More Blades and Brackets

A little bit here, and a little bit there, and progress is still being made.

I sanded the brackets, using both the piece of sanding belt and the drum sanding bit on the end of a flexible shaft connected to a Moto-tool. I quickly discovered that holding the hose of the shop vac in one hand and the Moto-tool flexible shaft tool in the other was the best way to keep the work area clean and to reduce the amount of airborne dust. I also discovered that the Moto-tool drum sander was very effective in removing unwanted material in tight places around the support brackets.

After the sanding was completed I then applied fillet material where there were still gaps under the receiver tubes from the first application, and around the tubes on the outside of the brackets.

Several more strips of saturated 12 oz. biaxial cloth were applied to areas that were missed the first time. Some 6 oz. cloth was applied over some of the bare wood at the center of the brackets and some of the 12 oz to help flatten the material and smooth it out.

A couple of areas on the top of the stabilizers where the wood had appeared due to too much sanding were also glassed over.

Finally, while waiting for the resin to set, I spent some time grinding the first set of propeller blades. Instead of using a hand-held grinder I used an 8 inch bench grinder. It took many passes on each of the four four edges, with care being taken to keep the edge of the blade appropriately aligned with the edge of the wheel as the blade was drawn along the tool rest.

After the rough shape was formed I polished it using a 100 grit flapper wheel on the drill press. It took a while, but that managed to remove almost all of the grinding wheel grooves as well as the bumpy surface of the bar stock.

The first propeller hub still needs to have the slot cut into it for the blades. A local machine shop said they could do whatever I wanted, at a cost of $80 per hour. While it probably is worth it to get a professional job done I would still like to see if it could be done using fairly basic tools such as a drill press and a band saw. My neighbor suggested getting a larger cutting disc for my Moto-tool to cut the slot, but that would still leave a section of the waste material attached preventing it form being easily removed. We'll have to think about this further.

Now that the resin has set I went back and sanded the brackets again. The stabilizers were vacuumed and flipped over, and strips of 3.9 oz cloth was cut to cover the bare wood edges where the sanding had been too vigorous. In addition, the rudders were sanded in preparation for glassing, as were the two wooded pieces to hold the central mounting bracket for the stabilizer akas.

So, no, the boat won't be ready for next weekend's Jetty Island Race. The Escapade will have to fill in again for my photography platform.