Anchor well and cuddy cabin cowling laminated

The cowling for the cuddy cabin and the anchor well are now laminated, and I cannot really do any more work on these parts until later when there is a hull to fit them to.  It did give me a chance to use up some of the remaining carbon fiber cutoffs to laminate the inside surface of the parts.  I wanted to see what an e-glass - foam - carbon structure would look like in terms of stiffness, lightness etc.  

Later on I will have to purchase more material for the inside hull surfaces and the thought had occurred to me to use the 6oz weight carbon fiber cloth.  There might be an advantage to using the carbon fiber on the inside for stiffness and the e-glass on the outside for abrasion resistance.  The candidates for the inside surface are carbon and s-glass (as in my floats).  No doubt when I price out the cloths, the small weight benefit with the 6oz carbon over the 9oz s-glass, may well be overwhelmed by the price difference.

Outside of the cowling laminated with 2 layers of the 8.9oz e-glass finely woven aerospace cloth.  It will still need a small amount of fairing.

Inside surface covered with a number of scrap cut-off pieces of carbon fiber left over from the rudder parts.
The anchor well laminated with e-glass on the wear surface for good abrasion resistance.  Carbon fiber on the inside.  The part did seperate about an inch from the mold dimension when it was removed.  I'm assuming I will be able to clamp it somehow into the correct position.  The part still needs final trimming.

Cuddy cabin cowling and anchor well

People who know me well are not surprised that I have decided to build the cuddy cabin main hull.  It's faster, cheaper and very fashionable with the large cockpit and ultra modern racing rig.  What finally closed the deal for me was the wonderful pictures of Loyd Crisp's (and his family) 'Stick Shift' in action.  Then,  as a testiment to the fact that you cannot make a good designer a manufacturing engineer for long (for the production F22),  there was the release of Ian Farrier's concept for the F32SR, which looks to me very much like a stretch F22.  

So, as I am  committed to getting this project completed before someone can build a F32SR, I moved forward this week by starting the cabin cowling and the anchor well parts for the main hull.  I do believe that after these are finished, I just have to review, inspect and finish the remaining flat panels.  Then, the next step is to cut the form frames for the main hull.

Above are the form frames for the blister cowling.  No battens to be used here.  But you say, 'what is a blister cowling?'  It's a removable shield that is placed over the cuddy cabin main hatch, so that spray and rain does not enter the cabin, as well as offer a bit more headroom.  I simply have to panel this shape with foam and fiberglass it.  No problem, eh!  

Above is the form frame for the anchor well.  This one looks fairly straight forward, although the one bend looks like I will have to use a heat gun for the first time.  

The above two pictures show my attempt at planking the cowling.  I took the designers advice to keep some of the strips to 25mm in width.  This is not for bending along the longitudinal axis but rather so the strip can flex transversely. Wider strips will not allow this.

I now plan to use my polyurethane construction glue to bond the strips together.  I'm hoping that the glue will drip through, lock to the frames below and allow me to remove all the screws for fairing and laminating.  This will be a matter for next weeks post.

Slots in the bow web - another part waiting for a main hull.

This week I finished cutting the slots in the bow web that I first laminated a long time ago now. There is a project management saying that there are 3 descriptors for a project,  'fast, cheap and good'.  You can take any two.  It certainly looks like my methodology is following the priorities of cheapness and quality.  At least I certainly hope I am holding to some quality.   I'm certainly not fast.  In terms of materials I do not mind paying a little extra for quality but these costs come along infrequent enough that they are not noticable.

Anyway,  I found another use for the cut out scrap from the wingnet rail, washers for the chainplate slots.

I made sure that the width of the slots took into account Ian's comments on a builders update. The slot for the Precourt deadeye (optional dedicated forestay) and the two slots for furling systems (jib and genoa) will easily accomodate a Furling system that will accomodate a clevis pin.  It looks like Precourt Systems have developed an appropriate unit and I will definitely be using sails and rigging to support roller furling.  No more hanking sails on and off.   But,  I do need to learn more about endless line furling and sails that can eliminate the need  for a dedicated forestay.  I found  some very interesting pictures at Sigi Stiemer's F33 site.  I had never thought or heard about using a double mainsheet system to replace the traveller, thats very interesting.  Would it be possible to put a self tacking jib system on the F22?   Interesting questions.  Anyway, here is the finished bow web.

Everything was done by the books, all the exposed foam was dug out a bit and  sealed with high density putty and covered with a layer of lightweight fiberglass cloth.   The G10 tube was also glued into the part for the bow pole pin.  The whole part weighs about 1.4lbs.