Beam fillets

Made a little more progress on beam #4.  Here you see the beam and mold on its side to make lamination of the corner fillets a little easier.  The only way I can figure to laminate the interior of the beams is to do the sides (w/ fillets) and bottom separately in three big stages with healthy overlaps.  Even laminating  piecemeal, I find some of the areas with complex geometry difficult to keep neat, though I am getting better with practice.  I laminated the first side (now oriented above) yesterday, and could have easily flipped the assembly over to do the second side in the afternoon, but laziness is quite the seductress.

Here is a view from the other end (outer end).  As usual, I always try to apply peel-ply to keep the glass fibers well encapsulated and aligned, as well as making prep for the next stage much, much easier.  It is important to apply the peel-ply before the epoxy starts to kick, otherwise it won't wet the peel-ply.  And I often have to resist the temptation to apply epoxy on top of the peel-ply, but that generally just prevents trapped air from diffusing through the fabric.  Better to add a little fresh epoxy to the glassed surface prior to laying down the peel-ply and let it wick through the fabric.

Four beams to a boat

 I know it's been a while since the last update.  The weather finally got out of the winter funk and into the spring thaw a few weeks ago, but I took a little longer to get up and at 'em.  I have made some progress, nonetheless, with the fourth float now coming together in the mold.  I added the first layer of carbon fiber to the interior bottom today.  I also glued the transverse gussets into beam three (on top in the stack as seen in the photo).  Not much new to show you, once you see the first couple of beams being constructed, it gets kinda redundant.  Once I get beam four to the same stage as the first three we can finally move on to new stuff.

 I had to get the table saw out to cut some additional foam filets for beam four, so while doing that I decided to cut a set of blocks out of hardwood.  These are installed inside the beams to provide strength where a bolt will tie the beams to the main hull.  In particular, these will prevent the ends of the beam from getting crushed by the loads at the attachment point.

Just to illustrate where these pieces will be installed, here is one in the port aft beam (beam three) on the ledge of the inner (main hull) end of the beam.  It will eventually be trimmed to fit snugly, then bedded in putty and taped in place with glass and epoxy.  So a little something new to show you … yippee!