Building Logs

Sealing Bulkhead 0 and Securing Foresail Anchors

Posted by Paul

The front of bulkhead 0 needs to be sealed to the hulls so as to create the end of the structural part of the boat and onto it goes the shaped nose cone. In order to seal the bulkhead to the hulls I rounded off the edges and taped it. But before I could do that I had to glue the inspection port cut out back in, clean up the glue and glass it all over too. I had the front plate glued back in where we left off last month and glassing the front and edges was done in one go (in fact finishing the foresail anchor point was also completed while it was all still green wet on wet). One tip for glassing balsa edges is to pre-soak them with resin, I brushed some on and let it soak in then applied the glass.

Once the edges were taped and the front of bh0 had its additional layer of glass I resin soaked the outside ply pad and glassed that to the wet glass on bh0. I had put masking tape over the bolt threads to protect their threads while all this wet glass was going on and I also back filled the slack in the bolt holes with more glue. The glass had holes cut where the bolts were so as to glass as close to the bolts as I could. I then put the stainless steel straps on and did up the bolts (the bolts were glassed in from the inside but 1 of them did not hold tight enough and spun when tightened so I cut a slot in the end of the bolt and held it with a screwdriver while doing up the nut tightly). And then coved them and piled glue up around the bolts and glassed the straps on too. To add some beef to the fitting I ran 4 layers of 450g uni across the straps in order to make it super hard for the strap to ever lift off, most pressure will be levered from the top putting more pressure on the bottom bolt as the sail tried to pull the strap forward, although if I ever fly a spinnaker between the 2 main sails the pressure would be forward. But I cant imagine that the pressure would not snap the halyards before it could budge the anchor plates, remember these are not stays. And then a final layer of double bias to seal it all in and a smear of coving compound around the s/s strap to act as a moisture barrier, but above that a small trough will be left around the straps for a sikaflex layer first, which is flexible and wont crack with movement.

sb foresail anchor sealsb foresail anchor glassed onport foresail anchor sealport foresail anchor glassed on

The glass over the bolts will ensure they cant undo themselves. I could not risk using lock nuts as they may have been too tight to get started or tight and as it was one of the 4 was not able to be tightened fully without turning and the solution although easy, was to cut the slot in the front. The other 3 held beautifully and it is all tight and secure now. My only concern will be to ensure no moisture can get in.

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Paul