Turning the Starboard Hull

Today I turned the starboard hull upside down for the first time, in preparation for shaping and then fiberglassing and fairing the hull exterior.

These first two photos are from last week, the day after I installed the topside panels. Once the panels were glued on at the bottom edges and held in place with temporary screws, I used a series of Spanish windlasses and adjustable straps to pull the upper edges of the topsides, at the sheer, in tight against the upper bulkhead edges. With everything locked in place, fillets were then made at the topside to bulkhead joints, and the cavities at the stem and sternpost were filled with thickened epoxy.

Note the bar clamps along the sheer used as anchor points for attaching the windlass lines. This worked really well and avoided the need for drilling holes for eye screws as I did on the port hull.

This is where I am today, with the hull upside down on the sturdy low saw horses I built for the purpose. The hull has been sanded and precoated with epoxy. The next step before glassing will be to fill and fair all the joints at the keel, stem and sternpost, and topside lap joints.

Starboard Hull Gets Topside Panels

The topside panels went on the starboard hulls yesterday. Despite the lack of recent updates here, I've been making progress on lots of projects on the boat, such as interior shelves in the port hull and getting the fairings installed on the crossbeams. Perfect weather recently has made for ideal working conditions.

The topside panels were already prepared and ready to install months ago. Once the bunk panels were filleted into place in the starboard hull, it was safe to lift it out of the building cradles and lay it over on it's side for pulling the remaining wire stitches out of the keel. I then turned it on each side and did a dry fit of the topside panels before gluing them on. The panels were fit with temporary screws. Here is a sequence of photos showing the procedure that makes it feasible for one person working alone to do this. My friend Chris Carter stopped by yesterday to see the project so I asked him to take some photos of me positioning the second panel.

With the hull in rope slings, the long topside panel was placed on the hull so that the slings hold it in place. The joint areas of both mating surfaces were sanded and cleaned with alcohol to prepare them for epoxy. I measured down 1 inch along the upper edge of the lower panel. This is the overlap area for the topside panel. A few small blocks were screwed in along this line to serve as rests for the topside panel until screws could be placed.

By grabbing in the midships area, I could easily flip up and manipulate the long panel.

Moving it in position: note the small wooden blocks I'm trying to get the bottom edge over.

The bottom edge is on the blocks, now it can be lowered in place.

The panel is in position. Now it's a matter of carefully aligning it at the bow and putting in temporary screws along the bottom edge. After everything was dry-fit to my satisfaction, I removed the panels one at a time and put them back on with epoxy in the joints.

Here's the hull flipped back the other way, after both panels have been installed with epoxy.

A view of the keel showing both topside panel joints. Like the port hull, the topside panels aligned perfectly and went on without distortion. The next step is to make the fillet joints where all the upper bulkhead sides join the insides of the topside panels. Soon I'll be ready to turn the hull upside down for shaping, glass sheathing and fairing.

Starboard Hull Ready for Topsides

The starboard hull is now ready to be lifted out of the building cradles so I can turn it to either side for installing the topside panels. All the bunks are now in and filleted, and most of the filling and fairing work in the lower hull compartments is complete. I made another trip to New Orleans last Saturday and picked up more okoume marine ply for the cabin roofs, decks, and cockpit. I should have enough to finish the project now.

As you can see the starboard hull is close to the outside lattice wall of my building shed. Last night we had several severe squall lines pass through the area, complete with hail, isolated tornadoes, and nearly horizontal rain driven by 50-70mph winds. Nothing was damaged, but this morning I had to sponge several inches of water out of each of the lower compartments in the starboard hull. Apparently the wind was so strong it blew the rain sideways right through the lattice. Everything in the hull interior was well-sealed with epoxy, so no harm done.

Here's the sequence of final tasks completed before the bunks went in. First the floor area in the main companionway was sheathed in 6 oz. fiberglass cloth. I did this in both hulls as this is the one floor panel that will be walked on and subject to having things dropped on it. In the photo you can see the blue tape used to define the perimeter of the glass. Three coats of epoxy were eventually applied.

Everything below the bunks got another clear coat of sealing epoxy after a thorough sanding and fairing. This will be the final finish below bunks, as no sunlight will get to these areas and there is no need for U.V. inhibiting varnish as there will be above bunk level.

Here you can see the bunks are in and filleted. These fillets will be sanded and faired with additional passes of thickened epoxy, but for now the hull is locked in and is a rigid structure. I can remove the temporary braces shown here and lift the hull in slings for turning.

These braces were necessary while the bunk fillets were curing, but they were hastily screwed and clamped in position and proved to be quite dangerous. I got a nasty gash just over my right eye when I bumped my head on a support post in the shed, which in turn bounced me face first into the end of one of these 1 x 2 pieces of Doug fir. I shouldn't have left the long ends sticking out like that, but I wanted to reuse them later, so I didn't cut them off. Now my right eye has been swollen for two days and I look like I've been in a bar fight!

Over on the starboard hull, I'm working on the details that have to be completed before the fore and aft decks can be installed. Much of this involves finishing up the fairing in the buoyancy compartments, and prepping the large bow compartment for paint. I decided to paint this storage hold white inside, as it is not connected to the cabin interior and will only be seen from the deck. The white interior will make it easier to find stuff inside, as well as to keep clean. I'm also going to install a small shelf at the interior stringer level in this compartment to divide the storage area somewhat and provide a place for smaller lighter items in the upper part.

In the photo below you can see the doublers I'm gluing to the inside of the sheer on the inboard sides beneath the decks. This will provide more solid wood to receive the screws that will be used to fasten the trampoline lashing rails to the inboard edges of the decks.

Other details below decks are the shelves I'm adding in the area over the bunks and just forward of the front cabin bulkhead. This is the foot area of the bunk and there is plenty of room for two narrow shelves at the level of the lower hull to topside panel joint. Adding shelves here will serve to reinforce this joint as well, as they will be filleted into position.

These shelves are narrow enough to be out of the way, but wide enough for things like flashlights or even books stood up with a bungee cord retainer across them. I made a small fiddle rail of teak for each shelf and glued it on with the industrial Superglue I've mentioned before.

The shelves with teak fiddles are coated with epoxy. A small fillet at the fiddle rail joint completes the assembly, and the shelves, made of 6mm ply, weigh next to nothing.

I'm off to Jackson again later today, where the rest of the week I'll be working on finishing up the Backwoods Drifter I'm building and hopefully getting the front fairings installed on my crossbeams.

Frames for the Portlights

While I was in Florida working with David Halladay on his Tiki 30 project, we discussed a lot of details in the fitting out of our catamarans and tossed ideas back and forth. David spends a lot of time working on interior and exterior carpentry projects for modern, high dollar motoryachts, and consequently has some methods and techniques beyond the basics shown in the Wharram plans for these boats.

One area that he feels can stand some improvement is in the installation of the fixed portlights on the outboard sides of the cabins. The plans show Lexan ports cut to overlap the edges of the openings in the plywood, and fixed in position on a bedding of sealant with small machine screws in holes drilled along the edges of the Lexan. This works fine and is seen on many types of vessels, but David felt it is a bit dated and doesn't look as clean as a more modern installation without fasteners. In addition, Lexan and wood expand and contract at different rates in temperature fluctuations, so the holes must be drilled larger than the screws or the panel can crack. A better method that he often uses for installing portlights is to either create a lip in the cabin side if it is thick enough, or add a ring frame on either the inside or outside of the portlight opening so that the Lexan panel can be mounted flush in the opening. This will be easier to visualize later when I have the actual Lexan and the cabin sides are installed, but the photos below show the process for making these frames.

The ring frames are made of 6mm ply, same as the cabin sides and the thickness of the Lexan that will be used. Since I had already mocked-up one cabin side on the port hull and had already cut the openings for the portlights, I was able to use the cut-out parts as templates for the ring frames. The Lexan will be cut slightly smaller than the existing openings in the cabin sides, to allow for some expansion, the frames will overlap the opening and the Lexan portlights by 5/8", making them a total of 1 1/4" wide.

Below is the sequence for making the frames for the smaller portlight at the forward end of the cabin. I started out by marking a line exactly the size of the opening on a piece of plywood to be used as the pattern. In the photo below, you can see this as the heavier centerline in the middle of the pattern frame. Outside and inside perimeter lines were scribed 5/8" on either side of this central line and the pattern was cut out to this line with a circular saw and jigsaw. The actual cuts were made 1/16" from the line and then the excess material was sanded off with a belt sander on the outside and by hand with sanding blocks on the inside. Below you can see the tube of caulking that I used to sand the inside radius. This was just the right size when fitted with a sheet of sticky-back sandpaper.

When the pattern was cleaned up and trued to exactly the lines and the curves were fair, I then temporarily tacked it to the first workpiece with a few dabs of glue from a hot glue gun, to hold it in position for routing.

Making exact duplicates from a pattern like this is easy with a router fitted with a straight bit with a guide bearing, as shown below. Although you can use a regular flush cutting bit with the bearing on the bottom, I prefer the top bearing kind, as you can better see what you're doing. This bit is long enough to cut more than one frame at a time if they are stacked, but I wanted to do just one first to make sure it was correct. There will be a total of four frames for the small portlights and four for the larger, aft ports, since I want to have both an interior and exterior frame for greater security. This is not really necessary with modern sealants, however, and many such ports are put in with just the sealant and an interior frame, resulting in a cleaner, flush exterior surface. My exterior frames will blend in nicely though, as they will be filleted and glassed right along with the rest of the cabin side and painted the same color.

Here's a view from the bottom showing the pattern-cutting router bit doing its job. For small parts of thin material such as this, I like small one-handed trim routers.

Below is the finished result. The piece of wood under the frame is the pattern for the Lexan port, and gives a hint as to how the actual port will look with the ring frame over the window.

Bunks Ready to Go In

A couple of days of good weather allowed me to finish up all the details that were holding up the installation of the starboard bunks. The final frames for the access hatches were fitted and laminated in place, and two coats of epoxy applied to all the bottom surfaces. Here you can see these parts curing in the sun curing outside the shed.

The structural and cosmetic fillets were also finished in the storage compartments below the bunks. A final clear coat of epoxy will go on over all this before the bunks are glued in place.

Here the finished bunk panels are in place, but not yet glued in. I had to be away for a couple of days and will glue them in when I return after the weekend. On Saturday I'm going to New Orleans to pick up what I hope will be all the plywood to finish the rest of the boat. This includes material for the cabin sides and decks, and the cockpit. Everything else requiring plywood is done.

Other details besides the under bunk areas included finishing up the fillets in the bow and stern buoyancy compartments and installing the plywood web brace, shown below, in the bow. In these areas that will be sealed off and out of sight, I'm using a filleting mix consisting of wood flour, silica, and phenolic microballoons. That's why you see the reddish tint. These fillets are easier to sand and smooth than the wood and silica blend I'm using in the parts of the boat that will be left unfinished or varnished. I'll also use this phenolic/silica mix for exerior fillets and fairing where everything will be painted, as it is much easier to sand to a feather edge.

Crossbeam Fairings and Reinforcements

There are still many details to finish on the crossbeams, mainly the exterior fillets and the fairings. Before installing the fairings I wanted to shape all the edges of the Doug Fir stringer sections to a consistent radius. This was done using a router with a 3/8" radius roundover bit. In the photo below you can see the radius on every corner, including all four corners of the top plates and the exposed corners of the bottom plates. This radius will help protect the beams from damage by eliminating sharp corners that can be easily cracked or broken if something hits them. It will also allow for easier fiberglass sheathing, as I plan to glass over all the exposed surfaces of the beams.

The transition between the plywood webs and floors of the beams is also eased with a concave radius formed by a nice, wide fillet that is both cosmetic and structural. It takes a surprising amount of thickened epoxy to make all these fillets on the beams, as there are so many exposed corners that require them. All in all, building the beams for the Tiki 26 is a substantial project; even more time consuming than building the mast. It would be quicker to skip the fiberglassing step, with all this preparation it involves, but for maximum longevity this is important. One thing I don't want to have to do is replace major components like the beams sometime in the future because of rot or damage that could be prevented by these extra steps.

Below: All corners have been rounded and exterior fillets started.

At this stage before the fairing goes on, there are also extra reinforcing parts that must be installed on the mast beam, which will bear a much greater load than the other two. Here you can see the top plate doublers that have been glued on in the area of the inner hull gunwales, and the vertical compression struts that connect the top and bottom plates in these areas and at the beam center point, under the mast step.

After the epoxy cured and clamps were removed from these parts, the fillet under the aft edge of the top plate was made. All these fillets will be sanded and touched up as needed until they are smooth. When glassed, faired and painted, the beam parts will hardly be recognizable as wood, but will instead look molded out of fiberglass or plastic. The smoother they are, the less the possibility for moisture to hang around and cause rot.

I did the cutting and fitting of all the beam front fairings this morning. When they are installed the bottom edge will be shaped to match the leading edge of the beam floors. This corner will be filled with thickened epoxy and then rounded off to match the radius of the other corners.

The first step in preparing the fairings for installation is to coat the inside with two coats of epoxy. Here the first coat is drying while the parts are spread across the beams, which also have fresh epoxy fillets curing. This is where I left things at the garage shop this afternoon. The weather is supposed to be good for the next three days or so, and I will be back at the boat shed working on the hulls as much as possible.

Back at the Starboard Bunks

With renewed inspiration from helping David on his Tiki 30, I was back at work on my starboard hull today, after first waiting for it to warm up a bit outside from a low of 35F. Working in south Florida this time of year was nice, with highs in the 80s every day I was there. If I had those conditions and some helpers like David's guys I would be done in no time. Now I'm back to mixing my own epoxy and and doing eveything that has to be done, from reading the plans to sharpening tools and ordering supplies - a true one man operation.

Today I worked on fitting all the bunk stringers that support the access hatches and made the final decision on the size of the opening in the main companionway area of the starboard hull and the placement of the portable head. The bunks are almost ready to go in after I finish detailing the floor and bulkhead fillets under them and getting a second coat of epoxy on all the surfaces below them.

In the photo below you can see the forward end of the stringers for the bunk section in the companionway area. I borrowed the technique used in the Tiki 30 plans for letting in the supports by cutting a 45-degree notch in the supporting bearers to receive a matching angle at the ends of the stringers - simple and strong.

Here the bunk section is temporarily laid in place over the stringers, with the portable toilet in postition against bulkhead 3. This is the only placement that will allow it to fit under the bunks and still be usable without moving it. A sliding wooden lid will fit over it when not in use, serving as a seating area facing aft, where there will be a chart table and navigation instruments.

A view of the bunk sections through the inspection plate opening in bulkhead 1, with stringers epoxied and clamped into position.