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PAR

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Posts posted by PAR

  1. Call the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and they'll stop by for an inspection. They'll look it over, discovering the pointy end which clearly signifies it as a boat. They may want receipts and stuff, but it's a fairly simple process, whereas you'll fill out some forms and mail them off. Eventually your title and registration will show up in the mail.

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  2. Sags and runs can be buffed out, which is a pro painter's secret weapon, it can be fixed. You do have to wait until it's good and dry (depending on the paint type, up to a month), than locally knock it down with some 400 or maybe a scraper, depending on how bad the run is. Work up through 600, 800 then onto a cutting compound, followed by a polish. Of course, this area will look a lot better than surrounding areas (baby's ass smooth), so you may have to polish the whole boat, which isn't a bad thing either. In the end, you may end up with a boat that is the envy of all that see it, all because of fixing a screw up or two. I've had the exact same problem, though I usually just buff up just the offending panel or side, hoping no one will notice the other panels or side.

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  3. If really interested in using pigmented epoxy, this is what I've learned. I use this technique inside lockers and buoyancy tanks, where getting paint once the decks or seat tops go on, is very difficult or nearly impossible to do neatly. Epoxy formulators all suggest about 5% pigment by weight. This is because the epoxy starts to dramatically lose physical properties, once much over this amount. Given pigmented epoxy is used to avoid paint in difficult to paint areas or places that will never see paint again, you can safely go to 10%, with a slight decrease in tension modulus, compression, etc. Once over, this properties drop quickly, for example at 20% you've lost over 50% of the epoxies elongation, peel strength, etc. I've used 15% with good results inside of buoyancy chambers and lockers, where painting is just too difficult once the boat is sealed up. I have an anchor locker that wouldn't be too bad to paint if necessary, because the hatch is fairly big, but it's 15% pigmented epoxy coating is doing just fine and only took two coats to get full, solid coverage, much like if it was painted.

     

    Now, if you suggest these numbers to the epoxy formulators they'll balk, spouting off numbers and figures about stuff, you might not fully understand. This said, if you keep the mix below 20% (by weight), you'll be fine if, all you want is a tough colored coating, rather than paint. The anchor locker I mentioned gets beat up a lot, as you'd imagine, but other than some fluke scratches, it's still doing fine after a decade.

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  4. One of the things I always first look at on a home built are the edges; chines, deck lines and rails. Getting these on, so they look straight, even if they're curved in all three planes, can be daunting and a sure sign of a novice builder if they aren't. When I visited Chick a couple of years ago, he noticed as I walked up his driveway, I was eyeballing the lines, the chine, the raised deck line, etc. Yeah, I got caught, but it's what experienced builders do, we can't help it. He'd done such a nice job, he had little to be concerned about anyway. Another thing I focus on is the intersections of pieces, like a break in the half oval at the bow eye, just to be continued further up the stem, a windscreen cross brace, etc. Are they balanced, proportional, symmetrical? Same deal, it's what draws the eye and focus, so areas you can divide the men from the boys.

  5. Using neat, pigmented epoxy as a primer is as costly as a good primer, plus it's a lot harder to fair and smooth. When you put pigments in epoxy, you don't get a paint like finish, as it's generally translucent, not the solid color paint produces. Of course, multiple coats can get you a solid color, but this is even more work and materials. Naturally, it can't be done as a top coat, as the epoxy will still burn with UV exposure, just more slowly then a straight neat coat. Lastly, the thing with primer is it makes a uniform "tie coat" for the top coat and can change the look of the top coat as well. For example if you paint a red over grey primer, it'll look warmer then if it was painted over a white or black primer. I'd much prefer to work primer than a neat epoxy coat, FWIW.

  6. First off, all epoxies blush, even the ones that say they don't. Simply put, if it's a BPA molecule (Bisphenol A), like most marine epoxies are, it's going to blush, unless you have perfict environmental condisions in the shop, which most builders don't have. I have an A/C'd shop now and I can get non-blushing epoxies to cure without a blush, but I still don't trust that some surface contamination hasn't occurred, so I still wash freshly epoxied surfaces, just in case. This is a result of having blush ruin and force a redo on several projects.

     

    Some, not all, nor even most alkyd paints, will have a problem with fresh epoxy coatings. Most of us have a mental note about which brands and formulations have this issue, so don't use these products over fresh goo (like Rustolum marine topcoat for example). It doesn't mater if the surface was washed or not, it's a chemical reaction that occurs as the epoxy finishes it final curing process, which can take a few weeks in some cases. Most are painting before the goo is actually fully cured, so this problem comes up. This said, I've never heard of a fully cured epoxy having this issue, but I'll bet it still can occur on fully cured epoxy.

     

    I'm glad to see some of the paint manufactures are recognizing this and making cautions about it. PrimeCoat works well and being an epoxy doesn't have this issue, so if using single part Interlux paint, use the PrimeCoat or possibly an other epoxy primer.

     

    With paints getting as sophisticated as they are now, lots of things can screw with the cure. I had an issue with a "non-clogging" sand paper once. I primed, then sanded normally, but the top coat didn't stick. I did dry normally, but peeled off in huge sheets of cured paint film. After some investigation, I found the sand paper's non-clogging feature was done with animal fats, which left a residue on the surface the paint didn't bond too. Pissed me off, as I used $300 a gallon paint and had to strip every thing and do it again, for a customer that wasn't in the mood to wait. 

     

    It's things like this, that force painters to stick with stuff they know, rarely varying from established products and procedures.

  7. I think you're biting off way more then you can chew or more importantly can comprehend. Vacationer is a poor baseline to use as an offshore yacht, particularly when there are literally hundreds of other designs that are just as easy to build, with far more capabilities. Additionally, Vacationer has known other issues, that you haven't addressed, some quite obvious, which has me wondering, why such drastic changes to a protected waters craft, that's very ill suited for off shore work, when you can select far superior designs that will serve you well, without major surgery.

  8. This is an issue that the paint manufactures are starting to catch up with. Apparently they've had comments about their alkyd base not sticking well to epoxy and indeed some alkyds do have issues with epoxy, though it's been a crap shoot as to which these might be. I've avoid this for some time using nothing but epoxy primers, but those of you that are going to use an alkyd primer, do some test samples first, to insure it's not one of the alkyds that has problems with epoxy.

  9. There's several issues you haven't addressed with your V bottom modifications, that will need to be, if you expect this to float upright on launch day. The first is the lack of a center of masses calculation, so you can get the revised boat, to float where you'd like. You've added quite a bit of displacement to the hull form, but I don't see this as sea worthy yet, without further explanation of the adjustment of the usual "centers". This boat is a cat. D at best and making it a cat. B or A would be quite an undertaking to say the least. It would also be wise to consider some reasonable engineering concerns before the build commences, such as the false bottom. The model looks great, but you'd be well advised to do the math before cutting full size pieces of plywood.

  10. It's usual to have the mini block hanging aft, off the leach, usually by a loop or gasket of line, then to dangle down one side. I'd imaging this will work as well, if a little more wear and tear. The trick to this setup is the location of the turning block and eye strap on the boom. I like them a little aft of their location on the sail so they pull aft a bit, when hauled down.

  11. I'm old enough to have learned to draft by hand and to loft on the floor. I know countless people that have made their own ducks and they look a lot like yours. I guess "Popular Mechanics" or someone printed a set of plans for the standard duck shape and it caught on. I made my own too, many  moons ago and still use them regularly. I have two sets, small and large, but I ignored the shapes thing. I used some stainless nails, bent to a hook and cast them in place on each duck, but mine aren't shaped like that. They do have some shape, but only for a comfortable place for your (my) thumbs and fingers to land. Mine are essentially a small brick with a depression on each side and a hook sticking out the front. The hook height was determined by the tallest batten I had at the time, plus about an 1/8".

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  12. PVC's added advantage is, the goo and fabric will not like to stick to it, very well, so it's easy to remove. 24 - 36 hours, depending on temperatures, should do. If the cure temperatures are relatively low (high 60's or less), it'll need more time, less if it's hotter.

  13. Yeah, most of my friends are like you. Hell, I learn hard too and have replace a lot more kitchen appliances than you as well, but I do eventually learn. It may just be muscle memory. Look, you don't actually have to learn, but a good idea is the "faux appropriate response reflex", which I have attempted to master in recent years. Well, what the hell does this mean. Simply, instead of seeing a hotass chick on TV and saying that's "screaming" (as your voice tails off because you've realized, you'd screwed the pooch again), you instead reply "isn't that a lovely looking young lady". It's all about changing your models and possibly catch phrases. Good luck . . .

  14. Grasshopper, you've come such a long way so far, enough that the old auto body guy, noticed your fairing is good (congratulations), but you have much to learn about coping with the one that must be obeyed. First off; a new vacuum cleaner isn't a good birthday present for the other half, no matter what kind of deal you found on Amazon. I mention this, because a buddy of mine did just this last year, with his lady and still shows the scars of this obvious blunder.

     

    Look, sometimes you'll need to "borrow" a tool or device from the kitchen. The first rule is never assume they're not going to hear you lifting it out of the cabinet, she so neatly tucked it into and second, the best advise is to wait and do the deed when they're not home. Additionally, in spite of your best attempts to convince her that the polyurethane pellets you poured through her spaghetti strainer are so inert you can eat them, you'll have to replace the spaghetti strainer. I know this because I actually ate a small handful of the offending pellets, just to prove the point, which I seriously regretted the following morning, during my daily ritual. Simply, you steal it or you can say you borrowed it, but this will imply you've been caught, which isn't good. If you need a tool, yep, steal money from the kids collage savings, but not a word, just get the tool. Next month or so, casually mention the small windfall you had at an after hours poker game or found in the parking lot when leaving the local Wal-Mart after getting some milk, which you obediently deposited into the kids collage account.

     

    Boat builders have to be, by their very nature, inventive, creative, often innovative, just to get the darn boat finished, let alone survive to build another. This means some lying, obscuring and bending of reality and the true may be in order, so you can enjoy the freedoms, you've worked so hard to wallow about in. Show your inner boat builder skills and make us proud . . .

  15. Yep, that's the way they look. If you make a deadnuts (technical term) lasered boot stripe, it'll look great and straight, until you splash 'er. Ideally, the boot stripe has a little sweep to it at each end, both on the bottom of the stripe (unless it's just a bottom paint LWL). The bow generally has more height then the stern at the transom and it's an eyeball thing. I remember reading somewhere (probably Herreshoff) a set of heights for this feature, based on percentage of LWL, but I can't find it. Simply put, once you've taped off the top or bottom of the boot stripe, lift the forward end off the boat and raise it, say an inch or 1.5" above the actual line. Eyeball it in, fairing back down to the actual line, across the last 4 or 5 feet of the forward portion of the hull. Do the same with the aft piece of tape, but reduce the height at least 10 - 15%, say a 1/4" if the bow height is 1.5" and again fair this in to the laser line across the last 3 - 4' of hull. The bottom of the boot stripe gets the same treatment, just not as much sweep. A common rule is (how much additional height for the stripe) 1/2 as much as the stripe at the bow and 1/4 as much at the stern. So, a 3" tall stripe would have a 4.5" height at the bow, by this rule, though I don't necessarily agree with it aesthetically.

     

    The reason for this is small boats can have trim all over the place. On small boats, you can fart and change the trim, so the LWL or boot stripe needs to cheat the eye. If it's dead straight, even the slightest amount of trim change will be noticeable on the boat, but if the ends have a little sweep in them, your trim can be off by a good amount, but the boat still looks like it's floating level. Additionally, it compensates for an optical illusion, where the bow moves away from the eye as it tucks into the centerline. It's a purely aesthetic thing, but a good one to remember and separates the pro's from the lubbers.

     

    2wny5og.jpg

     

    This boat has a "swept" boot stripe. It's proportions aren't they way I'd do it, as I like a little more "drop" in the line around midship, but it does show what I mean. Also on this one, it looks like just the top of the stripe received this treatment and the bottom paint is a straight line. From the angle this image is shot, it looks okay, but a dead on broadside the shot might look like the bow droops on the the bottom of the stripe, near the bow.

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