Another frustrating week of little work. I could only get in on Wednesday for 2 hours when I sanded the last layer of uni so the blank was ready to glass again for the last layer, the double bias on Friday for 2 hours and today, 6 hours. 2 hours is not enough time to get a lot done but I have managed to finish glassing the first dagger blank and to bog it (yesterday). I had resin left over after wetting out the layer of double bias so I bogged one side of the blank with the mixed resin I had left. I didn’t want to mix any more on Friday and I didn’t have quite enough bog to finish the whole side so I left the bottom 1/4 until today.

The this morning I gave the second side a light sand (and the small area on the already bogged side that I did not do last night) to key the surface even though I was fairly confident the resin would still be green enough to get a chemical bond. Then I glassed the remaining edges along the bottom of the board and along the cutaway edge, with 2 layers of surfboard cloth and then bogged the other side of the board. I also gave the trailing edge a coat of thickened glue just to fill in any unevenness and pin holes so that I can square it off when I am fairing the board.

In the afternoon there was little more that I could do on the dagger as the bog needs to set overnight so I started on the long clean up of the shed and did another meter of sanding under the bridgedeck. I am about half way along now. The shed is quite a mess at the moment as I have not cleaned it for quite a while. I finally started to clean up the resin spill. It has been soaking in wood shavings for a week to soak up as much as I could. Now with the shavings picked up the rest of the floor whilst still damp will soon dry out. Hopefully that is the last of my spills for the rest of the build. I have managed to spill about 20 litres of hardener and about 10 litres of resin as well as wasting as much as a further 30 litres of resin inside the drum that some of the 20 litres of hardener dripped into. I base that on how much resin I have left. I have about 70 litres of resin left but have run out of hardener. I need about 14 litres of hardener but 4 x 4 litre hardener drums are more expensive than 1 x 20 litre hardener. So I am saving for it. 4 litres is about $125 so 4 of those is $500 and 20 litres is $425 so you can see how much cheaper it is to hang out and buy the 20 litres, then if I have hardener left but no resin I will buy more resin.

Jo and I are still suffering from the bum shipment we got in our business that has really knocked us about financially for the past 6 months but we can finally see light at the end of that tunnel and should be back in business in about 4 more weeks which will mean we can finally stop penny pinching. So I am hoping I will have enough to buy the hardener next week or the week after. I probably have enough left to glue the dagger cases which I will probably keep me busy for another week provided I don’t need too much more bog. I will also need to buy the furniture panels and about 10 more duracore planks to finish the cabin roof soon (Ironically I have resin and hardener for that as I will use the last of the Kinetics for that but I need to have the money for the extra duracore!) I would have had the money for both of these but I recently paid for the hatches I am buying from the USA which used up the last of my cash reserves for now. They will arrive in around 5 weeks so I will report on them once they arrive. Anyway I am slowly getting what I need to get back to work. I have been working more slowly recently as I realised I would run out of material before I had the money to replenish them. Nevermind we are slowly getting there.

I passed 1500 hours today. So I have passed my numerical half way point now in years and in hours. Lets hope that the furniture goes in as easy as it has in my mind and that the ideas I have on linings work, so that I really am half way. I am also starting to think a lot about wiring and piping (electrical and plumbing). But I am still a few months away from any solid decisions. I still have a bit of external work to lock this baby up! The dagger cases go in then the side deck curves get glued on, then the flat decks go on then the cabin roof then the cabin sides finish it off to lock up.

There has been more work on Nine Lives, the boat is now completely bogged outside and the hulls are already faired. The forebeam has a foam front to round it off and the tramp conduits have been glued and glassed in, the electrician has run the cabling and conduit where needed but by far the most profound change is the cabin windows have been cut out. This dramatically changed the look of the boat and removes the boxy look it had previously.

So tomorrow I hope to fair the daggerboard, I am hoping I have put enough bog on that I wont need the 3 passes that the forebeam needed but I will need one more go using a yellow tongue as a screed to get the exact shape needed. Because it is not flat I will need to sand by long board again. Yippee! The top half is not so important other than cosmetic but the bottom half is a foil that will be in the water and the shape is very important. I do still have to the bog the edges but I will do that after I have sanded back this first layer when I do the shaping screed maybe tomorrow afternoon.