Port Settee, glassing and unglassing mast and hatch holes

The original forward hatch on the Pearson 10M is simply a portion of the mold cut off and fitted with a gutter and a few hinges.  It's a terrible leaky design, and the thought of green water coming over the bow and catching it is just a horrible vision.  I long since epoxied it shut and faired it into the rest of the cabin top.  

It was time to glass it in, with nearly everything else I'm working on needing lots of paint drying time.  It should have been straight forward.  

Last post I mentioned the stress of a significant glue-ups. But that pales in comparison to putting down several layers of  several square yards of 1708 biaxial cloth around compound curves and on vertical surfaces on a hot day.  This stuff sucks up so much epoxy, and those vertical surfaces  both resist quick wetout and encourage an army of runoff drips and puddles.  Which is why I've put this off for a few years.  

But I tackled it now - and the first layer got down fine.  I used close to 1/2 gallon of epoxy.

Then the second layer.  

All was well, though in the last last big mixture of epoxy, on the starboard vertical area, I put 4 oz of hardener in the mixing pot, which should have meant I add another 8 oz of resin to top out at 12.  But I had been mixing 6:12 for a total of 18 oz, and in a moment of lax concentration poured up to 18 with the resin.  Realizing my error, I, in my exhaustion and haste thought that should just add two more oz of hardener to end up with 20 oz total and, sure I'd have too much (I only needed 12 oz total after all) but I wouldn't have wasted what I already mixed.

Through the years, I've developed  one of the rules one makes for oneself after painful lessons of the past:  if you lose count or concentration while mixing epoxy, throw it away.  It doesn't matter how big or small the job, or how big or small the batch.  Just toss it out, man.  But, jeez, this was a lot of epoxy.  So I ignored the rule.  I didn't forget about it, mind you.  I ignored it.

And the next day I was rewarded with a gooey, half-cured shitty truth:  this stuff was mixed wrong and it will never, ever cure.  In this photo is the result of two hours of grabbing the edges of upper layer of glass with vice grips and grunting and swearing and sweating and pulling it up off of the surface to which it wasn't quite bonded.  All the while bringing in all my years on the mediation cushion and therapist's couch to keep from castigating myself for my foolishness.  The lure of the Second Dart as the Buddha might say.  Some mistakes bring their own Dukkha, no need to add more. 

My hands were raw by the time I got just a bare majority of the glass peeled up.

After the uncured glass was mostly up, I then faced 6-8 hours of getting the goo up.  This involves rubbing the whole thing down with sawdust, scraping it off, going through sanding discs in 30 seconds as they gum up, going at it with blades on the oscillating tool, then repeating. And it's all actually best done on the hottest days so the goo is as low viscosity as possible.  Because I really don't want that uncured stuff down and put good glass over that.  This thing is right on the forepeak and will be subject to direct baking sunlight and extreme heat.  If it ain't cured for real, it will have consequences at those temps. 

Oh, and my badass Portal Cable right angle random orbital sander died.  Yeah it's like four years old, but it only has like, 8 hours of actual use on it. 

All things considered, I should have thrown away that questionable batch of epoxy.  Add rule: don't break your rules.

 

I took the ROS apart and discovered that one of the bearings had destroyed itself, the motor lost concentricity and ground part of the armature down.  The bearing is discontinued as a replacement part, the drive gear in front of it is very hard to remove, and Portal Cable doesn't seem to even make the 5" sander any more.  I've ordered a gear puller to try to make the repair anyway.  We'll see.  I'm pretty pissed about it, actually. 

 

Yup.  They don't make this bearing or spacer any more and it's a bitch to even get to. 

Back in the interior, there was a saga trying to get the insulation. I ordered it.  It didn't arrive.  I called.  They checked.  Said it would arrive next few days.  Didn't. Called.  Confusion.  (Always very friendly and helpful though, so that's good).  Then it arrives. Well, half of the order does, because their system says I got the other half already, which I didn't. That's okay, because they sent the wrong stuff anyway.  I wanted the self adhesive, they sent the plain stuff.  Three weeks after the original order, the correct stuff arrived (Armacell's AP Armaflex SA 1" insulation sheets).  The distributor did have the good practice of not charging me the price of the SA (self adhesive) sheets, but kept the original non-SA price they charged  - not an insubstantial amount.  So even though it was a mess of process, they were professional about it, and I'll go with them again.  

I've decided on the general hatch hold-down method I'll go with.   A simple delrin toggle recessed in a 2.25" forstner bit mortice.  The bit was about $25 and it works great if I go really, really slow.  Simple solution and I'm happy with it. 

And here are a few more panels:  they are the forward part of the port settee.  And I'm trying out my new rule of no paint until every last fiddly bit is installed. 

And if it can be believed, under this settee cover, one will find 1" of insulation covered by 1/8" (3mm) of okoume ply panel.  In short:  a completed locker.  That's right, people.  The first completed insulated, painted, covered locker on the boat.  I really thought it might never happen.

I've learned a lot and decided a lot on this port settee.  It has to, HAS to, translate into faster progress on the rest of the boat.  Right?  Please say I'm right because this really seemed to take absolutely forever.  

An astute eye will also notice that I cut the door into the V-berth to its finished shape.  I also did the same for entrance to the head, though forgot a picture. 

I also managed to get the cabin sole faired in and glassed down.  This was my first time working with 1200 biaxial tape (from RAKA epoxy)  no selvedge edge, not mat (hence the 00 at the end instead of 08 for 8 oz of mat). It's got its quirks:  it's loosely stitched lengthwise, so I learned you can actually stretch it pretty tight in that direction without it doing that biaxial collapse thing, but it's got no integrity across it's width when wetted out and just wants to become a blobby tangle if you put any perpendicular stress it on it when laying it down.  And it sure conforms to corners well.  I bought it to test if it would be a good cloth to wrap around the sharp curve of the outward facing hull-deck flange- and it might just do the trick. 

This awkward looking photo is straight down on the forward portion of the sole where it runs into the hull to starboard and the mast step forward.  (The yellow is the bilge).  Since it had no curve significant curve and a larger area, I used 1708 6" tape there.  I needed a pretty good amount of phenolic microballoon thickened epoxy filler to fair the sole into the hull there, and it came out just fine. 

Plus I was able to get some flying in with my first spectators, my mom and her husband, Gil. And didn't crash!  God protects children and fools.

More port settee

I put two coats of primer and two coats of paint on the underside/backsides of the settee locker coverings.  I'll come to regret this decision later because it got the order of operations all wrong. I have a new rule:  do NOT paint anything until I'm absolutely sure I've attached all the things that need attaching.  Here you see that I don't have the locker cover supports attached yet.  I'll also end up adding cleats, stiffeners, sliding rails, and retaining toggles.  Each of those things requires me to sand down to the wood again, and instead of using Titebond III woodglue, I have to use thickened epoxy because of the uneven surface that results.  And of course, epoxy eats at the one part paint I used, so it gets a bit gummy.  Much time wasted for an uglier result.  So, yeah.  Paint goes on at the very last minute.  

And now for many photos of how I put the sliding tracks on for the sliding berth top.  

The trick here was to get the 4 slides EXACTLY parallel.  

Here you see them laid out generally where they'll go.

I decided that these would be mounted upside down compared to how you'd do it for a normal drawer; I want the sliding top to have the most support, and therefore the wider female part of the slide.  Plus, anything that falls under the berth top will have less of a chance of getting jammed in the slider. Not a major issue, but an example of how many little design decisions go with every part of this boat project thing. And nearly all my decisions are guesses. 

Anyway, I drilled pilot holes and counter sinks on the ends of each of the male rails.  Note to self:  your countersinks suck.  They go dull nearly instantly.  It might be worth an investment in a good one.  

I temporarily attach one side only of each (the left hand / inboard side in the previous picture) rail, except for the second from the forward end, which is attached on both ends.  This will allow the other three to shift to parallel to this fixed one in the next steps. 

I slipped the female slides onto each, laid a long narrow piece of scrap 1/4" ply across all of them at the INBOARD end, and carefully drilled a pilot hole in the the outboard edge of each just big enough for a brad to fit in. 

This locked the distance of the inboard ends of the female sliders to the distance between the inboard ends of the male sliders which are fixed to the support surface. 

Sliding those sliders to the outboard end now guarantees that the distance between the sliders on the inboard ends are now equal to the distance on the outboard ends.  To whit: contraption's sliders are now parallel to each other.  They may not be exactly square with the back edge, but they don't need to be.  I thought this rather ingenious 'cause I thought it up all by myself.  It's probably a technique the ancient Egyptians knew. I'm not really breaking new geometric carpentry ground here. 

I screwed the males sliders to the under-piece, locking in that delicious parallelism. 

I clamped the top on to keep anything from shifting, then drilled pilot holes and temporarily fixed both ends of the female sliders to the top. The top now has four parallel female slider fixed to it to match the parallel male pieces below. 

Another note to self:  put some butcher's wax on the contact surfaces of the sliders before all this assembly.  I ended up needing some significant taps with mallet to get this apart.  With the wax everything slides much better. 

Then the whole thing gets marked with various pencil lines so I can take it apart, put glue on it, and hopefully realign the screw holes again while it's all messy and slippery and squeeze out is covering said pencil lines and I'm cussing quietly to myself while moving quickly and trying to catch significant glue drips and turn clamps with one hand while holding the wood in place with my teeth and my other hand and ignoring my phone which always chooses this time to ring and then one of the screws strips out and I have to get the needle nose vice grips to extract and replace it and now another piece has slipped and oh crap the clamping caul is too tight and distorting the assembly and...

So, normal glue up procedure.  We see the calm clamped result here.

 And the exciting process repeated for the underside of the top with the female sliders here. 

And the whole assembly.

I did end up buying a better countersink. Carbide and soooooo much better.  I'll have to think about whether it should be used on fiberglass, or get a second one for that.  They are quite expensive, though. 

I made up a whole bunch of these stand-off blocks and epoxied them in the lockers.  They are 1" thick to match the insulation (which I ordered) and will serve as the anchor points for the insulation cover panels I need to make out of 1/4" or 6mm ply.  I am tempted to use luan door skin for this because it's so cheap, but it's probably false economy.  It's not strong, not waterproof glues, and has the potential to make my life miserable if it fails in three years.  I'll probably go with okoume 6mm. 

Port Settee Work

With the main tabbing completed, I could turn my attention to the settee design and bits.  This photo is about all I have for what I'm sure was many hours of thought when I laid out the starboard side. There are kinda similar marks on the port side bulkhead - but mostly I'm cursing myself for not taping plans or schematics or... something to the boat somewhere.  Or a notebook. That's what regular people do.  My memory is truly terrible - so this loss of brainwork over the last two years in which the project languished fallow is a real drag.

Anyway, I know the original plan was to make the settee seat slide UNDER the settee back, with a cushion on it that magically revealed itself as the seat was pulled out into a berth.  The problem there is that the forward-most portion of the seat actually meets the hull in the closed position, so there's no room to hide the cushion.  This would lead to a strangely shaped infill piece needed for that.  Two strangely shaped infills, actually, because the berth will have two different available depths - 22 inches wide for rough seas and a lee cloth, and 28 inches for calmer weather sleeping. 

Also, the hidden mattress trick (which is what the original Pearson 10M had on the starboard berth) is a bit more challenging construction:  the seat backs need to float above the sliding mattress.  The payoff just isn't worth it.  So it will be a simple slide out berth with infill pieces stored somewhere around the saloon lockers. Somewhere.  Maybe in the bottom of the locker where the slid-in mattress would have been.

In putting in the cleats for the settee back and main shelf, I somehow let this horizonal cleat slip upwards.  Since I also stripped the silicon bronze screws holding it in (glued and screwed), this piece could not be simply unscrewed while glue was still soft.  

I had to let it cure, then came back the next day and used the miracle that is an oscillating tool with a wood blade attached to slowly rip the cleat to the correct height.  It worked a treat.

The underside of the side deck is very unfair.  There are huge globs o' polyester resin from the original liner-to-deck construction.

A few years ago I had taken down the worst parts with an angle grinder, but it's still very uneven. Here you can see some of the gaps for the cleats are up to 1/2 inch thick.  It's epoxy and wood flour to the rescue

With the cleats in place and the decision to not put a sneaky under-the-settee-back sliding berth base in, I cut and fit the settee top, the back and the shelf.  This settee top is not the thing that will be sit upon - it's more like the locker top.  Attached to this top will be wooden sliders, and attached to the slider top will be the settee/berth bottom.  So these holes we see here don't get hatch covers.  The settee/berth bottom will get those, and when those are lifted I'll be able to reach down through this under-bottom into the locker. 

I'm also not sure about keeping the openings in the face of the settee above the sole.  The lockers are low, deep, and slope forward, and these openings are very close to the sole itself, so there isn't much room for hinges.  Plus I haven't figured out the saloon table situation, and it's possible that the forward most opening, and maybe the middle, will be inaccessible with the table in place. So I may end up glueing the cutouts back in place.  My goodness am I glad I've decided that this thing will be painted.  You can cover up a multitude of design changes with Boat Fair, moulding, and paint.

 

Cabin sole glued down, glassing port settee

I ran the sole hatches over the jointer, creating a slight rabbet around the edges to accommodate the thickness of the epoxy and paint coatings that will go on these and the hatch supports.  I don't want them proud of the rest of the sole. 

So they should sit just about right. 

I mixed up a batch of boat fare and fared in the area around the cockpit drain exit in the transom.  For some reason I don't have a picture of that.  I like this fairing compound.  Mix till green.  Smear on.  

 And we're finally ready to glue the sole down. I spread it on both the floors and the bottom of the sole.

I didn't use mechanical fasteners - just epoxy thickened with wood flour. 

 I used a notched trowel to spread it on both the floors and the underside of the sole. 

And there it is, looking just like it did three weeks ago, pretty much.  But this time it's staying. 

I began fairing in the sole to the areas where it runs into the hull.  Phenolic micro balloons mostly in the epoxy mix.  I actually want this to droop and self level. 

 I glassed in the port settee bits and pieces where it meets the hull.  

 Two layers of 1708 on everything, pretty much.

 And sanded and put a second coat fairing the sole in.

 And that's about it.  It was a busy three days.  

 

 Oh.  I also flew Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, and Wednesday afternoon.  Which takes a bit of time out of the workday - totally worth it.  I had some lovely flights. 

Cockpit drain and Cabin Soles, continued

 

 I ground /sanded/ shaped the opening and exit of the cockpit drain, rounding over the edges with about a 1/4" to 1/2" radius and sanding off the gel coat about 2 inches around.  I cut some strips of 6 oz glass cloth on 45 degree bias and covered the edges with about two layers.  The bias cut strips conformed very easily to the compound curves.  I'm happy with the outcome.

 The outside looks pretty good, too.  Eventually this will get covered with a flapper gate to reduce water running up into the boat the wrong way in a following sea or chop.

The galley bilge got a second coat of primer.  I had waited beyond the 72 hours specified, so it needed a light sanding first.  I'm not sure I did the best job of that because I really hate sanding all those odd spaces.  But hey, it's just the bilge. 

 The sole hatch support frames got two coats of epoxy.

And rest of the day was spend laying out, cutting out, and framing out the galley bilge hatches.  I put in two - one was able to stay on the center line and match up with the other four in the salon: 18 inches long and 8 inches wide.  

Well, almost 8 inches wide.  Because of the toe kick and odd angles around the galley counter the forward section of the galley sole was made in two pieces.  The joint of the those piece was almost perfect for the hatch side, but it wanders a little away from exactly fore and aft.  Like, 1/4 inch.  So the forward side of the hatch is slightly wider than the aft. I don't think it will be noticeable.