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28 foot Crusier


Scott Dunsworth

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Have a good friend that donated 10 gallons of fresh Raka epoxy to the project.

That is a good friend! :) Good luck with the fairing this week. I can sympathize about the heat. It's been 88 - 105 here in Georgia for the past week, as I put in 5 full days of sanding, painting, and epoxying to extend my masts, reshape my tiller handle, make a tiller extension, upgrade some rigging hardware, and reorganize the garage. Just have to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to get drenched in sweat and then thickly coated in sanding dust.

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You are right that is a good friend, I'll have to invite them down to Florida for some sailing one cold winter.

After a few hours of sanding today in the barn, I think I'm going to switch over to midnight shift. When the suns out, that barn gets 10 to 15 degrees hotter than the outside temperature.

Its in the high 60's to low 70's at night and high 90's to over a 100 by day, add the extra heat in the barn and it's more than I can handle. So I think I'm going to become nocturnal for a few weeks. Besides the light in the barn at night helps show up low and high places. There's just no good easy way that I know of to get through this phase of the build, there's over 500 square feet of hull.

I'm headed to the pool now for a couple of :) cold ones :) and to do that buoyancy test on a two square foot piece of the hull. I have been wanting to do that and keep forgetting. I think it will be interesting to see how much the hull will add to the floatation.

Scott

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The hull material has one and a half pound of buoyancy per square foot. So that adds up to about 800 pounds of flotation for the hull not counting bulkheads, decks and cabin wood. I was hoping the hull would come in at more than 1200 pounds of floatation. I am going to try to insulate most of that hull with 1/2 inch foam which has the potential of raising the hull floatation by another 1200 pounds. All this along with foam cored decks, cabin and poured foam in wasted spaces may be enough to keep her off the bottom of sea. But so much of the floatation will be high in the boat I'm sure she will be a swamped rat. But what floatation there is may help slow the in pour of water to the point that pumps may be able to keep up, depending on the size of the hole of course. It should also give a slow thinking captain more time to execute a plan of salvation.

At any rate we should be miles ahead of a fiberglass production boat that go to the bottom pretty quick.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well I have sanded and faired this thing about as long as I can stand it. I'll spend next week just touching up and getting the shop ready for the glassing day. I'm going to try to get three friends to help next weekend and get this tub glassed. Planning on starting around 8 in the evening as she starts to cool down to help with the out gasing and to help pull the epoxy deep into the wood.

Wish me luck it will be a long night.

Scott

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  • 2 weeks later...

She is glassed!! Im just filling the weave now. I'll post some pictures in a few days. It took 8 gallons of goo to wet out that berber carpet we put on her. ( 17 oz biaxle )

The gloss of the epoxy in the lights gives me hope that she's fair. I still have to fair in the the overlaps of of the cloth.

Now it's keel Time.

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After putting three filler coats on, the first unthickened and two thickened coats, It took four more gallons of epoxy. So that's 12 Gallons to wet out that carpet and fill the weave!! Insane isn't it! That puts the total for the build so far at 27 gallons. I'm nearly at a gallon per foot and still got to glass the inside. Something Tom said way back early in this build, was that cypress will adsorb a lot of water if it has the chance. Well that is equally true with epoxy, it drinks it up deep into the grain.

This weekend we will fair in the glass over laps and start building in the keel flat. Those over laps look to be 1/8 inch thick so I'll have to draw from my drywall skills to make them disappear.

Its strange how the old saying is a picture doesn't lie. But they do, I spent quite a bit of time fairing the bow and it looks sweet in person, but in the pictures it looks like a train wreck!

Just a bit of trivia, I added up all the materials so far to get an estimated weight of the hull at this point and it came in at 1955 pounds. Trying to keep an estimate of the weight, because the day will come to turn her over and its always on my mind. Everyone that sees the boat always asks how are you going to turn this thing over and how are you going to get it from the barn to a trailer? My answer is always I don't have a clue! :unsure:

Scott

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I got an email from a friend asking me if the white areas showing under the glass were dry spots. It's white balloons, I switched over at about mid ship to the white. The cost was much cheaper by 34's. In the pictures they do look like large dry areas though.

After looking over the whole hull I found 2 air entrapment's spots the size of a dime and a few small ones where we forced the biaxle around the bow. Those on the bow I will cut out and fill. We actually got no out gassing while wetting out the hull, this is a first for me. We started about 9 PM and it had been cooling down for about three hours before that. I had used a strong fan blowing under the hull sucking cool outside air. It done the trick the hull was cooling from 85 degrees to the low 60's by the time we finished.

The pictures really don't do the hull justice.

I usually cut the glass hanging from the shear while it's still green but decided to leave it this time until I'm done with the bottom. It will act as a drip edge for washing the hull down. That way the water will drip from it and not turn and get the deck shelf wet every time I wash the hull of blush. I cant see or feel any blush after using the Raka but there's probably some there.

With the hull glassed and the inside coated with a thin layer of epoxy ( except under the temporary frames ) I'm hoping she will be stabilized enough till I can get the inside glassed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got a pattern for the keel lamination's done, so we will start laying up the keel this week end. The keel is 101 inch's long at the bottom of the hull and about 18 inch's shorter at the foot. Also 9 1/2 inch's thick at the widest point.

My brother stays on me about making her a center-boarder. But I want to do a lot of off shore sailing and just don't feel like the four foot draft is unreasonable. Heck his trawler draws only a few inch's less than that.

Anyway we will be laminating the keel now, then on to the rudder skeg.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was intending to get the keel flat installed today, but the barn took all day replacing the plastic front. So I'll start on that today.

While the plastic was off I thought I would get a few pictures that wasn't possible with the barn closed up.

The shear planking is not trimmed to the deck shelf as of yet so that makes the shear look a bit lumpy. Before the planking went on the deck shelf showed the sheer fair and sweet. Cant wait to turn her over and get all these cleaned up so I can see her real shape. As you can see the stern hasn't been cut yet, Graham and I discussed that this morning.

After the keel is laid up there is only going to be about 4 inch's of space between the boat and the bottom of the truss's. So saying it's going to be interesting to turn is an understatement. I do now have some plans in the works on how to get that done, but no backup plan.

To get her out when done, the plan is when turning the hull set her in a metal cradle with the bottom rails fashioned as sled rails. We can then take the barn wall down and pull her out to the boom truck. Lift her up then use the tractor to set the cradle on the flat bed and set the boat back in the cradle.

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Finally got the keel flat installed. After checking, double checking and rechecking, alignment and position and levelness.

This is the first time I used chopped fiberglass mixed in the epoxy. Some areas were going to be a little thick so I used the chopped glass with silica. The glass fibers were about 1 inch long, don't know if they strengthen epoxy much, but figured they couldn't hurt.

So its on to sanding, fairing the glass overlaps and laying up the keel.

Just about given up on getting this thing turned over by winter, just too much to do, to get there!

Scott

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Shes looking great scott. Man that is a massive surface to fair. Wish I could offer some advice to help make things easier but you probaly are aware more than anyone of the task ahead. Just keep trucking.....and if you have any mates that owe you a favor... nows a good time to give them a call! (Longboarding)

ps. I have read the Gougeon brothers book on boat construction about 3000 times. It has been the most helpful book reguarding boat building, especially yatchs of your size I think I have ever come across. Well worth getting If you havnt already.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been to busy to get much time on my boat. I will get some more keel lamination's cut out this weekend.

Out of epoxy again so I'll just keep cutting and shaping pieces for the keel.

The high temperature of the shed really cured the the glass super hard. We will be sanding on it again for a while.

I'll post a picture of the keel flat this weekend from the top of the barn, you can really get a idea how wide she is from up there.

As soon as Graham gets me some direction on cutting the stern I am going to get that cut in.

Peter hope you bring us up to date on your 28 with some more inspirational pictures. I need extra motivation please!! :) :)

Scott

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On a conventional carvel planked boat it would be called the plank keel, though I am not sure the term applies here. So much of the old terminology is very concise and useful, but loses something in the translation sometimes in modern methods. Looking good! Getting that just right will make the rest of the keel work easier.*

*not necessarily easy

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