Winter Week 2: Goin Strong

This week started off with a bang when a large pile of needed materials showed up all at once. Mixing resumed with fresh pails of admixtures, sieved aggregate, and everyone's favorite, fly ash. Fly ash is a pozzolan, which means it reacts with calcium hydroxide which is produced within cement hydration. The fun part about it is that it is so extremely small (sub 1 micron) that filter masks are required when working with it.


With the necessary materials at our disposal we started on the coffin renovation. The coffin is our transport box for the canoe, and "coffin" was an accurate title considering 2 canoes failed in it over the course of a few months. The issue is that the canoe rested on a tarp which covered packing peanuts -- hull down despite the picture -- and while everything worked at first, the foam bed settled and the boat cantilevered. Essentially the boat see-sawed on the foam and broke in tension (concrete's biggest weakness) right across the middle. Here's the old layout and half of the last boat that it laid waste to.


Our proposed solution this year was to add supportive & segregating ribs. Using cross sections from our hull design, we cut ribs to support the boat every other foot. A total of 10 ribs for a 20' boat. However, we don't want 10 pressure points (although better than 1), so foam will be loaded up to rest the boat comfortably and the foam cannot settle as the ribs will keep it within it's 2' station. Here's Aga and myself cutting the new ribs:


Here's the coffin all ribbed up, now we'll just load some foam in between and she's good to hit the road with our concrete canoe.


Tuesday spelled out more than 20 manhours from this hard crew, helping week 2 become potentially the most productive week yet.


Check back soon for pics of our mold and the lovely mess that is fiberglass work. Next official meeting, Friday at 1pm.