Today is a milestone day. I have glued the forebeam into the boat. But before I did that I finished the first dagger case (yesterday) and started today on the second case.

To finish the first case yesterday all I had to do was run a bead of resin along the internal joins of the case. A simple enough task, except I made another silly mistake, not critical but annoying. I clear taped the ends of the cases to make dams for the wet resin then mixed up a pot of resin. I poured it into the case (I did the forward join first). Then about a half hour later the resin in left in the pot had hardened so I assumed that the resin in the case would also be hardened. So I mixed another pot and turned the case over and poured resin into the case to seal the back joins. I thought I saw a drip and then another as I realised I the resin in the front join was not hardened and was dripping, and I had even fresher resin in the back join so I couldn’t turn the case back over to stop the dripping as the new resin would drip even faster. Fortunately most of the resin had hardened enough not to completely fall. But my impatience meant I had to run a fresh bead (to be sure the join was sealed). The mistake I made is I forgot that resin goes off much faster in a pot than on the job, because on the job it is spread thin so it cant go exothermic but in the pot is heats and then sets very fast as it goes exothermic.

So the first thing I did today was run an fresh bead of resin on the front join just to be sure it is well sealed. The inside of the cases are open to the weather so any water that gets in can get into the core if not properly sealed. It cant get into the boat because the outside of the case inside the boat is completely glassed but inside the joins are only glued so the resin bead ensures the join is sealed. I left the bead to set and it took nearly all day. In summer this would be set in about an hour.

Then I started on trimming the second dagger case. I trimmed the first half then applied the spacers to the other beam, this time along its length rather than across it, so that when I slide the dagger out they cant jam. Then I placed the dagger in the case half and trimmed the second half to properly enclose the dagger at the correct spacing. Once I had the 2 edges trimmed I clamped the front of the case halves together to ensure that the join met neatly and then I glued it. I ran some resin in the slot first using just my gloved finger to apply it, then after it tacked off a little I trowelled glue in using a scraper. As last time I over filled the join at the front to round with a sander when it is set being careful not to push too deep into the join and pushing glue through the join into the inside of the case. I will not glue the back on with the dagger inside the case this time. The back is the correct size so I can remove the dagger and glue the back on comfortable in the knowledge that the dagger will still slide into the case. This will enable me to see if any glue enters the inside of the case and I can easily remove it (with a duracore strip) while it is wet.

Then after lunch I set about gluing the forebeam into the boat. I could not in the end resist correcting the height. The amount I was out was more like 10mm and even that would not be enough to be a problem of any kind, not even cosmetic, but finding the beam 10mm out after it is glued in and dismissing it is one thing but gluing it in 10mm out when it would only take a little work to fix would be silly. I got the pallet jack under the beam at the starboard hull and put a plank in and jacked the beam up 10mm and I then placed a spacer (an offcut of the beam bulkhead slot) under the beam against the hull side and lowered the beam back onto it to remeasure. Perfect. So now the beam is perfectly centred, and the correct height. I marked the centre lines on the beams and traced where the beam joins the bulkhead on the front face on each hull so I would know where the glue should go, and I lifted the beam back off each side to apply the glue. I mixed up a thick batch of glue and trowelled it onto the front face of each bulkhead and got as much onto the aft face of the internal web in the beam on each side as I could reach and onto the back edges that will glue to the back of the bulkheads.

Once I had the beam back in its correct position I cleaned off the glue that had scraped off on the bulkhead as the beam slid back down into position. I made sure there were no voids and filled glue into any I found and then I made a bead of glue on each edge including inside the beam as far as I could reach. With the beam glued back in place aligned with the marks I had to show where it should sit and all the glue cleaned off where it shouldn’t be and the joins all filled with glue. I then re measured again just to be sure. The beam is setting exactly where it should be.

Tomorrow first thing, with the glue still green, I will cove and tape the outside of the joins and also inside the beam each side as far as I can reach. With the beam is glassed onto the bulkheads the hulls will be ready to have the decks glued on so that the beam can also be glassed to the outside of the hulls. Then I will glue the back on the second case. Then hopefully there will be time to cut the first hole in the hull to start fixing the cases into the hulls.