With my sympathetic ear on the phone, dad has spent some time looking for leaks in the part – and has managed to get things sealed enough to pull 10″hg – but still not enough to risk infusing. I’m sure part of the problem is still coming from where we are sealing against the DBM, as nothing wanted to stick to it even after tons of sanding. As much as I like the process, at this point I’m going to give it another hour looking for leaks with some smoke before I pull off the bag and do a hand lay-up of it and call it a day — don’t want to waste too much time on this part.

Spent today getting the second float half ready for resin. Started out by laying the main laminate in place Then I trimmed the excess away and use it to create extra layers of laminate where specified The peel-ply was then put in place and the RDM placed on top – I had some large scraps that were cut off the roll when infusing bulkheads, so I used this up as well

Spent today prepping the second float half for laminating. A rundown of what happened : Yesterday dad cut the foam away from the keel batten, cut the foam against the deck flange, and faired the inside of the hull half – said it took him about 1.5-2 hours. This meant today while he faired the last few bog joints, I taped the deck mold wood (much better this time, I might add!

I was at least hoping to have the inside of this float half sanded today, but it’s going to have to wait until tomorrow. ~60*F ambient temperatures mean a longer cure for the bog and it was still tacky as of a few hours ago. On the bright side, the remaining foam is planked and bogged: And the cut the remaining foam needed to form the bow stringers all remaining float halves, the blocking that goes at the deck-flange and the float deck stiffeners:

Have had the past few days away from the project to ponder how this half will happen. Originally I wanted to infuse as much as possible. The first half we ended up doing a hand-layup on – partially because I didn’t give thought to how to get an airtight seal at the deck area, and then by the time I might have thought of a way, it was just there and ready for laminate, begging to do it that night… so I did.

Have received a few questions regarding this project and I figured I’d take a minute to put them up here in the hopes that it might assist someone else. First is how big the building space is : As you might be able to tell from the pictures, we’re building diagonally across a 2-car garage. The garage measures approximately 20′ wide by 19′ deep. Not all this space is usable, however – it was a garage first and foremost.

Had a lot of positive feelings from yesterday. It’s nice to look up at the ceiling and see the first of four float halves completed. We started on the second float half today. Dad spent most of the afternoon cleaning and starting to plank the second half While I infused the middle bulkhead and the forward beam bulkhead Put a pretty good dent in things and left it here for this evening

Today was an unexpected milestone (I actually was planning on this happening next week, so to have everything in place and dry enough for today was a treat). Before we could tape in the remaining bulkheads, the transom had to be realigned. Apparently when planking down the foam, a two strips were not fully contacting the batten closest to the keel and the bulkhead was way off. Cut away some of the glass where it gets removed anyway and screwed into the battens.

Was able to do a few more tasks on the first float half today. Spent some time cleaning up the edges from last night’s big lamination job. Went back and added 3″ of fabric on the deck-flange joint and then went to work finishing up the foam for the stringer. Once we got the shape and dimensions of the stringer right, I bedded it down with thickened epoxy. Placed the uni-directional fabric on it, wet out, then added the BD fabric over it, wet out.

Wow. I didn’t expect to do this until tomorrow, but I was able to bribe Teresa with some Starbucks and she was the second set of hands to laminate the float half this evening. Put down an entire layer of fabric, then added extra reinforcements at the beam bulkheads before we started to spread the goo out. Before: After: Didn’t take pictures, but I also laminated the bow bulkheads and glued together a long strip of 3/4″ foam for the stringer which I’ll finish up tomorrow.