i be sailing

This would probably also look good on Andrew’s arts and crafty shite blog but that’s for his shite, and I’m the proud Daddy of this baby.

Related somewhat to boat building but not really… This month being nutrition month, Cholo’s school is going to have a food parade. Some of the food groups that were assigned to his level were; butter, milk, leafy veggies, squash etc… and the parents were asked to make costumes for their kids out of indigenous materials. And due to this boat building infliction I have, what happened to be indigenous to me at this time is fiberglass. The plan was to make a milk carton costume out of a cardboard box and laminate the thing in fiberglass.

The amount of epoxy resin I had was just enough to laminate the dog boat so I decided to try using the polyester resin I got from polymer products in Pasay. The cardboard box I used is from an old electric fan as it had just about the same proportions as a tetra brick.   

The box was a little short, so I opened up the bottom flaps and hand stitched the corners together with black waxed hemp. Needle and thread work is very theraputic. This made the box around 25% taller than before. I wanted the box to look like real tetra brick complete with triangular side flaps, so i did just that. It’s a little longish to describe the procedure, but it was easy enough to do. especially if you have a real carton of milk on hand, which i did.

I then cut out the holes for head and arms. and had Cholo dry fit the thing. I had to enlarge the head hole a little bit more but it fit okay. I really should get my own digital camera so I can document these kinds of things.

Next, the glassing. I first glassed the top and the sides as they were a little more complicated as they had holes of the head and arms. I pre-coated the box with poly-resin before putting on the fiberglass cloth. the triangular side flaps were little hard to do as it had some unusual folds.

Poly-resin is real nasty stuff, any small drop that falls on your skin is guaranteed to leave a burning sensation. I never had that experience with Pioneer marine epoxy or their epoxy resin, it could be i’m not alergic to that… yet. Poly-resin also dries tacky, for it to dry hard you need to add a wax compound to the final coat. I found that out after laminating the whole box, serves me right for not completely reading the instructions on the bottle.

After waiting for a couple of days to see if it would dry solid, I came pretty much to the conclusion that it won’t, so I decided to start painting it, hoping that the coat of paint would give it a less tacky feel. Luckily it did.

I used enamel spray that I originally planned to use for the dog boat.  The box still wreaked of poly-resin on the inside. so it’s a good thing that I put the head hole on the inside not on the front as Cholo originally wanted.

I used up the entire can to put on one and half coats. I originally planned to use green and blue paint for the outside detail but figured it would be too much work for something that would only be used for a couple of hours. and I’ve had very little experience with that and it left very little room for error. so I used green and black adhesive vinyl instead for the detailing.

I actually planned to cut out the lettering from black adhesive vinyl but decided to just print out the lettering I needed on white sticker paper instead, as I also suck at that. it turned out to be a good idea. I did however use the black vinyl for the bar-code though.

It probably won’t win any awards, but Cholo sure likes it. Later on I can probably strip it down and turn it into a spongebob costume.

Here are some pics from the parade. here’s the finished costume complete with straw and at the stage with the other milk carton wannabes.

Everything is going along well. Graham sent an invoice with the prices of the sailing hardware and the sails. The invoice came around to $530. ouch! More than half of that price however was the cost of the sail. After taking that out the sail some optional stuff, I was able to bring it down to under $200.00 with plans included. I still have a problem with the sail though, I’ll probably have to go with polytarp (eeeeww!), a cheap, not as good looking alternative, but beggars can’t be choosers.

While looking through a list of ecozone locators I found this  company in Cebu that makes sails. So I decided to drop them a note and ask for a quotation on how much a sail for an 11 foot sailboat will cost. I sent them the specs they needed to make a quote and after a couple of days I got a reply back. And their price for a P: 4.4196 E: 2.691384 sized sail that’s made in the Philippines with Pinoy labor and ?imported materials?, plus taxes…. only around PhP36,000.00!!! Oo, napamura din ako, Grabe! That’s more that the price of materilas to build the boat.. No wonder sailing is a rich man’s hobby. This definately has to change.

Still looking for sail alternatives, I was able to find a guy in Q.C. who repairs sails. I called him up and asked if he makes them too. At first he was a little apprehensive and said he only repairs them, but when he found out how small the boat was, he said making one  shouldn’t be a problem. He gave me a labor quote of PhP3,000.00 which I think is fairly reasonable, but I have to supply the material though, and last time I looked they don’t stock Dacron sailcloth in Divisoria.

I was also able to pick-up that trade sample of formula #5 epoxy resin from Repubic Chemicals. Sure enough, it looked like the real thing 1: 1 epoxy resin, I also called them to ask some questions, and I found out that they also have an epoxy paint for marine applications called Pearl Glaze, it only comes in white though.  PhP 970 for four liters.. I was also able to buy a palm sander from Anzcom in Alabang. Most of the  stuff they had there was second had stuff, but I was able to get a brand new one for PhP2100.00, I did my window shopping prior to the purchase the only brand available here is Makita and it costs PhP5K+      a Palm sander ===>

With epoxy resin, fiber glass cloth and palm sander in hand. I was ready to start the next phase of the stitch and glue trials, or as I call it now the “dog boat” project. I was a little excited and I forgot to bring a camera to take pictures. But I’ll try stage some pictures and add them to this post soon.

Cleaning up the messy epoxy work on the outside was easy enough with the palm sander, the job used up an entire sheet of P60 grit sandpaper.

Next was the glassing. I mixed up a small batch of epoxy resin and coated the outside of the boat, then I layed 8oz fiber glass cloth over it and spread on more epoxy resin to fully wet it out. After around 48 hours the resin was hard but still a little tacky, but I decided to add another layer of epoxy anyway. I found out after this, that full cure takes around 72 hours.

I found this website of someone building an 8’ Two-paw nesting dinghy also designed by Graham. His documentation is superb!

A nesting 10′ Spindrift built in Panama by some Scottish dude. Check out the Celtic knot work done in blue non-slip tape. Cool eh?!