Seat wells have new cleats

A comment from Simeon on my last posting prompted me to glue in some cleats against the hull to make sure the tops were well secured and didn't sag when people stood on them.

This is generally pretty easy. I just cut the cleats and mark them against the hull. Then I coat the backsides with unthickened epoxy. After they are all done, then I thicken up the rest of the epoxy and use it like a glue against the hull. I also pin the cleat to the hull with two nails. The 1" stainless nails are just perfect to go through the cleat and into the 9mm plywood without bursting out the back.

Two cleats behind the hatch cutout.

This looks lopsided, but it's straight. It's for the rear circular hatches.

I am starting to run out of yellow cedar and I will need more for various places in the top. I'l have to pick up some more and rip it to the right 20mm x 30mm size.

As long as I had the epoxy mixed up, I coated the centerboard cover. My trick in the previous posting worked pretty well, but there were some gaps that I wanted to fill. The tape hammock didn't work perfectly. It was easy to fill the gaps with thickened epoxy.

Long shot of the centerboard cap.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this weekend's accomplishments. I need to do some sanding to give the epoxy some tooth, then I can prime the seat well and then paint them. After that, I'm ready to glue on the seat tops.

Before I glue on the seat tops, I need to make sure there is nothing else I want to do inside there.

I considered adding 2 bilge pumps. I wanted to put the bilge pumps between B4 & B5 and then coil up a flexible hose and hang that on a hook under the seat. When there was water in the sump, I could open the hatch, throw the hose over the edge and flip a switch. I decided that running the wiring was going to be a real pain it'd be easier to buy a hand pump.

If anyone has any ideas about what to put under the seats, let me know.

Sanding & epoxying in seat well, centerboard cap

The last few days, I've been cleaning up inside the seat wells in preparation for gluing on the seat tops.

I didn't get any pictures, but I used some epoxy with 410 fairing to smooth out the inside. I used a squeegee to roll on thin coats where needed.
I then sanded inside the wells and put a 2nd coat of epoxy over everything.

Now I just need to wait awhile for it to cure. I'll give it a quick sanding with 80 grit to give it tooth and then prime it.

As long as I was messing with the seats, I decided I could glue up the centerboard cover. It needs to have a block put under it so that it fits in the centerboard trunk. Additionally, it needs to have a lock on one end so that it stays put and won't jump out. It turns out I've got some pecan hardwood tongue & groove flooring that is nearly perfect. I used a table saw to rip it down to the right width, chopping off the tongue and the groove. Then I use the leftover tongue to cut a small piece that would fit in the groove on the end. That will be the lock. It doesn't need much.

Then I pondered how to glue the pieces together. I decided that I could use packing tape to make a little hammock to hold the flooring at just the right spot.

See the packing tape hammock on the right?

I also added more packing tape and scotch tape to make sure nothing got glued that wasn't supposed to be glued.

I slipped the tongue in the groove. I'll put glue on the ends and glue it inside the trunk.

I also wrapped the end of the flooring in packing tape to make sure I didn't glue the tongue in the groove.

The fore end, again wrapped in tape. The lateral piece is the hammock.

Cap is on top of the pieces suspended in the tape hammocks.

I then put the cap on and made sure I knew where I wanted it in relation to the seat. I put on one coat of epoxy, then mixed up some silica glue and smeared that on. Then I put the cap on and weighted it down. A few hours later, I took the cap out and it looked great.

The tongue is glued in. I'll re-coat that with epoxy.

Here you can see the groove on the flooring and the tongue in the centerboard trunk

Finally, here is a shot of the whole thing. I'll coat it and seal it up.

Tomorrow the epoxy in the seat wells will likely still be green and will sand poorly, so I can't sand that. I have a couple other projects like the anchor rode storage that I still might build.

Starting to look like a boat

Today the glue was dry on the fore sole. I cleaned it up a bit and then did the filleting. In the below shot you can see I did the fillets and I also cleaned up the puzzle joint.

Fillets done

Before that, I put down all the hatches where they are supposed to go and snapped some pictures. It is starting to look like a boat.

Long shot

The veranda

Veranda and the battery well

Veranda, battery well and seats.

This evening, I painted the exposed surfaces of the fore and aft sole. This will protect it from footprints and marred wood. I've already dropped a few tools and scarred up the wood a bit. The epoxy should protect that very well. I haven't decided yet if I'll do the second coat or if I'll wait awhile to glue on the sole doubler.

I used the Abranet sanding disks on a random orbital sander to clean up the puzzle joints and sanded right through a ply or 2, so I put on micro balloons to smooth it out. It still has a ton on strength there, so I'm not worried about it.

Painted surface. You can see I added some micro balloons over the puzzle joints

And a long shot back. More micro balloons over the oval fills.

Tomorrow will be a busy day at work, so I'm not sure what I'll accomplish. I also need to stop at WestMarine for some more filleting mix and some 610 tubes.

I think the next thing I'd like to do is to get some doubler plates created for the motor mounts. That will be complicated to get correct and I may not be able to mount them until after I glue the seats down.

Fore sole glued

I got the fore sole glued down tonight after another coat on the bottom of the sole and a good coat on the cleats.
(I also sanded the nastiness left by the plastic. It's not perfect as there are still some lumps in the crannies, but I'll apply some fairing putty and get that smoothed out. I have one word: Abranet. That stuff is great. Makes your random orbit sander more like a belt sander without all the nasty scratches.)

water buckets weighing it down in the center

spreader clamps pushing it down at the edges.

I feel good about this. It's nice to see the thing coming together.

The next step with the sole is to fillet this fore area. Then I can do some fairing on the area that is visible above the hatches. Finally, I can prime and paint that area.

In the next few days, I hope to get the aft sole painted a first coat. I'm walking on it a lot and I want to have it protected. I'll probably also paint the fore sole also. Just a single coat as I still need to cut doublers for the areas outside the hatches.

I also want to get the foot well done, so I may paint on the sandy grit on the doubler there.

I would also like to double the aft transom so that I can get the holes for the motor mount drilled.

So much to do.

Working on the sole

Sunday night, I glued up the puzzle joints for the sole between B3 & B5.

I first was going to do it on the boat when I glued it down, but I decided that wouldn't work well when I tried to dry fit it all together.

Amazingly enough, I didn't even know if I could get the entire thing installed. I loosely fit the pieces together and decided that I could actually take it out without disassembly.

I first set it on the garage floor on plastic to paint on the silica thickened epoxy. But that didn't give me flat surface. So then I hung it from the ceiling, but that was too complicated to try and push it all together.

Finally, I decided it was just easiest to set it on the boat. First I laid down the plastic, then put the sole on top of that. I could hammer it with my rubber mallet to get it to fit.

Glued up puzzle joints

This morning, I took it off the boat and scraped it for a little while. The glue was pretty messy from the plastic.
This evening, I snapped some pictures. I'll glue it down tonight.

puzzle joint glued

Close up. It will need sanding and fairing

Even though it looks fragile, it will hold up, I've added enough cleats and there is a lot of doubling on the bottom.

Aft sole filleted; electrical mounted and done

This morning, I was able to fillet aft sole. As long as I was there, it was easy to get the transom doubler mounted. Again, I had to abuse clamp, but that was pretty easy.

It will need to be coated.

Filleting and transom doubler glued

The fillets sagged a little bit on the vertical surfaces and where there were no cleats under the sole, so I'll have to touch it up, but that shouldn't take too long.

Fillets done

I was also able to mount the electrical components. I think this looks very good. I was even able to test the circuit breaker switches to see that they worked.

The components mounted

Above you can see the circuit breaker is mounted between the motor controller and the bus bar.

Below, you can see that I got the bus bar mounted and the wiring to the switch control panel installed.

Bus bar on the mast box

The back of the switch

I'll have to remove the switch because I still have work to do on the aft side of B3.

Aft sole glued and electrical mount points drilled and filled

I wanted to work on the boat all day today, but the day job interfered.

This evening, I glued the aft sole down. I sanded down the cleats, painted the edges of the sole and the cleats with epoxy, then put a bead of 610 on the cleats. Then I laid the sole down and put water buckets on for weight.

I have sole.

I also did some more layout of the electrical components and marked up my drill spots for the screws. I want to drill oversize holes in the wood and drive the screws into wood flour epoxy mix rather than into wood.

The first thing to do is to lay it all out and mark. When that was done, I drilled the holes. Some went though and some just went in a little ways depending on the screws I will use.

Moving the components out of the way.

Here are the holes, left to right:

• single through hole for the motor power cable
• 4 holes for big screws to mount the motor controller
• one large hole for the cabled remote
• 2 small screws for the 60a circuit breaker (towards the bottom)
• 2 screws for the bus bar

In the picture below, there is tape over the filled holes. I fill them with a disposable syringe to make sure the wood-flour thickened epoxy goes all the way back. There is scotch tape over the front and back for smooth edges.

Holes drilled.

As long as I was playing with cable, I mounted some nylon cable clips. In the picture below, the jacketed cable is clipped to the cleat above. Once the hatch goes on, this will be well protected.

cable tied up.

I also tied the cable below the hatch.

running under the hatches.

And then up the cabin interior.

That cable runs to the switch panel. Before it goes to the switch panel, I'm going to add a small bus bar just like the one in the battery well. 

In the shot below, I've drilled the holes, but not through the mast box. I have small screws that do not go through the 9mm plywood.

The cable will terminate at the bus bar, then jump to the switch panel

Here's a close up shot of the tape over the filled holes:

The top one looks like it has a bubble. It won't matter.

Since I had some wood flour epoxy mixed up, I filleted the plate under the port seats that I used as a doubler. I didn't get a picture of that. I't will need to be sanded and coated, but I can worry about that later.