Next up was getting ready to put the deck on. Not actually putting the deck on, just doing all the work necessary to get ready to put the deck on.
Centerboard uphaul line #
So first up was to finally drill the hole for the centerboard uphaul line. I had been putting this off while I waited for the special turning block to arrive from Duckworks, and that wound up being back ordered for a good 8 months (sigh), but it finally arrived.
When positioning the hole I needed to:
- measure down from the top of the inside to make sure the rope will not hit the centerboard cover. My cover has roughly a 1" piece of cedar that extends down into the centerboard case when installed, so the rope definitely had to come out lower then that.
- Also make sure that the rope enters the case at a place roughly even with the top of the centerboard when it is all the way up. This makes sure it is as easy as possible to raise the centerboard all the way.
- Ensure the exit hole on the front of bulkhead 4 is such that
- It’s the right distance away from the edge to fit the turn block correctly
- It’s far enough down such that once the turn block turns it around the corner the rope is below the cockpit cleats for the rowing seat
All told, there was a lot going on to make sure that this was positioned correctly. Ideally I would have wanted it to slope downward as it entered the centerboard case as well so that any water would drain down back into the centerboard case, but as it happens, given my requirements above, it actually sloped the other way. Oh well, if water gets into this thing I’m probably sinking already ;)
And of course, wouldn’t you know it, but the perfect positioning for the hole had me lined up to drill through one of the few screws I had used to attach the centerboard case to bulkhead 4.
Had to drill through this screw
(Next boat I build when I use screws for clamps I think I’m going to remove them all and fill the holes with epoxy - otherwise they just get in the way like this, and contribute to potential problems down the road if water gets to ’em)
For the copper tube that fit in the hole I bought a very expensive pipe flaring tool from home depot and used it to flare one end of the pipe before promptly returning it. I also needed to figure out if I needed to flare the holes themselves to accept the flared pipe or whether the act of flaring the pipe would compress the wood enough.
On the left, the hole is flared, on the right it's not. You can see it's quite proud on the right side
And so I flared each end of the hole itself so that the pipe would better sit in it.
Hole flared ready for the copper tube
After trying my best to seal the inside of the hole first with unthickened epoxy (allowing the bare wood to suck up all it needed) and secondly with thickened epoxy, I put a bunch in the hole and then slid the copper tube through. At that point it was time to flare the other side.
The final result. The flares on both sides of the tube are pretty flat with the wood surface and overall look pretty good. You can see the epoxy drip down the centerboard case from the hole - shoulda put some tape below to catch that, but oh well, a little extra impact reistance for that part of the centerboard case now I guess.
Cleat backing #
Next up was adding backing plates for cleats. Figuring out where to put these was more difficult than it needed to be, and I’m still not sure I’m completely settled on this. Some scamps have two cleats for fenders, some have three, and the location of all of them is a little up in the air.
At any rate, I wanted these to be super strong, so I bought some quartersawn white oak 1x stock and cut out a few pieces to fit between the hull and the carlins. I cut pieces to fit between bulkheads 6 and 7, 5 and 6, and 4 and 5, but only installed the ones now between 4 and 5. The others I will potentially install after the deck goes on to make installation a little easier with just gluing directly to the underside of the deck.
After epoxying these in I had to take a little wood off the top to shape them to fit the deck camber and found the easiest way to do that was with my grinder and a sanding disc installed - quartersawn white oak is no joke.
Epoxy Coats #
With the uphaul tube installed and the backing plates installed for at least one set of cleats, last up is to prepare the cockpit of the boat itself, since after the deck goes on access will become harder. So I’ve decided to epoxy coat/sand/prime/paint the entire thing before putting the deck on. At this point, I’ve just done the epoxy coats (three in the cockpit, three on all of the hatch covers).
Next up is sanding, priming, and painting. I also just learned that even Russell Brown, he of the boat building firm and author of epoxy boat building books, believes that paint sticks just fine to sanded epoxy without primer, so I don’t really need the primer after all, but at this point I bought it so I’m going with it…