I’m still in progress with the hulls, but I’ll tell you what I’ve done so far, and what I plan to do. I just started a couple months ago, so I've only got 2 half hulls done. The shop where I'm building the hulls is a 4 hour drive, so I live there for a week at a time when I can get off of work. In the mean time, I’m working on the cuddy in my garage.
I built a female half mold and added temporary stringers onto that. I cold bent vertical 12mm corecell strips and screwed them in from behind through the stringers. It was a long day of work, but with one person holding them from the top, and one screwing in from behind, we planked a half hull in a day. It’s nice to not have to deal with messy glue while adding the planks. After they were all screwed down, I made a small groove with a dremmel tool and spread in some epoxy/microbaloons/silica in all of the vertical joints. Then we added 2 layers of 12oz biax overlapping at the knuckle. So far, it’s all been pretty easy.
That’s where I am today - my next steps are to reverse the frames so that I can make the mirror halfs. I plan to make one half, and while it’s still in the mold, fit the other half of the hull, and add some bulkheads. Pull it off and repeat for the other hull. My main point of concern right now is how well the two halves are going to fit together after I flip the frames. I’ll probably hang one half above, so I can check the alignment before I do the planking. I’m not going to do that until the end of November. Right now, I’m cranking away on the cuddy, before the temps are too cold for me to work in my garage.
I wasn’t going to share pictures until I had something interesting to look at, but these may help explain what I’ve been talking about:
http://picasaweb.google.com/romanycatamaran
Sorry about the bounced email. I’ve been trying to keep the spammers from getting ahold of it. Try:
Romany ~at~ ilseus ~dot~ net
I’ll also send you a message.
-Jeff