Gluing down the cabin top.

Monday morning I woke up and painted the part of the top that will be hard to reach later. I wanted that to dry so that Monday evening I could glue it down. The epoxy may not have been completely cured, but the paint is unlikely to stop it from finishing it's cure.

Painted the underside of the cabin top.

Please see how flat the cabin top is. This is after leaving it weighted into it's curve for well over 24 hours. It sprung right back to flat.
For those intrepid SCAMP builders, I would suggest not bothering to try and induce the curve. If you have a steamer, you may be able to make a curve, but it didn't seem to work for me.

I also painted the inside of the cabin sides

Monday evening when I got home, the paint was dry enough and the epoxy was still green enough that I felt I could glue the top down.
Quincy came out and helped me put the top down. He put the screws in the center and we worked together to dry fit the sides down with drywall screws through temporary supports (see pictures later). When we got that done,  I mixed up a batch of silica glue (I'm out of 6-10) and painted the carlins, the bulkhead tops and the cleats.

I was very excited; this was the moment she turned into a real boat!

Quincy helped me again to press the sides down and drill the predrilled screws back in. We worked from the center out to keep everything aligned correctly.

Finally, it was done! I was quite happy.

Glued down! We put weights on top for security

Temporary cleats to hold the screws.

Front view. You can see both sets of temporary cleats.

View from inside. The curves matched Ok on B3.

View of B2 from inside. The curves match pretty well on B2.

You can see that I didn't paint the entire surface. That's so that I can put in the fillet.

I came back out about 11:00 and backed out all the screws and drove them back in one at a time. This broke the epoxy bond so that the screws didn't stay in forever.

Installing the top was definitely a 2 person job. It could be a one person job if you have special clamps that handle angles well, but i don't.

Since this is one of the last jobs before flipping her upside down to epoxy and fiberglass the bottom, this is a major milestone for me and I'm really happy with how it went.


Since I had glue mixed, I glued and nailed in the footwell cleats. (Stainless steel 1" nails from McMaster).

port footwell cleat installed

starboard footwell cleat