Interior paint preparation

I decided that before I got hull panels installed, I wanted to do as much inside finish work as I could while access was still easy.  So I started out by rolling on the final coat of epoxy on the bulkheads and other interior areas.

Everything looks so shiny and nice!  

I thought I was good to go and could proceed immediately to painting the interior spaces white.
  

I had purchased some porch and floor white enamel for this job, but it was a latex paint, and I just felt more comfortable putting on something oil based, so I returned what I had and purchased Rustoleum Gloss White for the job.

To make sure I was getting good adhesion, I painted a small test patch, let it dry, and then was disappointed to find I could scrape it off with my fingernail.  <sigh>

I sanded up another area with my random orbit sander and painted a test patch there, and found I had much better adhesion.  But I couldn't get into all the spaces with my power sander, so I did a third test patch, just removing the gloss with a 120 grit sanding sponge.  That also worked well, so I proceeded to sand all the gloss off my latest coat of epoxy by hand with the sanding sponge.

With everything dulled up, I can start on my painting after cleaning up the dust.

A Hole in the Boat!

It was time to install the fill hole/drain in the water ballast tank, so I took drill in hand, took a deep breath and drilled a hole in the bottom of the boat!

I had cut out the backing plate from 6mm ply, and then put it in the lathe to turn a recess to inset the fitting so it will end up just shy of the outside of the hull.

I drilled pilot holes for the screws, smeared everything up with thickened epoxy and put it all in place.  I installed the three screws through the epoxy blobs and snugged them down.  Then wiped up the excess and and left it to cure overnight.

Here is the result after scraping things smooth with a utility knife blade.

Next I coated the water ballast tank with graphite.  I'm hoping this will provide a slick, durable surface so that the tank is easy to clean out when needed.

I modified the drain plug by drilling a hole through it and inserting a short length of brass rod.  I then flattened the ends of the rod so that it can't slip out.

And here is the final result ready to go.  The rod on the plug makes it easy to install and remove.

Cabin and front deck beams, cockpit sole cleats installed

I have now constructed and installed the beams that support the cabin roof and the front deck.  

Installing the deck beams fixes the bow transom in place, and I wanted to be very sure that it was centered.  The keel piece had somewhat of a bend to it, so I carefully measured from the corners of B3 to the top corners of the bow from both sides.  I pulled the bow over to the right and held it in place with a stick and two clamps.

Then measured again.  And eyed it up from the front.  And measured again...  Finally decided to go ahead and glue up the beams with thickened epoxy.

Here the ends of the deck beams poke through B2.  

After the epoxy cured and I removed the clamp I measured again.  And it wasn't straight.  <sigh>  So I softened up the epoxy with a heat gun where the beams pierced B2 and pulled it over to the right a little more and reclamped.  2nd try was perfect, so I went ahead and reinforced all the joints with fillets to fix things permanently in place.

Here's a shot of the cabin roof support beams.  Before installing these, I drilled a couple 3/8" holes and chamfered the edges.  These are in case I want to hang something from these supports sometime.  I also rounded over the edges that didn't meet other pieces, and then coated with 2 coats of epoxy.

I also cut and installed the cockpit sole cleats, except for the ones aft of B7.  These were installed with thickened epoxy.  I could clamp the side to side ones with bar clamps, but for the fore and aft cleats I braced them against each other with sticks.  This method of clamping is handy when it works. In both cases, I carefully aligned the cleats, then shot in a couple pins from my 23 gauge pin nailer to keep them from sliding around, then applied clamping pressure.

And here's the view after removing the clamps.  Looks nice.  One of my next steps will be to epoxy coat and paint all the interior spaces that will be easier to get at now while there are no hull panels to reach over. 

Mast trunk installed

I have now installed the mast trunk, which I assembled outside the boat some time ago. This part had a bit of twist to it and I was a little worried about being able to get it installed straight, but having the surrounding pieces firmly fixed helped a lot, and I was able to get this nicely aligned using only a couple handscrew clamps.  The lower portion was fixed in place over the keel and in slots in the bottom hull, and applying the clamps twisted the top portion straight against bulkhead 3.

After installing with silica-thickened epoxy I followed up with fillet mixture.  I was glad to be done with the fillets back in the narrow hard-to-get areas. 

Here's a view down from the top.  I'll have to reach in through the front of the box to try to get a fillet on those corners (to the right in this photo).

This was a good job done.  Nice to get the 'engine room' in place.

Forward bulkheads installed

Finally time to get the remaining bulkheads in place.  First I trimmed a bit off the keel between B3 and B4 to allow clearance for the hatch backing plate that will be in the cockpit sole in that area.  It's much easier to make these change before the parts are installed.  

I then glued down the keel and B2 and B3 using thickened epoxy.  I used a couple sticks to push the center of B3 forward about 1/4" where it was tending to bow backward.

I also attached the cleats that will support the bow transom (bulkhead 1).  As with the seat cleats, I applied thickened epoxy, then used the pin nailer to temporarily hold them from sliding around while I attached clamps.  I like this method better than the suggested method of dry fitting the parts, drilling and fitting screws, disassembling, applying epoxy, assembling with screws, and then filling screw holes later.

  

I then planed the bevels on the bow transom so the hull panels meet up nicely, and installed that.  Again, pin nailer, followed by clamps.

After the glue dried on the joints, I followed up with structural fillets to bond all the pieces into place.  This is looking more like a boat all the time! 

Seat cleats and transom doubler

Next job was to install cleats along the bulkheads to provide glue surface for the seats, which are installed later on.  I cut pieces from the cleat stock that I had previously prepared, and applied thickened epoxy to the cleat.  I then lined up each cleat and shot a couple 23 gauge pins in to keep it from sliding around, then follow up with clamps to ensure I had good contact.

I cut the ends of the cleats at a 45 degree angle and sealed the ends with thickened epoxy.  Cutting the ends like this will give me more clearance when I later apply the fillets between the bulkheads and the hull panels 

I also took this opportunity to glue on the transom doubler.  I had some difficulty clamping this part.  I had the part on my plywood risers, but ran them from side to side rather than front to back to make sure the panel didn't bow.  Doing that meant that the risers were in the way of my deep-throat vise-grip clamps.  

I was able to reach  parts of the panel from the edge, and some from the tiller cutout using my home-made cam clamps, but still needed more pressure out in the middle of the panel.  I tried piling on all my leftover lead ingots, but that wasn't fully effective.  Using go-bars between the workpiece and the shop ceiling finally did the trick.

B3 Hatch covers

To construct the hatches for B3 I epoxied the stiffeners that I had previously laminated out of 2 layers of 1/4" baltic birch plywood.  First I had to clean up the glue squeeze out and round over the corners on the router table.

The 9 mm ply cutouts had a twist in them and would not lie flat, so I took this opportunity to try to correct that.  I put spacers under the low corners and clamped down the high corners.  This flexed the plywood in the opposite direction of the twist.

I then applied thickened epoxy to the stiffener, and clamped it down to cure.  After removing the clamps I found that the hatch now had a slight twist in the other direction - my spacers were a touch too thick.  But it was much closer to flat than previously and the hatch latches should be able to flatten the hatch for a good seal.