new project

transom section of the mould is now finished.

i have bonded in some plywood to help keep it flat and have put in some ribs as well.

i have made a start on the timber frame for the mould and will post pics of that tomorrow once the frame is complete.

 

In my experience with this type of hull form on boats from 20' to 65', the 'gap' between the hulls is proportionately wider. A bit late now but try a boat out, see how it goes, and let us know.

 

the reason for the tunnel the size it is is so that the boat can still be towed on the road legally.

also if the tunnel was wider the boat would look out of proportion.

length as it is with out the pods is 19ft 6" with a beam of 9ft 1" so any wider and it would look wrong.

with the pods fitted the boat will be 22ft long.

there is a similar boat built near to me but just a bit smaller and there tunnel is even narrower and that works fine so i based mine around that but scaled it up a bit.

fingers crossed it will all work fine.

 

timber frame is now all glassed in.

i have cut some plywood which the wheels will bolt too. that will be glassed in tomorrow morning.

then its just a matter of drill all the bolt holes , quick sand down and then pull it otuside to be trimmed up and take the mould off the plug.

that will be done on saturday as there will be more people about to help out.

 

have got the ply glassed in for the wheels and have bolted the wheels in place.

all bolt holes are now drilled in the flanges.

all i got to do now is trim the flanges up and then the mould can be lifted off the hull/plug.

 

mould is now outside ready to be taken off the hull plug tomorrow.

i have trimmed up the main bolt flanges and have just got the main top flange to trim up once the mould is up the right way.

 

Hopefully it will be easy to get at the bolts when the mold is upright. The center section might need some wheels too.

 

the bolts should be pretty easy to get too if not then i'll get some else to undo them

i was going to put wheels in the tunnel section but as its in 2 halves i don't think it will need wheels as they shouldn't be too heavy.

to get a hull out the mould i will have the hull and mould lifted of the ground by 1/4" and then release the transom and side sections and then lift the hull up a bit higher so that i can pull the tunnel sections down and rest them on the floor.

when the hull is moved out the way i can just block the tunnel sections up at correct height and bolt the mould back together.

well thats the plan. just hope it works like that.

 

We were talking about cutting propane tanks in half and I outlined possible problems and the guy said he wasn't worried because he had his brother in law do that part.

The mold looks real nice. I was thinking getting the bolts out might be easy compared to getting them back in. I guess you could cut access through those two stiffener plates in the tunnel mold parts.

 

i don't think there will be any problems getting the bolts out or in but if there is i'll find out tomorrow and let you know.

the mould flanges have got decent sized locators so once the mould sections are pushed together the bolt holes should line up easy without to much effort.

im chuffed with how the outside of the mould has turned out.

just got to hope the internal face has turned out ok.

 

finally got the mould off the hull/plug today and have to say im well chuffed with how its turned out.

the mould came off very easy indeed.

got just couple small repairs to do.

the mould looks really big now its up the right way.





















and as a mono hull

 

It looks real good except for that square patch on the bottom in the stern. Any idea what caused that? Maybe it's just dirt or something.

Now you need a few extra roods or hides or virgates or hectares or whatever to store your growing collection of plugs and molds and boats.

When it comes to making things in split molds, it helps to double gelcoat the splits/seams because when sanding and smoothing the flash on the new part it is easy to go through the gelcoat and be into bare laminate. Aside from negating the waterproofing and whatever of gelcoat, it looks real bad and requires touch-up, which is a real pain in the butt.

 

the patch is where i started to use tooling gelcoat on the plug but i had problems with it and had to scrape it off and quickly repair the area before i put on the grey gelcoat.

the dark patches is paint off the plug. its scrapes off easy.

the pva on that patch was not applied as thickly as the rest hence why its not quite the same colour.

the gelcoat is fine and will polish up good.

in the pics the rest of the mould had not been washed down to get the pva off apart from the pics where the mould is bolted together.

as for gelling out the mould it will get 2 gelcoats all over and maybe and extra layer over all joints so that when it comes to sand off the joint line i know there will be more than enough gelcoat on there.

as for storing its funny you should mention it as there is a big workshop coming up feburary/march time next year which i have first offer on so fingers crossed i can get it and get the moulds in there ready for building my boat.

 

I just noticed the chine strake thing. You must have added that for this boat, unless the original mold was a split mold too. It looks a little delicate for an area subject to abuse, I would worry about a hole getting knocked in the outside edge of it and then having a leak in an area difficult to repair from both sides. When it comes to molding a boat, you might think of laminating the whole boat and then coming back to the chine, filling it in with something and then a few more layers of glass over that. Then if it got wacked, a patch from the outside would be good enough.

When I worked at the boatbuilders place here and the boat had strakes, they would chopper gun a layer over the whole hull, with extra in the strakes, work that out with bubble buster rollers, then fill in all the strakes with a resin putty filler. I'm not sure if they did it for strength or what, but when they put the rest of the laminate in, it eliminated all the roller work that was needed to get the glass to lay in empty strakes. Chop and chopped mat was easy enough, but any kind of woven material in the strakes was a ***** as rolling the glass even a number of feet away was liable to pull it out of the strakes and leave it hanging in the air, bridging the gap.

 

that was already part of the original boat and mould.

on my last boat that set the height for the deck so when glassed up the deck went in to that strake and by the time it was all glassed up that area was very strong.

i put woven in the last boat and didn't have any problems rolling the woven out even with all the chines and the outer strake.

on the new boat the deck will be about 5" higher than that strake so i may look at filling it in so it becomes a solid structure along that area. thanks for that tip.

i have never used a chopper gun so can't really say much about that method.

i was taught to hand lay all the layers which im comfortable with.

if i was given a chopper gun id be worried about the boat ending up with different thickness's all over.