Finally got hull #1 in the shop and all my tools moved around. After many hours in the thinking chair, I have a plan of attack.

1. Add the shear strips
2. Fit the bulkheads starting at the bow and moving aft

Ok, so I should have marked the shear line when I still had the boat on the forms. I actually did buy sanded the mark off. So back to placing the forms in the hull and marking the shear line. Once that was done it was quick work to scarf the sheer strip, radius the bottom of it and glue it in place with epoxy. The nice thing about sharing a boat building garage, is now I have access to twice as many clamps!

This is an excellent time to make sure your sheer flows smoothly and adjusting it before the glue hardens. Notice that I added a radius to the bottom of the strip before glueing.

Once the epoxy hardened I ran my router with a pattern bit and trimmed the excess hull to the sheer strip.

At this point I am super anxious to see if the hull is still true and square. A simple eyeball test tell me that the front and back of the hull have not torqued. If the are crooked, the front and back levels  will not align.

There she is! What a beauty! The hull ready for the bulkheads.

Bulkhead #3 is one of the two bulkheads that the cross beam gets connected to, thus deserving special attention. At this point I have dry fitted bulkheads 1, 2 and 3. Before glueing them in place I decide  to add as many of the extra pieces that make the beam box before bonding the bulkhead.

For many of these joints I am bonding with thickened epoxy and silicon bronze screws.

 

Here you can see the 1×2 reinforcements in place and the 12mm doubler that will help in setting the deck

Next you can see 12mm knees that will hold the beam bolts in place

bonding every thing together

 

I also added the first brace for the beam box at this time.

Finally after two coats of epoxy to seal everything up the bulkhead is ready to install.

To install the bulkhead and keep a good bead of epoxy going, I found it helpful to spread the  sides apart before installing. Unfortunately you can only use this trick moving aft as we go on.

Clean with water and a scrubbing pad to prep the surfaces one last time, You can tell above how much dust still needed to be removed. Then I clear coated the mating surfaces and added a nice bead of thickened epoxy. Here we don’t care how much oozes out since it will be used to supply the extra epoxy for the fillets. Cargo straps tighten things up.

 

 

It looks simple, but it took a good part of a day to measure and cut the pieces that make up the fwd beam box. Luckily I has some help and things kept moving along.

The pieces

The glue up. Lots of epoxy oozing out and this baby is going to be solid! We used more screws this time, so less clamps.

After removing all the clamps and sanding the piece down, time to see how it fits. Perfect!

Now for the two coats of epoxy to seal all the plywood. Notice that I can’t bond this piece to the boat until I drill the holes for mounting the beam bolts. Those are being welded for me and should be done within the week.

You might notice that on the picture above you can see frame #1 being glued. A successful day in the shop means one of 3 things happen at the end of the day

1. I bond a bulkhead or frame
2. I glue up the additional parts required for a bulkhead or frame
3. I am pre-fininshing a bulkhead before installation

And right on time for Christmas my beam bolts were fabricated so I was able to drill the holes and bond the beam box to the hull

All together we need 16 pieces, and since I had them machine cut, I also made 16 backing plates.

The beam box with the hull cut out and a bracket in place

A busy three weeks adding the remaining of the bulkheads and the transom. She is finally starting to look like a boat.

 

A view from the transom looking forward

 

Bulkheads tabbed in

Bulkhead 7 showing the reinforcements for the aft beam box 

Bulkheads 4, 5 and 6 ready to be bonded in

And finally the transom

 

 

So before you actually add the deck, you really need and want to take care of some details.

Here is the picture of the hull right before decking

 

I decided that the I was going to add a composting toilet to my port hull. They are taller then a porta potty and basically I decide to sacrifice the aft bunk. Instead I get a nice lazaret.  for stowing lines and bumpers and a nice place for the battery and electrical panel. In this same picture you can see the shelf between frame 2 and bulkhead 6. The shelf is structural and adds a lot of stiffness to  the gunnel at that area

The floor and floor supports. The floor is structural in that it adds support for the keel below

The forward bunk and bunk supports

Details on the lazaret framing. note the slope of the frame to allow water do drain. I left the deck edge frame in place to make it easier to lay the deck. it will eventually be cut out and become part of the hatch.

Some more details on the aft section. The rudder post reinforcement and another reinforcement just forward of it were I expect to have a vent. Hidden behind that you can barely see the spinnaker  block pad.

This is also a good time to make sure you have all the bow hardware reinforcement  pads and whatever hardware you have installed before decking the bow.

 

So the most import part here is to have all surface as true and smooth as possible. Any thing that doesn’t look good at the point, the plywood won’t fix… Take special care at all edges and the radius of the deck.

I pre fit all of the plywood pieces and trimmed to 1/2 in of the edges. that made it much easier to clamp, align  and screw. A thick bead of epoxy goes on all contact surfaces before final fastening. A helper comes in handy to set the pieces down. The radius on the cabin top was the hardest so I started by screwing the centerline down. Then using a cargo strap to start the bending. Then from the strap outwards adding 2 inch spring clamps, a few on each side the the other side until it was all secure. Now the tricky part to eliminate voids on the radius is to add more screws to the top of the bulkheads. Work from the center down and from the center forward and aft. Without these screws I found that I had areas where the plywood did not touch the bulkheads.

some details

and the finished hull.

All decked out and nowhere to go!

 

 

I will add some more pictures here after glassing the second hull. These are the things I learned.

It was impossible to do a large glassing job and keep the glass against the inside radius creating air voids through out the joints. So unlike the picture below where I tried to minimize the pieces of glass to do the job, I am going to try something different for the starboard hull.

1. Start by fiberglassing the beam boxes first
2. Then the center deck and up the cabin house
3. Followed by bow
4. Then the cabin house top and side
5. The aft deck and transom

The final product. Port hull leaving the shop showing the cutouts for the hatch, companionway and lazaret.

Here are some additional pictures. I am pressed for time but details will follow

 

 

 

This is what happens when you don’t measure properly. the vent what too close to the beam…

 

Details on the lazaret

 

So when you are installing a production hatch, two things are critical.

1. Making sure you won’t adversely affect the structure of the deck
2. Making sure the hatch will be placed on a level square surface

These pictures show how I went about installing a Lewmar Size 44 Medium-Profile Deck Hatch on a very curved deck.

Luckily the hatch fits nicely in between two of my frames under the deck, so I did not have to worry too much about adversely impacting the deck structure.

Let us start by drawing a very accurate profile of the hatch opening into a nice 3/4″ plywood pattern. You can do this easily by setting your hatch on top of the plywood and lining it with 1×2″, pushing it against the hatch coaming and using those lines as reference.

My frame is also made of 1×2″ so things line up nicely.

Measure where you are going to set the hatch on the boat. I added two temporary screws to prevent the hatch from sliding and also to help shore thing up.

Now for the first tricky part. Getting the template to lay even on the deck. use some shims and play until you get it where you want. You might notice that I already have two 1×2″ screwed to the template to make it easier to eye the hatch.

Now transfer that angle to the table saw

Trim another 1×2″ to that angle until both sides lay evenly

Now for the second tricky part. Getting the radius transferred.

Start by placing another 1×2″ on top of the template and find a measuring stick to allow you to transfer the curve

Scribe as many marks as you think you might need

Connect the lines and cut and shave as needed

Glue the pieces to each other, but not the template! It is covered in  clear tape to avoid this costly mistake.

Trim the edges, but save the corner pieces

Carefully trace around the template

Prepare a nice batch off epoxy goop (6 pumps of west) and apply a nice bead.

With the template protected in tape apply the piece to the deck. Wiggle it some to spread the bead.

Clean and bead as best you can. You will be doing this once more once you remove the template so no need to get it perfect.

A cargo strap came in handy to hold things together.

Once everything dries you can remove the screw holding the template to the frame. Time to cut the deck. If you have the right diameter hole saw this little trick works out great.

Now re-glue the edge pieces, fillet, sand and fair as needed.

Missing from the pictures above is a drill with a drum sander. That makes fitting the radius a simple task.

“Give me a can of filler and lots of sandpaper to make me the carpenter that I ain’t!”

 

 

 

Building is a rudder is time consuming but well within our capabilities. It all starts by cutting the plywood blanks and getting a machine shop to build you the rudder post and tiller assembly. They also took care of making my delrin bearings.

Now we go ahead and piece it together

And shape it to the prescribed foil shape. I used a belt sander to get it to shape

Once you are happy with the shape, time to glass it over. I did the leading edge first. To make sure you can a smooth curve on the bottom cut the glass strips 45 degrees tot he bias

Once you glass the edges. adding glass to the flats is easy. I decided to glass with three 10 oz layers the whole blade

 

And here is the final product…