Now I feel like I’m at the point where I have a bunch of small cleanup type tasks to do before I can start putting hull panels on, which probably means I’m a month or two away from putting hull panels on. But it feels close.
Next up is to get all the cleats on. There’s a crap ton of them - cleats for seat tops, cleats for cabin sole, cleats seemingly all over the place.
First up was to put in the cabin top support beams (which are really just fancy extra long cleats). Now that the mast box was done these can finally be glued in and tie together bulkheads 2, 3 and 4.
All the deck support beams installed in a single shot
Next is to start work on the cabin sole athwartship cleats. I wanted to include here cleats on all four sides of the footwell as I intend to build a removable cover for the footwell to allow me to sleep on cabin sole and so I need the cleats to eventually support the cover.
Athwartship cleats on the footwell and water tank
Next up was to cut out still more cleats - this included athwartship cleats for the extra footwell bulkhead as well as bulkhead 7, fore-aft cleats for both sides of every section below the cabin sole, as well as all the seat cleats on both port and starboard sides.
All the cleats, laid out in position
For my cleats I’m using cedar that I purchased in raw 2x8’s that I’ve ripped down to 20x30mm. I usually choose the unfinished sides to glue, as I figure those give extra good surfaces for the epoxy to grab to. I also found it was a lot easier to setup the router table with a 1/2" roundover bit installed in order to round over the one exposed corner on these cleats, and it made quick work of all of them in one go.
I’m still using clamps only for gluing everything up, and so at the moment I can only glue as many in one go as I have enough clamps for (well, enough reasonable clamps. Yes I have a dusty pile of C-clamps, but those are so annoying to use compared to spring clamps). The above photos see my spring clamp collection basically maxed out, and so I wait for epoxy to cure until I glue some more.
My list of things to do before I put the first hull panel on includes:
- a few more cleats to glue in (including all of the fore-aft cleats for the cockpit sole)
- drill out and redo my centerboard pin
- install the drain plug for the water tank
- fillet and glass the footwell
Like I said - probably a month or two. Sigh.