Hurry up and Wait!

Spring is here, along with Auckland’s famous four seasons in one day weather. Beautiful and sunny one minute pouring down hail the next.

During the week I measured up the remaining sheets, so that come Saturday I was ready to take them outside and cut them to size.  Then I laid them out on the strong-back, mixed up a batch of epoxy glue and glued them together.  Since its best to let the epoxy cure over night, that was my work done for the day.

Sunday I took the first sheet out and cut it to shape. As you can see it’s a fair size already (4500mm x 100mm) and this is only the first half!

Granted I’ll be taking a fair amount off giving it a more streamlined shape but I think my concerns about buoyancy were unfounded.

With that done I laid out the second side and glued them together.

So at the end of week twenty nine, after a flurry of activity and blue dust I’m back to waiting for the epoxy to cure. Speaking of which, I’m getting low on it and glue powder again. Well I’m almost out of glue powder. Next week I will get more supplies and glue all the sides together with the plywood core. If I’m careful I’ll be able to do it all in one day so that Sunday I can start shaping the ama.

Also during the week I spoke to Gary about paint options and he suggested two brands; one which is a marine paint, that are both available at Bunnings, which hopefully will be cheaper than buying through a marine supplier.

Useful link of the week: Building a better Leeboard.

Back on Track - Kind of

The Styrofoam arrived on Thursday, so now I can get started on the ama. Except it’s my birthday this weekend and we’re having a

dinner party. I try and keep these simple by distributing the load a little (people bring salad, starters etc) but I still spent Saturday running around getting supplies and re-arranging the lounge to make space for the table.

Because of the kids, we kicked dinner off early and it was 9:00pm when people started to going home even though it felt like 11:00! A sure sign I’m getting older :D

Sunday we went to the pool followed by a trip to Mums’ to drop off the table and chairs we borrowed. After that Nico and I went to Bunnings to try and get some glue for the styrofoam. The sales rep recommended something called Styrobond, which he thought Bunnings might stock. He was correct, they have it in five litre jars! Forget about that I’ll try something else. So after a good ten minutes reading the labels on various pots of glue I settled on CRC Ados F22.

I also looked at sourcing timber for the boom, leeboard and rudder. However; while they have the right lengths for the boom, they only stock pine and rimu. The rimu I’ve decided is too heavy for the boom but the pine will make a reasonable back-up option if I can’t find something lighter.

Speaking of the rudder, during the week I went to Boat Bits to rummage through their second hand parts to see if there was a spare rudder or daggerboard I could modify for use as a leeboard or rudder. They had a lot of Laser rudders which are too short and too expensive. But there was one long enough that I ended up buying that I will try to modify.

Shopping done, Nico got his treat which was an extra long play session in the stores’ playground.

Back at home I marked out the outline for the ama on the plywood I joined up last week then cut out the shape. Gary sent me plans for an enlarged ama but it turns out that the sheets of styrofoam are only 600mm wide and I will need to cut them in half the get the full amount I need, fine for the ama that’s in the plans but not enough for the larger ama. I’d need to double the amount of styrofoam to build it. An expense I don’t want to pay right now. So I took the original plan and stretched the widest point by 900mm.

Next step is to glue the styrofoam together, I wasn’t prepared to risk a whole sheet, so I cut up some blocks from an off-cut and glued them together… Good thing I did!

The glue melted the foam, so its back to the drawing board.

End of week twenty eight and work on the ama has begun in earnest.. Kind of!