Were you talking with Hovey at the last battle? I need to do an update to the parts to match Stephen's laser cutter, but I will probably be in a position to do another run of kits when the Provence design is done. Sometime this fall.
Yes that was me...at the last battle. I am shooting you a message so we can swap contact info. Thanks Kent
To answer your question, I do not know if anyone has fielded a fully operational Mac yet but I have finished the hull build for mine and floated as well as ran her around the pond a couple times. Just waiting on cannons before I put anymore work into the internals. It is an amazingly beautiful hull kit done very very well in its designing. looks like a beast on the water even without her teeth yet
So I ran an experiment. I am trying tap plastics marine grade epoxy + slow hardener rather than west systems. Advantage is that west systems (for the same volume, they are not identically packaged) is 50% more expensive than tap plastics.... the slow hardener makes it really low viscosity, which is nice, however it cures slow. it is tack free in ~8 hours but not full hard for at least 2-3 days
well, the foam method is working out really well. That is about as far as I can go without getting running gear in her
Looks great so far! Another way would be to create the water channeling by using wood across the ribs and finish the inside of the boat. Then flip it like the picture above and use expanding foam. This way the interior is already finished and built, you are just filling the cavities. Sand and smooth, then fiberglass the bottom.
I have tried both the wood blocking and the spray foam. the wood looks nice but takes a lot more work to get to shape. the spray foam method I didn't care for much. This method really did minimize the mess since I was able to carve off ~95% of the material that needed removing with a sharp knife (frequent resharpening required) and then sand only a little. The dust produced by 80 grit sandpaper was also larger particle size than the wood dust is, which makes less of a mess.
Greg, I learned a neat trick from a carpenter friend of mine. Get yourself an 80 grit 3” x 21” belt sander belt. (cheap one from Harbor Freight works good) Cut a piece of plywood to fit inside of it. Works like a fine rasp. I did not need to use a knife, it took of that much material that fast. You can hear and feel when you start touching the wood ribs. My one experience with the expanding foam was bad. I would never recommend it. Keith
http://www.smooth-on.com/Rigid-and-Flexible/c10_1122/index.html FOAM-iT!® 10 - 1A:1B by volume - approx. 6X expansion Don't use the hardware store, get this tight cell expanding foam. Cuts with a steak knife (use an old one) and sands butter smooth. Just another alternative... If you get creative and really want minimal sanding, complete the interior water channeling and then use packing tape on the outside of the hull. Poke some holes and fill with foam. Fun times!
Yeah...um, about that.... McSpuds & I did this when refitting Baden way back when. Ship had wooden water channel capped w/ thin ply (fiberglass hull). So we drilled holes in each "compartment" of the water channel & shot expanding foam in. Unfortunately, the foam expanded faster than it could extrude out of the drilled vent holes, bowing out all the wood and seperating it from the hull. Huge mess. Moral: Use extreme caution about putting expanding foam into enclosed spaces.
so far so good. I found a great way to rough out the foam, using some aluminum foam as a very course sandpaper
First layer of glass down after two layers of epoxy followed by filler. That is as much as will happen before I cut the deck restraints and see how it all holds together
So it has been a while, and there has been slow progress. Kevlar cloth on the sides works well. slow resin makes working with kevlar easier as it cuts best when the resin is at that hard rubber stage in the cure process the motor mounting works well Super cut out nicely and kept its curvy shape main stack needs one more plug and then it will be water tight and hollow, for recovery float as will the aft stack
I should add that nothing has been so brilliant as an HDPE working surface. I would love to get UHMW but it was too costly. epoxy won't really stick to hdpe so sealing the aft stack consisted of pouring epoxy in the stack, putting a weight on it, and letting it pool at the bottom to seal the open end. fill, flip over, repeat and the whole thing is sealed.
