Now with the holes cut out and the “shelf” that each hatch cover would rest on glued in, it was time to tackle the hatch covers themselves, along with the bungie attachment points in the seat wells. This is all in preparation for eventually being able to glue the seat tops themselves into the boat.
Prepare the seat tops #
The first step was to deal with the glue squeeze out on the shelves holding the hatch covers. I want the hatch covers to be as tight a fit as possible, so any glue squeeze out here needs to be removed.
Removing the glue squeeze out was surprisingly hard to do. I used more then a few techniques, but this was ultimately the one that did the most work.
I don't even know what this drill bit is called...
With those removed, the seat hatch covers now fit nicely in place.
If you look closely, you’ll also notice that they’re sitting slightly below the level of the surrounding seat top - that’s exactly what I was aiming for by adding the spacer to the glue up of the shelves themselves. When I add in the gasket, these should sit near perfectly flush with the seat top.
Glue up the hatch covers #
For the hatch covers themselves, I decided to add a backing piece of ply for extra stiffness. This would obviously need to be sized to fit within the shelf of the hatch cutout in the seat tops, but I wasn’t concerned about making this a particularly tight fit.
I also decided I’d use screw in metal hooks on the underside of the hatch covers in order to grab the bungie cords, and for these I needed to make the hatch covers even a little thicker yet so I added in a firring strip on each side.
Everything cut out, still need to trim the corners off the firring strip
Install the bungie attachment points #
The bungie cords will hook on to the hatch covers but from there will need to run somewhere within the seat wells. The force on the bungie cords should be mostly down (as opposed to out to the side) in order to pull the hatch cover down into the seat top securely.
I wound up cutting up some small oak blocks through which I could drill holes and thread bungy cord through with a stopper knot.
From there, figuring out where to glue them inside the boat was a bit of a balancing act between getting nice downward force on the hatch covers and also not having bungie cords taking up space by running through the center of the open space under the seats.
Getting these installed was a touch annoying. I didn’t want to (and in some cases didn’t have access to) drill through the outer plywood for a drill into the block, so I just epoxied them in place. I used some packing tape to hold them in place which…worked well enough, I suppose.
See both sides at once
I haven’t actually painted the underside of the hatch covers yet, which I’ll probably do before they’re considered done. I’ll also be installing a small fabric loop in them so that they can be opened after the bungies are installed.
But next it’s time to get the cockpit sole ready for installation.