activitysteam

Good evening folks, so there’s not been much progress on the autopilot as I’ve diverted project time to help manufacturer PPE for a local group distributing in the Bristol area. Here’s hoping normal service will resume as safely possible, stay safe folks.

Lockdown project week 1:
Whilst waiting for the Pi and arduinos I’m cracking on with the hardware for my wifi Autohelm 800 to pypilot conversion. I’m using a pololu SMC G2 to handle the motor control which has all the endstop, current sensing and various other things on board and configurable via serial and USB. This does mean my pilot won’t have…[Read more]

Evening folks… Well ummm I don’t think there’s going to be much happening for a bit! To top it off my work have announced redundancies set to happen in the next week or two so project funds may dry up rather suddenly!
I’ve got a few low budget and socially distant projects in mind to keep things ticking over, including ripping the guts out of…[Read more]

Progress! Feeling much better today so did a few bits and bobs on the wagon and headed off down to the boat. I spent a few hours sanding the area the beam will go and got the template made, jury is still out on the material I’ll use for the beam, I’m leaning towards either a traditional laminated hardwood all varnished up and pretty looking; or a…[Read more]

Morning all, I hope everyone is having an excellent Christmas 🙂 annoyingly I’ve decided to have been struck down with some kind of Peruvian murder flu (just bit of a cold apparently). Anyway I’ve been spending a lot of time planning for the next stages, trying to avoid the naivety of some of the previous stages so I hopefully won’t hit any snags…[Read more]

Evening folks! It’s been the cars MOT month so not much done on the boat in the last 2 weeks, I have got the stern tube adaptor finished and ordered up the next lot of glass.
The bi-ax is just for general tabbing and laminating and the combination mat is going to be used as a single polyester resin layer to reinforce the hull from the inside, I…[Read more]

Evening folks! Had a surprisingly pleasant few evenings working on the boat this week, sadly it’s too cold to get the epoxy involved but I’ve got a plan for that which involves a 3kw heater, lots of bubble wrap and doing a science. We’ve had to revert to plan b for the Cutlass bearing, I’ve bought a standard sized bearing and a bronze tube which…[Read more]

Evening folks, it’s templating time again, this one was driving me slightly insane! When I did the last few they lost the curve of the hull when I released them so I’ve been putting much more thought into bracing it to retain the curve. This is the first of the sections that will make up the bed. The curves get a bit less dramatic further aft so…[Read more]

Finally decided on the paint system I’m going to use and actually committed to ordering it! We’re going with PPG Sigma. SigmaCover 280 epoxy primer for the basecoat and Sigmadur 520 for the topcoats. Its less than half the price of the comparable yachty branded paints but heavily used for commercial shipping so if it’s good enough to protect steel…[Read more]

Making good use of the last nice day for a while, some slightly rustic jigsaw work but will be hidden by the surround so didn’t feel too compelled to re do it, few things left to do before the chain locker is finished but nice to add a bit of boat for a change. I warmed the resin over the kettle in the end, really helped with the wet out!

Hurray the new toy has arrived! Going to spend a while getting used to it before committing to the prop shaft but as you can see in the video it chews through 316 stainless without any issues, that was a 1mm cut on carbide insert tools (the smoke is the coolant). The picture is aluminum so if I make a mistake threading it won’t break anything…[Read more]