1921 Hrs – Mixing It Up A Bit

After working for 8 days straight, including through the Easter Weekend I finally managed to get back to working on Gleda today. During my time away I’d been thinking a lot about the next stages of the build and how I am going to tackle them. There are three tasks I want to focus on.

1. Get the port hull joints glass reinforced as per the starboard hull
2. Get both hulls sheathed
3. Build the cross-beams

I struggled a bit with the glass-reinforcement on the starboard hull as it’s quite repetitive work and there are a lot of joints!

The sheathing will have to be broken down into small sections as I’m doing the job on my own and the amount of epoxy I can mix and work with at any one time is therefore limited, and, even with a mixture of differing hardeners the right temperature is needed.

Building the cross-beams is a big job and technically quite challenging, the work needs to be of a high standard and not rushed. There are many jobs on a Tiki 38 where you can cut corners and still get a workable result but not the cross-beams.

So what I intend to do over the coming months is work on all three of these tasks as mood, time and weather suits best. After all it’s a priciple I’m finding works well in my income generating activities so why not apply it to Gleda as well?

Today I’ve started glass reinforcing the port hull working from the stern forwards and I’ve built a sturdy construction floor on which I can make the cross-beams. Obviously it’s critical that they are put together on a perfectly flat surface with no twists or distortions so I made up a 6.5 m long ‘table’ using 3 lengths of 4″x2″ and some 1/2″ birch ply,  then levelled it using plastic shims before epoxying it down to the concrete barn floor so it can’t move. Should do the trick nicely.