small craft photos

part 1 - cutting the hull

last week i was assigned to cut the front off matts hull, unfortunately i didnt get any pics of myself doing it... :(
i think matt was a little sad, cause he didnt want to watch, he only came to look after all the cutting was done.

i had to tear the last bit cause i
couldnt get the jigsaw underneath
it was too close to the floor.

this is looking into the hull from the
front, you can see the subfloor
thats there for extra strength, and
you can also see the carbonfibre
on the sides.

after that we cut the top section off just above the carbon, unfortunately i forgot to get a pic of what it looked like after we cut it...

part 2 - cutting the carbon and glass

me and mohamed had to cut the carbon and glass while the others finished fitting the foam on their half-hulls

here you can see the 3 strips of carbon lying on top of the 3 glass 

it looks to cool!

when cutting the carbon (unidirectional) you have to slide
scissors so you only cut the strands that run across
and you dont cut the strands that run lengthways

yeah, we were both kinda nervous to cut the carbon and fibreglass cause matt wasnt there to check that we had the right lengths and everything.

but in the end it all turned out correct.

Part 3 - wetting out

we all got a chance to wet out the glass and carbon.

here is where we rolled the glass off the roll and onto the table

here is where we rolled the glass
back onto the roll after wetting it out
with resin.

Part 4 - applying the laminate

before we apply the laminate we have to
make sure the foam is perfectally flat with
no bumps or ditches. so here is mohamed
sanding the foam after we bogged all the holes

this took ages cause matt wanted to make sure it was all perfect so he started all of them

applying the carbon

matt making sure its straight and not crinkled

straightening out the carbon. always work outwards from the centre so the crinkles and bubbles have to move the least distance and the carbon warps the least

after working for hours (even with a
respirator, you start to get a head
ache and start to feel dizzy)

 after laying out the glass you have to make sure it has no bubbles or crinkles (this takes a long time...)
and you have to make sure it has resin spread evenly                                               through it

small craft

its been about a week since my last post,

well we've managed to laminate all 4 half-hulls by friday, and we spend the week mostly preping for that.

my group finished laying the foam in on thursday before lunch and after lunch we laminated our half-hull.
and then on friday we help the other groups, and only just managed to finish all of them by 1600.

i got to cut out the carbon fiber and fiber glass with mohamed on friday also.

the actual laying in of the fiberglass takes ages cause we have to make sure that there are no bubbles whatsoever under the glass...
although the wetting out process is reasonably quick.

ill try upload some photos some time this week

setting up frames...

this is us setting up the frames. ^^^>>>

some of the guys making stringers.

vacuuming up a bit. just general

cleaning.

<<< nearly finished adding the stringers

Matt thinking about how we are going to do the bow!!! >>>

my group's job before we really got into it was to cut blocks to glue to the floor that hold the frames in place. that was pretty easy.

one of the other groups make packers.

another group organised all the equipment and tools we needed.

and the other group made stringers.

ok we nearly finished setting up the frames. towards the end i started rushing a bit and made a few minor errors (just putting the stringers on too quickly and making some of them unfair), so we went back and fixed them.
i also had to copy cut (router) another of those bow pieces (and we need to make 2 more tomorrow morning).

starting small craft build

last week i caught up on blogging and im happy to say i didnt wait more then a week to update again!!!

last friday i came in to unitec and coppy cutted (router) allmost all of the frames for the front 4 meters of dragon (our small craft build). it took me a few to get into a nice pattern, but after the first 8 or so, i was steadily doing them at about 2 every 15min. i managed to finish them at 1:30 and i went home early to get ready for a sea cadet camp that i had all weekend!

wednesday, brett went thru bits and pieces, nothing in particualar. and in the afternoon we finished preping the frames and clearing out a space to set them up. and we set them up before we went home. today we are gonna make sure they are all level and finish cutting stringers and probably fit them to the frames.

when i get home today i will try to upload a few pics of what we did.

woah!

ok its been over a month since my last blog update! thats not good!!!

lets see, at the end of last term we (well most of us) finished our 8mtr round bilge hull drawings in the drawing room. this term we started our lofting of the 2.5 mtr chined dingheys, im glad to say that after 3 days of solid work ive finished! i did have to redraw most of the grid lines cause they were extremely light (not visible in some places), and some of my hull lines are also just visible (mental note: use a darker pencil, not a 4H).

today and tomorrow our class is doing a first aid course, fortunately i did one 3 weeks ago for gymnastics coaching, so i dont have to do it again.

im taking today off (thursday) and just catching up on blogging and wikis, however i dont seem to beable to load wikispaces (for sum weird reason).

tomorrow im gonna start the prepareation for our small craft build. john and i are gonna help matt cut stringers for the hull frames..

i had to go in to unitec on monday to get the information from my drawing needed to calculate CLR, underwater volume, saltwater displacement, lateral area...

i didnt manage to finish all of it at uni cause i had gym in the afternoon, but luckily i had all the info i needed to i just finished at home on tues. i didnt do the calculations perfectally cause i started them in mm (millimerters) and when i converted them to m (meters) i didnt quite do it correctally so my numbers were 10 times bigger then they shoud have been. it wasnt too hard to fix the problem once we found it tho..

peter hasnt turned up since mid semester break, he was really struggling with the drawing. it appears hes not comming back at all!!! so now we only have 12 boys in our class!!! wow thats very few.!

brett has been complaining about the boys who dont turn up for his theory lessons. fair enuf! they are really gonna fall behind! and i dont want to thing about what will happen when we start the small craft build cause we are supposed to work in teams!!! and if they dont turn up reliably for class everyone is gonna fall behind. i just hope i get a reliable team!

ok im gonna try catch up on the wiki now! hopefully it will load, otherwise i might take a break and play sum dota with my brother! yay (or maybe liero or operation space hogs, but we will only beable to do that if the computer starts up TT)

i think this is enuf blogging to catch up for the few weeks that ive done none! but i really need to do it on a regular basis so i dont miss out info, plus it will be a lot easier when its fresh in my mind!