Interest in the carbon fiber mast

I thought I'd be leaving the poll up for awhile before acting, but with the interest growing in the carbon mast -'me thinks'- I need to create the RFQ emails and send the mast assembly drawing out to Forte and U-Spar

I'm still spending 12 hours at work every day, so if someone else is eager to contact Forte for price and delivery information for a group purchase, please let me know. On the other hand, more requests from more people might get more attention.

Jim Buckland who is building in Australia has reported that the mast can ship in two pieces from Forte . See comments in the "More details on the Forte carbon fiber mast" blog entry. Very interesting.

Update:
Just read my email
Ed Walker is already in communication with Forte and reports an estimated cost of $6383 with all the goodies except the mast step. Shipping costs is not an issue for Ed with Forte.
Roger Bonnot is also in communication with Forte and has reported the same price without shipping and mast step.

It's all good, although I'm not sure how to share the information in my fellow builders emails to me. It would help if the blog comments were more actively used. I know they are awkward in blogger and I hate the comments 'rigor mortise' more than anyone. But, does anyone have any ideas how to more effectively share information on questions like this? Use the public Farrier forum? - ... yuk!

I like the way we are starting to organize independently.

One thing for sure, all this bodes well for a healthy evolving F22 community.

Carbon fiber mast poll

I'm still sanding and filling the deck, bow and stern areas on both of the floats. I'm also noticing that the light filler is taking longer to cure with the lower temperatures. But I am getting close and soon I should have another picture or two to publish.

In the meantime I have added a poll in the right side column. I am willing to search out the best supplier and organize a group purchase for the F22R carbon fiber mast assembly. Is there interest? Certainly there should be a discount for quantity and I am prepared to purchase the mast sooner than I need it if the price and quality is right.

Feast or Famine

Well, I've seen other F22 bloggers lament the time spent on their day job. Guess it is my turn. Hard to get work done on the boat when you're spending 12 hrs a day away from the house. It always seems to be this way, feast or famine, for a small engineering automation company. Tomorrow I get to say hello to the floats and finish off the bow cap shapes and gunwale sanding.
Hooray!

More details on the Forte carbon fiber mast

Here is the wing mast section identified on the Forte site for Ian Farrier designs up to 31' in length, and good up to a mast height of 40'. It is ~1.3lbs/ft and is listed at $92USD per foot. Another $8/ft for sail track.

I'm not sure yet if $3500 is a good value for a carbon mast. It's still early in my investigation. Any comments from anyone?

The builders of another boat design, the resurrection of Gary Mull's 'Pocket Rocket', the Rocket 22 has offered a testimonial for Forte spars. This is a good recommendation for their product.

Gunwale radii

I'm not sure if the idea originated with Jay or Henny's build sites but I have found the sand board made from a section of tubing to work very well indeed. I can't remember where I first saw it used. I showed the tool to Monica and she thinks that the originator is very clever. I agree. It allows me to mindlessly sand away without fear of screwing up a 1.5" radius on the gunwale.

First I used the sander to put a chamfer on the edge. I scribed a line on the deck ~ 18 mm in from the edge to use as a guide to make this a uniform chamfer. Once this hard work is done with the power tool, it doesn't take too much to manually sand in the final radius. I admit that I am finding areas on the gunwale where there are voids in visible surface of the join that will have to be filled.

I'm about 3/4's done and then I have to finish off the bow cap shape. That all done I can think about laminating the deck. I would like to keep a promise to myself and start the vacuum bagging again for the highest quality on the outside laminations.

This will require a greater effort in preparation and a purchase of more bagging materials.

Interesting links for mast and hot wire cutting

Where to source my wing section carbon fiber mast?
Now that I have the mast plan I've taken some time to source suppliers for this carbon fiber wing section mast.
I've found a local supplier here in Ontario.
U-Spar (Canada ltd)
And a larger enterprise in the U.S.
Forte Carbon Fiber Products
Tor has indicated where he is sourcing this spar. How about the builders in North America? Any other options? Comments and emails always welcome.

I'm also planning my winter projects
1) Finish the dagger board case
2) Make the rudder and dagger board
Will I hot wire the sections?
Here is a link to the equipment at Aerospace composite products

Port side float deck glued on

Another long day at work, but this evening after voting in our provincial election, I decided to make the effort to glue the port side float deck on. It is also cooler today, maybe only 12 degrees celcius tonight. I'll be leaving the straps on overnight this time.

I have noticed with a great deal of pleasure how much stiffer the whole starboard side hull is, now that the deck is in place.

I'm already thinking about getting the radius on the gunwales and getting the outer decks laminated. I have some 3" diameter ABS pipe and I will try to make a sanding board with curvature at a 1.5" radius.

Float decks all fitted - bonding begins

It took a little time to get these deck 'noodles' ready for gluing. They certainly handle like noodles. In the long dimension these structures have hardly any stiffness at all. You can see that I did make the correction and added the high density foam where indicated for the beam side bolts. In the above picture the decks are sunning themselves outside to get some extra heat into their resin..

As a final step in preparation for gluing I gave an extra coat of epoxy resin in the float interiors, especially along the keel and in the central storage areas.

Having the floats side by side gives me the opportunity to visually check their similarity. Here I am using a long level to compare the straightness of the two floats.


Convinced that everything is good enough I started mixing up the epoxy with cabosil and micro-balloons.
I was a little worried that I would run out of time doing this. It's Thanksgiving Monday here and it is a hot 30 degrees celcius. The epoxy will harden pretty darn quick even with the slow cure hardener. Another bad thought, my family had left me alone to this work this afternoon, leaving me to ponder how to get the deck 'noodle' on without making a terrible mess. It worked out somehow, phew!, and the deck slipped into place over the dowels and the side stay chain plate.


It looks like eight straps are just barely enough to get a uniform clamping force along the full float length.

Late in the day update:



The straps are off and everything looks fine. We did a quick weigh with two people, two bathroom scales and it looks like the float now weighs around 75 lbs. I still have hope that my choice of the fine weave areospace fiberglass cloth will pay off with light hulls.

F-22R cuddy cabin with cowling

Ian Farrier sent out a major release of 21 new drawings yesterday. Just in time for our Canadian thanksgiving long weekend. I now have lots of winter work (work in the basement, as if I did not have enough).

• The long dagger board rudder drawings are now here.
  
• A very good design for a flush access hatch is even included.
• Most interesting are the sail plans for the two versions of F-22. The standard and racing rig plans are now here.
  

I'm sure that every builder finishing the floats is asking themselves which version of the main hull am I going to build? The F-22R rig with the 5 foot taller carbon fiber mast looks really, well really right.

It has made me consider building the simpler, faster small cuddy cabin version. I'll wait to see how heavy my floats end up.

I have added the small line drawing profile of the F-22R with the cuddy cabin and tall rig as it now seems to be my favorite.