Backer Board of Inquiry

Been a gnawing pain these past weeks and during a visit to the doctors, as he's old school he inquires into my background and whether I design maritime drones.

'And like James Dyson goes on about 100% suction 100% of the time, don't you like to use 100% of the material 100% of the time?' he queries.

And fact is he was quite right and recommended I apply 160g of laminated foam to each ski as per his prescription!

For don't you remember how we used a half-dozen strips from the original backing board, and lay aside the remainder?

Well in view of yesterday's flotation test I think we can alter the pattern to provide eight strips of foam instead of six, and I know exactly where to fix the extra pair.

So make yourself comfortable and we'll begin, but no talking please!

First off we'll remove one of the laths attaching the ski to the fuselage, and see how easy it is now we can stand the boat on each side:

Next up we need to flip the craft over and fix the same lath to the other side:

Turn it once more and see we've formed a picture-frame to apply adhesive to:

To pop the surplus foam into for an extra kilo of extra buoyancy on either ski:

Add a bead of adhesive or silicone along the foot of the foam to hold the ski straight along its length, using a knife to create a filet as with your bathroom furniture. Next a brush of undercoat to seal the upper edge, prior to spraying it in 'naval' grey.

And remember how we'd want to pop the pontoons off for storage or replacement? Well ideally this requires a form of shear-web to keep things square in the absence of the box-structure, and we've got that right here in this stretch of foam!

Amazing what you can do off the back of a cream tea.