20+ Footer - Building in Hawaii

[longy]

Luau feet!

 

[WCB]

Picked up the entire bulb with the chain hoist until I put my foot on it and it came loose.
Looks good View attachment 567835 View attachment 567834

It came out...happy days!

 

[Jim Donovan]

Removed the bulb from it's cradle, inserted the fin and rolled the bulb onto it's side to expose the bottom of the bulb. Need to carve out pockets to take the washers and nuts on the lower end of the bulb bolts. The "seam" of fairing at the top/bottom junction looks good and easy to deal with.

 

[Jim Donovan]

Here are the tools used; pulled out the BIG drill after the first hole. With a drill guide tube inserted into the bolt hole, the hole saw's 1/4" pilot bit centered the hole saws on the bolt hole.



Used 3 different size holes saws, plus cutting oil, to remove lead "easily", and then got the rest out with a chisel. Butchered one of my sanding discs to make a 1.5" diameter disc that worked perfectly to flattened the chiseled surface.

 

[guerdon]

Jim, do you remember before cordless drills? Long live my Hercules drill, scary good.

 

[JonRowe]

Apologies if you covered this already, are you intending to cover the nuts or just accept it as is and "go sailing" tm

 

[Trevor B]

Jim don’t do “as is.”

 

[Jim Donovan]

lol

 

[Jim Donovan]

I had an old corded Porter Cable drill until my good friend Jack (you know wo you are) killed it. The drill was older than he was! Love this Hilti drill; if I win the lottery I'll have an entire quiver of Hilti.

 

[Liquid]

^ got me curious:

Hilti - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hilti Corporation (Hilti Aktiengesellschaft or Hilti AG, also known as Hilti Group) is a Liechtensteiner multinational company that develops, manufactures, and markets products for the construction, building maintenance, energy and manufacturing industries, mainly to the professional end-user.


The first non Hilti appointed CEO was 1994, a year later:

In 1995 Hilti opened its first Chinese manufacturing plant in Zhanjiang; this plant was expanded to 55,000 square meters in 2005. Another manufacturing plant was opened in Shanghai in 2004. This plant employs 470 people.

 

[Jim Donovan]

Keel is on the final stretch; fit the bolts and glued them into the fin, and then bolted it all together.

 

[Jim Donovan]

Glued the upper keel box packing onto the fin; that's not coming off easily . . .

 

[Jim Donovan]

Longboarded 75% of the bulb to discover the last few low spots and fill today.
Hopefully only one more spot fill and then primer. The bottom got a little beat up rolling around on steel pipes, so needs some more filler - I'll treat it nicer after that.

 

[Jim Donovan]

4" of beautiful snow fell last night, so this morning a couple hours with the plow and then a tour of the local golf course on X-country skies. Using our new 98mm wide Fischer Backcountry skies that are prefect for trail breaking.

Then back to sanding the bulb . . .

While plowing the heater was going on the bulb and resin.

After sanding around the recess in the top, I stuck the fin in the bulb so I could rotate the bulb onto its side for more sanding.

 

[Jim Donovan]

Bulb top and sides are looking good.
Just needed a fill around the recess and should be ready for primer after sanding

 

[Jim Donovan]

Sanded that filler around the recess and it looked good, so rolled three coats of thinned Awlgrip primer on 75% of the bulb; I'll give it a light sand a few more coats tomorrow.

 

[Jim Donovan]

Getting "complicated" trying to work in the shed these days - outside temp this morning:

Home temp on the bottom; it was 39F in the shed with the heaters running 50% of the time.

 

[Jim Donovan]

Priming the bulb bottom in these temps is a 3 step process:

1) heat bulb for 90 minutes - this gets the bulb up to about 65 degrees
2) paint bulb - using Awlgrip 545 primer with about 10% reducer which flashes off pretty quick on the warm bulb; I can roll about three smooth coats in 30 minutes
3) Heat the bulb for 90 minutes to make sure the paint cures.



The paint job is much smoother than it looks in this photo; the super thin coats rolled on with a foam roller leave roller edges you can see in the photo; those sand out quickly with 220g sandpaper. Will sand the bulb bottom one more time and apply 3 more coats when the outside temp gets above 20F.

There's nothing from Awlgrip that says this is an acceptable way to use their product; I'm painting in temps 20 degrees below their recommended minimum. The paint's well stuck to the bulb, and sands out beautifully. Would never try this on the hull/deck/spars. Those will wait until I can easily heat the shed to 65F.

 

[Varan]

So much for "Building in Hawaii". Are you missing Hawaii about now?

Again, thank you so much for sharing your build process.

 

[Jim Donovan]

What's to miss?
72 to 88 degree temps year round, beautiful beaches, great sailing conditions and good friends?

Give me sub zero temps any day; went x-country skiing today and the feeling has just returned to my fingertips.

Aloha