Laminating the hull

So I finally found some foam at a fair price. I could not find any foam in my city so I need to outsource a lot of my materials. I bought 9 sheets of 75mm foam and 16 half sheets of 50mm. This cost me $1400 for the foam and $350 postage. Not a bad postage price considering it was 3.5 cubic meters traveling 4000km.

First step was to join the sheets together to make 2 halves. I used expandable foam to make sure it got into all the gaps but it is not the best glue for joints like this as it is not very strong. I glued sheets length ways to create 4 double sheets. 2 of these double sheets were glued together to create the overall length of the hull with an extra 400 x 600 on the end for the nose.

I was going to join the other sheets together to create 2 halves but this foam is very awkward to move alone. Also it is very hot in Darwin so the epoxy has a working time of only 30 minutes. This being the case I chose to sandwich the panels together in 3 separate vacuum bagging runs.

Vacuum bagging seemed daunting at first but fairly easy in the end. I bought a 2m x 50m roll of 0.2mm thick clear plastic for the vacuum bag. I cut 2 peices at 6m long and joined the 2 together lengthways. Then I placed the large foam sheet ontop.

I then cut another 6m length and joined it length ways to the bottom 2 peices of plastic. Next I applied epoxy onto each surface to be glued and placed together. Several blankets were placed down to allow the bag to breath and suck all the air out. Next pvc pipe was placed down which has many hole drilled into it. This is where the vacuum connects to. Next the top plastic and the two ends needed to be taped up to create a good seal. A hole is made in the plastic near the pvc pipe so it can be pulled out slightly and the vacuum taped to the pvc. At first I was only getting 10kg on the scale but after finding leaks I got 100kg.
The vacuum kept shutting off so I had to pull it apart and point a fan directly at the motor as it was overheating.
This process was repeated several times until I had the two 75mm halves glued.
I feel I did not use enough epoxy for joining the 2 halves but every surface had damp epoxy on it from a paint roller so we will see. Approx 2.7kg of epoxy was used.

Next is shaping the hull