Sanded down the duct and cut a top piece to fit. Glued and nailed this top sheet into place, filling the gaps with spray foam. Used a hacksaw for this mostly and a belt sander. Seemed to go just fine.
Fitted two pieces of plywood either side of front lip. Glued and nailed these into place, again filling gaps with spray foam.
Tied in 50 plastic milk containers as flotation using plastic ties and wire clips. Neat - things seem to be moving along nicely.
Sanded down the front lip to a nice curve. The cut slots for the engine mounts. After a lot of pushing and pulling, the mounts were in place. I then used spray foam to glue them into place.
Sanded this all down again and gave it all a coat of epoxy to stabilize the surface. The filled some holes with epoxy and filler.
Cut and shaped all the back panels and fitted them to size.
Ordered some more epoxy (used 1.5 gallons already) and the pulleys and wires. The hardware came from McMaster-Carr, who have an excellent choice and they also do perfect skirt material real cheap. Neoprene coated nylon in 17oz sq. yd. I didnt order that yet, but I will soon.
Fitted the pulleys, using a long bolt, washers and springs. Used another piece of plywood inside too to add strength. This setup seems to add tension to the wires.
Then I got bored with the boat part and started on the main duct. I rough cut two disks 48" across with a scroll saw. Then bored a hole in the center to fit the left over 3/4" EMT pipe from the steering. Using this as a spindle, I screwed the router to a sawhorse and turned some wonderful disks. Really smooth and regular. And both identical in size!
I then screwed then to some block of 4x2 to make the form for the duct. Wrapping the plywood was tough. Ended up epoxying the two pieces together, then wrapping the resulting piece around the form using rachet straps. I did remember to add some string around the disks to aid removal later.
I then added two sheet of white polystyrene foam glueing them on with expanding foam. Big mistake. It looked good for a while and I had it sanded down most of the way to a finished duct but it was not to be. The foam had pushed the sheets away from the wood and would never look good. So I scraped it all off back to the bare wood and started again.
I am now trying to use some pink foam sheeting from Home Depot. Tis about $7 for a 4 x 8 ft sheet in 1/2" thick. This is more dense and will sand much smoother. I'm also using epoxy this time to glue it in place. One hint here: If you use this pink sheeting, remember to remove the plastic film before glueing. I didnt notice it and when I took off the straps it just unwound, leaving the plastic behind.DUH...
Another wasted day.
