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.

Rudder sleeve assembly completed (more or less)

First, I cut the sleeve to accept the shaft to connect to the rudder mount.  Not having the S.S. shaft yet I used a wood dowel to verify the fit.   The big question here was how far to cut into the sleeve.  The deeper you cut into the sleeve the wider the angle the sleeve can rotate before there is a hard stop to the gudgeon.  The picture below shows the angle I can achieve.  It is not a full 90 degrees,  but it's getting close.  My understanding is that the tiller will hard stop in the cockpit before this angle is achieved.  

I also finished the  tiller stub, which went together fairly straight forward, and glued on the sleeve.   Straight enough I hope.

Here is my access hole, through the tiller stub, to get the shaft in and out.  

The tiller stub is my first carbon tube, and I am thinking about molding the tiller itself with carbon when I have the hull and traveller completed.  You can also see that I sealed the exposed foam at the end of the tube with a piece of carbon cloth.

Here is the complete steering system for an F22.  The sleeve and rudder combined weigh about 7 lbs.  Not all that much when you think about it, but isn't it funny that we go to all this trouble to reduce weight and then stick a heavy outboard at the end of the boat.   Anyway, you can also see that I have not yet finished the plastic end strip yet.  I'm think about using the option for 3/8" nylon hardware to keep the plastic strip in place.   

Final laminations on the rudder case

Just a quick post to show the final laminations on the rudder case.  In preparation I smoothed everything out with the lighter weight QuickFair putty.

And then in one session I added the remaining layers of carbon fiber cloth and uni-directional.  I can see why people love to work with carbon fiber  The resulting patterns from the weave are most attractive.  One other comment.  You have to be careful cutting the cloth to size with the loose weave of the carbon cloth.  It will fall apart.  Orientation of the fibers at 45 degrees is also interesting as the cloth will stretch like an accordian in the most extreme way.

As it stands currently it weighs 1.8 lbs.  

Now I have to think about attaching the stub for the tiller extension.  The foam is rough cut to size but I have to shape it to the profile of the sleeve itself. Then more wrapping in carbon fiber.

Pivot tube mounted on the rudder sleeve

Getting the pivot tube attached to the rudder sleeve requires that a spacer plate be carefully cut and joined to the tube and the case.    I found myself using some of the trimmed off material (layers of s-glass) from the wingnet rail.   The pieces cut away on the wingnet rail for lightening purposes were just the right length for this spacer plate.  I glued two pieces together to get the correct thickness.

I just used a high density putty (cabosil and resin) and the best judgement of my  eyes to glue the spacer plate normal and parallel to the fiberglass tube.

In a similar fashion I glued the pivot tube to the rudder sleeve case.  I did not need any special clamping to keep the tube in place while it was curing.  Again I trusted my eye to get the part aligned.

The plans call for some extra carbon fiber to strengthen the tube at the top.

Then in the areas where the tube will be cut away to fit the rudder gudgeons a very high density putty (cabosil, resin and chopped up s-glass cloth) was used to build up the gap.  The middle area will be filled with a low density fairing putty and then the assembly will be ready for the final layers of carbon fiber.

Rudder sleeve out of the mold

The plans actually call for the use of sheet wax wrapped around the rudder blade to build up the nesessary room for the frontrunner fabric (a durable marine fabric) that will line the case.  Like the daggerboard,  the rudder on the F22 design is just pulled up and down in the case. No pivoting, which I know some builders would prefer.  I like the simplicity of this design however. The open transom design should give me good access to pulling the rudder up when needed.

Anyway,  I could have purchased the sheet wax from Composites Canada who sell sheets at a .010" thickness.  This is the proper way to do it but it would have required building up quite a few layers of wax, so taking once again the lead from Menno, I decided to try using the fabric itself wrapped in plastic.  This fabric was kindly supplied by Jay in Seattle at a fair price and I have no idea where to source it in my locale. 

Two 2x4's cut with the profile of the rudder blade provide for the mold edge for the upper and lower flanges.  The picture shows the everthing more or less in position.  The fabric was taped in place and compressed to what I hope is the correct amount.  After this I used lots more plastic tape and some dollar store plasticine (horrible stuff made in China),  then finally a number of layers of a mold release wax.  

Here is the first layer of laminate applied.  I let the first layer cure before adding the others.  I'm not sure if this was necessary.

When all the carbon fiber was applied and cured I knocked off the 2x4's from each end.  Then I removed the plastic strip from the trailing edge and was able to break the part from the mold by prying up from that open trailing edge.  It came off no problem.  I did make some initial trimming when the part was still green  and I still have some trimming to do,  but I am off to the next step of adding the pivot tube to the sleeve.