I made a decision today regarding the float half. Not going to infuse it. Plain and simple. There is the area around the deck flange which I think could still be made ok for a seal and such, but between the catastrophe with the Gorilla Glue and needing to clean out that entire area and bog; nervousness of actually doing a part this big right now; and just wanting to get it done and keep making progress, it seemed like a no-brainer after weighing the pros and cons of it all.

Finished planking the foam today. Was surprised that even with Wurstfest band commitments, dad was able to spend some time planking during the week. I only had 3 pieces to cut and place today. The next thing I did after that was to go around and circle anything that looked like it might have a hole or need some bog placed when I got ready to glue the foam together. I have decided that I loathe Gorilla Glue for joining foam pieces together.

I’m not sure if I’m really looking forward to how much this torture device will get used during the build… 🙂

Received an update from Ian today regarding the plans. He sent out a materials list which, at first glance, doesn’t seem too far off from what we have. Might need more fiberglass further during the project, but that’s going to depend on too many factors to tell right now. Will most likely need a little more resin as well, but hopefully not too much.

I just realized that I didn’t take a single picture of the completed center bulkhead that we unwrapped today from yesterday’s infusion. Regardless, that is complete and I infused the forward beam bulkhead today. Majority of the time was spent with the first foam plank for the hull – as this is something we’d never done before and it took some trial and error to figure it all out. First we tried a piece that ended up being too wide for us to get a shape to hold

I went into today with two goals. I wanted to cut materials and infuse a second bulkhead and I wanted us to have the battens in place on the frames so we could start planking foam tomorrow. Second infusion went much smoother this time. I read Steve’s CD and learned a lot from it on some simple mistakes I made the first time that made a world of difference. Sadly, there was a casualty today.

Have been having trouble cutting the fiberglass cloth off the roll and into shape. We bought new scissors but they kept having the same problem. When I would cut the fabric, the stiches that hold the actual fiberglass strands into their pattern would walk ahead of the scissor blades and cause the cloth to get out of alignment and have horrible runs. Teresa beat me until I took her advise of getting some extremely sharp 8″ dress-maker’s scissors from the local fabric shop.

Today wasn’t quite as productive as I wanted it to be. To start with, yesterday the motor on the radial arm saw burned out so we couldn’t use it to rip the 1×12’s into 1×1’s for battens (looked EVERYWHERE and no one carried 1×1’s. 1×2’s just seemed too stiff). Drove to a friend’s house to use his table saw to rip the lumber (Thanks Fred!). In return I fixed some computer network issues they were having at the house.

Took a few minutes to perform some destructive testing on the first bulkhead that was infused. Wanted to make sure the bond between the glass and foam was good and also nervous about a boat built of nothing but foam and fiberglass.. 🙂 First test I have no pictures of – it involved a strip of laminate about 7″ long and maybe 1″ wide at best. Braced it between two low shelves and put some weight on it with my foot.

Traced the remainder of the float bulkheads today. Also cut out all the carbon UD for the chainplates. Not very happy about the 45-45 glass I have tacked to the top of it right now and will make a better piece before laminating (and after buying some better scissors). Cut out and worked on the first bulkhead infused last week. Turned out pretty good I think. Need to finish digging out foam in the hole and back-fill with bog.