Split mold for hull

Sam III, its a bummer when stuff goes wrong, I think I'd try very carefull carving with a really sharp chisell, bevel side to the mold & be really patient with it & finally single sided razor drags over the smaller remnants & mask the borders & whats been already "won" some times the masking can be used as a guide too, even if you gouge here & there its an easy fix compared to oversanding, on the bright side there'll be non skid over most of it. Did that bight in through PVA? My "guess" on the cause is some kinda solvent entrapment/surface energy issue with the PU coating(not that it matters now). All the best in your endeavours from Jeff. PS: Everyone has a stick up some time & although dissapointing ,the "positive" is "a learning experience".

 

Ouch......

I've had good luck with a sharpened plastic spatula. Its all obvious, start with something softer than your gelcoat and only resort to the big guns when you have no other choice.

 

I started using a chisel yesterday. Only a few nicks and occasionally a real deep section will pop out due to 'porosity' in the gel coat I guess.

Clean up is going better than I thought and thank goodness we are going to put non skid on it later.....

We did not use PVA on this one, but will be using it in the future. Solvent entrapment makes a lot of sense as we didn't allow as much time after the last coat of sprayable fairing as on the hull.

Sam

 

. . . . .****. . . . . . . .!!!!!

Hang in there, buddy.
Plastic spatula, "Wood shims: long strips of plywood sharpened to a knife edge"

 

try making your plastic scrapers out of acrylis 6mm sheet, cut the edge to a razor on the belt sander with the run toward you, use the end wheel and they are concave cut, very sharp and strong, but do not damage gelcoat...not that I would have ever needed to do this!

 

After many agonizing weeks we finally got the deck mold back together and all shiny.

This will be the shiniest thing we have used for a mold.

Sam

 

Almost there!!!

nice, "looks like the moon", though.
Take a staright edge and "sweep" all of those radius'.
Too many waves: "don't let the shine fool ya", it needs to be straight, too.
Take a piece of aluminum and "with a scrapper edge" and cut your diameters.

Sorry, "you want perfect, don't ya".

 

Like this !!!

 

Very nice. Not to worried about the deck mold as we will be painting it with non skid.

Hull another matter.

Thanks

Sam

 

Hey! what about Infusion school, how did it go? great thread, great tips, great work!

 

Infusion school was well worth the $$$. Spent 4 days, 50% class, 50% in lab/shop.

Did simple panel infusions, more complex panels and infused a 13 foot runabout hull and deck.

Got to design and install resin and vacuum manifolds to infuse the deck.

Well worth the time and money. I think as long as we look at the boat as 'sections of 2 x 21 we should not have any problem with the infusion.

Most important thing learned is how to repair bad infusion panels and 'test', change anything (only one thing at a time) 'test again'. Repeat cycle.....

Sam

 

Looks great so far!

Saw the same result you got in a plant in Naples IT.

We (mouse in pocket !) determined it to be too much reactive styrene in the fresh tooling surface coupled with thin laminate not generating much heat.

Please post more photos as you progress.

(First post, this forum is a great resource).

 

Well it can be done. After all that work and help from this forum we have our first hull out of the mold.

Will paint the interior and the bottom of the deck and glue it together.

Yeah we almost have a boat.

Sam

 

Good on ya mate.

 

This is looking really good. I like your building style. Congratulations.