I had some visitors today so I didn’t quite get as much done as I would have liked but I always welcome visitors, they make the building much more fun. I love chatting about boats, my boat or anyone else’s. I did get the stiffening frame glued to the catwalk underside. Tomorrow I will round the edges and glass them, uni first along the top then double bias to hold it all down. Then I will bog out the tape lines to the base so that is fairs out neatly without visible tape lines and also lightly bog the curved sides.

I have decided on the material I will use for the internal furniture fit out, including the non structural bulkheads I still have to build that will be walls and doors into the bathroom and the rear port cabin and the small room in front of it so the occupant has some privacy getting dressed standing up. The material is called Nidaplast, it is a polypropylene honeycomb core. It comes as just a core or pre glassed. I am going to buy it as just a core and glass it myself for 2 reasons. Firstly I am going to form a lot of the panels on the job especially where I want a compound curve, then glassing in place once the shape is achieved. No kerfing is required as the un-glassed panels are very flexible and can be cut with just a Stanley knife. I will also make some flat panels and may even vacuum infuse them to get them lighter (lower resin to glass ratio and a bit stiffer). The other reason is cost. The pre formed paper honeycomb panels are about double the cost of these once I factor in the core, the glass and the resin. The cores are about $110 each and glass and resin will come to about $80 per panel. So about $2500 – $3000 for my furniture. That is about a quarter of the price of the furniture kit but a lot more work. I figure I will need about 12 full panels maybe a little more. I had seriously considered Multipanel, a foam core that some of the Fusion builders are using, it can be heat formed and then glassed but the cost is also a little more. The picture above shows a small sample of the Nidaplast and the purpose is to show that compound curves can be formed.