Deadlights arrived!

After not making a decision for months, a thread on the SCAMP board convinced me to just order the deadlights and interior rings from SailBoatStuff.com (Thanks Simeon and Dale). They arrived Friday. Fast shipping from SBS, thanks very much to them.

Deadlights!

Profile. They need about 15-16mm depth

I really should have ordered these sooner. It would have been much easier to cut the circles in the cabin sides on the drill press rather than with a hand drill. In fact, the instructions in the circle cutter box say not to use an electric hand drill, instead use a drill press on 500 RPM.

Before I cut the cabin sides, I wanted practice using the circle cutter.  For the first time ever, I took the top off my drill press and adjusted the speed. I couldn't find the table that shows belts to RPM, so I just used the slowest setting. It still vibrated and wanted to shake off the bench, but I successfully cut two rings from scrap plywood.

I cut these two doublers with the cutter

I made the outside of the ring about 6 3/4". I should have gone to the maximum 8" of the cutter, but these are fine and should be barely noticeable from inside because they are only slightly bigger than the brass ring size.
I cut the outside circle first, then cut the inside circle. Be sure to pay attention to which way the cutter is oriented or you'll get sloped sides and have to sand. (And be sure to flip the piece over when halfway through to do the other side.)

Against instructions, I used a battery drill on low speed to cut the cabin side circles. I didn't adjust the cutter at all so that the circles matched the rings.
This was a royal pain. The cutter would get hung up occasionally and was terribly vibraty. After much fussing, it did finally cut through.
Lesson learned: subassembly first.

Used a battery drill to cut the cabin sides.

I decided to quickly fillet the cabin top area since it would have been a pain to do after the doublers were attached. The fillet stick trick worked nicely. I didn't bother to sand the fillets or even fully finish them because I still plan to do the rest of the interior fillets when she is upside down.

Before gluing on the doublers, I filleted the upper.

I didn't get a picture, but the doublers are glued in place now. I do need to drill oversize holes and fill those so that I can run bolts though. It looks like #10 hardware is the right size. the holes are nicely countersunk, so I'll order some #10 flat head brass machine screws from McMaster. Since even the inner ring is countersunk, I could turn the bolts around and use the acorn nuts on the outside. In my head, this gives her a "steampunk" look. I'll see how it looks in real life.