She sails! A legend returns!

Saturday 24 October 12.10. Launched! The end of one adventure, the start of another!

It seems like months - indeed it is months since the last blog entry, but man when we get busy here at carbonology.com we get busy! SO here's a run down of the last few weeks of the build... Well the carbon racks take a lot of time and effort. Joining tubes is a long process if you want them to stay joined and on an 18 everything has to be built to last - and everything has to be made to measure. It takes time.

But as you can see, the racks looked great when they were finished.

I'll put some more detail up about how we rigged the boat in the next few days... promise!!

Strung Up!

Hey it's busy around here. sorry for lack of bloggage, but we're making a lot of stuff for customers - in particular our special projects side, and of course it is the sailing season and championships in various classes are coming up fast and we are involved one way or another.

Well as you can see the wings are on, the sprit fits properly and we're busy stringing up. The mast has been up an down a few times and hopefully we'll get the skiff on the water soon. Big up to Ady who has been putting a lot of time in helping me catch up with skiff work when 'real' work gets in the way.

Stringing up the trampolines is a big deal - they take a couple of hours each side to get right, and that's using a pre made trampoline... We got through probably 30 metres or so of high tensile dyneema (cordura casing) to string them on, with each 'stitch' pulled as tight as we could get it, working the corners first, then the outboard edge, the inboard edge and finally the ends. Its a lot of string - and even more when you consider each tramp' has around 70 metres of string in it. When it's done properly, they are so tight they ping!

The whole boat has taken a long time - a lot longer than we wanted it too, but 2 things are just plain facts. 1. Every job on one of these things needs to be done properly - you can't just lash something up on the way to the start, and 2. The project has generated a lot of interest in what we do (err kind of the point!) and made us busier this year than ever before - and that's right in the teeth of a downturn... I am therefore happy that we have been so busy that the boat has had to take the back seat at times - and delighted that each and every job on her looks so good. Can't wait to get the thing in the water!

Rack em up!

It was very frustrating having to work while the inaugural 18fter Mark Foy Trophy was being hotly contested in Carnac. The racing looked tight and fair with a good range of conditions (although I think it was big rigs all week, am I right?) Robert Greenhalgh, Dan Johnson and Phil Harmer pictured above (thanks to Yachts and Yachting ) did a great job, winning the event convincingly from boats of every corner of the world. Not sailing the last race and still winning by a good margin is usually a sign of overall supremecy. Interestingly the top 3 boats representing the UK, Australia and the USA in that order - Truly epic stuff... Hopefully next year we'll be there.

Not that that is a prediction of when we will hit the water!! We weren't taking it easy here at carbonology HQ - As you can see we're assembling the racks now - The tube has been provided by our viking friend Soren Clausen at Xperion Tubes - Soren was racing in carnac last week in GP Covers (DEN1) and looked like they enjoyed the fresher days particularly! The tube is pull wound so it is particularly stable in torsion - which it is very good for rack tubes to be good at because once sailing, the loads are generally bending and twisting and strain can be in any direction or load case.

As I type both sets are outside curing (funnily enough the boat doesn't fit in the 'shop with the racks loaded!) and when the initial glue has gone off, we'll start seconadary laminating - which might be worth a look if you are interested...

Take me back to carbonology

Stick a flag on THAT!

8.30pm on Wednesday June 24 2009 and GBR52 has a rig put on her for the first time in maybe 4 years. We went straight for full rig tension, which although it made the mast creak and the pins bend in the chainplates, didn't seem to bother the structure of the skiff, and even though we put multiple tape measures on her, there didn't seem to be any hull deflection in any direction.

Next time it's up we'll do the same but put 100Kg of mainsheet loads on as well and see what happens, but for now we can just admire the Suffolk sunset being punctured by our No 1 rig...

Don't phone in, it's just for fun!

I know from the wonders of the blog back office that we get readers from all over the 'States, Australia, Indonesia, Germany, France, Denmark, Turkey and Spain and of course the UK... Well skiff fans the world over here's a Skiff related quiz for you!!

This very early 18ft SKIFF FITTING has been kindly lent to us by our neighbours here in Woodbrige - Atlantic Rigging - (2.5 and 3mm dyeform on the shelf as well as anything else you could need for your boat from 6ft to 60ft).

The question is: - What is it?!?

Put your answers on the comment page and remember - Don't phone in - it's just for fun!

True Blue

Ed Note: This post is pretty much based on boat building techniques, but I know of car and bike builders that (very sensibly in my opinion) visited a few boat yards and buy the same products as the boat builders and save themselves hours of work on finishing. DC.

One of the marvels of the modern boat building age is the development of adhesives, fillers and paints. In your own shed/barn/garden you can now produce the same sort of finish that 10, no maybe even just 5 years ago would have been only possible in a few boat yards in the country.

The biggest issue in the process of refinishing is trueing up, or fairing a surface. We used to mix epoxy resin with micro-balloons to form a skimmable paste, but man it was messy - and expensive, if not in materials (actually, yes in materials) then definitely in man-hours. Once that was done and had cured, you needed to get the long board out, but epoxy adhesives being what they are it was hard work - Not that we're scared of that around here, but long boarding a filler which has set like concrete is a long expensive process. Once that was (finally) done you'd use a high build primer applied with a brush, which was almost the same as normal primer in thickness, so you needed 2 coats of it. Then you could see the low points (man I'm boring myself here! - you can imagine how dull all of this is in real life!!) and you'd use polyester filler to tickle up the las few dips and hollows. After an all over sand, the the top coat primer would go on and then once that was flat and yet still covering the whole surface, you'd get the thing sprayed up to a finish. Weeks and weeks of work and unless done very carefully, adding heaps to the weight of the boat.

2009 and thanks to the paint companies all wanting a slice of the high performance keel boat market from Melges 24 to America's Cup and everything in between, epoxy paints and primer/fillers of all types are on the market.

You can carry out your repair and then after a rough sand to key everything up, skim with a super light fairing filler - many of which have a specific gravity of less than 1.0 - (Ie they weigh less than water) All of the surfaces of the skiff have been skimmed using this product - Nautix Blue Epoxy Filler - which weighs just 600g per Litre. When it has cured, we hit it with a long board and it's like sanding polyester car filler - easy. With the shape trued up, we roller on (yes ROLLER) a coat of hi build primer, which unlike it's predecessors really is thick. It goes off fast (like sandable in 3 hours on a warm day). The long boards come out again, followed by the electric dual action (DA) sander (rotating and vibrating orbital sander). Then finally a wet sand with 240grit wet and dry - and you are ready for a top coat!

Here's where it really gets interesting (in a paint mixing way!) The surface finish from the modern epoxy primer is better than the gloss top coats of 10 years ago - particularly when the boat is sliding through the water. So now we don't spray on a topcoat, we roller on using a fine foam roller, a high performance epoxy primer like Durepox as a top coat. When it has set, we polish it with wet and dry, right back to 2000 grit, then use cutting compounds. It comes up like a gloss. The advantage of the hard work is the boat slides through the water quicker (Ok, we'll have that discussion fully another time) but from a practical point of view it means any damage or repair work can be fixed double quick. Very soon the boat will be in it's fully finished colour - and under it you will find just one coat of hi build primer and some lightweight filler. QED.

Stars on 45

I get people ring up and say they have stuck a panel into a car or completed a repair to a fairing on a bike - and then quite rightly used a woven glass or carbon tape to go over the join. They clean/sand the area properly and mix their resin with a little coloidal silica or microfibres to give it some resistance to sag. They cut the tapes, laminate them in and use peel-ply to keep the whole lot consolidated while it cures. All text book stuff. The job looks a peach when they peel the peel-ply off, but within a few weeks the cracks have started. Why when it was going so well!!

Y'see, standard tape is fine for most secondary bonding (ie the reinforcement laid up after the glue sticking the panels has cured), but as it is 0/90 oriented (ie the fibres run at 0 degrees and 90 degrees to the length of the tape) it has a big failing - Only half of the fibre is doing any work... The '0' degree fibres are running the length of the join and aren't doing anything...

In higher loaded areas, for example on the deck of an 18ft skiff where 3 blokes will run around while the boat bounces up and down, it is best not to leave too much to chance. As watertight and solid as it feels, 0/90 standard taping isn't enough. Instead we took some time and cut some 45deg/45deg tapes from a metre of standard woven fabric - in this case a 200g/sqm carbon fabric. Lay up, peel ply, wash up and rest assured that all of the fibre is doing something to hold the deck together - and consider torsional or sheer case loading, the fibre is more directly resistant to loads. Savvy?

(I'm going to be running around on that bit very soon!)