I have glued on some Huon Pine strips on around the deck edge, but now I have had to stop. Where do I go from here?? My choices are:
Put a transom on. One problem I have is that I have not quite decided on what kind of deck I am going to have. Suggestions anyone??
Build the deck. Should it be curved and moulded like the hull, or seeing this is the first one sould I build out of balsa/fg composite?
Build the keel/rudders. I don’t have the money to get carbon, so hopefully a few layers of fibreglass will be rigid enough.
I am planning on using an RMG smart winch, does anyone have dimensions for one?? I have to umpire a few games of Aussie Rules footy before I have some cash to buy one.
The hull will be painted when its finished. I have a mate who is a car smash repairer, so he has some crazy ideas for the paint. It should look pretty cool!!
Well I have decided to detour from Claudio’s build a bit. I have decided that I will build a deck ouot of 5mm x 5mm huon pine. Its light, strong, and easy to sand and cut. Dad has 50 tonnes of it reclaimed from a 100 year old shipwreck!! Its an amazing wood!
I have started to mock up the deck, and I will glue it all together with epoxy and cover the deck with patches to save weight. Also, I glued the atatchments onto the fin and rudder. I have made them out of plywood just because its my first boat, and it will be easy to upgrade later.
Here are some photos of the fin and rudder, as well as my mock up for the deck.
Well I have changed my mind again. I see the new trend in ocean racers is a flush deck. So I have installed two beams of huon pine where the forestay will be mounted and two where the mast will be stepped. This alone has really added to the rigidity of the hull. Next I made a keelbox from some 1mm ply and some huon pine. I glued it all together then put FG over it using Claudio’s foam press method. It worked a treat!
The keelbox was installed using an epoxy/ West System filleting powder. This looks much like microballoons but it has ‘hairs’ of FG through it. These hars are very short (1-3mm) but as there are so many of them it is much more strong and rigid than microballoons. I then put some stiffening components (huon pine) in to tie the whole structure in together. It seems very stiff and strong!
I have also made a transom from 2.5mm balsa. I have dry-fit it in place for now but I will put 1 layer of 200gm FG on the outside and a layer of epoxy on the inside soon.
Next I will put some deck beams in (balsa) and then construct the deck from 2 x 200gm layers of FG with no core. All it has to do is keep the water out and it doesn’t matter if it ‘oil cans’ a bit.
Weight at present is 360gm - that leaves me 80gm for the deck. Should be OK (fingers crossed I might be a little under!!)
