Ended up making a V section to hold the trailing edges together.
Heavy, but solid, and pretty easy to build. On this size mast, the
trailing edge would have been much simpler, cheaper and quicker in
polystyrene, with bulkheads where the battens go. Good practice for
the big one, though.
Glassed the trailing edge today. Not perfect, but it will suffice.
Leading edge tomorrow. Then seal the ends, slit the track and paint
it. Seeing the sailmaker on Friday about the sail. Still need to
make the battens and the control thingys and cast the bearings on the
stub mast. Should be sailing before Xmas. ;-)
rob
On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Rob Denney <harryproa@gmail.com> wrote:
> Lost a couple of days when bending the glassed-on-the-inside foam
> trailing edge. It split along a hot melt glue join. Easy fix, but
> time consuming.
>
> Experimented with various ways of joining the trailing edge, none of
> which worked, so I have built a mould for a V piece which includes the
> track. In the interests of time saving I bought fiberglass tube for
> this.
>
> The leading edge was going to be hollow, from bent glass, but the
> weight would have been pretty much the same as using shaped
> polystyrene. Bought some sheets of this to glue and sand. When I
> went to pick them up, there were some very ornate shapes being cut for
> signs. Turns out they can cnc cut to almost any shape, for 25 bucks,
> so got them to do the leading edges.
>
> Pics in the folder.
>
> The mdf shapes holding it all together are the formers for the Sol mast.
>
> rob
>
> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Rob Denney <harryproa@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Added a couple more, plus some of the stuff in the garage. Any
>> questions, let me know.
>>
>> rob
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Rob Denney <harryproa@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> As promised, some photos in the elementarry telescoping mast folder.
>>> Don't show much as so far it is just a carbon/foam/glass box with
>>> flaps on the back. Should be a little more to see tomorrow when I
>>> join the flaps. The 7.2m/24' central spar (100mmx100mm/4"x4") weighs
>>> 12 kgs/26 lbs, which is heavy, but stiff.
>>>
>>> Building in the garage is hard work. Can't make dust or noise, run a
>>> vac pump or open the door for fear of the neighbours whinging. Have
>>> to be out next Monday so the wife can put her car away. Tow is also
>>> very time consuming compared to uni. Allows much better tapering, but
>>> takes a long time without a wetout machine or infusion.
>>>
>>> On the bright side, I had some excellent help from Jeff (Vis builder)
>>> yesterday which sped things up and relieved the boredom talking about
>>> glow in the dark boats and other interesting things. Also found out
>>> that Katy (daughter) is a natural filleter! One pass, perfect fillet,
>>> no mess. Biggest drawback of epoxy is that she cannot help more.
>>> Actually, 2nd biggest. Biggest is that it doesn't cure if you forget
>>> the hardener. First time i have done this for many years.
>>> Fortunately a small batch near the end so easily removed and fixed.
>>>
>>> Next step is to join the trailing edge and put the track in, and add a
>>> lightweight (28 kgs/cu m polystyrene) nose piece which will have to be
>>> sanded/shaped very quickly, with the vacuum cleaner on. ;-) Also
>>> got to make some guesses about the batten stiffness and how the sail
>>> will be trimmed.
>>>
>>> rob