Kurt Hughes Daycharter 36

eladio,
There is no doubt that you can do it. It is a big commitment, though, and you will definitley need helpers at times.

I believe that my build has progressed relatively fast, considering my circumstances. I cannot compare it to other similar projects using different methods, since this is my first boat of this size. All I can say is that I got started with the actual work back around April/May of this year, and here it is almost November, and I have four hull panels laminated, and one hull about 3/4 completed. So far I have spent about 14,000 USD total. I have worked every weekend and averaged two hours per weekday, with Sundays off.

I hope to have this hull decked, and out of my garage by New Years, with a targeted splash by this time next year, and then begin fitting out.

Hope this helps

 

I"m in awe of your tenacity gentlemen. I can assure you that the fold up is the hump and you will have much smoother sailing for the remainder. Getting stringers and bulkheads installed will really help with stabilizing things, but check twice, glue once.

 

Thanks lentil. It is good to know that others with experience in this method are looking on. I really appreciate all critisisms, hints and advice. Most of this is all new territory for me.

This Saturday was spent laying out the stringers, cutting bulkheads, and fiddling with the inside curvature up forward. Fairing the outside of the hull in that place will entail grinding down the ply considerably at the split-- even all the way through in one place, My plan is to bog in a big scarf patch three plys thick before bulkheads go in.

 

Here are a few shots of the inside repair at the bow split. The split had made a crease inside. I wet out the valley and filled it with a structural bog mix, then pressed in a custom 3mm patch, till it gooshed out the edges. I stacked three layers of larger and larger pieces, till it more closely resembled the opposite side. It is still not perfect, but I hope to fair the outside of the hull so you wont be able to see it from outside. I was (am) paranoid about this because I will have to grind down the hump outside, and I want to have adequate hull panel thickness when its done. So I added a layer of Biax over the whole thing to make sure. It is just above the waterline.

Now I am finally ready to wet out the inside of the hull, and bog in the bulkheads and stringers. I have spent an extra week tapping and filling voids. I found a few more, but now I feel confident they are now all filled. I use a tackhammer, because it doesn't leave "pecker tracks" on the wood. It is supposed to make a nice solid "tock. tock." sound. If it goes tock. tock. thunk. You have a void. I wound up cutting them open with my razor knife, peeling off the top layer, sanding and prepping, filling any open areas with neat resin, using a small wooden wedge to open and seperate the layers, then filling with thickened resin and chopped glass, putting back the lid, and screwing or wedging them closed.

 

nice repair work charly. make absolutely certain you've eliminated as much twist in the hulls as possible, deck jig twist sticks, plumb bob centerlines for and aft. once stringers and bulkheads are in, tweaking time is done and you're in possession of real hulls.

 

Well, she is a real hull now then I still have some bogging to do, (ran out of material again) but the deck jig is off. and the stern section has been cut out. I find myself just staring at her lines... course, I have been fascinated with curves since I was a teenager.

The keel has been straight all along, except the last foot or so up at the bow section. The stem lines up good though. I think I can fair it out OK at the forefoot. I still don't know exactly why the bow didn't line up so well... I guess it could have been for many reasons-- the stiffness of the repair work at the vertical crack on the starboard panel, maybe poor sawmanship at the cutout, or poor tracing of the pattern onto the ply, or maybe the sheer timbers had different stress levels for some reason. Maybe when I flip her over again I will learn something new.

I have been able to keep a good overhead centerline throughout, with plumb bobs on both ends, and was able to triangulate the sheer distances off of it (allowing for disparities in athwartship level).

And speaking of that, I have since planed down the stb sheer a bit, and shimmed the port side at most, about one inch, in one section between the main crossbeams. I was able to keep it level, athwartships, at the stern cutout, of course by cutting away the ply a bit high of the pattern line. I assume all this is OK. I occasionally get a wave of cold nightsweats when I have that nightmare dream that one hull turns out to be hideously taller than the other one. I guess the important thing here is uniform crossbeam height above the dwl?

my old camera died. maybe santa claus will bring me a new one.

 

Now THAT is a sign you are deep into the project and totally immersed.

Nice work. Can't wait to see how things are going once you open up presents on Christmas morning. My hat is off to you. Very good skills.

 

Here is a new shot, just taken today.

Obviously, I wll not make my goal of having this first hull out of the garage by the 1st of Jan. I hope to get back on track now , though. I still have a good bit to do before moving it out, and starting the next one-- finish bogging in the bulkheads, glassing in the reinforcements at the chainplates and doublers, make sure everything is sealed well inside, lay-up and install the rudder housing and the daggerboard trunk, and the support shelf for the crossbeams. After all that I can install the deck: one layer, 4mm ply, one layer 3/4 inch balsa bagged down on to that, then two layers 20 oz triax. THEN I can have that moving party. I haven't tuned my mind to how to accomplish that yet, but it should be easy enough with some helpers. We only have to go about twenty or thirty feet, out into the yard, and the flip it over so we can fair and glass the keel.

Over Christmas weekend got out my transit and with a helper, checked the garage slab elevation. It is pretty good! Within one eigth of an inch. I have been worried about getting things as accurate as possible when I go to mark out the cut-outs for the crossbeams. The dwl on the plans is right at the bottom of the hull ply at the transom; simple enough to locate, but the quirk in my situation is that I never laced up the keel all the way. I still have about 1 1/2 inch seperation there between the two hull halves. if they were laced up all the way, it would pull in the two sections together, and slightly RAISE them as well. So, I can only guess where they might meet... I think (hope) it will be negligable. All I have to do then, is to get the distances above the slab-at the dwl mark at the stem, and at the transom (somewhere out in the air), equal, measure that, add 33 inches, correct for dips in the slab, and mark off the bottom of the crossbeam hole, grit my teeth, and drill a pilot so I will know where to glass in the shelf. If anyone knows any better, please chime in here. Thanks!

 

crossbeam sockets

I have been wondering how is the best way to attach the crossbeam, and would really like to hear some opinions.

This operation is still down the road a good ways, but I need to make some decisions pretty soon, since I will be moving the first hull out of the garage and starting the second, I want to be sure I have done everything I should do before I put on the deck!

The 36 Daycharter cat is designed to be demountable. The two crossbeams are fitted into the hulls and bolted into place, and the bridgedeck is then bolted onto a ledger on the hull sides, and underneath the crossbeams.

The plans call for four mainstrength bulkheads in each hull- one fore and one aft of each crossbeam, which fits into a "socket" that is glassed onto the mainstrength bulkheads. The sequence is to build hulls, and glass in the aft-most bulkheads first, but allow the forward bulkheads to float, unnattached. Next fabricate the beams, and on each of the beam ends that will be sticking into the hull, put some mold-release and wrap some tri-ax around the beam. This, then when popped off, will be the "socket", which will fit like a glove around the beam when it is inserted and bolted in place. Next, align the hulls, and glass in the sockets, and finally, install the fore-most bulkheads and reinforce everything. The socket fits on a horizontal plywood shelf, that spans the hull and is glassed to each mainstrength bulkhead.

My build is being done in tight quarters. One hull at the time in the garage, then the crossbeams in the garage. There is not room in my yard to assemble the whole boat, but I may be able to insert the crossbeams, and glass up the sockets. I plan to truck the main parts to the water somewhere- yet to be determined- and assemble the whole thing there. I would like to have my ducks in a row, and get the boat assembled as quickly as possible, since the meter will probably be running, and I am on a budget. If I am confident that the crossbeams were all the same distance above the waterline, then all I would have to worry about would be parallel and squareness. But it seems that the sockets must be left to float along with the forward bulkheads, until everything is square and level. Am I leaving anything out?

 

show and tell/ crossbeam shelf

Hopefully these shots will make some sense out of my last two posts. At assembly time, the hull and stringer get a square cut out on the inboard sides to accept the crossbeams. The forward bulkhead in the pic is unnattached inside the boat, and will be set temporarily in place until the beam is inserted and rests atop the horizontal shelf. Then it will be glassed in like the others.

I am still having trouble figuring out how to glass the "socket" onto the forward face of the bulkhead shown, and to the shelf below it. placing the beam within the socket and pressing the whole thing into a mess of hot bog would only give me one chance to get both hulls square level and parallel before it kicked. Doesn't seem like an option. I guess I have plenty of time to figure it out, but it won't be long before all this work is sealed inside below the deck.

 

spectacular thread Charley
thanks for all the effort in picts and postings
best of luck and keep up the great work
B

 

Dave's hidden cove method

Thanks Boston!

This trick is straight out of Kurt Hughes' manual, thanks to someone named Dave. (thanks Dave). Regulars here may yawn at this, but since I haven't seen it illustrated before I thought I would do so here. This is my first stab at it.

You could use plexi-glass strips with mold release on it or anything similiar... the idea is to form up a cove and then remove the strip. It is useful if you need to cove in an inaccesable, or hard to reach place. I am doing it on the tops of the bulkheads so I won't have to go inside the hull, then sand, prep, and form them after the deck is on.

Here I used a strip of 1/4 inch ply covered with a piece of six mil poly. Then I laid on a strip of peel ply, wrapping it over the ends and stapling it into place so it wouldn't shift around. Then fastened it temporarily at the sheers on each side of the hull, and bogged in a cove underneath the strip. After the cure, you can take off the strip with the poly on it, and the peel ply stays in place on the top surface of the new cove, ready for a coat of adhesive when the deck ply goes on. The cool thing is, you can leave the peel ply on, until just before you get redy to glue on the deck, or whatever. (I had to peek this first time, of course)

 

One of the best uses of peel ply i've seen in a long time. if your socket alignment is critical, you're going to have to leave it be until you can set up both hulls, plumb, level, square, check diagonals, equidistant, etc., and then double check.:!:

i had trouble with the balsa core ''printing'' thru the triax, long board sanding, primer, awlgrip! most noticeable in early morning light!!

 

Hey Lentil, I have figured out a way to align both hulls in my yard before moving them to the water (it will only cost me one grapefruit tree- well worth it) So, I can go ahead and glass in the sockets permanently, then disassemble the crossarms etc., for the transport.

But -- the contact areas between sockets and the bulkheads, and between sockets and the "beam shelf" will still be innaccessable. The sockets get glassed to the outside of the inboard sides of the hulls, and to the decks above, but- is that it? I suppose I could wrap a layer of glass from the forward part of the socket down and underneath the beam shelf, which is already glassed into place to the hull on three sides, and then install the forward "floating" bulkhead, over that, pressing it into some globs of bog between it and the socket, but the socket would still not be glassed to the front face of the aft bulkhead, nor the top face of the beam shelf. Is that how you did it? (hope that made sense)

The only other way I can see, is to bed the socket in some hot bog, and then level, square, and parallel the hulls before it kicks. It would be "dramatic", to say the least.

 

sorry sir, all my Hughs design builds were either built solid or transported to the water for an end of the build tabbing session and some touch up paint.

what prevents you from leaving small sections of deck or scarphed bulkhead out of the way, doing the glass tabbing, then doing ''Daves Mysterious Hidden Fillets'' with your remaining glass work?

A well executed 7 to 1 scarph is stronger than the surrounding wood as taught by the Gougeon Bros.