The next step was to decide how I wanted to cap off the top of my cockpit edges. As you’ll see, this step was a lot of laminating that was slow going - I didn’t make a lot of progress on this over the course of September/October (it actually dragged into November but I’m writing this update a little late obviously after it was completed).
Seat back reinforcement rail #
I took inspiration (well, ok, maybe slightly more then just inspiration) from WoodnMetal guy’s site
- I basically just copied what he did there, since I liked the look of it, thought it would be pretty functional, and would provide me with enough “meat” for a cockpit rail for installing the oarlocks I want.
So I bought some CVG (clear vertical grain) fir and cut out some strips for the reinforcement rails on the outside of the seat backs. I just used two strips of roughly 0.5" x 0.75" and laminated them first directly onto the curve of the seat backs before then gluing the lamination directly on to the seat back.
Plastic in place protecting seat back while laminations glue up
I thought about gluing them on to the seat back at the same time as gluing the two strips together but thought that would get too messy too quickly. The draw back of not doing that is that I had to wait for epoxy to cure before moving on to the next step - hence why this took so long.
Gluing both port and starboard reinforcement rails on to seat backs at the same time
While the fir is a much harder wood when compared to something like cedar, I still needed to use blocks of woods with the clamps (especially with C clamps) to make sure no marks were left after clamping.
The turn in #
Final step was to cut and shape the turn in piece for the forward end of both port and starboard. These were made from the excess length of the original lamination.
These turned out pretty nice but had one slight problem - I didn’t bevel the edge that glued against the cockpit seat back itself, meaning that after these were installed the tops of them were sloped down and away from the cockpit - the slope wasn’t even with the reinforcement rail on the rest of the cockpit seat. This wouldn’t be a big problem, but it would require a little more effort when putting the cap on itself.
Rounding off the aft ends
Seat back caps themselves #
These were made in the same way, out of roughly 0.5" x 0.75" strips of CVG fir. Preparing the strips for these, however, taught me all about grain run out in lumber and why it could be a problem.
Grain run out #
When I originally ripped my fir down to size, I ripped each strip slightly wider then I needed and then ran the resultant strips through a planar to get them down to size. This worked ok for one set of strips but for the other as I put them through the planar I kept getting these gigantic splinters that were forming on the corners of the pieces as they were coming out of the planar. Some of these were so large (think 8" to 10" long and quite thick) that when they broke off they’d leave a noticeable chunk missing from the fir strip itself.
You can see the grain direction here and some small splinters forming
These were all formed by the grain of the wood, rather then running the length of the strip itself, exiting the strip at an angle. That’s where the sliver would start and run backwards up the strip until eventually tearing out.
This made cutting and laminating the seat tops in such a way to ensure a smooth surface very difficult to do. As it was I had to fill a couple of gouges with epoxy. This CVG fir was indeed clear and vertical grain, but a few pieces had some pretty significant run out that bit me - something to watch for in the future.
Laminating the seat caps #
First step was a dry fit, mostly to test the clamp strategy.
Two pieces clamped with downward pressure against the seat top
After figuring out the clamping setup would work, I applied tape to the tops of the seat backs and along the deck underneath to catch epoxy drips, and started the lamination with the first two pieces, curved in place to match the seat top and held in place with bar clamps applying downward pressure.
The big wood clamps just help make sure the curve of the two pieces being laminated is correct
After that setup the next two pieces were laminated to the first two (each were laminated one at a time - again, these laminations took me a long time). The bar clamps were still holding everything in position, but now smaller clamps were used to bring the new pieces into the curve and hold them tight.
After the lamination was done I pulled off the packing tape and was ready to glue it directly on to the seat top. I just needed to first clean up epoxy squeeze out and round over some edges first.
Disaster strikes #
After cleaning up the squeeze out and sanding the piece smooth, next step was to put some roundovers on the top corners and a small one on the bottom outward edge. The starboard side went easily, but when I went to add the round overs to the port side the grain run out problem really bit me, hard.
That happened during the routing of a 1/4" round over. The gashes were so large no amount of epoxy was going to smooth that out.
So I decided to cut off two of the laminations on the bandsaw and glue new strips on and try again.
Glued up just on the bench top this time
When routing this one out I made sure to note where the grain ran out and tried to make sure the router bit didn’t go “against the grain” on these sections. That meant not routing an edge in the same direction along the length of the seat cap - I had to stop and turn it around more then once. However, with care, it worked (there was still some tear out, but not nearly as bad).
Port side glued on
Fitting the turn in piece #
I cut the forward edge of the seat caps off at a sort-of 45 degree angle (I just eyeballed it). Then I had to figure out how to cut a piece that fit the space for the cap turn in.
The piece fit first go (love using templates) but it had a couple of problems - if laid flat onto the reinforcement rail it would be at the wrong angle, and it looked too small. So I first cut an angled piece to add to the front edge to fix the latter problem.
That looks better
I also added some wedges between the reinforcement rail and the cap itself along the turn in portion in order to make sure the top was a smooth surface at the same angle the length of the seat cap.
Dry fitting the wedges in
Gluing them in involved clamping them with downward force to the bottom of the seat back itself.
Final bits #
The final bits to complete for the cap rails were:
- add a fillet underneath the cap rail between it and the reinforcement rail
- three coats of epoxy over everything
Like I said, while I started this process in September but didn’t fully finish it until halfway through December. Doing those laminations one piece at a time really took a lot of time.
But I did do a few other projects in between, read on to see some of those.