Week 12 before launch - Producing the yard & finishing the rudderblade+centerboard & coating the hull with primer

14.09.-20.09.15

Producing the yard & finishing the rudderblade+centerboard & coating the hull with primer

 
This week we intended to produce the yard, finish the rudderblade and centerboard and coat the hull with primer.

The yard will be the gaff boom for the rigg and is shaped out of Alaskian Spruce. To get the squared and out of 4 pieces glued boom round it needs a lot of plane work and a special spar gauge.

Starting shaping the yard

The gauge seen below has a width of  24 parts (mm, 16ths, eights or whatever) which are departed in a ratio of 7:10:7. You use it with two pencils as shown on the picture and it enables you to mark the lines you need to take off the right amount of wood.

Using the spar gauge

 The nearly finished spar with a lot of nice shaves.

While I was working on my yard, Ant continued with the rudderblade and centerboard which he sheathed with two layers of plain weave 200.

The glassed centerboard

Sheathing the ruderblade

fitting the ruddercheeks

The rudderblade is really huge. The total lenght is about 1700 mm

The eveningtime Eva and I spent in romantic primerpainting sessions. The primer is a double pack product and is needed to seal the boat and get a smoothe base for the top coat.

painting the primer

We put on 3 coats of primer. Between the coatings we had to wait at least 8 hours. So our days were timed by the drying times of the paint and evening work was a usual thing during this week.

I´m a bit upset, that I didn´t take more fotos of this and the next week, but the night hours as well as the never ending sanding drained away all my energy.


 As mentioned we first put three layers of primer on, but the result was far from perfect. It was as I would call it a terrible "orange skin" and who want's his new baby to have "orange skin". At first I imagined it would smoothen by wetsanding, the normal procedure following the painting. I Started with wetpaper 240 grit. But as that seemed to have no effect at all I went back to 180 grit. At the end of the day I was more than frustrated:  Still "orange skin" but a lot of spots without any primer any more. 

After having spent about 20 hours sanding with no convincing effect, I was so annoyed, that I decided to sand with dry abrasive 180 grit and to put on a 4th coat of primer on saturday - not before contacting Hempel, the producer, what they would suggest to prevent the uneven surface.