Finishing steps before I start to paint

I spent Saturday laying down the sole doublers that I had cut months ago. This is all in preparation for painting.

Here's a shot of the sole as she'll look with the footwell cover in place and all the hatches. I'm pleased with the height of the hatches vs the height of the doublers. They are nearly the same, which will make for nice level sleeping surface.

The sole as designed.

The sole with the footwell cover removed.

I'm not quite as pleased with the seat hatches. They interfere just a bit more than I thought with the coamings and don't quite stay open by themselves. But they'll be fine.

I also added the ipe cabin trim rails. I think these look great.

While I was at that, I added the ipe coaming rails. I need to decide if I will remove these and bed them with bedding compound or just glue them on.

Ipe coaming rails

And just for a finishing touch, I added some of my loops to the underside of the cabin. Not sure how I will use them, but they seem useful.

Nylon padeye loops

Nylon padeye loops

I've got another post coming with the results of what I did today, but I'll save that for later. It's big news.

Cabin top edges cleaned up and fiberglassed

Luckily, the weather is still cooperating and staying warm enough to work.

I was able to clean up and round off the corners of the cabin tops. I was nervous about this step because there are no good instructions and I didn't know how I wanted it to look, but I cut the cleats and just started using the shinto to shape the corners. It worked great and I was happy.

Using a plane, I was able to get the sides nice and straight, except for the starboard aft corner. See later.

Detail of the corner. It looks messy here. Sanding fixed it.

Again, it looks messy, but sanding cleaned it up.

overall view

The edges

port side with doubler

 Except the starboard side. The cabin sides were just a bit short on that side. WoodnMetalGuy had a similar problem. I think the seats to B4 are measured a single plywood width wrong. It's about 6-9 mm I had to fix. But it's easy to recover. I did almost exactly what WoodnMetalGuy did, just put a piece of filler in there.
He had some problems with the cabin top, but my cabin top just needed a bit of filler.
I used some masking tape to make a dam in that corner and just filled the corner with fillet mix. Later I sanded it and shaped it to match the rest of the roof. Not a problem.

Starboard side I had to add an extra filler of wood and a tape dam to fill a little bit of the roof top

 I let that glue dry and cut off the excess with a flush cut saw. It will take some extra work to get those edges smooth and fair, but it shouldn't take too long.

Inside of starboard

this corner got cleaned up

The cabin top cleaned up

Finally, late last night, I put on the fibreglass and wet it out. I trimmed and recoated this morning. This evening, I'll do another coat, this time with 410 and some white pigment.

First layer of glass

Cabin top is done!

Tuesday morning I woke up and backed the screws out and back in one more time to make sure they weren't epoxied. None of them were.

Tuesday evening when I got home, I backed out the screws all the way. Nothing went "sproing"! The cabin top is now officially done!

Well, there is still a lot to do, doublers under the top, planing the sides, fibreglassing, etc. But this is just a huge milestone for me.

Toothpicks in the screw holes

Toothpicks in temporary screw holes and tape over permanent screws. 

Thanks to the scamp message board, I had some tricks; I filled the temporary screw holes with toothpicks and thickened epoxy. I also filled the permanent holes with epoxy and put tape over the top so that it cures flat.

I also epoxy painted the doublers that go under the cabin roof. I'll install those in the next few days; it should be easy. Then I need to round the corners of the cabin top and do some trimming.

I considered filleting under the cabin top, but I think that is much easier done when she is upside down.

The cabin top will be hard to fillet because of the angle. I have a filleting stick that Welsford made for me that has one sharp edge and one curved edge for scraping up fillet mix. Pressing that against the inside of the cabin and pulling it straight will make a nice fillet. 

Filleting stick used as a filleting stick

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

Preparing the cabin top

Sunday I prepped the cabin top for glue down. I painted epoxy on the underside of the cabin top preparing it for the glue down.

Painted the underside of the cabin top

I also painted up two cleats that will go in the footwell to hold up the removable foot plate.

cleats for holding the floor

I didn't get any pictures, but i predrilled center holes and got the top dry fit.

cabin side cleats glued

I picked up some 5/4x4 cedar decking at Home Depot last night. I cut it to 45" and ripped it down to 1 7/16". Then I ripped a rabbet along the inner side. That made a nice profile for the cleats.

Getting it glued on was a pain, but I got it by screwing in from the inside. There was a slight bend upward that needed muscle and screws.

cabin side cleats

  They looked good this morning.

Profile of the cleat.

  I could have shaved a bit more off the rabbet.

view fore

This morning it looked good.  So I put the cabin lid on and weighted it down to start the curve.

I'll let that sit for awhile, then I'll drive screws down the center carlins. I'll drive screws into the cabin side cleats to hold it down and finalize the curve.

weight down the top to get a curve

I did do a few shaves with the plane to shape the cleats. There's more to do before I glue it down.

side profile after a shaving a bit

I want to get the bend established and screws ready to install.. Then I'll take off the top, epoxy the bottom and prime & paint the areas between B2 and B3. Those will be hard to get later.

More beautiful weather.

The weather stayed nice so I did some more work. I didn't get any pictures, but I ran some finger fillets around the underside of the the deck. Now it should be well sealed against water.

Quincy painted the inside of the cabin sides, so they were ready to install.

I glued the cabin sides on.  I had dry fitted them last week, so I knew right where they fit and had already used the rasp to file the front and fit it well.

I did not cut drain holes in the cabin sides. I hope I don't regret that. I suppose I can cut them out with a fine saw sometime in the future if I feel it's needed.

Sides installed.

It looks good. The fillets looked very nice even though I hadn't practiced in awhile.

I took a few inside shots as well.

Since everything fore of B3 is already painted, I don't have to do much there. Although I will paint the exposed inside areas before I glue on the cabin top.

Inside the cabin.

A view from the front.

bow view

A shot of the nav light mount

The nav light mount looks terrible now. Some sanding will take care of it.

I will have to do some sanding of the entire deck before I can coat it. But I can do that even if it is cold.

The next step is to wire the nav light. The ends will fit through the hole and the wires running to the circuit panel will go through nylon quick release clips. That way I can replace it with another light easily without a lot of mucking about with wires.

My plan is to finish off the inside of the cabin and then get the cabin top glued down.

Then I will flip the boat and do the bottom before finishing the coamings and painting the interior.