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.