I managed to break away and get a bit more done. Prior to gluing up I laid a batten on the bottom to see where the rocker flow was going to better position the piece of foam. Then I marked it with pencil so I could easily put it back with the glue.
I don’t know if you can see it, but I took my sanding block and cut in a cheater scarf joint on the existing stringer ends. It’ll make more sense in later pics.
Here is the Comet Tail setting up in vertical position so it didn’t fall out. I didn’t have any tubing or other clamp system but the fit was pretty tight and even if you did push in on the two rails, it didn’t really budge. I used two part epoxy home depot glue. Left it that way overnight.
I cut two stringer extensions out of the doorskin I use for templates. It’s cheap stuff but I figure it will be strong enough. It was three ply and I tore some of it apart to see which way the thicker middle part’s grain was going.
To make the other end of the scarf joint I sanded it down at an angle on my sanding block like you would a blade on a stone. Didn’t take long and it was easy to slip in place and refine until it was as good as it was gonna get.
I put a piece of plywood on the shaping racks then propped the nose up with a towel so the comet tail was laying flush on the table top and stable. This way I didn’t have to worry about the weight of the clamps and 1 x 3’s. Since I was glueing fresh wood to fresh foam I went with carpenters glue. Easier and that epoxy was expensive (Two Buck Chuck eh?), I’ll save it for later pieces attaching to the old stringers. A temporary moment of panic when I had put the glue on then realized I had no wax paper to put between glue overflow and the clamping board. Saran wrap to the rescue. Also, I was glad I decided to glue up each stringer one at a time, less sliding around.
Wow…you’re doing very, very well. That new stringer joint is simpler and perfectly adequate, being as the glue bond in it will still be stronger than the foam, so making it any stronger would just be extra work.
One thought came to me - you might possibly want to think about the tips of the swallowtail. See, the tips tend to be fragile, what with taking all the impact on a very small area. Kinda like what probably happened to the nose, it/they shatter, leak and generally make your life difficult.
So if it was me, I’d be thinking about how to reinforce 'em. The stringers that run to the swallowtail tips, they’ll help some, but… dunno, will they be strong enough, soaking up impact without crushing as foam alone does?
Heee- rat-bastich that I am, I have a few ideas that way, but you’re doing so well that I’m thinking I’ll “leave this as an exercise for the student” -
I’ve done a bit more on the project the last few days. First off I glued on the second stringer extension to the comet tail. Then I went to work to remove the foam where the botched and crazy concaves had been sanded. Also underneath the removed glass of the fin area where foam pulled away with the peeled glass. I was thinking of running my circular saw right up the line I had drawn but opted for my trusty cheapo hack saw. You can see where it left its blue paint.
The taped line was to score the glass with the hacksaw and keep it from moving around. Once I’d cut through the glass in one spot I was able to plunge the saw blade all the way through and finish the cut.
This pic is gnarly. I cut the vertical line in such a way as to preserve as much of the original bump/wing as possible. I ended up with a lethal dagger!
I was glad I hadn’t messed with the glass on the fins because I could put them back on to keep track of where things need to be and how long the foam add-ons need to be.
Next step was to lay the piece of replacement foam under the giant gap and mark its shape. I cut it out then refined with the sanding block but I got a bit overzealous on one side and ended up with it being too narrow by about 1/8 of an inch. I have just enough large foam pieces for the project so I had to add some back on from scrap. I didn’t take pics but what I did was glue on another larger piece, then after it set, cut it just larger than neccessary. The again with the sanding block this time being careful not to take too much off.
The pieces of replacement foam are from a practice shape I did a while back. This piece is from the tail and the rocker is pretty close to what I need. As you can see the comet tail piece and new string are much thicker so I scored it where it needs to go when I got the glue going.
For this I used the two part expoxy glue again, what a mess that stuff is. The clamps are good old masking tape. The foam was a tight fit so no probelm, it’s in the garage now setting up.
As I was doing all this today and yesterday I had an epiphany. I didn’t have to completely remove all that foam from the concave and fin area and further cut the glass on the deck. When I was glueing on the shim in the previou pics a light bulb went off. All I had to have done was taken the foam down past the concave with a sanding block to about a 1/2 inch depth, then slap on a foam panel! DOH!!! So in keeping with the Frankenstein nature of the project (insert appropriate Young Frankenstein movie reference here), I think I’ll try that first on the other side.
Heee- nawww, the difference between a beginner and a pro isn’t that the pro does it right every time, but that the pro can deal with what goes wrong and make a nice job of it
Oh, and set up/modify the process to make it simple, straightforward steps rather than something horribly difficult.
I’ve been working sporadically on this in between other projects and thought I’d post some progress photos.
Final glue up of the inserts
rough out of the foil
I put some tape on the glassed portion since I was getting pretty close to it. Since the insert pieces of foam and stringers weren’t perfect there were some pretty gloppy resin spots. They created glue balls from hell with the block planer on the stringers so I had to do it all with the power planer. The tape ended up in the way as it got scuffed by the base plate of the planer. Better to go really slow with micro depth cuts.
bottom after some hand sanding - notice the rolled vee that was in the board.
deck after some hand sanding. You can see the rough glue up area at the front of the new stringers. I’ll be doing a little painting before the gloss coat!
After a while it was hard to tell what I was doing with all the extra foam. So I got out my notes and marked original the fin placements, then did a rough sketch of the new outline so I could cut off some of the extra material. There was enough of the board left to see that it had a double bump, but the very end is a guess. I’m going with a small swallow tail between the stringers.
This is how it looks after cutting off most of the excess material. I think I will start work on the nose before I refine the tail any more. It’s sort of awkward to work with raw foam and the glassed part. It slides around a lot ( I put sticky tape on one end of the racks).
