Gussied up gussets

After the fillets set for about an hour, they were stiff but still not fully cured, as desired for a stronger bond.  So we got to taping the bulkheads in permanently.  Here you can see the result.  Dawna did one side while I did the other, so we made good time.  Of course, the temperature in the boat house got into the high 90s, so in spite of the "slow" epoxy, we still had to race to keep up with the cure time.  We tended to finish a bulkhead, but then the left over epoxy would kick and we would have to make a new batch for the next bulkhead.  By the end of the day, we had big thunderstorms move through which dropped the temperature about 20 deg.  As a result, the last batch is still slightly tacky many hours later.  Notice that we remembered to make this a port-side float, as determined by the direction of the beam cutouts.

The real challenge for the day was installation of these gussets on the forward beam bulkhead.  You've seen them before, but these turned out much nicer than my earlier attempt.  Again, the "Epoxy Maestro" applied her touch and the results are a very high quality installation.  Actually, even the maestro was getting a bit frustrated on these evil reinforcing elements.  The filleting was very frustrating do to the lack of a solid support for the gussets.  A jig may be needed next time.  And the glass work is much more complex than any of the other components so far.

Nonetheless, we took as much time as the temperatures would allow and worked it all smooth.  The result is pretty good.  Glass strands are nicely aligned (mostly in the desired directions), excess epoxy was kept to a reasonable level, and the gussets are generally square and aligned.  As noted above, the last batch of epoxy was applied after temperatures dropped a good 20 deg. while glassing the gussets.  As a result, the gussets are still a little tacky five hours later.  They should harden overnight and the return of high temps tomorrow should make the boat house a nice post curing oven.

Only thing left to do is to clean up the excess glass at the ends of the seams and in the beam cutouts.  Then we can pop this half out of the frame, clean up the outer surface, and make a final determination if we should rebuild the first starboard float hull half.  This should be done in the next day or two, depending on how I feel after I get back to the day job.  All in all, we finished this half in two weeks (actually three weekends), which was my goal.  This rate should put us on schedule to finish the float hulls by the end of October ... trick or treat!