Number 10

By my count, there has been 9 hull shells pulled out of the Gilmor mould with 2 still yet to be completed in to boats). On the weekend, with the help of my brother, I started making number 10.

First up was mold prep. The mould is a little worse for wear these days, than she was when she was new, and the last person to use her, cough doink, didn’t to the best job of leaving it how he found it. After a few hours of polishing and waxing, it started to look somewhat like its former glory days.

IMG_0517

Then the preparation started.

I have come to the conclusion that boat building is a lot like making stir-fry. Most of the time will be spent in preparation for the construction. All of Friday was spent cutting cloth, foam and pre-bending foam to shape with a heat gun.

IMG_0523 IMG_0528 IMG_0530 

With all the foam prepared, and the cloth cut it was time for beers. Then, at about 9pm (after the kids were in bed), we set the 2 hour timer and went for it, as determined by the resin pot life and the need to have the boat under vacuum before the resin started go go off. We set a “point of no return” at 1:30 where we would assess where we were and decide to proceed with the second, inner skin as well.

In the end, we managed to get the whole thing done and in the bag in 2hours 10 mins, so we were pretty happy with that, then we set the pump on it, oh and this is no pussy small pump let me tell you …

IMG_0534 IMG_0531

We recorded the whole thing on video, so here is how to build a shell in 8 mins …

6 thoughts on “Number 10

  1. Bruce,
    I have a quick question: What advantages do you find in shaping the foam that way, ie. formed with a heat gun as opposed to flat panels? Do you think you could bend corecell with a heat gun similarly?
    Thanks,
    Graham

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>