Archive for August, 2007
Friday, August 31st, 2007
the grisly alternative to rebuilding
Remember when I said that Hobyn’s only alternative was the crusher? Well I got to see this sad alternative first hand and up close the other day. Granted that victim was a cheaply cored power boat, but it was still amazing to see someone’s former pride and joy reduced to a 16 cubic yard trash container… All the yard did was position the boat on top of the container and use a back hoe to literally “punch” the boat in. It was like someone over stuffing a suitcase for vacation. You could almost feel the rest of the derelict boats at the yard shiver.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007
things that work
I love it when materials work the way they are supposed to. The SM fairing compound and quick cure epoxy works like a charm, the stuff is so mouldable that I could create sharp spires and peaks if I was so inclined. It takes a bit more than the stated time to cure (at least 4 hours not 3-4 hours), and the 1:4 ratio is hard to measure out in small quantities, but for 1/3 more material for 1/2 the price of the System 3 stuff, I’m pretty happy so far.
Monday, August 27th, 2007
Deck joint repair
Oh hull to deck joint, why were you so well made? Couldn’t you have been made with only a couple of bolts? 3″ on center sounds great and hold wonderfully, but when you are doing a rebuild, its a lot of work. And what about that inside tabbing? It was a great idea at the time and I’m sure it served for 2 or 3 decades, but eventually ice expansion rendered it useless. Now I have to pull it off with pliers and a chisel so I can service the bolts underneath. Oh cruelly well designed deck joint!
Sadly the joint has pretty much completely failed due to the death of the sealing mastic that Tartan used between the hull and deck segments. It was some sort of oi-based caulking so I’m going to have to remove it to fix the joint. What I really want to do though is to just seal the whole thing inside and out with fiberglass. My only issue is if I have to remove the bolts before glassing or if I could just do a rough grinding right over the bolts and gel coat and then just glass it all together. A big new wooden (ipe?) rub rail is going to cover the joint after it’s all glassed up so I doubt that it will have too much exposure. One the inside I’d do a tabbing job like Tartan’s original only with some heavy epoxy compatible matt or some biax. Any ideas?
Monday, August 27th, 2007
T30: version 2
Back in 1972, a prospective buyer would have looked at the T30 and thought
“wow, nice finished look, sleeps 5, nice big cooler, full galley, fast, good build quality and great name.”
If I was to translate this into “rebuilder’s” terms, it would sound much more like
“damn, these liners kill 20% of the usable space behind sealed off panels while making the interior look angular and small, the sleeping areas are only big enough for your shoulders while an arm hangs over the edge, the cooler takes up double the space of the fuel tank and puts it right in the widest most usable part of the boat, and the galley needs to be made for cooking instead of looking. Thankfully she’s fast, has great build quality, and a great name”.
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
Computer Woes
Today was the culmination of a 4 year ritual. Every year for the past 4, between the months of August and October my Apple iMac G5 (rev. a) has conked out.
Sometimes this is with much fanfare (repair #1 : logic board and graphics board replaced due to exploding capacitors), fear (repair #2 : dead hard drive), or just aggravation (repair #3 : power supply). I’ve been a mac user since I was 8, my first machine was a PowerMac 7100/66 with a mind blowing 32 MBs of ram and 66mhz of number crunching goodness. Since then I’ve owned 4 other macs (G4 cube, iMac 400DV, and my much loved Powerbook G3 400 rev. b) and NONE OF THESE MACHINES HAVE EVER SEEN THE INSIDE OF A REPAIR SHOP. Ever.After the third repair (all under warranty, if I didn’t spend the $160 on applecare I would have been screwed big time) I talked to an apple rep about my situation.
me: “Hi, I think I have a lemon machine, I want another one.”
her: “Sorry sir, but your computer needs to break one more time before I can do that”
me: “hold on a sec isn’t it usually 3 strikes and you’re out? What’s up with the 4th one??”
her: “thats uh, just the way it uh works…. I’ll give you my personal email address and if it happens again, we’ll deal with it”
me: “Thanks I guess. I hope I don’t need it”
What I should have said was “see you next year”. I called apple yesterday and was being lead down the road of “repairville” again when I said “Well [un named female apple rep] said that if this happened one more time I’d be getting a new machine! Replace my lemon! It’s a lemon!” The line was kind of silent and then I hear “she really told you that? You actually spoke to her? Are you sure it was this person?” Apparently my rep last year was more than she seemed to be.
From here I was transfered to a “problem solver” where he gave me 3 choices.
- do a full and complete gut replacement on my current machine. I would basically have a new machine in old clothing. Same model though. Turn around time 4-5 days. No warranty extension, nada, zilch. This was essentially the end of the warranty gravy train. Bummer
- Replacement of my machine with a brand new Intel iMac. I’d get the 20″ bottom of the line model. Turn around time is about 2 weeks because of back ordered status of the machines. Full year warranty and the option of apple care. Sweet!
- Replacement of my machine with a brand new Intel iMac that I can have upgraded for only the cost of the upgrades. If I want the top of the line model all I pay is the difference between the prices. Super sweet!
I asked for a day to mull it over and tomorrow I’ll be backing up 200 gigs of files to dvd while shipping the lemon back to the orchard. It’s good to know that even though apple is selling cheaper fruit these days, they’ll still stand behind it. Thanks guys.
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
New Epoxy for putty
After the dismal failure of using my laminating epoxy for making fairing putty, I did some research on “pre mixed” putties to see what my option were. Basically there was only one “affordable” solution, System 3’s QuickFair, a fast curing easily sanded epoxy based putty. Sadly, at $140 for 1.5 gallons, it was still a bit pricey. I needed an alternative.
Using the information I got from the product specs of QuickFair I knew that the putty was sandable in 3-4 hours, had a purple colored part A and a white part B which would mix to a creamy putty, and would have a short pot life. I then found a brand of epoxy that cured at the same rate as the QuickFair and was available in a “thick” formula. To top it all off the same company makes a powder additive called SM Fairing Compound that sounded like just what I was looking for. It didn’t say anything about being purple but I figured I’d take a chance. I called up US Composites and talked with someone about what I wanted to do with the order. They recommemend that I use the thin epoxy that they sell (same quick cure rate) because you can mix more of the filler in before the resin starts to kick. Makes sense.
I received the package yesterday and guess what, the SM Fairing Compound is a nice medium purple color. Total price for my gallon of epoxy and 5 quarts of filler (it’ll make probably just over 2 gallons of putty) $77 with shipping. We’ll see on monday how well it works out, I’m getting tired of looking at the bare fiberglass.
Friday, August 24th, 2007
Ode to cardboard and reconstruction
Today I came to the realization that I need to plan out my new interior before I can start knocking out any more liners. Some of the liners are serving as hull supports so I need to put in new supports before I can start taking more out. I took all of the tools and supplies out of the cabin and hosed down the whole area so that I could work in a “clean” cabin (note: clean is a subjective term here, even with the scubbing if you lay down on a berth you are going to get up with fiberglass in your back…).
In preparation for this I went out and bought a bunch of corrugated cardboard sheets for templates. When I lived in NYC, finding cardboard was a matter of calling up a props place but in NJ things get interesting. I called up probably 15 different places, either they wouldn’t sell me sheets because I didn’t want enough or they would refer me to someone who bought in bulk and “might” sell me some. Well, sure they’d sell me some, for $8 a sheet and they weren’t even the exact right size! This is cardboard, not masonite or plywood. Finally I got a call back from the good people at Hillside Paper in Elizabeth NJ. For the price of $3.50 I could have as many sheets of 4′x6′ as I wanted, heck, the more I bought the cheaper it got.
As for reconstruction I’ve been trying decide if I want go all out and radically change the interior of the boat. I could go modern like Hallberg-Rassy . What sparked my interest with the HR’s was the way they handled the aft section of the boat on the HR 31 (check out the 360º VR gallery of the 31 MKIII here to see what I mean). I like the idea of converting one of the quarter berths into a cabin and converting the rest of the area into semi enclosed storage space. Keep in mind that the HR 31 has a foot and a half more beam to here (mostly in the aft) but I think it’s doable.
The other option is to keep it open and just make it more livable. Right now the quarter berths are just a could of inches longer than I am tall, and just about exactly the width of my shoulder. When I lay down an arm hangs over the edge. Good thing I got the cardboard.
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Stringer re-core
Today I spent the whole day rebuilding the balsa cored stringers that ripped out back in July.
Back when I was first diagnosing the damage to Hobyn I noticed a black seepage coming from various parts along the hull. It looked like it was coming from absolutely no where but then I realized that these areas were the bottoms of reinforcing stringers. I guess in order to save weight (and costs since resin costs more than core material) and increase stiffness the guys at Tartan put these huge stringer panels into the topsides of the T30. The thing is that while they did a good job, no job is flawless and this job is 34 years old…
What happened is that water leaked in through the hull to deck joint and saturated not only the balsa core but the plywood cored stringers that run right under the deck joint. I know what you’re thinking “wait a sec, isn’t the wood protected from water by a layer of fiberglass and resin?”. Well yes, yes it is, however the a tiny bit of water that accumulated + freezing temperatures (this is a northern climate boat) equals tremendous force that basically popped the fiberglass apart in places. Read the rest of this entry »
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
New Website (yes, finally)
I know I promised this back in January , but you know how things go. Between working to graduate from Cooper Union (which I did indeed do) and trying to raise funds to work on this project I just didn’t have the spare time. I had some down-time this week due to a lack of supplies and a busted table saw so here it is, the new website. Let me just say that nothing makes you feel more web rusty than trying to code a php driven, css styled site. I needed some design WD-40 (aka: CSS handbook). I still don’t have this thing working quite right and its a bit ugly, but i’ll get it there (hopefully it won’t take 8 months but as of now this is a temporary site).
Anyway, now that the site is up I can start logging my progress on “Hobyn” (I haven’t come up with another name yet so for now, “Hobyn” it is). There is a whole lot of back story involved but I think I’ll just sum it up in the About section (at the top left of the site, maybe if I get crafty I’ll make some “retro” posts. Read the rest of this entry »