Tanks again

September 26, 2009July 14, 2014

The 2 starboard tanks are made. They just need the lids glued and glassed on and the through fittings (skin fitting) put on. Each tank will have 2 skin fittings on the top, an inlet and a breather that will double as an emergency overflow through the side of the hull just under the tramps and an exit fitting through the bottom.

But I still have 5 tanks to make, the 3 fresh water tanks and the 2 main waste water tanks (black and grey) located in the port hull. The starboard tanks are 50 litres for the grey and 75 litres for the black and the port tanks will be double that at 100 litre grey tank and 150 black tank. The main black holding tank will have a third top skin fitting, a vacuum exit point for having the tank emptied at the dock by the pump out facility. I probably wont bother on the smaller port black tank as it is just an emergency tank but I am yet to make a final decision based on how easy it is to fit to the main tank.

I have measured for the tanks, the grey tank will go behind the port dagger case and the space tapers back to front and top to bottom and because I dont want there to be anything left in the tanks when they empty I am trying to make them lower in one corner and fitting the exit skin fitting there, so the bottom of this tank will taper front to back. Only the top is level. The black tank will sit on the chamfer panel behind the shower against the rear bulkhead, under the cockpit seating. The tank could taper to a point but I need a flat section to fit the skin fitting so I will cut off the bottom of the taper and make the bottom of the tank flat.

But before I can make these tanks I need to make more polycore panels. About a year ago Jo and I had some financial problems (we are over them now) but that forced me to explore cheaper options in order to finish the boat, and even though money is not so tight now, I am going to employ many of them because they make sense and work just as well. For example, the furniture kit for our boat is about $15000 and consists of about 30 featherlite panels.

Featherlite is a paper honeycomb panel pre glassed each side and the kit would have these cnc router cut. But we dont want the standard layout so the kit would be very much wasted for us. And featherlite is about $300 per sheet. Polycore comes with no glass on (at least we buy it that way, it is available pre-glassed) and it works out at about $150 per panel to glass them myself including the resin and glass. So we worked out that our furniture would need about 20 panels which means we ought to be able to build the furniture for about $3000. So today I spent the day laying up glass on 4 panels.

Once the glass is set I end up with a panel with similar strength to featherlite but with a plastic (polypropylene) core instead of paper so getting wet wont harm it. Of course I am hand laying up so they might not be as well laid up as a factory made panel but when I get to the important furniture panels I intend to vacuum bag them to increase the quality of the lay up. But for the tanks a hand laid up panel will be fine.

I also spent some time sanding the bog on the curved vanity front panel (back and front) but as with every other curved part I have made (forebeam and rear steps) it takes at least a few layers of bog to get the curve fair. So once I had sanded the highs off the front and back I pulled a screed of bog over it again using a flexible batten to get the curve close to right and let it set.

I wont get any work done tomorrow as Jo and I are moving shops for which we have hired a moving van and will spend the day shifting the entire contents of our businesses from one premises to another. Another month where I have barely done 60 hours work. I dont seem to be able to do more than that. I have pretty much averaged that for the entire build so far.