Hatches, Continued

The hatches were cut, but needed doublers.

gluing in the doublers

the back of the doublers.

 As long as I had the seats down, I had been putting them on and they fit poorly. Well the shinto rasp did a wonderful job of shaping the sticky areas and getting the seat tops just where I wanted them.

Seats fit great after rasping

Seat fit

Since I had the handy circular saw out, I wanted to cut more doublers. Since the hatches in the front are so large, I'm probably not going to put down any sole doubler there. So that means doublers under the sole.

Sole doublers.

Here is what it looks like down

 I did put in some cleats to hold up the sole behind B3. The cleats are attached to the planks. I'll have pictures later.

I cut out the trunk and the hatches. There is a lot of room to sit.

The other side.

More rudder work

Here is a quick shot of the centerboard pin. I used some epoxy with graphite in it to glue the pin to the plate. I did thicken it first, that's why it looks grey.

I also realized that I filled the holes with microballons. I'll want to drill those back out and use wood flour thickened epoxy instead.

centerboard pin

I was really excited about the rudder. I dry fit the entire rudder together to see how it looked. I think it looked great. I had ordered a pull pin for the tiller from McMaster and the exact right length of 3/8" stainless bolt and acorn. I ran around the house with the assembly in my hand showing everyone.

dry fit rudder.

 I still have a long ways to go, but at least some things are starting to look like they might be complete someday.

Alas, I did have to take it apart so that I could glue it.

Glue up

I put the bolt and pin in to make sure they everything lined up correctly.
Once it was dry, it was time to clip the dowels with a japanese flush cut saw. How I love that flush cut saw for things like this.

trim the dowels

It then got sanded a bit.

raw copper tubes

the trimmed out part

View down into the graphite epoxy foil chamber.

I hung it and painted it a few days later.

looking good

Dry fitting hatches

I've had the hatches awhile, but decided to cut the holes last weekend.

The measuring was a real pain. First, the boat isn't setting level, so I can't use a level. I had to mark it off by reference points. And my mad jigsaw skillz are still not to be trusted. That meant I needed to use the handy battery circular saw.

As I was placing the bulkhead 3 hatches, I decided that I needed to get the sole hatches in place also to make sure they didn't interfere.

I finally got them all measured and cut.

The sole behind B3 has me a bit worried about it's structure, so I'm adding some cleats to strengthen those, but I think I'll be happy with them when done. I can stand on the hatches, so they are tough, but the backing needs to be strong as well.

Measured and holes cut.

Further back shot.

Over the weekend, I also ended up cutting the hatches into the seats. More shots of those later.

Pulling out the sole piece and the seat tops meant that I had to rearrange my overhead storage. I've got the pieces out that I need now. I should have planned better and arranged my pieces in overhead storage so that I could get the ones I needed first. That problem is solved now.

Now that I've got those hatches in place, I need to decide if my hatch cover over the well will be large enough for batteries.

I called Gig Harbor Boatworks and ordered the drop down electric motor that they have, complete with the aluminum and phenolic mounting bracket.  I'm really excited about that. I think it's a great solution.

Now I'll need to cut and install some transom doublers under the seat. I'll also need to do some electrical work and decide what AGM cells to buy. Wow, AGM cells are expensive.

Then I can decide if the well hatch needs to be bigger than 13x24. Probably, but we'll see.

I'd appreciate any advice on AGM cells from the gallery.

I’ve seen pictures of people running copper pipe through their rudder for the up haul and down haul lines and I wanted to do that.
I didn’t want to cut the plates individually because the 1/2 id copper is thicker than the plys and I don't trust my cuts to be consistent.
The plan is to glue together all the inner parts, then drill out an arc with forstner bits.
Then I could insert the copper and glue it down.

First, I drilled pilot holes so I had the same arc on the left and right halves.

pilots

Then I drilled with the forstner to the right depth.

Drilled

You can't see in that shot (you can in the first) that I had to clip one of the dowels. No big deal, I'll fill that dowel hole in the cheek later.

It seemed to work fairly well. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good pictures of the copper glued down before I glued on the cheeks.

I micro ballooned the visible sides and graphited the inner parts.

Microballons to smooth it all out. Tape was over the copper.

Also microballooned the top.

And graphited the inner.

The next step is to glue the cheeks on and then coat them.

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to hang the centerboard and rudder for final coating. I got that done and they look good. I'll get around to sanding & priming the rudder. I might leave the centerboard black. Not sure yet.

Hanging centerboard and rudder, graphited.

Drilling the pin plates

At first, I thought I had to have 2 plates, one permanently mounted on the outer side of the centerboard trunk and one that was permanently mounted to the pin. I decided that wasn't necessary. I read a lot of posts on the SCAMP message board and saw that often times people put in complex mounts. After thinking about it, I decided 4 screws in the 1/4" holes and into the trunk would be fine. I didn't need a complicated system here.

I did have to make small rings in the plugs to cover the slightly proud bushings. I've also picked up some 1/2" red o-rings that will need to fit in there and seal the water out. (McMaster-Carr made me buy 50 of them so I've got extra.)

Plates after filling then re-drilling.

what it looks like with the pin.

I also glued on the inner plate. This had already been coated twice on the inside, so it was ready to be mounted. Spreader bar clamps are awesome.

Permanently mounting the inner plate.

And here it is a few days later after I flush cut the dowels and painted the outside.

Painted

Hatches

The  hatches arrived. I order them from DPI marine and they appear to be just what I wanted.

I ordered four 13x24 hatches. 2 for the entries into the cabin, 1 for the floor hatch behind bulkhead 6 and one for over the water ballast well. I've decided that the water ballast well will not be a water well, it will contain some AGM battery cells for the trolling motor I'm going to install. More about that later. (Note, I may end up getting a larger hatch, depending on the size of the batteries.

13x24

Two 18x16 hatches for the floor hatches right behind B3.

18x16

2 round 8" hatches for just afore of the transom. These are just simple access hatches. It's likely I will put on some shelves under the seats in the back to hold small items.

8" round

 Finally, two 11x17 hatches to go between bulkhead 5 and 6.

11x17

Fixing centerboard oops

The next morning after re-drilling the holes, I found this.

Filled the old 1/4" holes and the bushing hole.

Then I realigned the guide plate and re-drilled the 3/4" bushing hole.

It worked!

This time the bolt [in went right through. It worked.

You can see in the above picture that the bushing is on backwards. The flange should be on the inside.

But the trunk was too narrow to fit my hand in there to insert the bushings. I needed a stick to put them down in. I took the chunk of white oak off my stick and drilled it with a 1" hole, the size of the flange.

insertion tool

With this, I was able to insert the bushings. I scored them up a bit then put glue on them and inserted. I wanted to press them in, so I rigged up a simple cam that I could turn to press in the bushing.

simple cam for pressing bushings

An unclear shot down the trunk.

the bushings sat just proud of the surface on the inside

and the outside

The last thing I had to do was the fill in the plates in preparation for using them as caps.

Put packing tape on them, flip them over.

And fill with epoxy