Just some prep work and staging

I've got a case of the "not enough epoxy" blues, so I spent the weekend sanding and prepping out the UFS panels for laminating.

I'm sure someone out there figured out some genius way to do it, but sometimes I'm really not that bright, so I spent the weekend fiddling around with small blocks of precision cut wood, packing tape and clamps.

Grr!

The end result will be great, but the road to get there is a bit frustrating.

Note: I did order a Five Gallon pail of laminating epoxy to fill the time gap and allow me to continue working on these small parts. I'm guessing it'll be a week or so before that arrives.

A little too strong? Yep!

The instructions call for four layers of "D" fabric which is listed as a 12oz UNIDIRECTIONAL material for the outsides of the UFS recess side panels. There is nothing in there about using Carbon, but for whatever reason my brain went straight to "Carbon UNI" and stayed there and since I only have 9oz Carbon Uni, I figured up the cloth weight required (48oz) and then converted it over to the 9oz cloth. (48oz required / 9oz  per layer = 5.33 layers rounded up to 6 for a total fabric weight of 54oz)

I guess you can see where this is going - the total fabric weight is up just slightly, but the strength is probably 200+% over-spec...

Let's just keep smiling and move along, shall we?

Next step will be to lightly sand these down a little before shimming out the sides out and getting the pivot pin bushings lined up so I can glue on the three layers of fiberglass over the top which will secure the sides together forming the actual recess for the Upper Folding Strut.

Lower Folding Strut Beam Anchor - Center Panel & foam

Last night I marked and cut out the Center panels for the LFS Beam Anchor build.
I also glued on the foam pieces that I had cut to size and planed down in thickness over this past weekend.

These parts should be ready for further processing this weekend.

I also glued in the UFS G10 tubes and bushings using some milled glass to thicken and strengthen the epoxy before twisting in the bushings.

Cut just slightly over-sized to account for cutting blade kerf.

A mark on the Peel-Ply to ensure I don't get confused with fabric direction

Peeling back the protective layer of Peel-Ply on the sections where the foam will be glued into place.
Note the fabulous results with the Resin Infusion process!

Center plate thickness was supposed to be 3.5mm
I got REALLY close!
:)
Another case of using more material then needed though - the plans call for FOUR layers of Uni-Directional glass.
I ended up using SIX layers with the infusion process and was still slightly short of the thickness required.
But I'm confident that it'll be plenty strong enough.
You can see in my notes there, the first panel was laid out as published in the plans and resulted in a 2.86mm thickness.
I wasn't happy with that and did it all over again - you can also see in the notes where I call out the need for an additional two layers of "D".
One more layer would have been better for the measurement mark, but would have been wholly unnecessary.

Applying a Milled Fiber reinforced Epoxy glue on both the Fiberglass and also the foam side of the mating pieces with a linoleum glue trowel.

After this picture was taken, I put a sheet of MDF on top and weighed it down with a couple pieces of cement and a bag of cement.
Then checked it really close to make sure it would cure in the correct position.

Gluing in the UFS pivot bushings

PeelPly is still applied to the outsides to protect from contamination

I'll have to add it all up when I'm done, but these thick areas near the top of the UFS panels are going to consist of over 100 layers of fiberglass! 
As it sits right here, you are looking at 96 layers!

Some work on the UFS housing

After a little bit of work with the drill press to do the final boring of the UFS Pivot pin holes, I was ready to start work on the spacer pieces for the next phase. From what I can tell, the beams are probably the most complex and critical parts of building this entire boat and need to be made exactly as specified.

On that note - and I'm a bit conflicted about it, the sidewalls are supposed to be six layers thick and measure out to 4-5mm in thickness. Using the Infusion process, I ended up with ten layers measuring out to 5.3mm. Same thing with those thick outside edge "cheeks", there is no number of layers shown in the plans, but the final thickness needs to be 12mm  For those, I ended up using twenty eight layers for a final thickness of 14.3mm. Yeah, kind of an overkill there. I have no doubts about the strength, but it also means that I'll forever have to deal with the extra weight in there that I don't really need. On the flip side, it's one less thing to worry so much about when things get "nautical" out there.

(I say these things to make me feel better)

Anyway, these parts are finally prepped out for the next step which is making a spacer to set the correct distance between those halves. The spacer itself is a fairly complex piece. It has to incorporate two different widths and several angles, plus it has to have a mitered edge and have a releasable surface. The more I thought about it, the more difficult it became.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and take a stab at it and see how many problems I could run into while trying not to slice off any fingers on the table saw.

I'll caption the picture below...

All eight UFS housing pieces matched up in pairs and strung out on a piece of G10 tubing to get things squared up.

The PeelPly is still on both the interior and exterior sides of these pieces.

I started with the long top piece, it's the easiest to build and has a miter running along the top on both sides.
I'm building the spacers out of wood and using multiple pieces to accommodate the various dimensions.
I'm sure there must be an easier way, but this is how I ended up doing it since it allowed me to make mistakes on smaller pieces instead of screwing up the entire piece.
You'll notice in this shot that the 45-degree mitered edge on the smaller angled piece has to taper from 8mm to nothing.
I did that by making a small 45-degree jig on the belt sander and holding the piece in position by hand while trying not to sand off my fingernails.

This piece was the worst of it, Two thicknesses and a miter that runs across both but not all the way to the top edge.
I still need to build out one more filler piece at the top before sanding it all down and taping it over.

The gap at the top there falls right in line with specs!

All clamped up and squared together in matching pairs.
The G10 tube can be turned by hand which ensures a good lineup across all eight pieces.
The next step is to remove the G10 tube and glue in the bushings that I made earlier. Once that is cured, I can finish the spacer pieces and do a final measurement before starting on the carbon and fiberglass overlays.

The peel ply has been removed from the interior surfaces, but remains on the exterior for now.
You'll also notice that I pushed the top wooden spacer all the way back to the reinforcing pad before clamping down again. This was to make sure the lineup stays true when I remove the G10 tube.