Thursday, March 19, 2009

Fitting Out...Part 2

It's been too cold to do any epoxy work for the last few months, but fortunately alot of the components could still be "dry-fitting".
The bow storage area is designed to have a shelf under the fore-deck, and a watertight storage compartment under the shelf, accessible via a round hatch. The shelf is held in place using fir fillets attached to the sides and to frames A and B...the side fillets had to be shaped to fit the curve of the bow, since they were too short and thick to make the necessary bend. There is supposed to be a fillet of thickened epoxy covered in 'glass tape to strengthen the joint between the frames and the hull--I decided to wait until I had the fir fillets epoxied in place before doing the epoxy fillet--that way it would be easier to fit the wood fillets in the corners, and also the extra epoxy would help hold them in place and alleviate having to screw through the hull to attach them.
The same procedure was used to create the frames for the stern seat/storage area...I had some extra fir strips leftover from an earlier stage, so I added a couple extra supports for the seat.
Once all the supports were in place, the plywood seat and shelf could be cut out...it helped to draw a centerline on the plywood and make some measurements off of that, but there was still a bit of trial-and-error involved.
Finally, the center deck support, and the two hatches (obtained from duckworks) were dry-fitted. I added a ring of plywood on the inside so the screws holding the hatch in place would have 1/2 inch instead of 1/4 inch to bite into.

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