Stanchions:

Well, went to Kinko's today to get the hull stanchions PDF printed, three three foot by ten foot prints is a lot of paper. Did get a couple of frames cut, no pics (no camera on hand), but I'll have some tomorrow. I might be to excited to go to bed, wish I had some MDF here at home so I could keep working. But I'll get back to it tomorrow.

I've been framed

Well, spent a couple days worth of lunch breaks working on my mould frame (and staying after work as well). and I finally got the frame done. I also have the Stanchion PDF ready to take to Kinkos, so I'm planing to do that on Monday. the picture is from earlier today when the frame was only 3/4 done, but its done now. I also had some discussion today with Clive Davis about his Electronic Flap Control System, I am seriously considering giving it a look when its time to start messing with such things (of course I will still be starting off with mechanical control.) I also asked him what his initial impression was to having such a big sail on his foiler, he said that even at 12.5sqm that he has no problem controlling the power and it seems to be about the right size. Some of you know that I've been kicking around the idea of going bigger so I'm pretty sure I'm going to pull the trigger and go to 11.5sqm. but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. (thanks to Jacob Duncan for the picture)

Moving Right Along

So, I got my frame beams cut and assembled. Tomorrow I hope to get the actual hull mould support structure completely assembled and ready to take stanchions. I have a picture of an experiment where I glued a full size print of the stanchion mount (cut out of mdf scrap) to the beam, seems very sturdy and should hold very well. I'm starting to get excited as the project moves out of my computer and into reality.

Layin down the rabbet joints

with the help of Cliff Wege, I was able to rabbit the boxed out strong backs for the hull mould form on Thursday, (the power feed makes them perfect). Got one of them put together, just need to glue up the other 3 on Monday, complete frameout on Tuesday, and hopefully start cutting and shaping stanchions by the end of the week.

Cutting

well, It has begun again, cut out the strongback/frame today (the real one this time). Scott "Murf" Murphy doing what he does. Hopefully I'll put it together tomorrow.

To hell with CNC

Well, I am sick of trying to work with CNC programmers, after spending a week looking for anyone with a 4X8 vac table machine in the Boulder area that had a drafting program that could read my OSX dfx files (and finding no one) I've decided to go old school. Yes thats right. 1:1 PDF & Kinko's. I'm taking some stanchion drawings down to them, have them printed out on 36'' wide paper from their plotter, then Super 77 them to some MDF, and start getting after it. I'm going to do all the moulds for this first boat by hand. I don't care what all you smarty pants NA's out there say. All kinds of boats have been done this way (moth's, IC's, Swifts, A Cats, ect.) it will be fine. With the fantastic way the economy is going in this country, I find myself with more time than money. And I will finally be able to get to work.

The "Head Carbon Monkey" himself

I'm very excited to announce that Mike Cooke from Aardvark Technologies in the UK has agreed to come on as the project "Foil Development Advisor". I will be designing and building the foils and moulds myself, but Mike has agreed to help me out with all my questions and give me pointers on the process and system setup. There are so many things that are "secret" in the foiling game (control systems, flap size, wing tips, foil taper, ect.). It will be very helpful to have a master foil craftsman to take some of the voodo out of the process. I can't wait to start working with him on the design aspect of my lifting foils.

More support frames.

I had no work today, so sat home and redesigned my Hull mould support structure, here it is. Should be beefier than my last one, and hold all the stanchions real nice like. Just need to move on to the foredeck and we should be rollin again.

here are the pics from Mike Cooke over at AArdvark. Nice foils, just not enough lift...... we'll have to see if he'll help me throw together a set with a bigger lift area for the SR-71.

Redesign

Well, after working on my mould frame structures for a little while, I've decided that they aren't going to work very well, (that's what I get for trying something that's unproven). Oh well, it was only a couple of sheets of MDF, could have been worse. So I spent yesterday redrawing the deck mould structure to take old school vertical strongbacks, hope to redraw the Hull structure today to do the same. here's a pic of the new deck structure .