It's been a quick couple of days

Time seems to be flying by quicker than I would like right now.

I got into town late Sunday night so I got somewhat of a late start on Monday. I began by cleaning up the garage and my work spaces. It was like Christmas opening up all the packages that I had ordered. I waited around all day for the wood to show up and no luck. I guess I would have to wait till Tuesday to begin all the fun stuff.

I woke up Tuesday and decided to call the freight company to see when they were planning on delivering the package. Well bad news ensued and they informed me they lost the crate. I decided not to waste another day and went to the lumber yard and purchased some douglas fir planks for the rudder and the keel. One of the guys from school had suggested that instead of doing the foils as one piece create two halves and then epoxy them together with a layer or two of carbon/glass between them. So I designed, using 1" thickness (chord strips), NACA 0010 (rudder) and NACA 0012 (keel) foils. They only had 1"x6" so I had to recalculate my strip size and related thicknesses. I spent the afternoon with the table saw and cut out 66 strips of wood which I would become the keel and rudder. I spent the evening gluing the rudder strips together using epoxy mixed with colloidal silica waiting on my wood to be found.

I woke up Wednesday to good news....the wood had been found and it was scheduled to be delivered by early afternoon. I continued gluing the keel strips together the rest of the morning. The rest of the day I unloaded and organized my wood and glued the lengths of plywood which would become the hull shell together.

Thursday I finished cradle began to lay the lengths of wood in place. I spent the afternoon drilling holes and zip tying the pieces together. I hastily used 1/2 inch pvc as suggested in the construction guide only to realize Thursday night that if I wanted to tap the seams that all the pvc would have to be removed.

Friday I worked on removing all the pvc piping and redoing all the zip ties. Once I finished that I used the 4" bi-axial tape to tape the seams between the zip ties. I decided that I did not want to leave the zip ties in. I also worked on fairing out the rudder halves.

Today I covered all the seams in a continuous strip of bi-axial tape after filling in all the zip tie holes with thickened epoxy. I also glassed the internal parts of the rudder halves with 4 oz fiberglass. I coated the inside of the hull with two coats of epoxy as a sealant.

Tomorrow I plan to sand the inside and begin to fit the frames into place. I also would like to add the third and final layer of sealant epoxy.