Bracing the foredeck and cocpit

 A lot of invisible things are halfway done like fairing the hull in preparation of glassing, cleaning the interior in preparation for varnish etc. More on that another time. Or never. It's a lot of sweat, sanding, scraping and wiping all to no visual advantage.

I'm in the process of varnishing the inside of the fore and aft lockers because I'm about to close those those spaces. The varnish I'm using does not have to be sanded between coats and I can easily put down 2 coats a day.

My sheer clamp is sick! Sap stain, a fungal infection. It did not look as pronounced before varnishing. Anyway, it is said to usually not affect the strength properties of the wood. The fungus does nothing in dry wood (as in below 22 percent humidity content) so I better keep my boat dry ;) .

 

Also: the foredeck and cockpit are now fully braced. The braces are encapsulated in 3 layers of epoxy, wet-on-tacky.

Somehow small jobs like that take hours - between the cutting of weirdly shaped load bearing slots in uncomfortable locations, fitting, sanding and beveling the timbers - many hours of work are poured into such small elements.

One of the braces has a knot - which I noticed only now in the picture. I've handled that piece for I don't know how long and only now do I see a big defect. Luckily the knot is on the top half, comes out on the side just next to where it sticks out the top. I'm gonna let it be.

I'll continue on the interior: floor timbers and bunk supports.

Hull screwed up

 All the screws are in, all bedded in epoxy. Now only the deck and horizontal surfaces in the cockpit are missing.

In the mean time I fitted and glued in the carlings for stiffening up the cockpit benches. Those are not in the plans, but 8mm plywood can use some support there - the spacing between the bulkheads is quite large and it does not get the benefit of being curved like the deck. I placed the braces flat so there is some give to allow the forces to be spread around - a stiff brace would try to carry the full load all by itself and that might not be a great idea.

I'll do a similar thing for the cockpit floor tomorrow.

One more thing on the agenda for tomorrow: fairing the screw holes.

Before I turn the hull for glassing I need to install the compression post and it's supporting floor timber. That would be hopefully the day after tomorrow.

until then.

Hatch carlings

Today I wanted to screw in the final stainless fasteners along the sheer and the cabin sides. I redrilled all holes to the correct depths (30mm on the longitudinals, 50mm on the futtocks). But then I got sidetracked by the carlings. Spaced 30cm, running from the forward bulkhead to frame D. Completely rigid as frame D will be supported by the compression post. I already ordered a hatch, a minimalistic 30x30cm contraption, will let in some light and air. The actual hole is something like 26x26cm which means my head may or may not even fit through. We will see.

Cutting into my carefully laminated deck beams was a bit scary, but luckily I managed not to cut too deep.

I did not want to cut deeper than absolutely necessary which means the carlins have to be about 2 cm at the crossing point. Together with the deck plating this will still make for a relatively stiff construction and will support the hatch sides nicely.

 Glued and filleted:

As for the screws I got distracted from: their time will come tomorrow.

Cabin sides

 Two days of work, not full time, granted, but still... The cabin sides are in. Everything got shaped, beveled and prepped for gluing. That is where most of the time had gone into.

The plywood panels are not quite long enough, but only a small additional piece needs to be fitted, maybe 10cm. Originally I was thinking about scarfing it in, but since i'm running out of time I did not. It's such a small piece, it will be fine, it does not even have to be butted, it fully fits in the area closed by the joining beams.

I really did go to town with my belt sander on this one. 80 grit belt rips through wood really quickly, but the scars will heal under a layer of fairing compound.

Tomorrow: put in final stainless fasteners and do some fairing and filling of the screw holes. Maybe finally some cleanup inside.

Deck beams installed

 The deck beams are installed. The last of them was curing in the template for 2 days at home, it was a bit cold lately and I would not want to remove a bent lamination from the template halfway through a cold cure.

 

The additional beams, the ones not attached to the frames, as per design, get to rest on a single wimpy plywood gusset. If I had more time I would probably give them two, or maybe even a proper futtock to sit on. Not today, the actual design gets some authority for a change... I experimented with covering the fillets with strips of pe foil - this is how it turned out:

smooth, but still messy. Somehow it looks better in real life than on these pictures, and, after some cleanup (there is no way to avoid sanding I guess), should look better still when all done.

Here the inside view:

I do hope it will clean up well and look good in varnish. Soon. But first the cabin sides.

Daily update: more cabin top

 The newly scarfed beam is in. Replaced the temporary fasteners in the cockpit with stainless ones, all bedded with epoxy. Did some trimming there as well. Rounded over some corners with a rounding router bit. Small stuff. But still time consuming. Tired now.

Tomorrow I'll let the resin set on the cabin top and start laminating the two missing arched deck beams. Maybe start preparing the compression post and it's support. Add bracing for the cockpit floor.

Cutting slots for the beam, piece of cake after the many a slot I screwed up during previous stages. Still not perfect, but good enough:

 

And yes, I did cut too deep in places:

 

 

 The clamps secure the fragile scarf, it only had 1 day to cure at low temperatures, so I don't fully trust it yet.

The shape of the deck is starting to be visible.

genoeg. tot morgen.

First glimpse of the cabin top/deck

 Today I did some cleanup of the cockpit but I'm leaving it alone to let the resin fully cure before I start meddling with it. Most of all I fitted and glued the port side cabin top longitudinal. The front end looks a bit like it is glued in the wrong place, but there is a thought behind that. I'm hoping it is a correct one :)

The nasty narrow corner where the timber meets the sheer I filled with resin to make cleaning possible in the future. The strips of plastic help keep the goo in shape and make sure I don't have to sand too much. Also no blush is forming underneath.

Nice fit with the shimmed futtock:

A knot hole filled with goop:

... and then I ran out of long timbers. So I made one by scarfing (1:12 ratio) two short ones together :) I think that will be the last one I have to scarf.

To be installed tomorrow.

Cockpit coaming

After many hours or work the cockpit coaming is fitted and glued in. I'm starting to run out of excuses why every job seems to take forever - maybe I'm just a slow worker, maybe I'm overdoing the procedures, I don't know. The large amount of weirdly shaped corners and crazy compound angles did not help either.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

 

I will leave the horizontal surfaces open for the time being as I need to flip the hull for glassing and I don't need the additional weight. That, however, has to wait for the night temperatures to reach 15degC as I will be using the slow 206 hardener for that. I'll focus on the interior until then.

Fixing early mistakes and other business

I made a couple of mistakes constructing the frames - I made the companionway too low for a good smooth flow of the deck profile, it's just a centimeter or so, but I'd know. Fixed by laminating a strip of wood on top of the whole thing:

Another screw up, or rather a failed experiment is the angle of the cabin side just above the sheer at frame D. I was hoping it would be possible to bend the side a little bit more than in the design. Not sure why. Now it would be possible, but the stringer (or rather a deck joist (?) ) would have to be twisted just outside of the range I'm comfortable with - I did have some trouble with that in the past. So. I decided to just fix it by lamination. Just like the other thing, I'll use slightly longer fasteners to compensate.

 

In other news: the forepeak bottom is fitted and glued in:

It is screwed to the stringers but only a fillet is keeping it up at the stem, should be good enough. There will be no hatch, it will be accessible from the inside only.

I cut the cockpit floor out of 8mm ply, as specified in the docs:

It feels, surprisingly, strong enough, even just like that, not attached to anything. It does flex a bit too much for my liking though - I will add some additional supports. It will gain a lot more stiffness in any case just from being attached and glassed over, but I like my floors completely rigid.

A bunch of other smallish finishing jobs also got done today, no pictures though. Tomorrow I'll tackle the rest of the cocpit.

Daily update: cockpit sides affixed

 After many hours of fitting, sanding and cleaning the basic structure of the cockpit is all glued in. Since it will be abused most of all the areas on the boat the gluing had to be done to the highest standards - all the parts are proper structural. That means good fit, degreasing, sanding, pre-wetting with unthickened resin and only then finally gluing with the thickened mix (105/205/HDF). Also fillets are important here as the sides rest directly on the bilge plating (on the part I glassed a few days ago). But is is done. I'll add more detailed pictures once the rest of it is all ready, for now just two snaps:

A milestone of sorts is reached: the last floppy part of the boat, the companionway, became completely rigid.

yay!