Scout SEV Hovercraft: July 2007

The hull pieces have been cut and fiberglassed on one side. The pieces have been curing in the 97 to 100+ degree heatwave that the Bay Area is experiencing this week.

Now that all the foam pieces are dried, the edges have pieces of fiberglass mat and cloth that have hardened and needs to be trimmed and cleaned up. I trimmed the fiberglass along the edges before the polyester hardened but some edges were still soft and when it is not ready the blade will pull the fiberglass strands - I leave it alone before I create a problem - I'll just have to wait till it is dry.

My garage floor have a commercial carpet tile and the loose white glass fibers from the fiberglass mat easily falls off and sticks to the carpet and difficult to vacuum or sweep or blow away. These glass strands needs to be controlled and managed - I do not like it all over the place and it is not a healthy inhaling glass particles! It could make us sick!

Definitely no sanding of in the garage. Sanding or grinding will be done outside in the patio and not in the garage.

Applying fiberberglass in the garage creates polyester odor especially when the material is curing and it takes a long time before the odor dissipate. When the doors are closed there is a strong odor of polyester resin curing. Whenever I open the door to the garage from the house the strong odor enters the house, and it's already been 4 days when I glassed those pieces an they still smell strong.

I will be moving the construction of the Scout in the covered patio behind the house.I will move them today before dark, the next job is cutting the hardpoints and gluing the wood pieces then bevel edging - sanding, that means sanding the glass, polyester resin with MEKP and urethane foam to microscopic proportions! Not a pleasant thought! I need a good mask, vacuum and blower!

I will be working with microbaloons for the hardpoints - another substance to worry about. I advise anyone working with these synthetic man-made materials to be careful and use them with caution and avoid touching them, use gloves, don't inhale them, don't eat them, don't let it touch your skin as much as possible.

We can never be too safe from these industrial compounds that is essentially not healthy and can cause sickness and disease and toxicity to living things. I personally think these chemical compounds and industrial materials to be toxic to the human body.

Manufacturers never really tell you the truth - if they did, they will not be able to sell their product. Just remember that they do things for profit and it does not really matter to them if you get sick or die, anyway corporations and conglomerates is another topic on it's own.

I would not want to be doing this on a daily basis and exposing my body to unhealthy . I'm just giving you my comments on my experience with the building process. I am not fond of the fiberglass mat that sheds. I will take extreme care in handling fiberglass mat next time and avoid it from getting scattered about. The urethane foam also has issues - it produces these tiny particles of foam powder - very tiny yellow powder that stick to plastics and things that have static electricity charge. That is also not good to inhale and ingest.

I consider all these things to be harmful to the body and the least amount of exposure to them the better. Prolonged exposure is not healthy, fiberglass and urethane foam powder can be very tiny microscopic particles that can be easily ingested or inhaled when they are that tiny and who really knows if these particles are easily eliminated by the body without issues? I rather not take the chances and minimize my exposure and risk.

That is the drawback so far that I experience with polyester resin, urethane foam, fiberglass mat and fiberglass cloth. Fiberglass cloth is not that bad in comparison to the mat. The cloth does not have fibers that fall off. The cloth creates lint instead - at least it is not in tiny pieces. When cutting glass cloth, cut straight and continuously to avoid cutting a cut strand twice and creating tiny pieces of glass strands that will easily scatter everywhere.

So, that is the major issue that I have with hovercraft building so far. I do not like working with the materials because I do not think fiberglass and urethane foam particles are healthy for me. This could possibly be my last hovercraft - because I do not want to make my body sick from those synthetic materials.

So, building hovercrafts for a business? Not if I have to builds the hull! I do not want to work with the materials used in the hull but for those that don't care and don't mind working with those materials - I will pay them to build me a hull. - I tell you, people will do anything for money.

Day 3 - Sunday, July 1st 2007

H6 Hull Floor - glassed one side

We have more time today so we got going and cut up the big pieces. H6 and H7's and H1. We glued the pieces, cut the pieces and glassed them all in about 6 hours. I ran out of 3/4 oz. matt - I thought I had enough? I looked at the plans and only the H6, H8A have matt! Shit! Oh, well I added matt on H7, H8B, H9, H1. The hull will be heavier but stronger. That's okay, those sides will be on the outside. However, I need to pay attention to these blueprints, it's not that easy. The information, data and specs are not that clear and some dimensions are vague and I have to look at or search another diagram for the measurement. That is why it would be great to have 2 heads figuring out the freaking blueprints.