Projects

The center case is located between bulkheads 11 and 12 which are the last plywood bulkheads to be assembled, rest of the bulkheads are made from foam. After the center case is cured the last plywood bulkheads can be glued to their position.

Until now the transom was glued only from outside and next step is to reinforce the transom from inside. The transom reinforcement  is made of few layers of glass, western red cedar and plywood that are glued together. Purpose for this is that the glass along the keel line should take most of the possible forces that are directed to the bottom of the transom. The next picture shows the transom reinforcement.

Last step before glueing the foam bulkheads is making the chainplate for side stays and for spi chute. Obviously there will be lots of pressure directed to this plate so I decided to use few layers of kevlar instead of planned glass cloth around it.

Next step is to trim and glue in the foam bulkheads, those were the first thing that I made around last July ;).

The cases for daggerboards are made of Okume with cedar spacers. I had to be little bit creative this time because the plans are made for low aspect ratio boards and I ordered high aspect ratio boards. Because of this I moved the back wall of the case few centimeters forward and made it little bit shorter so that center of daggerboards would be at the same spot than in the plans. In the picture below you can see the back side of the case.

After the cases are cured it is time to do some dry fitting.

 

Because I moved the back wall of the case I  decided to put additional cedar block behind the wall so that it will completely solid.

The case is put to correct position wit spacer and then it’s straightened with support screwed to gunwales.

Last step is to fillet and glass the case to hull.

When case glassing is cured the last two plywood bulkheads can be glued around it. So interior of my Blade is getting along pretty well :).

It has been again a long time without an update. Currently my schedule seems to be that I’ll do something every week, but the progress has not been that fast. Well of course it takes time to do things properly ;).

Making the bridle starts with some steel work i.e. rounding the outside end and drilling some holes that let the screws go through the steel. It was maybe the third time that my Dremel set was used and this time for something usefull. After the steelwork and making the cedar pieces for fitting it was again time to put pieces together.

After some dry assembly, glueing the bulkhead 3, the bridle fitting and the 1/3 bulkhead (used as a back wall for fitting) starts.

The bridle fitting will hold forestay, so I used kevlar in addition to normal glass cloth. Hopefully this will make difference when there will be lots of load on the fitting :).