Long Days Night

At 11pm I went back to the shop to sand. you can see the green guide coat, I still sanded through is some spots, but high spots have to go.





After a ton of sanding, fairing, and two coats of Grey Duratec here's the final topcoat. I would like to thank the two huge cans of Monster Energy Drink that made it possible for me to stay up till 5am to get it done. Now just need to go in this afternoon to sand it up to 1000 and buff/polish/seal/release. (Of course its "The Strauss's" birthday so there's a good chance I'll go in and get nothing done.......except drink a lot of whisky and enjoy.)


Happy Birthday Bro

On the road again.....

The Brotherhood of the Traveling Mould was at it again today. These tools have more miles under them than a lot of real boats have sailed. My fellow carbon monkey Craig Smith brought his rig over and we moved the hull tool to EBS.


I forgot how heavy that thing is. (sorry bout your forearms Craig)




Fared up and ready for the Duratec base coat.



Now the fun part, watching paint dry. I also sprayed a puke green base before the grey as a guide coat. I'm sure we'll be seeing it a little later. Time for some dinner and some time with the Family then its back to the shop for a late night sanding session.

Slick as Sh!t

Heres the pics, turned out way better than I ever thought it would.



Its screaming for water...........



If I do all my work at a composites shop do I still qualify as a home builder?...............What if it almost feels like I'm living there?

(FMG, if your out there get a hold of me)

2 down 1 to go

Unbelievably, I've been really hallin' on the build front. Stayed up till 3:00am wet-sanding and polishing the deck tool. She's all done, sealed, released and ready to lay up. Turned out really nice, some of my best work yet. Didn't bring my camera with me so no pics right now, but I hope to swing by EBS and take some later today so there are pics coming.
Now I just need to find a trailer to borrow so I can get the hull tool to the shop so I can knock that one out as well. So excited to be back in the swing of things.
As far as other developments, I've been doing some experiments with the Nidacore and have found that it isn't the core for this project. I'm not happy with the weight or bond compared to the foam and nomex cores that we use at the shop. I'm leaning towards nomex, you just can't beat it for strength, stiffness, and weight (but I am going to need a pinhole strategy). Eric has a ton of it laying around, but wouldn't you know it - no 1/4'' so I'm SOL for now, but have some leads and industry contact guys that might be able to help me out.

Back from the dead........

After what seems like an eternity I'm back to being a boat builder again. I finally found a hole in my schedule to get some work in. I think about the boat constantly. I work on drawings and things when I get a chance, but that hasn't converted into much progress over the last couple months. I have put in enough "carbon monkey" time at EBS to have unlimited access to the facilities so that should make it possible to get some things done. I have found its a lot easier to make progress in a fully decked out composites shop than it is in my freezing garage.



Here I am in the sanding booth, air tools make a week long job take a couple hours.



Much better than it was, I'm on my way out to fair this layer down to hopefully perfect then spray the final top coat. I really want to make this nice because the tool surface will be showing on my clear carbon deck.


Stayed late one night this week and wetsanded/polished/released this little fella. Very shinny and ready for lay up.


Spent the morning at the CU Engineering Auction and picked up this fine piece of kit. Thanks to the collage always buying new tools and getting rid of what they don't use very much, I was able to "steal" this Edwards M8 for $100. It looks to have been used maybe twice, I don't think they knew that it's a $2400 pump......ha ha.