The new Bosch Colt battery powered palm router is great. I tested the dust extraction and with the Festool extractor it’s perfect. plugging the screw holes is very easy with just the on-tool functions. I simply draw a 6mm circle and using a 1/8” bit, either cut the
I have about 30 simultaneous projects going on but this week found some time for the teak foredeck seat again. After finishing all the joinery I glued it with epoxy, then did a rough sand with the belt sander. The picture above shows the setup after that where I just
After cutting all 11 pieces (zero straight cuts), we have to make mortise and tenon joints, all of them angled. The picture above shows the work holding for cutting an angled tenon using the Shaper Workstation. There’s the vertical clamp face where I have attached the angled fence. On
Testing and practicing with the Shaper Origin is going well. I have arrived at the point of cutting parts that are too big for the Shaper Workstation but require a precision that I’m not comfortable with marking with a pencil and using the Shaper Plate. For this, people make
As expected, after learning a thousand things with the initial design and loading that on the CNC, I started over with the design of the seat to optimize the method. I started with a top view design of how it should look like as shown above. There’s the individual
I got my hands on some plantation teak boards and have a project on my list for a seat on the foredeck which is handy when working with spinnakers or just to enjoy ourselves. The trouble (it’s never easy) is that it needs to rest on stainless steel railings
Testing in some cardboard. As this is incompatible with the workstation, I added some shaper tape with the dominoes so that the CNC can track its position, then used a smaller 1/8” bit to cut 1mm down into the cardboard. First cut with a little offset and when that
Exciting times for us as we level up our toolset: we received a Revopoint Miraco Plus 3D scanner and a Shaper Origin handheld CNC router with accessories! We have a long list of projects lined up for these but first we’re getting to know these tools which both have
For the controller I also have all the components except for one of the three relays. The two I installed are for controlling a Blue Sea Systems Remote Battery Switch (RBS) and the one I will install later is for controlling the active balancer. This PCB has many more components
We’re back in Florida so projects can resume! Surprisingly I had enough parts to build one complete cell board, which is now ready for testing. The empty DIL-8 socket is for the ATtiny microcontroller, which I program out of circuit. The RJ11 socket is for connecting these boards in
I made this diagram years ago and posted it on the Cruising Forum. The problem there is that it simply is too hard to find and it gets lost, so I’m posting it here instead. The goal of all my diagrams is to be a reference and this is
We have been testing different halyard setups for our roller furling jib for more than 10 years. Our preference is to use a two part halyard, i.e. a permanent part and a second part that is only used during hoisting and lowering the jib. The rendering above shows a
Projects
The past week we have been planning projects for this summer. Besides finishing the ceilings, hull lining and replacing our jib furler and forestays, we also want to make modifications to our cabin soles and our pilothouse. These modifications are difficult, requiring probably weeks of making patterns and templates for
BMS
This morning I received the JLPCB shipment from Fedex. They look fantastic, better than anything I made before and they are cheaper than anything I made before, even my DIY PCBs. Below some more pictures incl. screenshots of the production timeline and shipping progress. You can see that they did
News
I found good maps made by Michael Ferragamo, https://ferragamo.gumroad.com showing the actual landfall positions of all hurricanes in recorded history on. The above one is for the whole Atlantic basin, below is another one for the US East coast. From what I understand, meteorologists expect a somewhat
BMS
Above an impression of the finished PCB design for the main controller module. About half the board is taken by the ESP32 module with POE Ethernet port; the other half has two relays and an optocoupler to interface with the Remote Battery Switch, another relay to interface with the active
BMS
I finished the design for the controller board. It uses the Waveshare ESP32-S3-ETH module with the POE power over ethernet module. This module has an Ethernet port that will be available on the outside for connecting it to our network switch. The POE converts to 5V power and the module
BMS
My reason to use the ATtiny85V microcontroller is that it has a power-down sleep mode where it consumes as little as 1 µA, which equals zero for any practical purposes. The reason for consuming anything at all is that we can wake it up by changing the state of an
BMS
Last year I designed BMS v2 and built a prototype that worked great. I continued to design the circuit boards, finished that and then never actually ordered them… because I didn’t like the large size and mass of cabling. What I liked about the design is that it uses
Network
We have now been using Wireguard VPN’s between our Spectrum Cable Internet in Florida and our KPN Internet service in the Netherlands for a couple of weeks so I think we can come to some conclusions. We use these in several ways, let’s start with the simple ones:
Electrical
I previously called these gadgets a scam or at least a barely allowed trick and I did receive some feedback on that, asking if a company like Victron really is selling a scam product so let me put this into context with this post: I call these gadgets scams or
Electrical
You can buy a LIM for $1000-$2000, which is a great deal for a hospital operating room but a bit stiff for a sailboat where nobody dies when AC power is disrupted. A couple remarks before diving in: the diagram above is conceptual, not an actual schematic, which requires
Electrical
In part one we arrived at the input bus where incoming AC power, if any, is present. This incoming power is used to charge the batteries and/or to feed the distribution panels for use throughout the boat. Multiplus inverter/chargers I recommend two identical units that are special-ordered from
Electrical
For these posts I am using a diagram that closely follows our actual installation aboard Jedi. In this post I discuss the input side: the shore power and generator inputs, the transfer switch, the input bus and the P conductor busbar. I present a detailed description of an installation that