Its been a while.................

Indeed it has, work has got in the way, had to do it though given the economic situation but in meantime i got my head around the latest failure with the heat pads and got two custom made, they cost 200 pounds each but have a temperature range of 0-260 degrees celcius so i will get on the case this coming week.

What else.........oh yes i started to turn the boat shed back into a boat shed from a pig sty. This mainly involved digging the old floor up all three tonnes of it and installing a floating floor all the way around the boat.

To do this i first needed to remove the diagonal supports from inside and put them outside to free up the space so with my good friend the post drill i excavated four holes a metre deep to act as the piling i would bolt the new supports to.

With these uber-supports made and installed it was time to turn my attention to the floor, after much ringing-around suppliers i got the best price i could for the timber and flooring even with discounts it still gobsmacked me how much timber has gone up - about 35% incredible.

Here's the result of a couple of days work from last week, this job cost 350 pounds in all ,250 for the flooring materials and 100 for the timber to make the external supports, considering i'm working very infrequently it was a bit of a tussle with my head.

That said i don't want the project to grind to a halt as that's when the motivation stops and it becomes another abandoned project and to be honest i have been feeling a little bored at the moment i think largely due to boat shed looking like a student house so part of the process to get re-energised was to create a more professional environment to work in.

I managed to use a lot of materials i already had left over from various jobs i had done so in the process freed up much-needed space in my wood shed which is no bad thing.

I found i was wasting a lot of time going back and forth to the workshop to get tools and materials so i built a bloody great cupboard at one end of the boat shed to store all the day today stuff (abrasives, power tools, resins acetone etc).

With the floor in i set about building the aluminium towers and parking them adjacent to the boat ready for me to re-core the fore-deck, more of that in a while.

Its drying time............................

Yep its now time to get serious about getting the water out of the hull seeing as i want to potentially paint the hull at the end of the summer but first as has been the case all along with this project many hoops need to be jumped through.

Firstly i need to get the moisture levels in the wetted areas down to between 5 - 10 parts on the Tramex at present the bow and stern areas are around 7-10 whilst the underside area is still off the scale of the moisture meter.

I tried previously using carbon heat film which whilst proving successful in its implementation had reduced the levels insufficiently, i think there maybe a couple of reasons for this

Either the Tramex is faulty, (i'll need a calibration kit from nigel clegg to check the machine) or it may well be that the boat is still so sodden that it needs a lot of heat even with the vacuum process to vaporise the water trapped in the laminate.

My latest heat pad led me back to using a previously discarded heat element which comprises o f heat cable, i say previously discarded as when used before it was in an early design that weighed so much it would fall off the hull so thought it was part of the problem.

However after trying to destructively test the heating film to diagnose the lack of heat, it led me to conclude that there must be some kind of limiting mechanism on the film as i couldn't get it above 30 odd degrees.

When i tried the same process with the heat cable it went off the clock! all the way past 80 degrees at which point i bottled it fearing i'd bugger up either the cable of the thermostat controller so having seen what was possible with the heat cable option i built a lighter version of one of my first designs.

It is done, the keel stubs that is.

Yes the port side stub is finished too now and not before time, got it painted inside too check out the piccies. now its onto the outside and the engine bay, i've bought some mild steel tubing the same diameter as the prop shaft so i can start roughing out where the engine bearers are going.

in the meantime i've turned my attention to finishing off drying the hull out, the latest version of which is proving the best so far, lightweight, efficient and stable at higher temperatures and still only a couple of hundred quid to make.

i should point out to get to this stage i have spent a bit of money researching and building different ideas only to find out they didn't work for one reason or another but the one i have working on the hull at present seems to be doing the job.

I have this system on the hull which i intend to leave for 72 hours, (at time of writing i am half way through this) if the moisture readings are good i will then set up a bigger heating source to cover the entire bottom of the hull and provide details of how its done.

cheers roger

Light at the end of the tunnel

Finally the gods are smiling as of yesterday i finished the starboard keel stub save for removing the Plasticine i used to block up bolt holes & all of it painted too.

I decided to use epoxy based garage floor paint for the bilges (purchased on ebay) - good price too £40 for two gallons plus postage still worked out at about £4.80 a litre which i thought was pretty good value versus the usual marine 'heist' of £25 a litre for pretty much the same stuff.

The port side is nearly done too, just need to sand back and paint as i finished tabbing it all in yesterday so -touch wood- i shall have both stubs done early part of next week then on into the engine bay to make and fit bearers and battery boxes.

To be honest i'm finding it hard to stay motivated at the moment i think because of the general lack of work about and the nature of the work on the boat its hard to keep my mind on the job. Plus with all the heat, the scratching and the general covering myself in wests then washing down with acetone everyday, (all in 35 degree heat inside the shed) its not much fun.

Looking forward though, after the engine bay is done the next part will be 'modding' the deck moulding to take new lockers, hatch surrounds and companionway hatch plus a lot of filling and fairing, but at least there will be air flow!

I drew out the new lockers on the cockpit seats the other day to see where everything was going and found a bit of inspiration in the process. I'm putting a gas locker in one side and storage for the outboard and tender on the other, it looked pretty good.

Also got round to mounting my 50kg roll of cloth on Tuesday, it works like a dream thanks to an old piece of scaffold pole i cut down and a couple of roller bearings bought off ebay.

cheers

Now we're cooking on gas.........

Literally after 18 months of cutting, grinding, cursing and finally removing various stubborn lumps of Solway Cloud, i have for the first time this week actually put something back in. Nearly keeled over (no pun intended) at the price of the materials used (work's still abit scarce at the moment) but all in all very happy with the results of the work.

My starboard keel stub is now three times as thick than before and touch wood more stronger, still on a steep learning curve though, to the point where i stopped everything on Monday to put more vents into the shed.

This in some vain attempt to get the air moving inside the canopy and so give me a few more minutes open time with the epoxy, i have a rubbish bag half full of mixing cups all with about 100ml of gone-off wests and a paint brush stuck in the middle.

After all this re-modelling was carried out i got back to tabbing in the ribs and finished off today by reinstating the keel stud holes. I have also fitted the template up to the stub to check for accuracy and will need to do some fettling to the areas around each hole.

It was observed that the studs and washers pull up at odd angles on a couple of locations and as i want a proper job done and for everything to sit down flat on the stub floor it will require a bit of filling and fairing.

cheers

Fuck it, i'm having a cup of tea!

Been having temporary sense-of-humour failure the last few days and i think its no coincidence that this is happening as i have started laminating the inside of the keel stubs, my conclusions are that if i were to come across this problem on another boat i would seek advice before jumping in, such is the steepness of the learning curve.

I have finally got the hang of it; (cutting, folding & rollering etc) but trying to consolidate cloth onto the hull when you have a sodding interior moulding in the way........oh and thirty degree heat in the cabin drove me to down tools on the first couple of lay-up's, peel ply it - then sulk in workshop.

what i have learnt about west systems is that although it will create a rock solid bond , better than polyester, in my opinion this system is a sod to lay up by hand as it takes so much effort not to mention materials to saturate 430g cloth. i say this because if you were to use a finer cloth to saturate quicker you'll just end up using more materials and take twice as long.

That said its fine on stuff like the coachroof and engine bay where these areas were easy to get too and do not have fiddly tight radii.

Where west's comes into its own is either being used in a vacuum system (where the vacuum pump would stop you getting 'white knuckle syndrome') by pulling the cloth down into the resin or indeed infusing the cloth with resin to begin with, (so you don't need to soak it in the stuff) thus saving materials (& money).

Having seen the amount of epoxy i have used this last week to repair one keel stub i was shocked considering how small an area it is .

When considering west's 'c' pack which is a 30kg drum costs £300 a pack and with another keel stub to do as well as re-laminating the hull that's quite a lot of money - that said the hull will be put in a vacuum as it is a simple shape with good access so will not use as much epoxy, hopefully.

cheers roger

Updates again.

What have i been doing? Well i've got the new rudder pretty much finished barring mounting the skeg on the hull and fitting rudder all of which i can only do once the hull has been laminated, still won't be long now seeing as i've got sod all work on at the moment.

Have also cut away all the skin fittings on the hull to make way for new ones in new places, it is customary during these jobs to curse and swear like a trooper . The reason being the complete lack of thought that went into the materials used for the environment they would be subjected to, hence lots of blackened rotten plywood beaten/ground out & very stingy scratchy face for the rest of the week. Cheers Westerly!

What else..............oh yes, i have removed the engine bearers to make way for new ones to sit my lovely new 29 horse HMI lump on.

You should know this project wasn't on the cards but because i had relied on the technical data of the engines handbook and not actually measured the bearers i found the bearers to be a good hundred mill narrower than stated. F*@K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway a couple of trips to screwfix i later i obtained my own 'volvo engine-bearer removal kit' which consisted of a reciprocating saw and plenty of blades, a ten inch angle grinder with both stone and metal discs and a shed load of discs for the small grinder to tidy up the scene of crime.