V-berth progress, keel smile, settee tops

 

On the starboard settee, I went through the careful twelve step process of aligning and attaching the hardwood sliders.  This side got five of them.  The fit is a little tighter than I'd like, but it will work. 

There's the berth/seat top ready to slide on.  At the top of this picture you can see a fiberglass half-cylinder I made to soften the edge on the forward portion of the settee bulkhead.  It will somehow become some sort of cubby under the emerging end-table cabinet thingy going between the settee and main bulkhead at the v-berth entrance. 

A little out of sequence, here's that fiberglass half-cylinder drooped around a 3 inch piece of tube covered with plastic. I think I used three layers of the 6 inch wide 1708 tabbing tape. It came out fine.  

And here we see that odd little corner starting to take shape.  

And A bit more.  I'm not quite satisfied with the curve of the countertop -  There's something very subtle required, and I think it's going to be a game of 1/8th inches to get it to feel just right.  I've left extra material to play with.  I think the small cabinet above the counter will look good, though.

Here is one of the templates for the insulation going under the v-berth lockers.  I'm leaving them about a 6 inches short of the very bottom because I expect gung or perhaps some water will collect there.  This is not an elegant solution, but nothing about the insulation installation has been. 

There was some more nice weather, so when better to cover up my entire body and put on a full filter mask to grind out the area around the keel smile? Copper and lead dust.  Nasty work when fiberglass dust is the best thing covering you. 

It took a few hours, but I cleaned out all the years of gung and flexible caulking that had worked their way into the crack, and then sanding back a groove and bare space over and under it.  

Then I mixed up many small batches of epoxy thickened with cabosil, putting each one into a pastry decoration bag and slowly squirted the contents deep into the space between the keel and hull.  I suppose this wasn't necessary because the keel bolt are said to be strong enough, but I didn't like all that space and no bearing surface - I just saw too many stress failure options. So this step was to create a large bearing surface to reduce the potential flexing distance.  The compression strength of the thickened epoxy should be okay.  In any case, it's better than the mere caulking that had worked for 30 years.

I a few days later I cleaned it up and put on a heavy application of West Marine's G-flex over the join zone.  I had left a good 1/2" groove in the crack to make sure plenty of this 30% elongation material could fit in there.  I've never worked with it before, but it was pretty straight forward, if disturbingly mucus-like during application.  A true Ghostbusters experience. 

Sanding to follow. 

Back in the v-berth the insulation is cut and fitted, and the lockers painted.  I'm really not crazy about the paint I've chose in the lockers, either.  It's a decent grade latex, and I don't think it's going to be robust enough to withstand locker use.  The lockers in the port settee still have a sticky feel to them.  I have a sneaky suspicion this stuff will peel off in sheets in a few years.  I hope not, but we'll see.  They are just lockers.

It does make me reconsider the one-part paint I was thinking for the interior. That will need to be more robust. 

And then there's this lovely photo snapped by Molly of both Lisa and me in the sky at the same time over Hadley, Massachusetts.  It was a beautiful evening with an amazing view south over the Holyoke Range. 

And a couple of days later, Farmer Ned, who owns the grass field near my house I usually fly out of, snapped this shot of me flying over all his cows. Some great flights were had in the middle of all this boat stuff. 

Starboard Settee, Head Sole, V Berth Start

 

I realized that I forgot to add rounded edges to both the forward and aft corners of the port settee backs.  So I cut the 90 degrees out, fabricated a couple of white ash quarter rounds, and slapped them in place.

Here's the forward corner near the mast.

The aft corner near the yet-to-be-designed nav station.  Pre mod.

I cut the corner off, then beveled a piece of white ash to the 45 degree entry angles.  This allowed me to trim the cabinet with higher confidence.  Note that because the seat back slopes at 10 degrees, this is not a true 90 turn from face to side.  The geometric calculations were beyond me, so I just got close and let thickened epoxy do the rest. 

It came out just fine.

Here we have the starboard settee back getting its cleats.  My truck in was in the shop for over a month waiting parts (Covid supply chain issues are world-wide), so I was thrilled to finally get it back and be able to pick up some more plywood stock. 

And there are the fiddly bit getting painted up. 

I went with some basic support structure behind this settee - a set of stringers glassed to the hull and four fore & aft braces. 

Another week of work and the settee is mostly together.

Over in the head, I spent a lot of time getting the sole layout right.  It will be the floor of a shower, and so needs to drain forward and well under the lip to the door.  Emptying the sump, which is just the space under the head sole, will be done with a simple barrel pump. I want to be able to remove the sole thing for cleaning, with no complicated corners to catch gunk. So I beveled some cleats close to the hull angle, wrapped them in plastic packing tape, and set them into an epoxy mush held flat and flush to the underside of the fitted sole.

When cured, I popped the cleats off and used the mush as witness marks to really slop on the thickened epoxy muck and glue them down. 

The fit came in nearly perfectly.  I only spent about half an hour sanding down a high spot on the aft side of the forward most cleat section.  

I cut the hull edge off the sole, glued it to the cleats, applied more filler and sanded it fair.  This will get glassed into the hull with a layer or two of the 1200 biaxial tape.  I have no idea what the cabinetry will look like above this:  it needs to be water proof and allow for insulation...  Another set of decisions.

I'm happy with the result so far.  There's more work to do here with drain holes and waterproofing the piece, but this was good progress. 

I think this is the first time I've been in the V-berth in two years.   The aft half-bulkhead still needed tabbing on the forward side, so I did that.  I cut cleats and installed them all around the top edges, including against the hull. (Not installed yet in this photo.)

I added in a fore-aft bulkhead in the aft most section.

It will be the back of a shelf snuck under the v-berth top. I also fitted a little sole area at about a half inch proud of the door opening.  The door trim should make this transition smooth.  It's about a 1.5 inch step up from the step up at the mast step.  Follow that?  Headroom gets low, so I've banged mine about 30 times in the last week working on this.  Also, with the D-shaped doorway into the v-berth, I keep catching my shoulder on the sharp edge.  I'll have to make the trim very round and forgiving. 

This wool hat, though a bit hot in the summer, has saved my scalp from several stiches, I think.  There's that sharp doorway on the far right side of the photo.

The berth tops are cut and fitted.  

On a nice day, I spent four hours cutting and hammering out the old cutlass bearing. 

It put up a fight, but eventually yielded. After I discovered a very important tool:

These things make a difference.

Deck mast hole, more port settee, mast step sole area

 

Not a ton of progress to report for the amount of time, mostly because of a week of in Florida with Lisa nearly finishing her training on her NEW Fly Products Eclipse with an Atom 80.  The world makes a Lisa sized motor!  Hurray!  This is her disappearing into the sky.

And us toasting success at some lake in the area.  

I've decided that there needs to be a step up at the forward end of the saloon heading into the v-birth.  It will cover the mast step and with the mast in the way, the v-berth entry is pushed way over to the hull where the turn of the bilge creates difficult geometry for footing.  So it's solved with less headroom and more foot room. 

The front edge of the step will be curved - I knocked together a quick laminating jig and glued up four layers of the 3mm okoume (from the insulation cover material) to create this riser. 

Here's the port settee area coming together.  Paint on the forward portion.  The fan is sitting where the new step up is going.

And here's the oddly shaped opening to the head.  This is the final dimension, as far as I know for now.  I have a lot of thinking still to do for the compartment, including the shower pan and overall layout.  It will get an Airhead.  That I know.  And a shower.  But the rest is very vague. 

The laminated curve for the step riser.

This area presents a little departure from the rest of the sole construction.  I want to be able to lift out the entire sole top to get fully at the mast step when needed. So the pieces will be screwed but not glued in.  On the right side of this picture, I beveled, epoxied, and later glassed in  a 2" wide piece of white ash to accept screws, and the forward and starboard cleats are glued and screwed. 

The sole itself is made of 12 mm ply.  I will trim about an inch off the right side in dead straight cut and glue and fair that offcut into the hull.  The rest of the sole here will be able to be lifted out.  I'm not sure if I'll use screws or some other easy-to-remove-but secure-when-installed method of holding it down. 

Here it is with the mast hole cut.  It needs to be two pieces cut along the mast diameter so I can lift it out when the mast is in place.

Both pieces got a little post/support glued underneath so that I didn't need to add any framing to that might get in the way of mast step access.  This makes for some awkward pieces of wood, yes, but they're not really hatch covers and will only be knocking about the cabin during rare moments of maintenance. 

Here's another example of three steps forward, one step back.  I glued these cleats on the wrong side of the curved step riser.  Some quick work with the oscillating tool and glue swapped them over.  But this kind of little mistakes happens more than I'd like.  It's one of the downsides of designing one's way forward.  So many details, and a lapse in concentration can bump one backward. I blame Critical Role's campaign 2 episode 24 podcast.   I never thought I'd find myself listening to other people play Dungeons and Dragons, but my goodness they are entertaining and, mercifully, nearly devoid of current events references.  

Just a little to port of the step work the settee slowly nearing completion. I'm not happy with the poor fit I'm getting with the insulation covering - there are gaps all around that will allow dust and crud to slip between the lockers and covering and be impossible to clean.  But the work to prevent it seems really high right now.  I'm considering some kind of taped seam or something? I dunno.  I'm not thrilled with any of the ideas so far. I've kinda avoided taking a good picture of the gaps because I'm so dissatisfied.   Maybe next entry. But the settee in general looks great.

I just found by reading the Practical Junk Rig that the deck mast hole I made at 10.5 inches diameter should have been much larger:  12 inches.  So I had a large task of creating that.  I filled the center with some chunks of wood attached to a piece of scrap plywood screwed into the underside of the deck (saloon roof).  Then I got out a long-dormant acrylic trammel I made many years ago for my plunge router. 

With a Whiteside 1/2" diameter 3" long carbide tipped bit, two fans blowing, dust collection roaring, and full face mask, I began the hour long set of shallow passes to cut this baby out. 

I stopped frequently to scape and vacuum out the swarf and let the router cool. Only twice did the bit loosen up and rattle:  because of the depth of cut at the end of this job, I had to seat it shallowly in the collet: It was a little unnerving and my cuts got very light indeed.  At one point it did vibrate out, drove itself right through the plywood support piece and fell into the cabin.  No harm done, and a danger I was prepared for.  

But eventually the job was done.  A lovely ring popped out of the hole.

And from underneath we have a 12" hole for a 10" mast.  I'll put a few layers of glass around the inside of this to protect the balsa and plywood layers from any water that SHOULDN'T find its way into the mast collar. 

This is pretty much what the area will look like when the sole removed.  I'll fit a little hatch into the sole on the starboard side so I can peek under here without removing anything. But I like the wide open space if it's needed.  I hope that using only screws to hold it in place won't result in squeaking.  Squeaking and me don't get along.  

Here's that little piece of the step sole getting faired into the hull. I like this solution to this particular challenge.