G'day again all. Hope everyone is happy and well. Just thought I better post some progress pics of my mini build. Thankyou to everyone who posted their progress and got me moving again

Im following the plans closely but of course deviated a little. Instead of finding the tube sizes listed on the plans I only used the ~60mm galtube, 30x2.5 RHS, 35x2.5 RHS and 25.4x3.0 seamless tube. Not much difference but I wanted to get cutting and only sourced these sizes. I figure I can afford the little extra mass as Im fairly light

EDIT: I deleted the large pictures present above and replaced them with smaller versions here.




Mast Step/tube.



Rear pulley mount.



Front seat mount. Notice its on the ventral side of the chassis.



Rear axle, whip mount detail. Next time I will wild the mounts on so they are paralell with the seat surface and not the rear axle tube.



Overview of the near completed chassis. On to getting a seat designed and built.

I'll answer your question in the comments thread responderman, seeing as Cisco made me one. Thanks for that Cisco.

"Whitworths Marine and Leisure"

They have a shop in Leederville (Perth,Western Australia)
but I think there are other branches all around the country,

They sell plastic (nylon?) rowlocks for about $4.00 each, and do mail order/ internet sales.

I bought 4 rowlocks to make the postage worthwhile, all up cost was around $20.00 or so.

Your LLM is looking great.
I get most of my parts from bias marine they have excellent customer service and mail order response www.biasboating.com.au/
Cheers
AUS230

If you make up "strops" to go around your boom to carry the blocks, rather than drilling or trying to make some sort of fitting you will have less stress on the boom section itself. If you are using the 'glass boom shown you probably want to do what you can to spread the load or the section itself may collapse. Another piece of tube over it, bit of wood inside etc are a couple of options.Looks good!

I don't think PVC will do a lot of good. I would be inclined to cut a slice of alloy tube, thin wall (1.2mm)would be fine, about 200mm long and taper the ends so it's longest at the top and say around 150 at the bottom. Sort of a half pipe. Put this on the outside of the boom on the top so that however you are fastening the blocks onto the boom goes through the boom and this re-inforcing bit. It will spread the load considerably and by cutting away the ends you take away the "stress riser".
The "strops" I use are just a bit of 6mm cord made into a continuous loop, just tied at the ends. It needs to be a bit more than the circumference of your boom x2. So a 50mm boom needs for the total length of cord to be about 450mm (depending how you tie your knots). Loop it over the boom and threadthe end through itself, then just fix the block to it. Sort of like a doubled lassoo.
If someone can tell a senile old fogey how to do photos I will do so!

I use this loop (and have done for years) in favor of other options because it clamps by itself, so you can try various positions very easily, and most importantly (and probably does not matter in Oz) you can do things with it when your fingers are very cold.
You can also make up the strops from 25mm webbing if you don't like the "string is cheap" look!

stick with the slot , and string, they are the best rear sheeted booms Ive used you need those pulleys up out of the way to give you sheeting room when you lower the rig for racing

havent yet had any problems, all the booms have been regular glass booms, rope has been 4mm spectra.
dont forget that your sailing a lighter , narrower yacht, so youll probably capsize before you snap most of the gear

Well after taking everyones comments and thinking very hard (not really, ran out of things to work on and got bored last weekend) I found a bit of alloy and made a reinforcing for the boom block mountings. I'll post a pick soonish.

I wondered whether the boom would be strong enough and thought why chance it, Im not exactly up to my neck it spare boom sections (plus a did a little damage to the inside of the boom when cutting and drilling).


Kiwi: what do you mean when you say "end on end pulleys"?


Thankyou to all for the good comments and tips.

Thanks Kiwi. Not much space to tie the rope off beside my lower block, maybe I can drill a couple of holes in the seat and tie off there... Will give me another inch of downward travel Then again my sail may not need the extra travel, and it brings up the issue of tangling as ropes will be passing against each other.

Thoughts to go into V.2 of the design tho

I think you should It will make a good job into a much better one
It should only take an hour or two Use some resin and filler to make a radius on the internal joins cover with some tape inside and out bedded in resin and jobs done !
If you cut your own tape from cloth cut the strips on the diagonal so all the fibres go across the joint
Much stronger that way Double bias tape can be purchased also
I usually buy it 100mm wide and split it into 50mm wide
You are almost there!
cheers Hiko

Before you paint the seat Lachlan you might consider coating it with "Everdure" or Wattyl "Timber Preserver". This is a two pack thinned out epoxy resin which will densify the timber and seal it.

The product is reasonably priced but should not be left as the top or final coat as it as no UV resistance.

Cheers Cisco.

Thanks for the hints and help, I'll check out the products that have been mentioned. I see there are a few varieties of additive to make resin filler, does anyone have a favourite or hated product?

That said, I probably wont protect the wood with anything more than the paint that will decorate it. This seat is pretty rough around the edges and will be having absolute minimum spent (time and money, at present the seat cost is under $80) to get it going. The next one will be much prettier up close and I'll definately want to use filler and protect it more (I think )

Right now I just want to get sailing ASAP!!!! and there isn't far to go

Get ready for it, your not going to believe it but Im almost finished. Though by finished i mean it could be sailed, there is a fair bit of cosmetic work that could (insert: should) be done.

First image up is of the modified whip block mount. The additional second loop is to tie the mainsheet off, this will allow the boom to be pulled down a bit further, and I dont have to buy blocks with a becket (??) which is cheper The how I did this is self explanatory so I wont describe the complex process of how I did it.



And a wheel and backrest. Wheels are held on with split pins. This photo also highlights quite a large mistake I made when making the seat, a couple of 1"x3/4"x2mm steel tabs on the axle sleeves fixed it up (please forgive the unit mix).



Actually, not one to make a single mistake heres a shot that shows another. Cutting a little too much wood off the lower front seat base changes the angle of the sides considerably. Too much angle for my liking, and the seat is 50mm wider than planned, but the up side is I could use 2 sleeping bags worth of padding and still fit into the seat This also shows where the angle comes from that you can see between the nose and sides of the seat.



And lastly a coule of overview shots. The grey colour I just used as and undercoat but I dont think it would look too bad as a final colour. I want to see what the sail colours are first and match the seat to it (although if the sail is pink....), hopefully bring out a professional appearance to the mini explorer (and sharks teeth on the front will add to that....wont they ) Thanks everyone for following the build, more posts to come as I finish and test the machine .

aus230 said...

Hi Lachlan.
When I built my stitch and glue Kayaks I used a fiberglass filler (resin +powder) to make a nice corner over the tape this can be applied with a spatula that is rounded at the end a bit to achieve a nice smooth curve along the inside of the body. I did not apply tape to the outside as it was filled when applying the inside tape this allows you to sand a nice rounded edge on the outside
Cheers
AUS230

Just wondering how one can sand the outside of the seams on a stitch and glue project when the 'ties' are protruding. I would have done this but couldn't think of a way to do it.

I imagine next seat I do will be stitched together with the twitches on the outside, use filler and glass the inside of the seat then cut the ties off the outside and sand the outside smooth (and by sand I really mean angle grind carefully). Can I have a quick run through of how to do it properly please?