Friday, November 03, 2006

First float lamination - Late September 2006



First port side float half with the laminate laid out dry and ready for the epoxy resin.

I started out with the idea to make a light but strong boat and the choice in materials seemed to me to be a very important matter. So, I researched the matter, as is my habit, in a fairly thorough manner. I also had a long series of conversations with my local supplier, before I actually bought supplies. I ended up choosing an s-glass woven cloth from BGF. It is 8.9 oz and satisfies Ian Farriers specification for the 'B-side' specification for a F-22R version of the trimaran. That's R for racing (and R for Raven) and a little more on the edge. Ian Farrier has recently estimated a theoretical (best case) target weight of ~112 lbs for a complete float without the paint. I'll be curious to see how I do.

I did consider resin infusion techniques to optimize the epoxy to cloth weight ratio's, but in the end I have decided that the 'one-off' techniques used in the Farrier 22 plans do not favour this process. My current goal is to explore vacuum bagging the laminations on the hulls exteriors.



First float lamination complete

I have chosen to use a quality aerospace epoxy manufactured by
PTM&W Industries called Aeropoxy with a 2 hour working time hardener. For this job I enlisted M's help and we learned a lot about getting the cloth whetted out and free of air bubbles. You can see the foam stringer in the bow area that is ready for final positioning and laminating into place.

More soon about vacuum bagging the bulkheads.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even tough we tried to use the minimum amount of epoxy resin, next time I will use peel ply everywhere on the big inside float lamination. It really does help to soak up some of the extra resin. On the outside after the float halfs are joined I plan to vacuum bag.

Anonymous said...

Yes peel ply is a very good way to go. It can as you said help soak up some of the excess resin. I've seen your vacuum bagging results and I must say that you have really done very well. Great job, and keep up the excellent work.