Seat edges constructed and installed

I continued with the seat edge construction by using a router to round over all but the top seat edge. 

I applied several coats of epoxy on the three surfaces that form the seat-board slot, since it's easier to do that before assembly, and after that cured I applied thickened epoxy to the joints and clamped the parts together.

I didn't have any kind of bit to form the large round-over on the front of the seat edges, so I marked out the edges where I wanted to stop the cut.

And used a power plane to remove the bulk of the wood, then finished up with a spokeshave, followed by sanding with the soft pad on my random-orbit sander. 

I fit the back ends to the transom on each side, and then cut them to final length and rounded the forward ends, then coated the remaining untreated areas with epoxy.

On the starboard seat edge I routed a groove for the copper tubing to route the centerboard uphaul line and epoxied that in place.

And after it cured I trimmed off the excess tubing and made sure there were no burrs or sharp edges to wear on the line.

Finally, it was time to epoxy on the port seat edging.  I held this in place with a couple clamps and braces from the other seat front.  Short sticks support the edging at the correct height.  No screws or other fasteners needed.

And the next day glued in the other side.

I left both moldings just proud of the seat tops, so that I can plane/scrape/sand them down to the perfect height.  After painting, the transition should be invisible.  I like the feel of these edges - they are smooth and comfortable.  They add a little weight to the boat, but I think it will be worth it.

Rudder head construction

Here's the construction sequence for the rudder head.  I had a couple goals I was trying to meet.  I wanted to line the uphaul/downhaul line channels with copper pipe to reduce friction, and wanted to laminate the center section first to make it easy to clean up and finish areas that will be hard to get at later when fully assembled

I fussed around with the layout for the line channels for a while before deciding on the route shown below.  I wanted the openings to exit the front of the rudder head as near the tiller as possible, and I wanted the rear exit to be gentle, so the line would not need to take a right-angle turn there.  Using the flexible copper pipe, here's what I decided on.

Heres' the exit on the front of the rudder head

And here's the back side.  Because of the thickness of my rudder, I added one layer of 4mm ply in the center of the lamination.

 Here's the glue-up of just the center layers of the rudder head

After the epoxy cured it was time to clean up the edges and trim the tubes to length.

A small hacksaw made quick work of the protruding tubes

And a bit of sanding smooths them down nicely.  I will further round the edges before running the uphaul/downhaul lines over them.

I used epoxy/graphite mixture to match what I did on the cheek pieces

And then laminated the complete assembly.

Centerboard uphaul tube installed - makeshift flaring tool

Before I finished installing hull panels, I wanted to get the centerboard uphaul tube installed, while it was still easy to work in that area.  This tube lines the hole that the rope runs through to raise the centerboard, and prevents wear to the hole and to the rope.

The uphaul line is 1/4" diameter, so I got a short length of tubing from the hardware store that is 5/16" ID, and 3/8" OD.

First, I drilled the hole.  I wanted to ensure that the hole was perpendicular to the bulkhead, and didn't tear out on the far side.  So I drilled a hole through a scrap block on the drill press to use a a drill guide, and clamped another block on the inside of the centerboard trunk to prevent tear-out.  I drilled a pilot hole and then followed that up with a 7/16" bit.

I cut a short length of tubing, flared the end, and inserted a length of 5/16" dowel and taped it on.  This let me manipulate the tubing, rotating it to apply thickend epoxy and pulling it through the hole. 

I clamped it in place with a stick until the epoxy cured.

Here's the inside, flared edge.

And this is the other side.

And this shows the 1/4" uphaul line exiting the tube.  At this point I considered leaving this as is and calling it done.  The rope pulls straight out of the hole and into a turning block, so I think that would work fine.  At this point the flaring tool doesn't work, and trying to shape it with a ball pein hammer seemed likely to mess things up.

After some thought, I started rummaging around in my 1/4" bolt bin, and found this flat-head machine screw.  My plan was to insert this through the tube with a washer and nut on the inside and flare out the end by tightening the nut in a controlled manner.

Here's the screw Inserted in the tube.

And the resulting flare after tightening up the nut a bit.  Worked great.

But it was sticking out a little too far, so I sanded it back using a little disk in a die grinder, and flared again.

And then I did follow up with a little light tapping from the ball pein hammer to fllatten it out just a bit more.  Job done!