Building the F-22

…. or….  how to prove you are insane.

First, I’ll rewind to yesterday.  During the past week, dad finished laminating the outside of the bow web, which meant that after a quick grind and touch-up, it was ready to have all the slots cut.  We did this in rather quick order with a hack-saw, dremel and chisel.  No picture of it because I forgot, but here it is being tacked into the starboard hull half.

With the bow web tacked in place, the only thing that needed to happen on the starboard half was really the aft beam bulkhead…  Since it’s so small and the port half would sit up on boards for a while to line things up anyway, we decided that it wouldn’t be a show stopper and to do things while we had an offer for help. (thanks a million, again, Fred!)

Again, no pictures in progress.  The three of us manipulated the hull half into an opening that it should not have been able to fit in.  We really should have built the strongback even lower than we changed it to, but it’s too late for that now.

We un-hooked the garage door opener and tied it to the ceiling.  Also removed part of a hanging shelf.  After much twisting, turning, scraping and who knows what else, we had success!

Still need to put some boards between for room to trim the bow, the DB case, etc, etc…

But for now, after a 2.5 hour morning, it’s off for some breakfast!

Time spent: 2.5 hours this morning, an hour last night, and 2 hours during the week

Whew… been a while since I updated this and it’s been a busy 2 weekends.

To start with, the starboard hull half is fully laminated with all extra re-enforcements.

We then measured, cut and tacked in the daggerboard case and forward beam bulkhead:

Here’s the deck, followed by the keel :

and looking forward from the very stern :

Also started doing something with the bow web blank that’s been sitting for the past year.  Here are the first layers of carbon :

and then added some more of the carbon - the last section will wait until these are dry so it can be reversed in the vice :

All the forward bulkheads are installed now (both forward bunk bulkheads, forward beam bulkhead and companion way bulkhead)

I don’t have a picture of it, but the bow is partially shaped to the template.  Looks like we might have to “modify” the garage wall sheet rock to get the bow web to fit since we didn’t move the frames far enough to one side of the garage.  I’ll take a picture of that when we mount the bow web.

Almost ready to bring the port side in… hopefully next weekend… ?

Time spent: 18 hours