SAILBOAT REFIT: Glassing in Traveler Bulkhead [E49] 

We love that you watch Mimi and can’t wait to see you soon!

Absolutely, wish I had more memories of family/dad assistance in projects. I hope it will be immensely satisying for them too.

@@Tomm9y It’s beyond immensely satisfying! I love hanging out with Matt … with or without a project. Judy (Matt’s mom)

Thanks so much 😊

It won’t bond the glass to the underlying substrate unless the layup is still slightly green, but it will support the glass and keep it in column. The strength of the part is from long glass strands in tension. The void allows stress to concentrate at the edges and filling it will alleviate that some, if not entirely. But for small voids it should be stronger to fill them than to cut those long strands of glass by grinding.

I am going to do some more research on this. Thx

@@christopherbrand5360 Wont bond.... That depends on a number of factors. Mainly if the epoxy he's using blushes or not. But yes I do agree more often then not the inside of the bubble is mostly mirror finish smooth. And well not the best boding surface. I built Hinckleys for many years, and voids where always filled by injection on a case by case, if and when the rare event happend during production.

treat it as if one's patching up a thru hull opening: remove the void, feather the surface, then spot glass to the same level, any bumps will be disguised by fairing anyway. with the amount of glass being applied that thing aint going anywhere.

thanks for the comments, Rob!

family bonding over bonding

i'm going to research this a bit more!

There is always the possibility to inject them...

@@ross82 Yup, you’re right and that’s why filling small voids with resin to stabilise them, or grinding out and repairing them with new layup, is important. The decision on which method to go with is directly affected by what the underlying layup consists of. If it’s biaxial or chopped strand cloth only there’s no huge downside to grinding out locally and providing a generous gentle taper up to the parent surface, then laying new glass to finish. To all intents it’ll be virtually as good as if it hadn’t happened. Where the void is beneath unidirectional cloth or long strand tow it’s a different story. The purpose of that material is to provide greatest strength in tension on a specific straight line load path. If the strands are broken or disrupted the real benefit of using them is gone, so in that instance the lesser evil is usually to stabilise the offending void by backfilling it with epoxy via a syringe. The two small holes that are required, one to inject resin in and one to vent air out, involve the minimum possible loss of unbroken linear strands, thus retaining maximum strength in tension, whilst at the same time preventing future delamination progression. It sure beats starting all over again from scratch anyway, which is the kinda nuclear option. Hope that all kind of makes sense. Composite layup design optimisation and manufacture is a vast but interesting technical subject and learning how to go about sorting the production snags that inevitably occur, without just scrapping a part that comes out slightly less than perfect, is a whole subject within itself. Fascinating, though it helps to be a bit of tech geek. Now, where’s my slippers? 😂 Cheers, R. 😎👍🍻

*effect

Nothing is perfect, drill and fill if so desired. In the end it will be about holding that part to the boat and holding the traveler to the parts. I might have considered using double 3/4 hydrotek marine plywood for this part for stiffness akd strength, plus fasteners set better. Good work keep going, long road ahead yet

glad it's helpful!

thanks Nathan!

wow, small world!

cheers Adam and thanks!

Good idea. I also just got a bigger vacuum which should do the trick

Yes, two small holes is good. One for epoxy to go in and one for air to come out. Both at the top of the void as close to level with each other as possible.

The strength is the mat not the epoxy. That's why he uses the vacuum bag to reduce the amount of epoxy in the fiberglass

don't stop! we love puns.

@@TheDuracellProject Well, you've probably heard of The Blue Man Group... so, you can run with glue puns from there. PS: heading to the studio today 10/9 to work on the hornpipe project: "Sticky Goop". Hope to have something to send your way soon. Stay 'tuned'. Your friendly desktop phantom shipmate.

...oops - difficult to sneek

Evan, the naval architect helping me out , calculated the loads for the chainplate and the traveler bulkhead.

@@TheDuracellProject Yea for Evan! I have Ian Farrier’s very detailed plans for building the composite chainplates & forestay of the F39 tri, handling about 130,000lbs righting moment. Happy to share in support of your project if that’s helpful. -greg

Hi Chris Matt's vacuum bagging technique is really excellent, but wet epoxy lay up is still a race with the clock. With infusion of large and complex parts, resin that is kicking on earlier stages of the infusion is not a problem as long as the resin front is still fully liquid. (60' catamaran hulls, 2'" thick engine beds on a 150 foot motor yacht.) My materials rep taught us a trick to catch up with any voids that develop in the resin front. You use a needle and tube connected to the vacuum, ready to go. If you need to pull resin into a developing void you just stick it through the bag with a little bit of sealing tape around the needle. When the dry area is full of resin pull the needle out through the tape and seal the puncture.

I thought long and hard about doing infusion on this one but I have never done infusion before and didn’t want this one to be my first one. I talked to some guys who are infusions xperts and they said this would be a really tough one. I will be learning how to do infusion for the interior work.

Hi yes it is quite a task when you do infusion for the first time, especially when you have no MTI tubes, you then want to have a lot of different injection tubes and some separate vacuum hoses as well and a resin trap is essential to not destroy the vacuum pump with epoxy. I know the MTI hoses are not cheap but they work very well. If you need some more information about the special tricks you can always reach me. Matthias

we do our best to re-use!

Yep, through the dog house. I am waiting glass in the roof so that I can slide it back.

Yes, two small holes is good. One for epoxy to go in and one for air to come out. Both at the top of the void as close to level with each other as possible.

What Matt didn’t mention was that their boat won the very first R2AK!

Thats so cool, I’ve watched most of the R2AK videos just beautiful area and what a challenge

it's a bib that makes her too awkward to kill forest creatures. otherwise, it's just mass murder of shrews and birds around here.

If I had gotten it to suck immediately it would have worked. I did get a bigger pump and I am confident that will fix the problem

I did actually. It’s in the episode a few months ago when I built the traveler bulkhead.

@@TheDuracellProject . Ahh, then just ignore me. My bad. I still think a wide spaced German sheet setup is best when you have only a small space under the boom. Especially upwind.