Miscellaneous Day!

So today I worked on a bunch of non related stuff!

Earlier this week I took the mast sleeve off the lower/top mast. Amazingly enough the whole thing came apart without any real theatrics (That is of course unless you consider playing tug-of-war with your wife using a mast as a rope as theatrics....). The only lesson learned out of the whole thing was not to use the blue painter's tape underneath a fiberglass layup and expect it to release afterwards! I had used it to keep the wax paper in place on the spigots and I ended up having to use my handy Cosco special generic dremel tool to sand it off the inside of the tube. It had become one with the fiberglass!

This morning I started out by sanding the mast sleeve to remove the high spots that built up at the ends and also to get rid of all the drips that ended up on the bottom. The first pass at rough sanding it with 100 grit paper looks pretty good. My next step with it will be to epoxy it in place on the lower mast and do some additional sanding once it has set up. I'm pretty confident that after an additional 3 coats of epoxy that I will put on the mast and sleeve that it will turn out pretty good. My goal at this point is not to paint it but leave it the crazy green color that it turned out. My wife thought it reminded her of the old greenish Coke bottles!

After I finished with that project my next step was to install the thumb cleats on the boom. Before I did that I went ahead and and gave the boom a thorough sanding using 150 grit followed by 220 grit sand paper. I figured it would be easier to do this without the thumb cleats in the way. I followed the sanding on the boom with sanding on the thumb cleats themselves. I hadn't really done anything with them after I cut them out and they needed to have all the corners rounded and also the bottom contoured to the shape of the boom. After I was finished with the sanding I epoxied them onto the boom. I also took the opportunity to use some of the epoxy I had mixed up to fill in a couple of gaps that I had on both the boom and the bowsprit where the birds mouth joint did not quite 100% join.

After that particular program was done I decided to finally drill the holes for the handles on both the rudder and the dagger board. A quick setup on the drill press and it was done in a jiffy! I also took the opportunity to cut the two 50mm long handles from the 32mm dowel I had purchased a while ago. I went ahead and sanded them/rounded off the corners so that they would be ready for a coat of epoxy. I'm going to go ahead and put a couple of coats of epoxy on the handle prior to gluing them in place. I am also still hesitant to give both of the foils the final sanding / varnishing since they are still being moved around a lot in the garage. I may still follow my original plan which is to do that at the end.

The hole cutter set up on the drill press.

Next thing I decided to work on was the rudder box. Interestingly enough the two panels that make the box were not included as part of the pre-cut pieces and therefore I had to make it myself. No worries since it was fairly easy. The good news was that I have kept all the scraps from the plywood and I was able to find two pieces that were big enough to work. After a little magic with a protractor and a table saw I got the two pieces along with the joiner piece cut out and ready for a coat of epoxy. I did not cut out the four outside spacer pieces since I am waiting on receiving the Pintle/Gudgeon combination from Mauri Pro Sailing and I want to make sure that the thickness is correct..

Next steps will be to sand the boom down one more time and apply 3 coats of epoxy to both it, the inside of the rudder box, and the spigot of the lower mast. I'm also going to work on installing the fiberglass reinforcing on the bowsprit

Its worth noting that other than the finish on the boat/spars that the majority of the construction effort on the boat is now over and I am down to the nitty gritty. Exciting stuff!!