. I avoided doing the next coat on the foils today, given the high relative humidity and low temperature. It had been getting pretty dry of late, so the rain is most welcome (just not in the kitchen ;). In between floor-mops this evening, I did manage to continue the stations around the other two sides of the yard, and mark the end centre-points for what is quite a bent piece of (scarph-jointed) timber. Spar centre-lines using two nails and some string, tomorrow. I may yet end up having to accept that the yard will have at least some bend in it (un-rigged). The boom isn't exactly straight, although it isn't quit as bad as the yard (or as the yard blank is at the moment, to be precise), and the sail will be loose-footed, anyway.

The bend in the yard blank can be avoided somewhat by reversing the tapers with respect to the ends: a check with a tight string line supports this. It's a close fit, but it will be better than having a bent or uneven spar at its current orientation (see also below). Set up the centre-line on the opposite face to the one with the marked c/l, then checked offsets. Looked OK - just! - so I will proceed from there.

Also added a strip of 6 ounce glass at one of the board tips: I had been a little over-enthusiastic removing the epoxied glass from the tips, and had also been likewise too enthusiastic in trimming too much off the piece of cloth. I discovered the error when sanding off the whiskers (actually nasty sharp spines) off the board-ends preparatory to applying the second coat of resin to the (whole) board. Grrr! Fixed now, bar the sanding. Then I'll stick the next coat of resin on some time tomorrow... For those of you who may think that I've forgotten about sealing the board ends when I cut the thing up to make two separate foils: I haven't forgotten or overlooked this - I just haven't mentioned it. I'm probably going to just soak the end-grain as much as possible with resin and build up a reasonable layer, probably without glass, and probably with a small but appreciable radius (2-ish mm or less) to reduce chipping of the edges. I still haven't decided though, and may yet use some light-weight glass (2 or 0.5 ounce cloth) on the top.

I had some fun this evening moving the opposite-face centrelines about to get the all the offsets to fit on both sides (and not run off the blank!) and be as parallel as possible with each other. Not easy, since the spar is twisted/bent in three directions, and the problem is compounded by my trimming the timber to 37.5 mm (approx) before scarphing. This latter decision has led to having little room to move the widest part of the stave about (0.25 mm approx in either direction), but switching ends has helped quite a bit, the thicker end of the spar now being at the more stable (dimension-wise) end of the spar blank. The thinner end is able to insinuate itself through the twists and turns of the less stable part of the blank much more easily. I think I've got it sorted out as well as it's going to be, but the proof of the pudding will be in the planing.

I'm tempted to use a batten to draw in the full taper lines of the spar, even though this isn't specifically mentioned in the instructions. Doing this should give me more of a safeguard in the trickier parts of the spar (with respect to the edge) where it will be far too easy to take too much off - where too much is almost nothing at all.

Only got to trimming the excess glass off the end of the foils board today, since the resin was still a wee bit too soft to sand. So I walloped into the yard with the viciously-sharpened No. 7 plane, although I've had to stop and sharpen the thing, the timber having savagely blunted the plane-blade in return. The axis of the spar as drawn ended up lying somewhat diagonally across one set of faces, which has made planing it feel a bit odd: I have had to resist the temptation to aim for making things "even", when in fact they're not. One end had heaps removed; the other not as much, even with it being the wide end. I'd got most of the opposite face done when I decided to stop and sharpen the poor blade. I really am going to have to build that sharpening stand, as I can't get right over the top of the stones and therefore don't have as much control over the sharpening as I should - even using the honing guide. Which latter item I am, incidentally, starting to not like, as it wastes a good deal of stone real estate. Another good reason to get that sharpening stand built.

Here are some photos...

1. Panel pin whacked into the proto-spar to hold the string-line in place





2. String-line positioned over the centre-mark at the end of the upper face. Ditto for the other end of the blank. The centre-marks transferred onto each station and the half-offset widths measured outward from them accordingly. Process repeated for the opposite face, and the faces on each side of the sets of marks planed down to the marks...





3. View down the blank showing the string-line in place





4. A wedge was used at each end to tension the string and straighten it up. This allowed for an accurate position for the centre-marks for each station


Follow this link around the mulberry bush and up the garden path to my Flickr account to see the stuffed toys - er, photos.



With my current lighting setup for taking photos (no decent tripod) it's very hard to get any idea of how the shaping of the spars evolves, so I haven't been taking as many photos over this part of the build.

I didn't get much further with the yard this evening, other than to finish sharpening the No. 7 blade and re-draw the station lines on the planed faces, and check the widths of the blank at those points. The spar outline will fit in position quite nicely except for one kink in an unfortunate (wide) spot that I can't do anything about. Maybe I'll end up fairing it with filler if necessary <gasp> ;). Anyway, I might get to using the spar gauge and planing the thing to an octagonal cross-section tomorrow. That will be good :).

Rather slow going today - the other two faces are proving far trickier than I was hoping, on account of the grain direction. I spent quite a biot of time rechecking the cntre positions, and used another, finer piece of string that I was able to tension up a bit more, to assist in the process. The plane blade in the No. 7 is digging in in either direction , but if I reduces the cutting depth it tends not to cut at all. When it digs in the blade tends to shift, so I've decided to call a halt, sharpen the blade and readjust the plane. I think the lever cap has loosened, as with my No. 4.

After tweaking the lever-cap screw a bit, I got the plane fixed up a bit - enough to plane off the remaining wood on the spar down to the lines. So I tried the spar gauge out on the quad-blank this evening, and even planed about half of one corner down to the lines with the block plane to start work on the octagonal stage. I decided to used the block plane since the grain was changing direction every foot or so in spots, and the block plane, being small, is handier to use in such a situation (and much less tiring than, e.g., the No. 4). While out this arvo I got a nice long 80-grit sanding belt to make a real mess of the spar in its penultimate (rounding) stage.

Some photos:

1. Long view of the lug yard, still in its square state, but planed to general shape. The No. 7 plane can be seen up the other end of the bench





2. Spar gauge: I made more of a mess using this than I was expecting: should have clamped the spar onto the bench to do the scribing





3. Yard after attacking it with the spar gauge. I say attacking because that's what it felt like, and what the end result look like. As long as my planing results in straight lines, it won't matter as the resultant apices will be removed (planed off) in due course. I marked the lines in with an oft-sharpened HB pencil to make them more visible when planing. The lines are rather hard to see in this photo, but they are there...





4. Yard clamped up in the Triton SuperJaws on the diagonal, ready for planing. Some heavy duty cardboard was placed between the vice and the wood, to prevent any oil on the jaw faces from getting near the timber





5. Closer-up view of the yard in the vice. The orange thing with the black tail under the boat is the circular saw in the Triton chassis, having a little change of scenery while the router remains installed in the table (it still has some things to do before I swap them back). The block plane can be seen at the top of the photo, sitting on the SuperJaws





6. Close-up of thinner end of spar after removing a bit of one of the corners. Still a bit to go yet on this one: then three more corners after that...





7. 100 mm wide sanding belt, in comparison with the No. 7 plane (sole is 75 mm wide). You might wonder wwhy the drill press in the backgorund isn't covered up agaisnt dust. It's going in the scrap bin as soon as I've got around to removing the motor. It's another blot on Ryobi's deteroriating (in my opinion) reputation


Follow this link to see all these photos and more in my Flickr account...no free lollies today, either...



I also sanded off the excess glass on the foils board tip this evening, but didn't do any more resin-coating. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Maybe...

Three of the four triangles have been partially planed down, with one more to go.

Why partially? Ha-ha, Mr Loopy strikes again. When making up the spar gauge, I mis-read the figure in the marking pin column as 6.3 mm instead of 8.3 mm (this was before I got my new glasses prescription made up). This translated into the marking pins being 12-odd mm apart instead of 16.6 mm apart... so the planing marks are too narrow, and the resultant amount shaved off the "point" of the triangle is too much. I caught this when keeping an eye (fortunately) on the relative widths of the surfaces. I may have gone too far down in a couple of spots as a result of over-enthusiastic planing with the No.7, but I'm hoping that by the time I've got all four peaks levelled and all faces as equal as possible, that it won't be as bad as it looks.

So I am now doing the thing by eye, using the marked lines for parallelism, and judging the octagonal by equality of faces. As I've been stopping up a bit for safety, I'll go back around the spar bit by bit once the fourth peak has been planed down. I would have redone the spar gauge, but as one corner had already been removed, I'd lost a reference edge for the guide pins.

With grain-switching I've been swapping between the using block plane in the left hand - because it's light and I can control it sufficiently one-handed - and for grain running up in the other direction (a short region) I've been using the No.4 and No. 7. The timber being planed by the left hand is, happily, much easier to work :).

Well, After a moderately frenzied period of activity over the last 24 hours or so, I've got the yard down to almost-finished state, bar final sanding, etc.

Here are twelve snaps taken over that period:

1. "Tear-drop" shape: one more corner to remove; this is the peak-end of the yard





2. Full octagon cross-section: and lots of shavings everywhere. Now for the hexadecagonal (16-sided ;) shape





3. Close-up of the yard's peak-end octagonal cross-section. Nice high-contrast image :). Note the upper RHS face - this is the one where I went too far with the plane...see below for the consequences





4. Octagonal yard blank set up for further planing. Each of the eight vertices gets shaved down a bit. so that we end up with 16 equal sides. In theory, at any rate...





5. Throat end of yard, after rounding with the sanding belt. Well, except for the rather obvious flat on the side closest to the camera. This is the result of having gone to far with e plane, chasing the (incorrect) spar gauge marks as scribed before realising and tracking down the error...





6. Method of clamping the spar to the bench. This worked reasonably well to prevent the spar from skating about too much under load. I did a bit less than a metre at a time. You can see the division between the sanded and unsanded spar on the RHS of the photo





7. Close-up of rounded and 16-sided portions. Dust everywhere. Again...





8. The rather tattered belt having a bit of a rest while chaging the position of the spar. Un-sanded wood to the left





9. Close-up of sanded/unsanded "interface". Note the prominent flat closest to the camera. I managed to get most of it faired back using the belt, although the cross-section is mostly now ovoid, not circular as it should be





10. Long view of yard after the rounding process





11. Part of the rounded spar at the scarph join between to quite different pieces of wood. The glue-line there appears particularly thick





12. Another view of the rounded spar. The other scarph joint is visible: again, rather thick glue, but at least there are no - visible - voids in either joint!


Follow the link past the fairies at the bottom of the garden (they're Torchwood fairies, so watch out for their teeth!) to my Flickr account to see these photos and others; you can even look at them in larger sizes to convince yourself that some of my assertions made in the captions are true...



Right, well, what next? Coating the foils board with more resin, I think - once the dust has settled out of the air from the spar-rounding. After that? Sanding down the hull (again), after the resin has fully set, of course.

Today, after the offspring's Auskick game, he and I dropped in on Alex who sowed us Wood Duck in the flesh. There is no doubt that he has done a great job so far and this will be a top rate Duck once it is finished (love all those fillets!).

Thanks for letting us look at Wood Duck, Alex and I hope the drool marks will come out of the pieces we looked at!

My pleasure, Jeremy :). It was great having you both over (and your visit forced me to do some tidying up ;).

I'm glad that you enjoyed it, although my apologies that the Dreadful Dog was at his Most Dreadful for the occasion. [Dreadful Dog. No pie for you tonight. Unless we put you in one ;).] He was being friendly, and I hope that the offspring wasn't traumatised by his attentions! I've just got back upstairs from wielding the bucket and mop to clean up all the drool plane and sanding belt to finish off the smoothing of the spar from octagon to hexadecagon (I looked it up ;) to round (or more-or-less round). See previous post of mine for pictures (eventually).

Perhaps I should change the name of the boat from Wood Duck to Fillet-o'-Duck or just plain Filleted Duck ;).

Originally Posted by jmk89

Today, after the offspring's Auskick game, he and I dropped in on Alex who sowed us Wood Duck in the flesh. There is no doubt that he has done a great job so far and this will be a top rate Duck once it is finished (love all those fillets!).

Thanks for letting us look at Wood Duck, Alex and I hope the drool marks will come out of the pieces we looked at!

You mean it's a real boat? We all thought he was making this up

Richard

that spar looks nice

Originally Posted by Daddles

You mean it's a real boat? We all thought he was making this up

Richard

that spar looks nice

Er, why thank you . I've since been attacking it with increasingly finer grades of sand-paper, then back down to the Perma-Grit block to put a small radius on each end, and back up the grades on the ends. Some totally self-indulgent snaps below...

Cheers,
Alex.

1. Peak end of yard, rounded. There's a few deep scratches at the end here, probably from the 120-grit paper used in rounding off the Perma-Grit-ed shape





2. Another view of rounded peak end of yard





3. Throat-end of yard, rounded





4. Throat-end of yard, another view of grain. This spar will look very nice once the worst of the deep scratches have been dealt with, and it has been resin-coated and varnished


Follow this link to my Flickr account to view all these snaps and more. But no free ice-cream (or anything else except photos, for that matter ).



The foils will get a meths-swab this evening, and I'll start the weave-filling resin coats tomorrow.

Slow day today. Once coat of resin on the foils board so far, and nothing else, since anything else is going to require the creation of vast clouds of dust. Not a very good idea when putting out resin without suitable exclusion tents.

Five snaps:

1. Foils ready for more resin. Look at that clean and tidy floor! Amazing! I put this photo in for the specific purpose of demonstrating that I can create a reasonably tidy environment (thanks to Jeremy's visit ;) and actually work in it. Won't last long, though...





2. Drop sheets under the work area. Just in case people think I'm a complete slob. The support blocks (with Glad Wrap covering) on opposite sides of the board enabled me to swing the board over and coat both faces without moving clamps. The board was stiff enough to only require one support without twisting





3. Resin coat added to both sides of foils board. Photo taken without flash in an attempt to show up the weave. 1/8 sec., so if it appears to be a bit on the shaky side, that's why... Note the cling-film under the supported board corner





4. Second fill-coat on foils. If I end up putting another coat on, it will be a scant one. As you can see, there are some areas that won't need another coat at all - the complete opposite, in fact ;)





5. Attempt to show fish-eye at this end of board: it's in the middle of the photo vertically and in the bottom half. The fish-eye - at least on this side - is restricted to this end of the board, so I must have handled this end too much. That suggests that the other side (at this end) will be similarly spotty (where it hasn't globbed, that is)


Follow this link to my Flickr account, which I have to keep referring to all the time so that Flickr doesn't get in a snit and sue me for showing my own photos from an account for which I pay money to them...



There may be another couple of resin coats to go on the board by the looks of the weave (see photo 3 above). It's starting to look a bit cloudy already, so I'm hoping that one more will do it. I might be lucky, fingers X-ed. Didn't get to the sail this arvo after all - put the second fill coat on the foils instead (see above).

I did in fact put a third fill-coat on the foils last night, so that part of the foils construction is now complete. One side had a lot of fish-eye, the other none at all, and this is directly attributable to a problem that I had with the hardener bottle. I am running out of hardener much faster than resin - which in itself suggests that I am over-counting the number of resin pumps - and would explain previous fish-eye problems that I've had. As a result of the lack of hardener, the pump stopped sucking it up, and as a result of it failed to deliver the correct dose, with me ending up attempting to estimate how much hardener had gone in. I obviously got it way wrong for that batch (I mixed separated batches per board size all the way through) - for the second batch I titled the bottle backwards so the the (rearwards-pointing) uptake tube was well below the surface of the hardener pool. The second batch cured fine with, as I have inferred, no fish-eye.

Time to order another resin kit!

I'll let the board cure for a day or so and get on with some work on the rudder-box and tiller that needs doing.

Alex - your job looks really good !!!

I will second that!

Michael