efficient 10m displacement powercat (build thread)

Oh boy, fairing this rear bunk area is going to be diabolical...



If anyone has any tips for making this less painless - let me know.

Heres a little more of whats been happening lately;





I have all the cutouts for these cupboards and will be using them as hinged doors...

 

Groper,
if you want painless in the bunk space......... monkey fur & timber cappings, get really good ventilation.

Jeff.

 

How dare you mention such blasphemous ideas Jeff

I seriously am looking for tips on fairing this especially the coves... do you bog the coves last after you got the tapes feathered and sanded or...?

 

You just need a system, use something that sands easy like microlight, do the flats & apply neatly, smooth & fair these & do the coves last so they follow the fair surfaces they join, the 3 way/triple corners are a joy, & don't get too fussy, switch to easy sand auto filler primer & detail any thing little left over with some CAMS filler, choose your colour & use a gloss reducer. & did I say don't get too fussy, people go nutty over finish when they start "chasing rainbows" the impossible super fair ultimate gloss................ if some one picks on the job..... tell them to ++++ *** & find some one else to bother.
If you want to be fussy, alter the fillets to represent the same "leg length" for various angles of intersection.. smaller for acute & bigger for obtuse, you can mask up for your fillets & at the start of sanding so the adjoining area doesn't "halo", & of course make some foam sanding blocks to match.
& did I say don't get too precious or fussy, the next owner will probably glue monkey fur into the space & fit some timber trim
& by the way I'm crap at that stuuf cos it aint fun!
Jeff.

 

Mate im definately not chasing rainbows... it will be painted in a satin paint throughout the interior - not a gloss. Just these damn 3 way coves are such a ***** to get looking nice... everytime i put some filletting mix in there, theres always a blob of resin somewhere, and you cant get a decent sander in there to knock em down!

 

random thought

I'm too lazy to start my own thread, I got back into my shed after a lot of distractions, some of which left me with around 10 weeks of leave, started waxing my mold & laid out the tunnel to hull intersection, my eldest gave a hand, he's starting uni just up the road so might do some sleepovers there after late tutorials.
Planning to take the leave in blocks over the next 12 months(plus I'll have another 4 weeks by then) to get a kick along, has taken & will take too long to get my own cat again. There's a pic of the state of play yesterday.

That reminds me, it costs some weight but sometimes you can mold off your shiney & smooth outside a nice shiney & smooth panel or molding for the inside, was common practice for headlining panels..... there back on subject!
Jeff.

 

Maybe you need to invent a three way fillet mold, butter it up, splodge it in, clean up the ooze factor & remove when hard............little bit of detailing & sorted.... maybe a 2 way & a single way to follow, who knows, give it a go even custom in MDF & packing tape.
Jeff.

 

PITA! ... One thing Iv been doing is power mixing the fairing compound, lets me mix it a little thicker with less slump but Im having same problem with my tunnel, thank the lord it's a timy bit compared with all you have to do!!

 

A high quality, washable flat paint would be my solution, probably because tedious jobs don't appeal to me. Any degree of sheen will accentuate faults.

 

The big problem with flat paint is the way it picks up dirt and stains...... The boat would look dingy in no time at all from hand prints on doors and jambs and you would spend all your time cleaning.

 

It's probably too late now, but if you use a ball-tipped filleting tool, 3 way corners are easy to do. You run it into the corner and can then go either way you want and then come back and go the other way to finish it. A ball bearing of whatever size you need welded on the end of a rod works perfect. For big filetts a pool ball on the end of a stick would work.



For regular fillets, I wax up an appropriate sized socket wrench socket, put it on an extension and use that.

 

For applying the fileting mix into the corner, I stick a corner of a sandwich/zip-lock bag into an empty can, kind of like a trash bag in a trash can. I then put the mix in there, twist up the bag and snip the corner off so I end up with a disposable squirter thing similar to this cake decorator apparatus ...


Actually, just like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvBCBJOCUEU

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I usually do those 3 ways in two hits, do say, the vertical fillets first and start the pull at the 3 way junction and make sure you don't leave any excess filler, you don't need to go right into the corner but need to be far enough in to allow for a clean sweep around the corner when doing the horizontal pull after the vertical fillet is set up and always scrape up all the excess before it kicks. There are polyester fillers that will cure over epoxy and they will move the job along much faster and are perfectly adequate for purely cosmetic filling. There are also polyester fillers that never set up rock hard but rather remain at about the same hardness as pine so as to be carvable, they are used in the pattern making industry, you can use curved wood carving chisels to work it, good stuff. I like to use products and tools from other trades, I was just using one of those ball end tools like SamSam showed a couple of hours ago, also from the pattern industry, they are used to lay in wax fillets and leather fillets. I have also made good use of carbide ball end mills in a drill to clean up the 3 way corners when I screwed up and left a blob to harden but all in all I find the 2 step approach better than trying to do it all at once.

Steve.

 

For typical flat paints that is correct, however there are available special washable flat paints, usually 100% acrylic base, that clean readily

 

Putting in the "dummy tapes" for the bonding of the topside panel in the sealed bouyancy compartments that i cannot access from inside the boat once fitted.

Got the shape by using packing tape on the topside panel where the bonding angles lie, applying glue to the bulkheads, fitting up the topsides onto it, then letting it cure. Once removed again, the hard glue lines give you an "edge" to which you can affix peices of thick ply wood strips or other batten material, covered in packing tape again, by screwing into place and apply the fillet and 'glass tapes as you would a normal panel. With the edges bordered like this, you still have access to tape the inside, then once its cured, remove the strips and you have some bonding flanges which follow the curvature of the topsides...



Got the first coat of highbuild on the rear half of the topsides, shows up all the hard to see low spots once you get some white on it... ill have to put a touch more bog in a few places before i continue flattening it out...