More Wings!

I added the fillet between the wing and the hull and fiberglassed the seam. I spent some time getting the fillets to be nice and uniform since the filleting material is tough to sand. The top rounded edge of the plastic squeegee worked out perfectly for this!

Filleted and ready for fiberglass

I went ahead and and taped the seam up for some extra strength in this area (Plus I had some extra 2" fiberglass tape left over!

Taped up!

Daggerboard Revisited

I finally got the daggerboard back out and started attacking the trailing edge. Pretty much the same program as the rudders but double the size and double the effort!

I finally figured out that I was better off using the hand plane to get it as close as possible versus getting it in the ballpark and finishing it up with the belt sander. I also have started to be a lot more confident with the belt sander and not being afraid to use it and sand off too much. Of course you always learn these lessons at the end of the project. Would have been handy to know up front! I guess it will come in handy when shaping the rudders / keel on the next boat.

I took a picture of the rudder and daggerboard together for a perspective!

Next step will be to do some fine sanding and fiberglass these up. I'll get to that later on!

Wings continued

In the last few days I went ahead and gave the inside of the wing area, and the inside lower wing skin two coats of laminating epoxy.

I also spent some time fitting the lower wings to make sure everything would line up nicely once I epoxied everything in place.

This morning I got up and epoxied both of the lower wing skins on the boat. Once they fully set up I'll go ahead and add the fillets to connect the inboard edge to the hull. I intend to make a little spatula from scrap wood in the shape of the fillet to avoid a bunch of excessive sanding and to come up with a nice regular shape.

While all this stuff sets up I'll pull the daggerboard out and start working on the trailing edge!

Its Got Wings!

This afternoon I came home early to vote, which left me plenty of time to get the starboard wing sorted out. Of course after doing the port side wing ahead of time, it took literally took half the time to get it all fitted trimmed and ready to go. As you can see I went ahead and glued everything up at once and I forgoed the two part process that I did previously.  I also added a couple of extra clamps that I had purchased to the leading edge.

Starboard Side all Clamped Up

It's Got Wings!

Tomorrow I'll get the whole thing filleted in place and start working on applying the two coats of epoxy to the inner parts of the wings, and the inside part of the bottom wing skins.

Looks like I will meet my goal of having the wings done by the end of next week. On Nov 15th I have knee surgery which will stop this project in it's tracks for 6 weeks! Therefore, I am trying to get the hull to a point where I can hang it back up on the roof so my wife can park her car while I am not working on it.

Port side wing

Yesterday I attached the port side wing edge frame and let it set up overnight. I had to do some minor trimming to the wing beams so that everything would line up properly. Prior to epoxying the leading edge I went ahead and fitted the lower wing panel to make sure everything was kosher.

This afternoon, after work, I took the clamps off and attached the wing leading edge. I did not have any clamps that where deep enough so grip the back end of the leading edge so I clamped it to the hull. I later noticed that this did not work the best since it caused the leading edge to slip a bit. It wont be the end of the world, but I did stop by Home Depot and bought some deeper clamps for when I do the starboard side. I also made a piece for the back end of the wing to account for the gap created between the wing deck and the 45 degree beam coming out of the stern transom.

Tomorrow I will go ahead and fillet the seam between the hull and the wing deck and start working on the starboard wing.

Wing Leading Edge Part Deux

So I figured that once the wing leading edge blanks were done it would take all of 5 minutes on the table saw to cut the compound angle and get it ready to go. Boy was I wrong! First after racking my brains for 3 hours, making a jig and trying things fifteen different ways I cam to the sad conclusion that my little Ryobi Portable Table saw was not up for the task. It has a sliding tray on left side of the blade for making miter cuts, and no way to make miter/angle cuts on the right side. Combined with the fact that I have a right tilting blade vs. a left one made it impossible to make the cut.

In steps David from work. He has a full woodworking shop in his garage and I figure he can do it easy - 5 minutes tops!! Well it actually took closer to 2 hours to get everything figured out and get the saw set up to make 2 acute compound miter cuts!

I then took the cut blanks home and proceeded to trim and sand them so the would have a good solid fit to the side of the boat. After both sides were fitted I marked the location of the second cut to make it flush with the wing. It's interesting to note that the 750mm minimum length for the blank made it with very little extra to spare!

I finally made one more cut to the outboard end of the rabbited portion so that it was perpendicular to the wing so that it would space for me to glue up the wing support beam.

Next step will be to flip the boat and glue the wing tips and wing support beam!

Wing Leading Edges

Once the epoxy fully set up on the boat I decided to start finishing the wing leading edges. First I cut the rabbits on the back side with the dado blade. Next step was to shape the "airfoil". On the plans there are a couple of suggested cut lines to make the process easier, therefore, I grabbed the protractor and a scale and measured the two different angles of the cut and also the resultant width at the end of the tip. I set the table saw up to cut the angle and ran the pieces through twice in order to cut the two different angles. Its always a little uncomfortable (as in nerve wracking) when you work with the fence on the opposite side of the table saw and you have the blade way high and at an angle. For safety's sakes I made sure I fully understood how I was going run the blanks through prior to turning on the saw. The resultant was a pretty close facsimile to the final shape.

After the blanks where cut out I used a combination of my hand plane and long board sander to sand the tips to the final shape. Next step will be to cut the compound angle in both blanks so that it interfaces correctly with the hull.

Blank set up in a jig to hold it while planning/sanding

The Finished Product!