For a more thorough and professional explanation, see Lackey Sailing, LLC
The morning of November 14th began with water washing and sanding the engine room bulkhead as well as the cabin sole floor timber just aft of the port primary bulkhead.
One of two cabin sole floor timbers, shown below, sits just aft of the port primary bulkhead, or mast bulkhead. This floor timber was constructed of three laminations of 18mm meranti, glued and screwed. The gluing consisted of West System epoxy thickened with cabosil. Just forward of this mast bulkhead, I will eventually continue the floor timber, and build it out of 2 laminations of 18mm meranti.
As I prepared the previous day's epoxy work for eventual tabbing / additional epoxy bonding, Tim began work on finding the position for the head's forward bulkhead - plumb and perpendicular to the boat's center line. I joined Tim in time for positioning and templating of the inboard section of this two-part bulkhead. Cardboard is a great resource for templating bulkheads, partitions, cabin soles, etc.
Tim making final scribe marks to the inboard portion of the head's forward bulkhead.
Off the boat, Tim and transferred the template to a fresh sheet of 18mm meranti, and proceeded to cut out the inboard portion of the head's forward bulkhead. Once cut, we carried it back onto the boat, solvent washed the edges that would exposed to the hull, and also solvent washed the portion of the hull and overhead that would be receiving this second part of this two-part bulkhead. With all surfaces cleaned with solvent (acetone), I headed down to my shop and mixed a small batch of "neat" epoxy to paint onto the edges of the bulkhead that would be in contact with the boat's surfaces (hull, cabin trunk, and overhead). After I had brushed on the straight epoxy, I mixed another batch of epoxy, this time thickened with cabosil. Lines drawn onto the hull and overhead for both sides of this bulkhead provided a place for the thickened epoxy to be spread. Tim and I then placed this second bulkhead into position, working the squeeze out along the joint between bulkhead and hull, and bulkhead and overhead. We filled any small gaps between the two sections of this bulkhead and cleaned of the remaining epoxy mixture.
Looking aft from the v-berth.
Next, we turned to the cabin sole layout. The Westsail 32 water tanks are still being built for owners today, though with a plastic material. The original stainless steel water tank dimensions have been recreated with plastic tanks. I will be installing two of these water tanks, and so their height dimension dictated the cabin sole height. The previous day, Tim and I set the forward cabin sole floor timber at the height I desired, and that would leave sufficient room for the water tanks (15" from the bilge floor to the bottom of the plywood substrate). We now extended a string aft, and using a string level found where on the engine room bulkhead the bottom of the plywood substrate would eventually intersect.
After marking the location of the bottom surface of the plywood substrate onto the engine room bulkhead, we drew a horizontal line across the lower portion of the bulkhead, and installed a temporary cleat. Using various length levels resting on the aft cleat and the forward cabin sole timber, we spanned them out onto the hull sides and made level marks - these marks indicated where the bottom surface of the cabin sole substrate would encounter the hull. Limited to a 4' level, we then took measures off the string for the middle portion of the roughly 11' cabin sole.
Once we had level marks along the port and starboard hull, indicating the bottom surface of the cabin sole's substrate, we began to fashion small knees out of polyisocyanurate foam. We shaped the small knees to the hull form, set just below the cabin sole marks, and then hot-glued into place.
Pictured below are the cabin sole supports (knees) hot-glued into place. The aft pair were later to be scrapped, as I opted for another floor timber (a lamination of 4 pieces of 18 meranti.
Shown below is the glued and screwed 4-piece meranti lamination. In this photo the floor timber has been shaped, painted with neat epoxy, and then set in thickened epoxy. This wrapped up the day's work.
Total Time: 8.5 Hrs.
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