This was a pretty good weekend for making progress on the port float and the beam support modules. Here is a view of the bow after the outer side of the float was skim coated with a somewhat thin epoxy filler (1.125 cups microballoons + 150 mL epoxy). The intent with the skim coat is to fill all the texture and provide enough thickness to blend in the edges of the reinforcements without excessive thickness that will just be sanded off. I did the deck surface first (3 batches of 300 mL epoxy each) and then rolled the float over and skimmed the side (4 batches). I will probably need to do a second light pass on low spots, but it should be minimal.
Here's the skim coated float looking from the stern with the starboard float in the background (like a before and after shot). I had planned to skim coat all three sides, but the day job interfered on Friday. So I will try to coat the inner side one evening this coming week. That will give the epoxy plenty of time to cure before the weekend when the real fun starts - more fairing! But this is the last big fairing task on the floats, so I'll take my time and get it done.
Here is the vacuum press hard at work on the last side of the last set of foam boards being laminated for the support modules. As I mentioned earlier, I chose to laminate each side individually rather than drill a million holes. I did the first side in the morning and the other side in the afternoon. This worked very well and was somewhat easier than trying to wet out the glass on both sides while trying to beat the cure-time clock. Most of these boards are 72 inches long by 14 inches wide, so it takes some time to wet out two layers of glass on each side. At the back of the table you can see the finished boards waiting to be cut to final shape. The next step is to make a sheet of solid fiber-reinforced epoxy board for some very high load components. This solid fiberglass board will also be made on the vacuum table to ensure it is flat and has the optimum ratio of glass to epoxy.
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