Fixing a too-low bulkhead

A couple of smaller steps today that I needed to take care of before moving on to figuring out hatch covers.

First off was figuring out a fix for the top of B5 on the centerboard side. The B5 bulkhead is bisected by the centerboard case, so it comes in two parts - the larger port piece that extends under the cockpit sole, and a smaller piece that attaches to the starboard outboard side of the centerboard piece and provides structural integrity for the hull panels and deck there.

The problem was that when I installed that smaller starboard piece, for some reason it wasn’t tall enough. I didn’t really notice this until after I put the hull planks on, but with the last hull plank in place the tops of all the bulkheads lined up to match the top of the last plank (and provide a gluing surface for the deck later) except for this one, which was a little less then a centimeter short.

Given I was building from a kit, I have no idea how this happened. It’s not like the bottom of the bulkhead was misaligned low or anything.

Anyway, I needed to figure out how to add a small bit of height on to the top of this bulkhead so that the deck would have a surface to lay on and bond to.

I considered just cutting a tiny shim out of plywood of the right depth, but decided it’d be easier to just use epoxy.

So I taped up two blocks of the right length (tape so the epoxy wouldn’t stick to them), rounded them over a bit at the end to fit snugly against the fillet between the bulkhead and the side panel, and then filled the space with thickened epoxy.

It worked great. A little cleanup later and it’s exactly the height and bevel it needs to be for the deck.

The other thing that didn’t do previously was put in cleats for the seats along the transom. I think I just forgot them previously. That’s an easy fix.

I had to setup a level across the top of the other bulkheads to figure out exactly where to attach these on the transom, but overall pretty easy.

Finally, although I’m not sure if I’m going to use one, I decided I might as well insure against the future and put in a backing block for an outboard motor mount.

I built a small template for the size and shape using cardboard, and then used that to cut out two pieces of 9mm plywood from scrap and glue them together.

Installing it required a little bit more of fitting but also went smoothly.

If I were to do this again, I’d do two things differently:

• When putting the cleat on the longitudinal (which I did to help attach the transom), I didn’t bother to cleanup the glue squeezeout as I figured it acted a little like a fillet. I’d clean it up now, since that squeezeout meant I had to compensate with this piece to get a tight fit between the two.

• I probably would have installed this before even installing the hull planking and putting the right bevel on it to match the curve between the transom and bulkheads 7/6 in order to have good contact between it and the hull plank. As it is, there’s just an air gap there now

The other portion of the transom reinforcement for the outboard? I’ve decided I’ll install that after the cockpit sole and seat are installed, as I think that order of operations will be easiest.