Kayak Outriggers

[goanywhere]

Had a bit of a mishap today. I glued the last baten (shear clamp?) to the second pontoon, and the following morning I checked it before heading off to work. It seemed set enough to unclamp it, so I removed the clamps and off I went. When I came home the baten had come away, and was stuck up at an angle with one end still glued. Unfortunately it was well and truly set hard by then, so I had a learning experience ahead of me.

So boldly I removed the baten, breaking it off at the fixed end. I trimmed the broken end of the baten to fit as best as possible back where it had broken off, sanded the glued end bit down where it was sticking up, and sanded the glued areas as smooth as I could on the hull and the baten, and glued it all back together again. The gap left at the broken end where it was broken off I filled with thicker fillet material, and clamped all back together again. It looks fine now, but this time I won't be so quick to undo it all!

I learned a valuable lesson. The springiness in the baten strip was enough to gradually force the join apart even though it felt fairly firm but not hard. So obviously you have to wait until the epoxy has set hard before undoing clamps. At least I learned that there is a fix for these kinds of problems though!

[goanywhere]

Tonight I made a bit more progress. The second pontoon is coming along, I marked out the reinforcing plate and the deck plates, drilled and glued the bolts to the reinforcing plate, and that to the deck and weighed it all down to set. On the first one, one of the bolts ended up at a slight angle, not much, but I wanted to get this one perfect, so I used the bricks I am weighing it all down to butt up againse the bolts and hold them straight while curing.

The first one, I started the glassing. I decided to apply the glass in 3 main panels due to the very sharp profile, so I taped along the keel, and will overlap the side panels. I was thinking about cutting off the edge stitching on the tape, but ended up leaving it as was. I didn't want the tape to unravel too much and have lots of loose threads everywhere. I might try it on the second one, now that I have done this one, and it layed up quite easily. It is neat and no bubbles or creases.

This is fun! I think these pontoons are going to end up really nice. I measured the volume of one of them using a 9lt bucket. It turned out to hold around 20 litres as I estimated. I built a couple of pontoons using PVC pipe, that were around 9lt displacement, and they worked fine with my plastic yak. These will be much better and even more stable.

[goanywhere]

Mmmm... interesting. I took a look at the glassed tape on the pontoon I did last night, and I was surprised to see a couple of bubbles under the tape. I made sure that they were nicely wetted out and that there were no bubbles when I finished, but they seemed to develop as the epoxy cured. They are only small bubbles, right on the edge of the sharp keel join. I just took another look now, and the epoxy is cured hard now, and they are almost invisible but there are slight bumps where they are. I don't think you would see them if you didn't know they were there now.

I guess I can't do anything about them now, and I don't think they will make any real difference to anything. But I want to make sure that nothing like this happens when I build my Sabalo if possible.

One thing I thought of is that the keel isn't rounded off perfectly in those spots, it's rounded a bit but still a little squarer than the rest. If it was this might not have happened. Any thoughts?

[makenmend]

'' it's rounded a bit but still a little squarer ''
thats the cause most likely, the cloth dosn't like to stay down over sharp edges. difficult to aviod sometimes,won't hurt at all.

MM

[goanywhere]

Ok, I managed to get to some proper glassing tonight. I'm almost done with the house painting so I might actually get these things finished in a couple of weeks. I'm already well past my timeline, I wanted to be well into building my Sabalo by now. But I'm glad I did these first. I have learned heaps, and feel much more confident about the 'real' build now.

Some pics for those who can't read...



The glass cut roughtly to shape and laid out. Looking good.



And the deck. I'l overlap the top piece to make the joins extra strong.
If these things ever break I'll be.... very surprised!



The side glassed.



And the overlaps. The edges frayed quite a bit as I was glassing the edges, so they're not as neat as I wanted. Shouldn't make any difference in the end though.

[Bemm 52]

Interesting is there any formula that dictates size of outriggers

Cheers Paul

[goanywhere]

If you look at sailboat building sites they give all sorts of formulas about sail area and heeling moment vs boat dimensions etc. But my sail is a wing sail, and they work more efficiently than most sails, and don't create as much heel on a reach as a typical sail, so I have just based the dimensions on my own experience. I might end up looking at making a bigger pair, but hopefully not.