Deck installed

With the underdeck supports complete, I was now ready to install the deck.  

There are four puzzle joints in the deck, and I had previously glued two of them, so now I did the other two.  I applied packing tape to the 3/4" plywood support and the 1/4" plywood pad under the clamps so the glue would not stick.  

I then applied thickened epoxy to the joint and clamped it down.  Then unclamped briefly to inspect and make sure I had enough epoxy in there, and clamped it again, leaving it to cure overnight.

The next day I discovered I had flipped over one of my clamp pads, so the tape side was up and it was firmly glued it to the top of my deck.  <sigh>

I didn't attempt to pull it loose since I didn't know whether the wood of the clamp pad or the wood of the deck would pull out, but I figured it would probably be the deck.  So I got out a wood chisel and started chipping away.

About 1/2 hour later I was getting close...

And after shaving the final bits off and sanding, you'd never know I messed up.  Unless I blab it all over the internet or something. 

With the joints completed I clamped a board across the deck to support the floppy parts, and took it into the shop to test fit on the boat.  I trimmed the aft ends of the deck a bit for a good fit, then took the deck off again to put on the final coat of epoxy on the underside.

And the next day glued it in place.  I put a few supports in place to hold the deck up while applying epoxy, then my wife helped me lower it into place.

The build manual calls for a bunch of screws through the deck to clamp things in place, but I used clamps instead.  And would have used a few more if I had them.

Up front I piled on what lead ingots I had laying around, and clamped battens across the deck to hold it down.  I put a couple wedges in at the very front to make sure I had good contact there.

After the epoxy cured I put away all my clamps, and admired the result.

Then got busy with the block plane on the outside curve and the spokeshave on the inside curves and trimmed the edges flush with the gunwales and carlins.

Following that I filleted the joint under the deck where it joins the hull panels.

The filleting went pretty quick, but the cleanup took a long time.  I sometimes had to work with a mirror to see what I was doing as I scraped off the excess material.

I'm now considering filleting the deck/carlin joints, which will be even a bit more difficult, but I'd like to have a smooth fillet under there.  Right now that joint is rough with a bit of hardened epoxy squeeze-out from gluing down the deck.