Deck fitting

 The forward half of the deck has been fitted to the boat.  I'm extremely pleased with how well this came out.  The deck fits perfectly with the cabin top.  I used the West System scarfer to angle the edges of the three plywood panels that make up the front 2/3's of the deck or so.  These joints were very well aligned and will take only very minimal amounts of fairing in order to be perfectly smooth.  

 The boat made its first trip outside of the garage this morning.  I moved it out in order to get better pictures.  However, I took the opportunity to clean the garage floor that was under the boat.  The  following pictures show the deck trimmed to match the hull.  

The last panels to be fitted will be the sides of the cockpit.  Hopefully these will be finished this evening.  After these panels are fitted, there are a handful of items internal to the boat that need to be managed before everything is glued in place.

Fitting the deck

Creating and fitting deck panels took quite a bit of time.  The picture to the left shows the back deck panels, the cockpit floor and the curved sections on the inside of the cockpit

There have been quite a few broken rudder attachments on i550's, so while reinforcing the rudder tab on the transom I added an extra inch of hight.

I also cut out the companionway.  The top hatch is going to fit flush similar to the hatch on Critical Twist.  

Progress

A lot of small tasks have been accomplished since the last post.  The photo to the right shows the installation of floor supports for the cockpit.  These outside supports were built as small I-beams with lightening holes along the vertical component.

The 12oz carbon fiber cloth finally arrived so I used some of it to reinforce the keel box.  I described the design of this critical component below and I think that it was actually strong enough before the carbon fiber was added.  However, the cloth went on very easily and molded beautifully to the shape of the existing structure.

The photo to the right shows curved edges for the cockpit that I built using 3/8" by 3/8" cedar strips.  The floor piece was cut some time ago.  I may need to add a bit to the edges up by the front of the cockpit where the cockpit sides curve quite a bit.

Top done for now

The cabin top is complete (for now).  All of the strips have been glued, and I have sanded and glassed both the inside and outside surfaces.  Unfortunately, some of the staple holes are quite prominent.  In retrospect, I should have spent more time figuring out the color of the filler for the holes.  Interestingly, the inside doesn't have any holes and looks beautiful.  If I were going to build a bunch of these, I would build an exterior frame and build the cabin top upside down with the staples on the inside.  Also, by dialing back the pressure on the air driven stapler, the staples would not drive below surface level and the overall appearance would be better.  I still need to put a couple of coats of epoxy on at least the outside surface, and of course eventually give it several coats of UV resistant varnish.  


I have the cabin-top on the boat, but I'm going to put it aside now until I finish the interior of the boat.  Next up, I have to glass in the hull side stringers, install the chain plate gussets, glass in the bunks, and then coat the whole interior with a couple coats of epoxy.  I'm planning on leaving the interior natural colored.  

Cabin top looking tip top

The strip pank cabin is taking quite a while (maybe 10 hours so far).  In any case, here is a picture as it looks today.  I need to finish the strips on the side, and then sand and fill the gaps and staple holes.  I'm hoping to glass the top this weekend, and then put the whole thing aside for a while so I can get back to the rest of the boat.

Keel and Cabin

 This weekend I've been working on the keel and the cabin on the boat.  It took quite a while to get the keel to be smaller than the NACA 0012 shape that is eventually going to be.  Once i got it down to size, I then used my hand planer to cut a 1/16" groove down both sides.  This grove was cut to accept two layers of 12 oz. unidirectional carbon fiber cloth.  The picture to the left shows the first side being laid-up.  The keel will be faired next, and eventually be wrapped in carbon fiber cloth.

 I started working on the cabin this weekend as well.  Instead of building the cabin out of plywood, the whole thing is going to be built using the strip-plank method using cedar strips with mahogany accents.  I'm planning on leaving the entire cabin natural and coating it with varnish.  Of course, if it doesn't come out as nice as I hope, I can always fair it and paint it.

To the left is a close-up picture of the first few strips that I've glued.  I'm using an air driven stapler to hold the strips together until the epoxy/filler mixture sets-up.  I'm stapling through small pieces of plastic so as to make it easier to remove the staples.


This picture also shows my first mahogany accent strip.

I glassed in the cockpit floor supports.  So far I have decided to not put in the bunks behind frame 124.  I think that the "trusses" that I put in there should more than compensate for the lack of the bunks.


I still need to put in stringers on the hull sides, install the chainplate gussets, install the bunks forward frame 124, and then coat everything in epoxy before I start working on the deck.