Building a Brown/Bieker Proa: puzzle joints

Showing posts with label puzzle joints. Show all posts

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Start of the Ama

I started glueing the puzzle joints on the ama panels yesterday. Hope to get a strong back going within a week.

Task time: 12 hours

Total project time: 502 hours

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Unclamping Puzzle Joints

I cleaned up yesterday's puzzle joints.

Just released.

After some sanding. Flatter than they look.

The results were reasonably pleasing. Some of the joints had part of the glue drain out leaving slight gaps at the upper surface. The joints are quite strong regardless. You can hold the panel up and let the ends droop with no problems.

The gaps and the holes can be filled with thickened epoxy in a syringe. If the thickened batch is mixed with the proper amount of brown fairing filler you can match the color and the holes will disappear. Color is only an issue on visible interior joints.

Did more work on internal blocking and glued another four joints.

Task time: 4 hours
Total project time: 149 hours

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Puzzle Joints on Aka

Finally putting something together today. The first puzzle joints on the project are on the aka sides. I had to put the two twelve foot tables together since the akas are eighteen feet. The joined parts need to be perfectly flat.

Russell suggests gluing parts that are in pairs together at once. The pair can be stacked and perfectly aligned to one another. If there is any variation in the alignment, it shows up the same on both parts so that the sides of the component will be identical.

Pairs are clamped down flat using two cover boards and nails or screws. Screws can give a little more pressure on large parts.

The other main thing to remember is to put plastic or wax paper between each layer. It would be easy to glue the whole pile to the table and then it would be back to the CNC.