With the centerboard case done, it was time to tack together everything with some epoxy glue and get bulkheads 4 through 7 along with the two seat longitudinals and the centerboard case setup and ready for filleting. The boat will truly turn 3-D now!
First step was to dry fit everything. This took a looong time to get everything to sit right, and involved quite a bit of finicky work. Interesting that I have never really read any other build blogs talk about this step, but it took a long time for me to get evrything to line up well without any large spaces. Steps I had to take included (but weren’t limited to):
- getting out my chisel and squaring off all of the slots on the bottom of the boat to remove the rounded corners
- using a file to square off the corners on the inside cuts of each tab on the seat longitudinals as well as the bulkheads
- adding some shims between the hull bottom and the build jig to help push the bottom up to better match the curve of the seat longitudinals near their end at the transom
- using some wire stitches to hold the seat longitudinal to the hull bottom near the transom (one on each seat longitudinal)
- getting out my rasp to remove material in the center of bulkhead 7
Even after all this work, I still found that the centerboard case and seat longitudinal were sitting a little far forward, making the slot at the very front of the centerboard case where bulkhead 4 is supposed to fit into too small. I’m not sure why this was the case - perhaps the curve of the hull on the jig was too much, causing the horizontal length to be just a bit too small? I wouldn’t expect this type of problem with a computer cut kit…
At any rate, I just pulled out my rasp and removed some material at the front of the centerboard cutout on the hull bottom in order to make enough room for the tab from bulkhead 4 to fit in.
I managed to get everything to fit relatively well. Everything, that is, except for the damn centerboard case…
Slightly out of alignment at the top
You can see here that when building it on my benchtop, apparently I didn’t notice that I glued it up such that the top of outer side wasn’t in line with the seat longitudinal itself, but rather slightly lower then it. Crap. You can really see this if you look below the hull - the centerboard case is sitting quite a bit lower then the hull bottom itself.
Much more noticeable misalignment on the bottom
Ah well. Getting the bottom to be level will be some quick work with a rasp. Getting the top of the case to be level with the seat top might be a bit more challenging. I’ll have to think about how to maybe add material onto the centerboard cap cover to make it sit level or something.
Other then that, in general, you can see I need a few stitches to get the hull bottom to pull closely to the seat longitudinals near the stern, I also used some shims to raise the stern of the hull bottom up a bit which worked well.
I also added the cleat behind bulkhead five on the starboard side as the bulid manual calls for, as well as a cleat on the port side of the port longitudinal that I used for attaching bulkhead 4 to - that made putting bulkhead 4 in much easier, as I could screw it into both this cleat as well as the forward centerboard cleat to hold it vertical while the epoxy setup.
An added cleat to make bulkhead 4 attachment easier
Next up is dry fitting the stem, bulkheads 1 through 3, and the mast box.