Back In The Saddle Again!

[strick]

Fits perfect. It will get screwed with big washers in place so I can remove it to get to things like the bilge pump and thru hull transducer or what ever else may be in the way.





Test fitting everything










During the week I trimmed the excess glass off the big bracket and bonded the top half to the flotation chamber. It still needs some light grinding and then glassing the two parts together. After that it can be sanded. Bill took the day off form Seacraft work and I'll leave that to him when he returns. In the picture below you can see little dimples in the wing of the swim platform. Those are not alligators! I accidentally put the wrong side facing in of the plastic molding...one side is smooth and the other side is textured so the textured side got glassed instead of the smooth side....always in a hurry.

[strick]

Started making the mold for bracket that's going on little Red. It will have a 25 inch set back. The flotation chamber is 48" wide at is maximum width. An aggressive reverse chine. It has a 15 degree deadrise.

Drawing it out







I cut out a little template to see how it would look before I went to cutting all the wood.

[strick]

More photos.




It's gonna look like the bat mobile hanging off the back of the boat





The gaps on the inside of the mold will get filled with clay when I start the modeling.






Thats it for now!

strick

[weir mako 21]

Strick,
Is there a reason for the reverse chines on a couple of your bracket designs (both the 20' I think) and no reverse chines on the ones you have made for the 23's? Very nice work as usual.

[strick]

Originally Posted by weir mako 21

Strick,
Is there a reason for the reverse chines on a couple of your bracket designs (both the 20' I think) and no reverse chines on the ones you have made for the 23's? Very nice work as usual.

No not really. I got in a hurry on the big bracket and forgot to put them in. Also I was working with that melamine board (white laminate on both sides) for the first time and I usually use MDF. With MDF you can slap some glass the outside of the mold to help keep it together but you cannot do that with the melamine. When I built the mold for the big bracket I was thinking that I had to glass the outside of the mold to hold the reverse chine in place but then today I went back and looked at my build photos of the bracket thats on the yellow 20 and saw that I could do it without glassing them in. My thinking is that the reverse chine adds a little buoyancy..... I dont know. If nothing else I think it looks cool so I decided to do it again. I would recommend the melamine board for molds when applicable because the part practically slides out when you go to remove it. If you notice on the swim platform I used MDF because of the way that I build that mold trying to staple it together wont keep it stable enough so it needs to be glassed.

strick

[Bigshrimpin]

Nice melamine molds . . . I'm sure that saves a lot of time. Last bracket MDF mold I spent a hour with a pressure washer and chisel to get the tub out.

[kneedeep]

hey strick the melamine mold looks great. something you may want to consider when building your mold and it may save you some time i did it on mine. i put a 3/8x2'' board across the front of the mold at the top on the inside to form a recess when i did the lay up so the swim platform could be bonded across the front of the tub. made it eazy for me.

[strick]

Originally Posted by kneedeep

hey strick the melamine mold looks great. something you may want to consider when building your mold and it may save you some time i did it on mine. i put a 3/8x2'' board across the front of the mold at the top on the inside to form a recess when i did the lay up so the swim platform could be bonded across the front of the tub. made it eazy for me.

Ha thats funny. I was talking to Don Hermco the other day and he told me that I was not building the molds right and that I should do exactly as you have described so I was planning on dong this one that way. Thanks Kneedeep!

strick

[strick]

Some shots of modeling the clay. I have been using a product that Composits One puts out called Permoplast that I really like. I use a heat gun to soften it and then run various sized sockets over it to get the desires radius.











A shot showing how strong the core cell laminate is. I'm about 190# and the thing does not flex at all. There is only one layer of 1808 on each side of the 5/8" core cell.



A shot showing the 3/8" lip that Hermco and Kneedeep are talking about. There is a clay bevel on the underside of it so the glass will contour up and over this to form a recessed pocket.



The mold is ready for wax and PVA now.


strick

[hermco]

Now you're talkin.