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.