Taping the Bow Transom

After some confusion on my behalf as to how far I should run the fiberglass tape up the Bow Transom (Which stemmed from my first not so good attempt described in my previous post) I initially decided to run the tape on part way up. This uncomplicated matters somewhat and allowed me to get a decent taping of the nose. Today, after some research which involved looking at build photographs from Dudley's pages and other pages I decided to run the tape the rest of the way up. Next step is to flip the hull and start working on the deck supports and the wings

Flip the hull again!

Well it was time to flip the hull so I could cut out the dagger board slot, round off the forefoot and tape the chines and the bottom of the hull. As usual what I originally thought was going to be a fairly straight forward job turned into quite the learning experience! First I bought this nifty tool from harbor freight that has this cool oscillating blade that cut through the plywood like it was butter! (A big thanks to another PJ 14 Builder) Of course, in my enthusiasm I got it a little close to the edge of the dagger board casing and nicked a small portion of it. No worries since I will be adding some spacers to align the dagger board and the nick should get covered up and faired. Next step was to round off the forefoot to the 50 mm radius - that went pretty smooth!

With the hull flipped I took out all the screws that I had used to keep the stringers attached to the hull while it was setting up and broke out the filleting epoxy so I could fill all the plethora of holes that had magically appeared in the hull since it was last upside down (mainly the stringer screw holes and holes that I used for the zip ties to keep the bulkheads in place while filleting them to the hull). I also added filleting material to the center line of the hull at the forward section. That way I could get it all sanded down to a nice straight line and take out any irregularities. Finally I added some material to the bow to take out a low spot that occurred during the hull attachment process. After a good sanding it was ready to to start laying the tape. This is where the true fun began.

Yesterday I taped the chines and the bottom of the hull. Everything went well until I had to wrap the tape around the forefoot and up both sides of the bow transom. The issue I ran into was that I could not get the tape to lay down flat on the bow transom and it kept popping up. I thought I had finally gotten everything kosher until I got up this morning and inspected it. At which point it was pretty clear that tape had not laid flat against the transom and had creating an air bubble. So this afternoon when I got back from work I got the heat gun out and took the whole mess off, scraped it, sanded it, and tried again... No luck same issue, pulled the wet tape off... tried again...Same bad luck same issue, took the wet tape off... Finally after a lot of head scratching it occurred to me that the fiberglass tape did no like to make multiple sharp corners and that it was most likely the root of all my problems. Out came the sanding block, and after a good 10 minutes of sanding and shaping I tried again. This time Success! I guess the bottom part of the bow is meant to be rounded! Went ahead and laid to sets of tape one on top of each other. They ended up being slightly uneven, but not to worries, it will even out during the fairing process! Looks like I might have to buy some more 2" fiberglass tape to finish the boat! Definitely wasted a bunch on this particular project!

Fillets, Fillets, and did I Say Fillets?

Well I have been somewhat busy adding the fillets to all the bulkheads and stringers on the inside of the hull. This was a fairly monotonous task especially since it required mixing up new batches of fillet material on a regular basis. I took a suggestion from another Paper Jet 14 builder and put the material in a zip lock sandwich bag which helped immensely with the application process.

I also went ahead and fiberglass taped the inside of all the chines of the boat and cut out the compression posts for the mast and glued them in place. I wanted to get this done prior to adding the last fillets on the back bone in this area that way the posts would lay flat against the bottom of the hull. Just need to fillet this area and fill in a couple of holes and it's time to flip the hull so that I can add fiberglass tape to all the outside seams!