Thursday, January 21, 2010
We are finding that different colour pastes result in gelcoats with widely different ability to cover and produce a nice finish. This means we'll have to do a bit of experimenting and then only produce boats with colours that are easy to work with. Hull nr. 3 "Yellow Submarine" was moulded last weekend and it [...]
Update: here is Jari's "fork" design for the mast-partner: The forward hole could be made a bit bigger so a 4mm acetal-rod with a small central hole for the jib-sheet will fit. There could be an M3 or M4 threaded hole added for the mast-ram, and finally some holes for a U-shaped bent wire which [...]
Here's another idea for the PIKANTO radio-installation. The yellow parts are 1.5 mm glassfiber boards (PCB-material) which are glued to the finbox and the mainsheet post. They would provide two or four mounting holes for M3 bolts that secure the main radio-plate (not shown) to the boat. If this is rigid enough I think no [...]
This jib-support part which goes into the bow of the boat has about three or four different purposes. First, it stiffens the forward deck to take the loads from the rig, second it provides a 6 mm i.d. tube for a dyneema-thread type no1 rig swivel, third it provides a 3mm wide slot for recessed [...]
These are the standard colours we have for coloring gel-coat for the Pikanto right now. They are from emc-vega. Hull nr1 was a mix of blue and white, hull nr2 a mix of black and white. The SAILSetc links to this page http://www.llewellyn-ryland.co.uk/standardrange.html which has a lot of nice colours. Anyone know where (online?) to buy [...]
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
What's the simplest possible way to install the radio components in the boat? Here's an idea: Use an FR4 glassfiber PCB-board (yellow) cnc-cut to the correct shape and with cut-outs for the winch, rudder servo, and batteries. Mount it to the deck with long M4 bolts with Y-head screws that mount flush to the deck. Use [...]
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Some more pictures of hull nr 1. The weight of the hull and deck, including mast/finbox and rudder-tube is 600 g. We hope to improve on that since this prototype hull has a bit too much resin in a lot of places. In 2003 I made this weight-budget for an Italiko, which shows the Italiko [...]
Saturday, December 26, 2009
We've moulded the first PIKANTO hull! This is a bit of a prototype since it's some time since Jari or myself moulded a boat, and also because these are brand new moulds and we have never made a boat in one-go like this before: closed mould with the hull, deck, mast/finbox, and ruddertube all attached [...]
Monday, December 21, 2009
The PIKANTO moulds were polished first with "Oskar’s buffing and polishing compund M-50" and then with "Norpol Rubbing R-10", both from Terpol (www.terpol.fi) in Turku.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
After sanding with 1200-grit and a 10-15um particle-size fine paper it is time for polishing. We have two grades of polishing-compound. These pics show the coarse type which is polished with a spinning soft disk on a power-drill. After polishing follows release agents: first Frekote and then wax. It's still possible we will mould a [...]