everybodys favorite itchy stuff

Faired in the blunt tip. Hope it holds up.




Cut out a little glass.



Gooed it on up. Into the oven it went. Should be ready to sand tomorrow night. (If I feel like it, have to fix a windsurfer sail, so might do that.)

15% Tip

Brought home the little tip for the foredeck and bogged it in. I had a little piece of Maple for it, but I messed it up on the sander, so I just used a MDF scrap I had laying around. Should work fine, its really nice and bogged in there. Tomorrow night I can shape it down and, who knows, maybe fiberglass the little monster.

faired up last nights filler


And added some more. Big thanks goes out to Phil Stevenson for answering my endless rig questions today.

My seven year old has caught the bug, and has made a boat of her own, looks like a very aggressive bow down stance is what she likes.........




Mounted the decking and started filling the bigger gaps last night, I see sanding in my future. I have decided to make the foredeck a little stubby so that I can fair in the cedar bow block where the forestay gets attached. Of course I forgot the chuck of hardwood that I'm going to use to finish off the tip at work, so it looks like that will have to wait till Monday.

by a nose.

Stayed up late last night and stripped the foredeck tool. I wish they where all this quick and easy. Want to true it up a little more today, add a little extension to the tip, and mount the decking. Then onto filling and fairing. Who knows, I might actually get to start building a boat this summer.

Skin box......

Went out and bought a sheet of ply today, so I can finish this little plug. I have had the decking ply cut out since the first mould, I'm finally going to put it on tomorrow. Not sure what I'm going to do with the very bow tip yet. Part of me wants to cut a piece of maple to fit, the other part wants to make it a little short and blunt so I can just fair in the top of the cedar forstay block I'm going to mount in the bow, we'll just have to see how it works out.

New Project Member, and a foredeck frame

I'm pleased to announce that there is a new Sr-71 Team member: Eric Strauss, owner of EBS Carbon in Boulder has agreed to come on as "Tooling and Carbon Advisor" (I'm also going to be working for him part time, so that should add to my knowledge bank considerably). Eric is a great guy and all around carbon guru, one of the most knowledgeable people in the field when it comes to tooling, prepreg, and all things high tech. The list of projects that he has been a part of is mind boggling, from carbon fiber jet packs and deep sea submarines, to jet boats and Indy cars. I'm so grateful to have his input, it should really improve build quality and raise the probability of success for this machine.





Along the build front, I was able to throw together the mould structure for the Foredeck today. I built the box frame yesterday and mounted the frames today, its just waiting to be faired for skin. Need to get some plywood. Hope to get that going this weekend or the beginning of next week.

Hard Drive Failure

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, but I've been without my Mac for a week, The hard drive crashed, so she's been in for service. A lot of things have been happening, not on the building front, but in other area's of the project. I'll flesh it out later after I get home, but cool stuff is happening........stay tuned.

stage 3

I found some time to go to Kinko's and cut out the Foredeck frames, just need to build a little frame and mount them.