Week 21

This week saw me helping out for the deck since the anchor well task is almost completed. I worked with Turtle and later with Oggi and Leon to glue/laminate the front curve part of the deck (do not know the name for this part of the deck).

This task was previously done by Oggi and Gomez (who had since left the course) and two end parts were already made. this left the front of the semi circle shape to be completed. Having stormed and discuss with Turtle and Leon on how best to secure the various pieces (made from off cut foams and once we glue them together) to conform to the curvature of the semi circle, it was Leon who came up with a very good idea. Leon's brilliant idea of using buggies core to tied and hold the pieces in place was taken up and tried. The result was it works. We have to still ensure that the separate foam pieces "fall" into places. We left the centre piece out so that the curvature will be better achieved. This centre piece will be glued on separate later. Got to get a photo of this!

Took this photo this morning when I went back for a while. -

We laminated the various pieces together on Tuesday and by Wednesday the result seen was good. More work would then be done on shaping and the laminated pieces (including the earlier two already pieces) ready for further laminating process next week.

Learning points for me:
1) Many ideas and brainstorming is still the best approach of the day. Being in the actual situation helps rather than braintstorming in a "vacuum".

2) The slope of the curvature has varying degrees over the whole length of the front. Tricky task to try to get the bottom angle of each piece of foam to conform to this varying gradient. I watched previous attempt by Gomez and Oggi to work on this varying gradient of the foam pieces. They tried (I think) to get the gradient individually with each piece which made the task all the more difficult and requiring more skills and precision. What we did in this week was to glue all the pieces together first with a straight edge at the bottom and then shape off the gradient for the bottom. This still required a fair amount of judgement and sanding the gradient but was much easier. The top of the foam pieces though not a straight line was much easier to work on.

3) Having watched and see how difficult (and frustrating) it had been for Oggi and Gomez then, I build on their learning and "improve" on the approach and process. This is a second loop learning outcome - or what the Japanese called "Continuous Improvement" -incremental learning; one step at a time unlike the quantum learning which is a big leap at a time. That was how the Japanese "beat" the American over the last few decades of industrialisation. Now the other "Asian Tigers" are beating the Japanese at their own game ( at reverse engineering). Nevertheless the Japanese still remains in the lead in this field.

In conclusion - a rewarding and satisfied week of having achieved something improvement.

Week 20 - Completed the inside laminate and vacuum packing the core foam.

This week was busier than any previous weeks. During this week it seems that all of us (those present) were hand on to work on the laminating the inside layers of Boat Cloth and Double Bias as well as gluing on the core foam for the top part of the deck. It was a great team work environment with all those present.

Some technical details on the materials used:

Tools:
1) Squeezies
2) Gloves - plenty of them used by myself and Hoff when we need to lay the boat cloth and the double bias and help out with the resin application.
3) Mask - breathing apparatus
4) Overall
5) Roller
6) Vacuum Bag
7) Proferated plastic
8) Weed mat

Consumables:
1) Wax and PVA lotion (Film)
2) Acetone for cleaning the squeezies
3) Ice cream container
4) Masking tapes
5) Packing tapes
6) Cheese cloth (for waxing the mould)
7) Resin ADR246 and Hardener ADH 28. - we did 9 mixes of 6 (500 gm X 125 gm ) and 3 (300 gm X 75 gm)  of resins and hardener respectively for the inside laminates. Ratio of 4:1.
8) Microfibre 403 (I do not know how many mixes of the microfibre was used ( I was not doing the recordings).

 Materials for Inside Laminates
Boat cloth - 3 pieces of 1000mm by 3000mm
EDB - double bias glass cloth - 1 piece of 1300mm by 3000mm, 1 piece of 800mm by 3000mm and 1 piece of 1300mm by 2800mm.

Material Data
1)Weight of the boat cloth is 200 gm per square metre
2) Weight of the EDB is 430 per square metre.
3) Estimated weight of the boat cloth and the EDB was 4.3 pg and 20 kg based on the estimated 10 metre square needed for the task.
4) Ration of resin to glass cloth is 1.2 to 1. Therefore amount of resin needed is 7.5 to 6.3 kg.
5) Stock of resin available DR 246 is 13.5 kg and ADH 28 is 2.8 kg.
6) Microfibre 403 available 1.664 kg.

Though we were assigned specified roles and task for this laminating job, in the end everyone helps out as and when needed to complete the tasks on hand without having to be told to do so. Only Hoff and I were handling the glass cloth materials before they were laid.

The boat cloth were laid without any overlap as there was no need for them to overlap. For the EDB however the overlap is supposedly to be 30 mm. In the end, the overlap between the first 1300 x 3000 piece and the 800 x 3000 pieces were at least 80 mm. At one stage, there was confusion over the final 1300 x 2800 piece and the 800 x 3000 piece. Eventually we managed to work these out nicely (though as as desired)   for the inside laminate.

The vacuuming aspect was rather challenging once the vacuum pump was activated. Some foams were not in place and there were leaks at a couple of points where the plastic vacuum bag were jointed with vacuum tapes. The vacuum pump was switch off and on a number of time. It was a race against time.

(Will upload some photos of the process later as I do not have them on the desktop here. The photos are in my laptop.)

This is the first time I worked with big laminating task and use of time and sequencing appear to be critical parts. Correct sequencing come from planning on how to lay the glass clothes as well as knowing our individual roles.Team work with specified roles and tasks assigned are essential element of making laminates so as not to cause confusion. In the final moment, everyone present put in whatever efforts and do whatever tasks are needed. For me, it is great to see everyone putting in their energy into this after  so many weeks of independent working on our own with no group accountability. This seems to me this is the only task so far where everyone in the class learns at the same pace and same "page". My other conclusion is that many hands are needed for such a task especially for first timers like most if not all of us.

Here are the photos (these photos do not show the process of the laminating of the inside layer) of the laminating process:of the foam core and the vacuuming process-

A Clean table to start with

Stephan applying bulk materials to the wooden laminate for the back part of the top deck

Fitting out the form care before gluing it onto the inside laminate layer

Oggi and Adan applying bulk materials to the top of the inside laminate layer

Securing the vacuum bag to the vacuum tape before vacuuming

Another view of the vacuum bag with the vacuum tape being secured.

Vacuum being applied to the vacuum bag

Vacuum tape placed before vacuum bag is used.

Week 19th

I was assigned to work on the deck of the Wilson 8 m this week with Hof. Our task was to measure and prepare the materials for the fibreglass laminate. A brief was given to both of us by Brett on the various aspects and technicalities of the laminates. The laminate will be a three layer piece with the foam core sandwiched between to other 2 layers (one inside and the other outside) of Boat Cloth and Double Bias materials.

A list of questions was posted by Brett to us:

What is a laminate?

What materials to use?

What other materials are required - eg vacuum bag, peel ply, mat, etc...

Who? - People resource allocation

When? - Timing

How? - Process

Tools to use?

Resins to use?

Resource available =
What do we have in hand?
What do we need to do?
What have been done so far?

To me, these are the 4 Wives (W) and one Husband (H) questions which I am familiar with in my previous corporate work environment for various team tasks and individual projects. Questions are and always have been the Drivers of inquiry and data collection.

What Hof and I had accomplished this week are:
Take measurements of the areas to be covered by the laminated - 2.2 metre from the back to the front of the top deck and 800 mm for window slope portion and 1.3 metre to the stem point. 3 metres to cut for each pieces of the cloth - both for Boat cloth and DB.

Stock take of the what materials available (laying out the materials and measuring them on the lofting floor (floor needed to be clean first before spreading out the materials) - Boat Cloth - 36.4 metre and DB 12.6 metre.  We may have to use off cut materials for the DB (for the front portion of the deck towards the stem) as the requirements is not met by the DB 12.6 material available. The boat cloth available is more than sufficient.

Cut out the pattern for the boat cloth and the DB cloth. - we cut out all the materials into 3.2 metre length (to allow for the unusable ends of the materials which we tape up with masking tapes). One main learning point we gathered when cutting the material - was to tape up the end parts where we were making the cut first before cutting the materials. This made the cutting easier as well as the tape held the material together for better handling. The materials get stretched easily which made the task of handling the materials rather difficult. It was especially challenging when we tried to roll back the materials after laying it out for measurement.

Calculate the weight of a metre square of both materials - 432 gm per metre sq for the DB and 200 gm for the boat cloth.

Mark off on the mould where the cloth materials will be laid - there is a need to provide some overlapping of the materials - about 300mm.

Brainstorm how to lay the clothes. (Boat Cloth is 1 metre in width while the DB is 1.3 metre in width) - wwe would need 3 pieces of DB of 3 metre width and 4 pieces of baot cloth to cover the top part of the deck down to the front window. Another 1.3 metre width of material would be needed for the remaining part of the deck - the widest width is 3 metre, then 2 metre and then a triangular shape toward the stem.

Mark off and take out the areas where the inside laminate will end on the topside of the deck. The tricky part to lay the materials would be the front window area when the deck slope down and the side curve round.

Week 18 - Major learnings

This week is a continuation of the work on the 8 metre boat. Aside from working on the anchor well, I assisted John to glue on the cap for the gunwale.  John and I had a lengthy discussion on how we could decide on the angle throughout the cap of the gunwale at different station points. With the differing angles where the completed deck is supposed to meet the gunwale, it is quite a challenge process in thinking through how we could plane the angles throughout the gunwale cap. This I think made the boat building process more of an art than a science (as with other building process in boat building) even with the advance of technology and the sciences involved in boat building.

For the anchor well, I continue to apply bulk to patch up the two holes at the bottom as well as the openings at the bottom of the bulk head to seal them. It was not an easy task having to reach down to the bottom of the well. Previously I used off cut foams to give some body form to close up the holes and then apply 411 resins to cover up the holes. The mix I had initially were too runny - and the 411 resin was difficult to apply. I had to wait for it to cure further before I could smooth it out to. The subsequent mix I made were much thicker with more 411 powder. However the resin cure much faster and I had to work faster. Once the resin cure it is very difficult to apply onto the walls of the well. There is also much heat generated from the curing process of the resins in the ice cream container from the left over resins.

In the subsequent applications to joining areas where the bulk head meets the side of the hull, I decided to use masking tape to provide the alignments to the whole length of the joints. This made cleaning up the excess bulk material easier later as I thought. This also gave a smoother line to the joints.

Learning points :
1) Pre planning (thinking though how I was going to apply the resin mix) and preparation is essential for the application of the resin. These will lessen the amount of touching up and cleaning up later once the resin is cured and harden.

2) Speed of work is critical and the curing process of the resin will make the resin mix more difficult to work with once the cure is complete. Furthermore the fully cured resin is of no use as any further application to the surfaces to work on is ineffective and made cleaning later much more difficult a task.

3) The skills (building) of a boat builder become more critical as and when the boat is being built. All designs that had proceeded before would have to be modified when the actual building process started. It is more like a learning and adapting process as the building process proceed.  Judgement ability also become more critical which means experiences of the builder is paramount in the success of a boat being built.

Week 17 - Major learnings

Major learning for me this week are: -
1) Investigation into Polyester resin mix - on Wednesday.
Brett show us the effects of MEKP as a catalyst on the laminating and gel mix.  The time it took for the Gel mix to cure is shorter than the laminating resin mix - at 11.5 min vs 12 mins. The mix ratio used was 464 of resin with 2.5% of MEKP (which is much higher than standard at 0.75% to 2.25%). This higher ratio is used to amplify the effect of the MEKP on the resin mix.

Another pointer is that the application of the resin mix must be done onto the final material before the gel time. Spreading out the mix on the final material will also slow down the chemical reaction of air is an inhibitor (I am not sure about this and may have got this wrong - the other way round as air speeds up the chemical reaction - got to check on this. Reminded of Brett's comment that we are to read the resource CD). The mixes in the two ice cream containers did not have much air mixed into them and thus they cure much faster.

Safety considerations are major in this type of mixing of resin with MEKP. Brett demonstrate the way of the eye wash should any chemicals get into one's eye. Goggle therefore is essential in working with MEKP. Respirator is the other essential safety equipment for this work. As uncomfortable as it can be, I have to learn to get use to them though my hydrolysis situation cause my safety glasses to fog easily.

2) The other major learning is with the Dory thwart. There is a lack of continuity in the work on the thwarts and as such there is lack of co-ordination which resulted in a major blunder of the front thwart being too short. This remind me of the need for a sort of  "organisational learning and memory"  process which I had used during my corporate days. We used a similar documentation process (much like the google documents) where the sale persons used to record their visits to customers. Any other employee before visiting the said  customer needed to bring themselves up to speed on the latest development with that customer. So documentation is critical in our learning process.

Reflecting on the process of making the thwarts and what went wrong - I conclude it may have been that we measure and marked off the reference points where the thwarts are to meet up with the upside/hull of the Dory on the top side rather than the underside. This could have resulted in the thwart being cut too short.

Another learning is that we should not have cut off the excess of the thwarts  until we had taken all the measurements.

Nevertheless my greatest learning comes from these learning opportunities (mistakes made) - especially so in an learning environment such as the sessions at the CAT program. Hopefully I have learned from these so called "mistakes".

My other tasks this week on Monday and Tuesday were continuing on the anchor well works. My experiences as I reflected on it now is that the curing time of the filler resins/powder was similar to that of the investigation works done on Wednesday. Speed is of the essence once the epoxy is mixed with the filler powder. I found it difficult to apply the mix onto the walls of the anchor well toward the end as the mix had become thicker. Once it cures, further is not only impossible but of no use to try to get a thin coat.

The works on the well using the air sander is both noisy and dusty. The amount of dust is reduced if I held the sander with the air outlet pointing up rather into the well. Mask and goggle is essential for this work as safety equipment  My hands and face were all soaked with my perspiration.sweat whenever I used gloves and masks. This gives me second thought about my suitability to work in such environment.