decks and hatches

The mast steps are in place and the decks are on. I had been debating whether to leave the decks natural or paint them. I’m going with the paint. So the only natural wood showing will be the hatch covers, the cap for the centerboard trunk, the thwart, the cockpit coaming and the rubrails.

The hatch frames are built and I am in the process of building the hatch covers.

The front hatch is significantly curved, so the hatch cover will be a bit tricky.

A friend took down an old pear tree and milled a few large planks for me. I’m using these for the hatch cover frames and insetting the marine ply.

Milled pear wood

...and the staves that will be used for the hatch cover frames.

Dry fitting the hatch frames.

 

Lots of clamps to get even pressure for the glue-up.

Next up is epoxy coating the decks, sanding and painting the decks and the cockpit. I bought a HVLP sprayer for the painting, but it has been very windy for the past week and looks like it will be for the next several days. So I may just roll the paint on like I did with the hull.

 Then I will bend the coaming into place. The corners for this will require either steaming or soaking in boiling water to make the wood pliable enough to take the bend. My test run from a few weeks ago seemed to work fine as long as I stick with 6mm plywood. Any thicker than that and no amount of steaming will allow it to bend that much.

Bending Jig for Coaming

After the decks are on I will be adding the cockpit coaming which needs to bend in the corners.  The coaming is made from strips of 6mm plywood. The forward end of the cockpit has a 15" radius, which isn't too bad, but the aft end is a 10" radius which is more than the plywood can take before snapping. So, I will need to soak the strips in boiling water for a bit to make them more pliant, then bend the appropriate section on a bending jig and allow them to cool and dry. Here's a pic of a test strip clamped to the jig. After just a few minutes in the soak it made the bend easily.