Christmas sanding and drilling

Today I was able to sand down the seats and drill the holes for the motor mount.
For christmas, I was given a drill guide to drill straight holes. It worked well to drill oversize holes for the motor mounts on the transom. Since the holes are oversize, I will fill with epoxy, then drill out 1/4" holes for the 1/4-20 bolts I will be using to hold on the aluminum motor guides.

It's really too cold to do much epoxy work.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Seats glued down

This is a major milestone, the seats are glued down. It took awhile to get it all done.

First, I finished the wiring to the motor on the port side. You can see the wires run along the inside. The connector at the back is not installed yet.

Wiring runs to the back of the boat

This is the end of the wire. I have a brass through hole fitting for it.

Closer shot. You can see the hole for the motor connector plug.

Saturday I decided where the motor remote control would come through the seat and drilled the hole for that. Since I can't cut the connector off, I had to use a cable clam to go through the seat. The connector is very large and needed a 7/8" hole through the seat.

I glued a doubler on the seat and drilled the 7/8" hole through.

Then I coated the bottom of the seats.

Bottom of the seats coated. And the footwell cover and the sole doublers.

Saturday evening, I recoated all the pieces. They were ready to be installed Sunday morning, if still a bit tacky.

Sunday I started gluing the seats down. I don't have a lot of shots of the actual glue down. Just make sure that you have the seats dry fit very well before attempting the glue down.

I had sanded all the cleats. Saturday evening and Sunday morning, I recoated all the cleats. So everything had a nice new coat of epoxy on it before the actual glue down.

Using buckets of water and boxes of tiles to weight down the seats.

After I got the seats glued down, I wanted to glue the transom doubler that will be used for the motor mount. I glued that in along with the small plate that backs the socket connector for the motor.

The blue spreader clamp holds the small plate for  the motor connector.
To the left, you can see the transom doubler.

A lot of clamps holding the transom doubler.

It was a real pain clamping in the transom doubler, but I got it. I used the same trick of a cross bar spreader and a small spreader perpendicular pressing against the piece. You can just see it at the bottom of the above shot.

I had some gaps along the outside edge of the seat. After it was glued and weighted, I put tape under the seat to block the cracks. Then I ran a pre-fillet. I don't think a pre-fillet is a real thing, but the idea is that I used some thickened epoxy -- not quite as thick as fillet mix -- and forced it into the cracks as best I could. I pushed that down with a finger and let it cure for just awhile. I had the garage about 70 degrees with the oil heater, so it didn't take too long to firm.

Then I ran a real fillet all along the edges and cleaned with a gloved finger a few hours later.

I was not able to fillet right near my complicated clamp setup at the back. I'll get that later.

Starboard side is glued.

Painted under seat wells, electrical for motor

Last Friday, I painted under the seat wells. I had to buy a new pint of RustOleum White Satin 7791. I think it's the same as the White gloss 7792. I like the satin better, but it's hard to tell the difference in the light and I think it will be impossible to tell the difference in the dark under the seats.

I used white of course because it should make it easier to see under there.

Although, thinking about it now, I have purchased a waterproof LED light strip. Maybe I should wire those up under the seats. The port side would be easy, I'd just have to run some 18awg marine wire that I have and rig up a switch. The starboard side has the centerboard trunk and would require drilling a hole through B4, running the wire under the starboard front hatch, then drilling another hole to run the wires back into the seat well.

I'll consider that this weekend. 

I decided to buy a connector for the motor so that I could easily remove the motor from the rear of the boat. West Marine sells a more expensive version of MinnKota's connector. I bought one of those and installed it in the aft transom.

MKR-18 socket.
Notice also that I trimmed the planks.

It looks nice and will be easy to connect and disconnect the motor when needed. I'll have to find a way to lock the motor so that no one steals it. I think a brass padlock will work.

The motor and the connector.

I didn't get any pictures, but I did wire the motor to the plug. I still need to heat shrink it to finalize it, but it will definitely work.

I also ran the wire under the seats and decided how the connector will look. In the picture below, the small steel ring is the through hole for the motor wire and you can se the back of the socket.

Wiring pieces. I still need to epoxy it all together.

Here is another shot with the wire through the hole.

Wire needs to be stripped and connected later

This weekend, I plan to drill a hole for the motor remote control and drill all the holes for the cable clam connector. I think that will go just fore of B5. I will velcro mount the controller under the decking. 

Once those decisions are made, I can finalize the under seat wiring and start epoxy coating the bottom of the seats in preparation for gluing them down. I'm excited for that step.

That frees up some other jobs, such as gluing the motor doubler and drilling the holes for the motor rails.

It also means I can start on the deck.

A final note: Beware drill bits from Harbor Freight. I needed a 1 1/8" drill bit for the socket, so I picked up a set of 4 spade bits. They were all horribly bent. I was able to drill my holes, but a lot of shaking happened. Unacceptable. I'm going to take them back when I get a chance.

Primed under seat well and cut sole doublers

This weekend we had pretty good weather. Saturday I decided that I could prime under the seat wells.  That went fine.

I considered putting some small shelves aft of B7 for storage of keys and things. I would have built a shelf and used screen door screen for the shelf bottom so that water didn't pool on it.

I measured and did some looking and decided that I won't bother, they'd be too restrictive.

I can easily make more hammock loops, but I have to find smaller hammocks for back there. I just might have to weave them myself.

Here's a couple shots just after priming:

port seat wells primed

starboard seat wells primed.

I had planned to paint the seat wells on Sunday, but the primer hadn't completely dried in the cool weather.
That forced me to do some other things.

I decided to cut the doublers for the sole and the footwell cover.
I'm actually very happy with how this is turning out. Since the hatches are about the thickness of the 9mm plywood, the sleeping surface should be very flat and easy when sleeping.

dry fit the hatches, and dry fit the cut doublers.

In the above picture, you can see the pieces that I cut. The one between the 2 hatches I just cut from scrap. The other I cut from the large sole doubler that comes in the kit. It's exactly the right width.

aft doublers dry fit

I also traced out where I wanted the aft hatch. I still haven't cut out the hatch in the sole yet because I am climbing in and out of the boat quite a bit and don't want to trip.

I also cut the 28 1/2" x 26 1/2" footwell cover and the 26 1/2" doubler to go on that. I even found the time to glue it together.

Gluing up the footwell cover

I still haven't decided how the foot well cover will go over the foot well. I think I'll just cut some cleats and glue those in and let it sit on top. I'll probably cut the cover in 1/2 so that I can store it somewhere.

Finally, I coated the doublers that I cut in preparation for gluing them down.

Coating the doublers

The motor mount transom doubler