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  • Cabin top

    boat building
    12th May 2009 - By adventuresofgreg

    Well, we have the cabin top assembled! This is pretty cool because it’s the first thing we’ve made that actually looks like Ocean WiTHiN! We’re also pretty psyched to see that Stuart Bloomfields design magic works like a charm. After building the cabin top jig and fitting the 3 cabin top carbon panels into position, they fit PERFECTLY – amazing.

    All the construction steps for the cabin top are below, but first a quick training update. As you may recall, I signed up to compete at the Northface Endurance Challenge 50 mile ultramarathon on June 6 in Bellingham, Washington. This will be my first foray into ‘ultra’ territory which is typically defined as distances greater than 30 miles. I’m really, really enjoying the training which basically consists of 2 long runs per week, back to back. On Saturday I ran up and down Moose Mountain trail in Kananaskis for 4 hours, then I ran it for 5 hours on Sunday.

    Running a hilly trail is easier in ways than a flat course. The constant muscle changes from climbing up the steep incline to running down hill seems to ‘spread the load’ a bit more than the relentless flat and level run. I feel better after 4 hours than a flat run for sure and feel like I can keep going.

    The Northface Endurance Challenge Gortex 50 is a TOUGH race with over 13,500 feet of elevation change over 80 km of mountainous trails. The rule of thumb for predicting finishing times for a double marathon is to take your best marathon time, double it and add an hour. This would put me at 8 hours, but that isn’t the case with this race. The WINNING time for my division last year was 9 hours! This is one TOUGH race.

    My training run on Moose Mountain is a 7.3 km, 2000 foot climb up, then 7.3 km down. I timed myself on my 5.25 hour run on Sunday and calculated that if I could hold the same pace for the entire 80 km race, I could finish in 9 1/2 hours. That’s wishful thinking though because I will surely start to slow down after my 5th or 6th or 7th hour! I will be happy if I can break 10 hours.

    OK, on to the cabin top building steps:

    26. Here is the completed jig station box. It’s flat and square and very rigid with coasters so it can be moved in and out of the shop.

    27. Ken is tracing the jig station patterns onto some 1″ thick MDF wood.

    28. The jig stations are cut out and assembled onto the box at pre-specified spacing

    29. The jig stations are aligned to each other using alignment targets and a tight string.

    30. The carbon sandwich panels are placed into position in the jig. Note that the peel ply and blanket layers are still on the panels. This is to prevent us from rubbing off the peel ply texture which is required for a proper bond and paint.

    31. The edges of the peel ply are ripped off showing the carbon. The panels are screwed into the jig sections using a strip of particle board. This will force each panel to curve into it’s exact position.

    32. The edges of the panels are joined with a radius of micro/epoxy

    33. The joins will be reinforced with a strip of carbon tape. To avoid fraying the carbon, a large sheet is whetted out with epoxy resin first, then cut between 2 layers of poly.

    34. the carbon tape is placed onto the seam. The epoxy/micro filled radius in the join is semi-curred to a tacky consistency to assure a good bond between the carbon and the micro.

    This shows the carbon tape fully whetted out

    35. The carbon tape is covered with a strip of peel ply and a strip of absorbent blanket, then covered with plastic.

    36. Normally, this carbon tape wet layup should be curred under vacuum, but in this case it would be difficult to obtain a good vacuum due to the seam between the two carbon panels. So, we used about 100 lbs of sand to press down on the wet carbon.

    37. After curring, the sand is removed, and the peel and blanket layers are removed. The inside is temporarily reinforced with wood spacers.

    38. The cabin top is removed from the cabin top jig.

  • No Responses to “Cabin top”

    • john on May 12, 2009

      Looks really good!!

    • David Tangye on May 14, 2009

      Nice work, and and really great explanation of the process.

    • Anonymous on May 14, 2009

      Great job !
      Fernando Bittencourt fron
      Brazil

    • Anonymous on May 14, 2009

      This is exciting stuff. I wish the Discovery Channel were covering this. Maybe they can catch your next project. By the way, Rich is not completely accurate about the Mormon thing…the boats he described sat on the water like a bird. The reason he thought that it was a submarine was probably because of the shape that was described and the air holes that were used (since the boat was going into severe weather). The boat was completely left to be driven by weather and the currents, so it was not a normal boating condition.

    • RedorBlack on May 16, 2009

      Nice to see more of the process, but I see you left out the actual sand removal process… trying to make it look neat and easy?

      Was that a shopvac operation or sweeping?

    • Adventures of Greg on May 17, 2009

      We used a shop vac to suck up the sand

    • Martin Pernicka on May 21, 2009

      Looks good! Hey, it's great you see you up and in force again! Your pages are live guides for building ANYTHING using the foam & fiber techniques; Senior industrial designer my self and in the tricycle projects for people with restricted mobility, I am also part-time tutor at UdeM's School of Industrial Design. Indeed, I strongly recommand to my students, to ANY students, to follow your progress – and devotion to make it happen.
      Keep it up and thanks for sharing your experiences.
      We are watching you! đŸ™‚

      À+, as we are saying here!

      MARTIN, (Montréal)

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