Team Seacats

For the first two hulls out of the mold, joining the two halves has been tricky because I hadn’t quite worked out how best to make that work. I was satisfied with a little extra time to join the two halves and fair them – but that won’t do from a future production standpoint. After some research, I set out to create a “joggle”. I doubt this is an official term but it’s one that I picked up from some detailed online documentation about a full scale glider build project…I’ll blog about that site later this week.

The joggle is a separate piece that will bolt into the starboard hull mold and will create a small offset on the lip of one half of the hull so that it will fit inside the opposing side.  This will (hopefully) leave a perfect surface for a glue joint and the capability to join the halves inside the molds with a high degree of repeatability and consistency. The joggle mold piece must be removable because it is opposite to the draft of the mold and creates a mechanical lock in the part being molded.

I created the joggle by waxing the mold and the original plug and then building up a fiberglass strip along the edge. Before I removed the newly created part, I drilled 16 holes through both the joggle and the mold, applied nuts to the back of screws inserted through the holes, and, after applying release agent to the exposed threads, and globbing resin and microballoons on the back to seal them so they won’t leak vacuum when vacuum bagging the next hull. This way the piece can be very accurately located each time it is removed and installed.

Then, with the joggle removed, I was able to clean up the flat edge, mask off the mating surface, and begin laminating glass to the side that will touch the hull.  This lamination will be slightly thicker than the hull thickness so it will create the appropriate offset of the fiberglass part.

Next, once everything is cured, I’ll sand the newly laminated fiberglass flush with the mating surface, trim up the raised edge for a consistent lip width, and apply some finish to the joggle so there are no sharp points that might puncture the vacuum bag.

Earlier this morning, Neville came over to get some key measurements and some small pieces parts to continue his build of hull #2.  We got most of his rigging points made, mounted, and glued into the hull.