Team Seacats

After about 16 hours of coaxing, soaking, coaxing a little more, soaking, trying air pressure, trying water pressure, letting it soak overnight, coaxing a lot more, etc. I finally was able to release the mold from the plug but not before the plug was in pieces. I made several blunders that ultimately led to pretty substantial damage to the plug and a less-than-perfect mold. After finally reaching the point where damage to the plug was an acceptable alternative, I drove wooden wedges between the mold and the plug. Amazingly, the wooden wedges did very little damage to the gelcoat on either the plug or the mold but it did result in the plug coming apart leaving the center section of the plug still firmly planted in the mold. Another hour and three bleeding knuckles later, the center of the plug finally separated from the mold. In hindsight, contrary to my usual style, I went into the layup of the mold without enough preparation. I’m going to write this detail so I can look back to it for the next go ‘round.

I first mixed up 4 ounces of orange tooling gel coat (which was plenty when I went to coat the plug with blue) and it managed to only cover about ½ of the plug. A second round of 4 ounces covered the rest of it – but it could have stood to be substantially thicker. More like 12 to 16 ounces total would have been about right. With my measuring syringe plunger melted from previous MEKP usage, I had to count out the 64 drops in each 4 ounce batch for a 2% mixture. With the ambient temperature at about 78 degrees in the shop, this worked out to about 45 minutes until the gel coat started to set (just right)…except that I got antsy after examining the gel coat in the cup that had solidified and was concerned that I would run out to time (in reality – I probably have hours before the gel coat cure would be affected). That brings us to the first blunder; I started to apply glass too early and ended up rubbing away some of the gel coat on the stern. Second blunder; I didn’t prepare / precut enough fiberglass and working with random mat was horribly messy once my gloves got resin on them. Third blunder, I underestimated the amount of resin required and just barely ran out of resin resulting in a couple of dry spots in the laminate. And the fourth and final blunder, which I think is due to the fact that I had to remove the wax from the plug (wrong type?), is that the plug was impossibly stuck inside the mold.

The good news is that the mold did come out with only one major blunder in one top edge where it was a bit dry and the gel coat was left unsupported. Due to some dry spots in the lamination I don’t think the mold is durable enough for vacuum bagging, but I should be able to repair it enough to pull out a new plug, do some light refinishing, build a second mold, and take a muligan.

Things I took away from this;
1) Don’t get impatient with the gel coat.
2) I’ll spray a test blob on something with equal thickness so I can test it with a finger and not worry about messing anything up.
3) Pre-lay all the fiberglass to reduce the handling.
4) Use a slurry of milled glass fibers and resin to fill in the sharp corners in the mold – the glass didn’t like to bend around the sharp corner and left the one spot unsupported.
5) I might even use the sprayer to lay down a coat of polyester resin on top of the gel coat and start laying glass on that before wetting it out to ensure a void-free layup.
6) Wax the ever-lovin’-crap out of the plug before the PVA goes down.
7) Maybe look at putting in a tiny air port somewhere on the bottom of the hull…like where the rudder post might emerge. This would allow me to pressurize the joint at the point where things stick the worst.

In hindsight, it’s painfully obvious that I have very little experience with wet hand layups … I can’t wait to get to the vacuum bagging part since I actually know what I’m doing there.

…check this website. After three attempts I finally got a good coat of PVA down on the mold. I’ve been trying all morning! After wet sanding the plug a couple of nights ago and finishing with 600 grit, I applied three coats of mold release wax – sounded like a good idea since the PVA is supposed to work with wax. I also made an assumption that the PVA would skim coat the 600 grit finish leaving it shiny. None of that worked at all. The PVA beaded up like water on oil. I took the plug outside and washed off the PVA and then back into the shop. I first took acetone and cleaned off the wax on a spot and brushed on some PVA. It looked like it took pretty well and laid down smoothly. I then rubbed down the entire plug twice with acetone cleaning off the wax. I hung the plug up and shot PVA again. This time it was definitely better – but there were still spots that beaded up. After washing off the plug again, I tried rubbing it down three times with MEK this time. PVA on again and it was still beading up in places and I had drips everywhere. I left it for a little while to vent my frustration and when I came back, the areas that did lay down well were really showing the sanding scratches – that wouldn’t do either.

Clearly the plug must be buffed and polished so I figured I would do that and then figure out what to do about the wax…just MAYBE the buffing would clean the plug up the rest of the way (the buffing compound is a 3M product that specifically does NOT have wax in it – but it does use vegetable oil). After spending 30 minutes buffing, I could have quit because the thing looked so good. I tested several spots with the PVA and it laid down perfectly! I washed the plug with soap and water and went back into the shop. I laid down several coats of PVA and it looks like it’s going to be good to go. I’m going to give it an hour to setup and start preparing to lay up the mold.

It was the smell of victory! Everything hardened nicely and the PVA was much easier to remove than I thought it would be – PVA over air-inhibited gel coat is the way to go for sure! I wetsanded the plug and base with 400 grit and within about 45 minutes had removed all the orange peel. I then went over everything with 600 grit. I’m debating a little about whether or not to polish the plug up with rubbing compound or if I should just wax it as it, PVA over it, and lay up the mold. I’ll have to think about that tomorrow. The plan is to tidy up the shop tomorrow evening and prepare to lay up the mold starting Saturday morning. Sorry – no pictures tonight…there’s only so much sanding you can capture with a camera.

Victory? I dunno. After working out some minor pin holes in the gel coat with more bondo, I shot another coat of gel coat on the plug. This time, instead of the surfacing agent, I used the raw gel coat and then surfaced it with PVA to seal it from the air. DID IT WORK? Well…that is the question huh. It sure is shiny. I’ll admit to being in a bit of a rush because Bonnie and I were slated to watch a movie (Pirates of the Caribbean – part I) with a friend this evening. I didn’t give much thought to the gel coat after I sprayed it – I quickly cleaned the gun and shot the PVA on the plug about 8 to 10 minutes later. Just now, I wondered if I had given the 40% MEK, that I used to thin the gel coat for spraying, enough time to flash off. I wonder what would happen if it didn’t escape before the PVA sealed everything up? I think we are about to find out, but with any luck things will be fine. With slightly less luck, I’ve made another mistake at the expense that you can hopefully avoid them in the future! We’ll find out tomorrow.

Originally uploaded by Team Seacats.

I don’t know how many of you kept up with the Volvo Ocean Race – but it wrapped up lately. This year’s event saw the introduction of a new 70 footer rule and boats from three different designers. All but one designer had some significant teething problems with some rather critical items…like keeping the keel attached to the boat and/or keeping the water out. However, when these boats put a groove on, they showed to be a new breed of monohull that are going to change things in this kind of ocean racing. Here’s a clip from ABN Amro – a bank who sponsored two Volvo 70 teams. One boat did sink toward the end of the event when the canting keel broke loose and one sailor tragically died after being swept off his boat in the cold North Atlantic.