Well.... this last weekend didn't go how I had hoped...
My plan was to expoxy the sponsons to the hull and have them all faired in and ready for primer.
Unfortunately, after leaving them bolted to the hull "under load" for a few days it appeared that the amount of tension they were under in order to hold them up against the hull was causing them to buckle and upon any sort of hard impact they were going to break.
On Friday evening I noticed a major stress fracture from top to bottom on one side and then saw what I thought were numerous more about to give way on both sides... At this point I was pretty bummed because I knew I had more work ahead of me than I had planned, but I had the idea that since I already had them bolted to the hull in the contour I needed, I would de-foam them and pie-cut them to relieve the tension. Then, while bolted to the hull I would re-foam them and re-fill the pie-cuts thus taking out any "stored energy" in the form of tension and change their "resting shape" to be closer to the contour of the hull... I really don't want these things fighting against an epoxy bond and constantly trying to separate themselves from the hull.
This is when i made my next interesting discovery...
As I removed the foam from one of the sponsons, I realized that it had already been pie-cut once before........ I'm not sure if this was done when they were first made in order to add some sort of fins for reinforcements or rigidity, or if most likely they had been modified previously to fit the shape of another hull using the same method I had planned to use. Either way, by bending them to fit my hull, the previous pie-cuts "stretched" and created low spots which became very visible and I mistook them for rippling/buckling. This was pretty clear on the otherside once I knew what I was looking at.
I removed all of the foam and made my piecuts by dremmeling out every other existing slit
Then I made the mistake of being impatient/lazy and used the only "tape" i had around to mask off the hull before re-foaming instead of just going to the store to get something that would remove clean...while FlexFix creates a very nice smooth finish on the back of the foam and allowed the sponsons to pop free easily... it was an absolute pita to remove from the hull because it just rips to shreds and de-laminates when you peel it off (this would result in 2 hours of tape/adhesive residue removal later on).
I made some very high-tech/high-concept braces and got to foaming with 2lb foam.
Once the foam did it's thing, I cleared the piecuts out and filled them with thickened epoxy. I also recessed the foam at the front and went ahead and re-built the area that I had previously trimmed off to fit the rocker.
It actually sort of worked. Not "perfectly' as they still had to be under slight tension when bolted during refoam/refill (unless I was going to do way more pie-cuts or even section them into three pieces)...I only did two cuts in the front so there is less of a difference there, but I still feel like they are under less tension and I will be leaving the bolts installed and epoxying over them anyway.
But here is how far off they were front and rear before compaired to now:
Before:
After:
I'm going to do the other side today, but will changing my approach a bit and will definitely be using something other than FlexFix as my masking layer.
That should work!
