Building the F-22

It started out simple enough…   Do more rough-fairing and filling on the starboard side of the main hull…  Untill we made another pass and thought… ya know…  This is good enough to laminate…  And so the tale of this weekend starts…

First had to carry the new roll of A-spec fabric from the living room where it’s been safely sitting into the garage.  Not too difficult, only 100 lbs.  Then we rolled out a length of fabric, starting at the keel over-lap, and put a few Raptor staples to hold it.  Unrolled another full length after marking the over-lap and placed it on top, lapping over the gunwale.

So far, so good…  We were making good progress.  Earlier in the afternoon, I decided I wanted to try using paint rollers to apply resin for this portion since gravity would NOT be on our side.  We picked up some 1/4″ nap rollers (smallest we could find) and 2 roller-handles with extensions.  Turns out, this was a fabulous idea, as it was easy to quickly wet-out the top and sides, then squeegy excess resin out and get a good laminate.  What neither of us realized was that while I was working the squeegy and dad was mixing more epoxy, the two rollers we were using kicked quite hot and stuck to the paint trays.  This, in itself, would not be a problem, except they fused to the roller handles and rendered them useless.  Again, this wouldn’t be TOO much of a problem, except we hadn’t done the keel yet…

Try as we might, gravity hated us last night and the keel turned into a right mess.  You can see the (very slippery even when cured) droplets of epoxy on the garage floor showing our fruitless efforts to laminate the keel.  Took around 2.5 hours, including all the work trying to get the keel.  If we bought even one more paint roller handle I think it would have gone off wonderful.  Lesson learned for next side.

So… we’ll grind part of the keel and do it again…. but you know what would make it REAL easy to laminate the keel?  You guessed it… having the hull upside-down!

What follows is a few hours of sweat, cursing, pain, more cursing, a little more sweat, no passing out and a little more curing….

We put a nice 1/2″ eye-bolt into the rafter to use with a 4:1 tackle as a belay.  Tied off to the aft beam bulkhead and hoisted the hull up.  Fortunately, there are no pictures of this event and neither of us ended up in hospital   What I will say with regards to turning over the main hull of an F-22 (and no-doubt other designs) – there are TWO points of stability and the hull is very happy sitting on either of those two points until the cows come home.  It took more effort to get the hull to actually turn over far enough for the belay to actually pick up weight than the whole ordeal….  But we were left with this :

(shown after cleaning the driveway back up).  Oh, another thing that would help in the future… move the car first..

The good news, the port side looks to be in good shape and shouldn’t take too much sanding, we only damaged a small portion of the transom (mostly what gets cut out for the rudder anyway) and the inside now has good working room to get under the settes and the anchor well.

The hull has gained a few pounds since we last moved it… looking forward to rolling it a few more times once all the laminate is complete….

Just got an update from Ian saying that our beams shipped today.

Spent the past two weeks watching my 5-year old nephew so didn’t do much boat-work (except start the rudder cassette) and am typing this from Montreal, Canada and not flying home until this weekend.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get some work done Sunday/Monday (work holiday) so we can get the starboard side laminated and get ready for installing the beam mounts.

We set up the rudder a few weeks ago with the 3mm wax sheet, wood molds, fillets, etc – but I can’t seem to find a picture of it.  This morning it was finally time to start construction.

Here’s the cassette with all carbon layers specified on the first page of construction and peel-ply in place.

Everything came out great, except there was a problem with the sheet wax.  I thought what we got was coated with a release that resin didn’t adhere to already.  Turns out I was slightly mistaken…

Cassette removed from rudder

Here you can see the mess of wax inside

It seems that boiling-hot water pouring through the cassette dissolves the wax enough to get it out.  We did most of it but the cassette was heating up so much it was starting to soften one of the flanges since it wasn’t 100% cured.  Will finish it next time.

Here’s the rough-cut/faired cassette ready for the next steps

Also did a little more fairing on the starboard side of the hull – no reason for a picture until we laminate it.

I meant to add some of these pictures last week, but couldn’t find my USB cable after moving.

Here’s the carbon fiber traveller finished, next to the selected Harken track.

We also managed to finish the rudder (I think, hope….  will know more once some primer is on)…

I’m actually real impressed with how close we got to the profile sections since it was all done by hand.  I have faith it will work well given our collective skill level with sailing multihulls…

Have almost all of the interior roughed in right now.  Still need to tape the under-side of the settee webs and add in the anchor well, which we will do when the hull is laying on the deck.

Decided to make the web at the aft end of the v-berth the same depth as the settee web to make for a transition that I was comfortable with.

Now that the interior is more complete, we have a feel for the size of the interior.  I remain impressed at the utilization of space for a boat of this size.

Here you can see the main cabin from the companion way bulkhead looking forward.  The anchor well is laying on the starboard settee, painted and ready to be taped in when we turn the hull onto the deck.

Here’s a view of the v-berth from the daggerboard case (forward beam bulkhead just visible on the left).  The opening on the deck is actually for the anchor well which has not been installed, but makes for great air movement and handing materials into the hull to work with.

For the next view, I stayed where I was positioned and just turned to face aft.  You can see the crawl-space into the aft cabin, the companion way bulkhead, the aft beam bulkheads (with a temporary join to keep the hull proper), and then the aft cabin hatch into the cockpit.

This is the bilge area at the companion way crawl-space looking aft into the aft cabin.  The holes at the aft bulkhead are small storage area and access to the rudder web.

Once inside the aft cabin, it’s actually quite spacious (again, for a 22ft trimaran) – I have no problems sitting upright with plenty of head-room.  You can see the crawl-space to get back into the main cabin, the hatch at the top of the picture leads into the cockpit.

The last “interior” picture is from the cockpit, looking down into the aft cabin hatch.  We sized this hatch and the deck hatch (not yet cut) for the Lewmar Medium 50 hatch.  The aft cabin bulkhead will require a thicker flange to meet the minimum mounting requirements for this hatch.

We started sketching out a template for the hatches to make a mold for the rear flange, and once that is done, the mold will be cut away to make a flat surface for the curved deck area.  Also started cutting templates/lumber to make the rudder casette.

This weekened, dad and I took the hull off the cradles so it could lay at an angle on the garage floor for access to the under-wing area.  It’s still light enough for the two of us to grunt around without levers or hoists, but by the time we finish laminating the exterior that might change some….

Here you can see the anchor well hatch opening, the access hole for the jib furler and a cleat because… well… because we could

I think she’s listing to port….

I made a pass with bog to start filling in the screw holes and seams that we didn’t already get.  Here’s dad doing what he does best… sanding …

After some quick time with the random-orbital, the starboard side is ready for the longboard to even everything out.  Hopefully to be laminated soon…

Last picture – starboard under-wing area looking forward.  Very nice hull lines

Plan is to do the starboard lamination, rotate to do the port side, then finally onto the deck to finish interior taping that would be best with gravity on our side.  I can’t wait to start putting the beam mounts in…

Speaking of beams… looks like ours will be ready to head this way sometime in May… need to get cracking faster and get the mounts installed!

Whew.. it’s been a busy few weeks with no time to work on the boat.  Dad’s gone this weekend, so it’s just me doing some work.  We all know how I love to sand, so no progress on the main hull until he gets back to help

Decided to spend today starting to make the traveler.  Two weeks ago we ordered some boat stuff and it’s been tricking in over the past week.  Among some of the goodies received (I’ll take pictures tomorrow) : main hatch (Lewmar) to make template on deck and aft cabin – will order second another time, screen to go with hatch so we can plan interior part of it; opening portlight for aft cabin (Lewmar) – we will most likely install two more just forward of the forward beam bulkhead, below the gunwale – it gets hot in Texas; Harken 1616 traveler 1.8 meter length; WEST System Aluminium wash (scary stuff if you read the label!); 6061 T6 tapping plate for traveler 72″ long; UHMW for rudder casette.

I should also note that we got a few more items for the main hull a few weeks ago to start making provisions for them (foredeck cleat, hinges for anchor well, more inspection plates, etc).

Whew.. anyway… on to the fun….

Started by cutting out all the pieces of foam needed to make the traveler core.  I thought it would be easiest to make the outside pieces of foam 2″ tall, and the inside pieces of foam 1-11/16″ tall to allow for the 6061T6 tapping plate

I wrapped the tapping plate in packing tape so it would not stick, and then assembled with bog and tons of clamps.  The picture above is after taking the tapping plate back out.

I peeled off the tape and proceeded to do the 2-part aluminium prep wash from WEST System on the bar.  Pretty scary stuff and I’m glad I didn’t read the MSDS, just made sure to have eye protection, respirator, gloves and worked outside. After the second (neutralizing) wash, the bar needs to air-dry.

Stuff worked good – took off the manufacturing ink stamps, my sharpie markings, etc.  After dry, went straight into the foam core with bog and clamped against something straight.  You can see the Harken 1616 track (wrapped in tape) and a 6′ straight tube with tape acting as my straight edges.

After curing, I attacked the foam with a router for the corners and sander

One of the things ordered during this down-time was some carbon fiber in a 45-45 weave.  I could not source the stuff at a reasonible price.  Surfing Jay’s site I saw a link to a place called Soller Composites.  They appeared to have exactly what we needed.  They sell 45-45 woven carbon fiber “socks” in different diameters that you can use to make tubes.  Well a rectangle is basically a tube, and they even have conversion calculators on their site if you don’t have perfectly round things…  I ordered 2.5″ dia sleeve (in the proper weight…. hint, it’s 0.1oz less than the spec in the plans).  Also ordered some other stuff with the plan of splitting the sleeve on one “side” and then having a flat 45-45 piece of carbon for making the rudder casette.  One of the other things they sell is a coated heat-shrink tubing that resin does not stick to.

Since it’s 45-45 and woven together, it acts like an acordian – you have to bunch it together to open it up and put it on the piece, then pull it taught against the part.

At this stage, I worked epoxy all through the part, squeezing it through and making sure it’s saturated.  Then I worked the heat-shrink on the part and started from the middle, working out.

Once complete, I noticed it developed a bit of a “bend” in the traveler.

No worries – I still have a track and thick tube to act as straight edges.  Here’s the traveler clamped and curing.

So far, I really like this stuff… I’m hoping I feel the same way when I cut the tube off in the morning to apply the UD layers and remaining laminate (I purchased enough heat-shrink tubing to also do the last layers of the traveler after UD to try and keep the part as straight and true as possible).