I am now fitting the cabin sides and working towards fitting the main deck. The basic interior and all the large fittings including engine and tanks (water and diesel) are installed as once the deck is on they will not come out again. (engine will squezzz out of the main hatch). A few photos:
Charlotte’s painting the areas that the tanks get fitted into and the first ply layers of the side decks are in place.
I made the tanks from 2.5 mm 316 stainless steel. I needed three sheets (8x4) to make the 4 tanks.
Two 20 gallon fuel tanks (40 Total) and two 60 gallon (120 total) tanks for fresh water.
I used a plasma cutter (thanks John) to blast out all the flat sheets. this was qui
ck and easy as you can use a straight edge (10mm ply) clamped down the the sheet metal and just run the cutting head down this. Far easier than angle grinding! I then use flap disks in a 4”grinder to remove what little slag is left from the cut. I had cut out all the sides in an afternoon. Then it was just a case of tacking all the sides together every 6 inches or so before seam welding it all together using a TIG welder. I added stiffening bars in the middle of the sides to prevent the sides bulging out when full of water/diesel.
I made 10 inch inspection hatches on the tops of all the tanks . Adding these and all the pick up pipes / fillers seemed to take longer than making the main tanks. In all these tanks took me 8 days to make which i think has been well worth while at this stage.
Planking
Epoxy glued and stainless ring-shank nailed to stringers - Screwed & epoxyed at the stem and stern post. Two layers of 10mm on the topsides and two 10mm’s + 6mm on the bottom. All the ply is scarfed and epoxy sandwiched together. This part of the job consumed a shed load of epoxy (West system) but had made a solid job.
painting and epoxy - glass cloth/peel ply . Sticky messy job. The whole hull covered with 200g glass cloth set in epoxy.
two pack primer
Now onto laminating all the frames up - these are principally longitudinal frames on each chine to provide glue area to attach the ply. Each made up from three tim
bers measuring either 5”x3/4” or 3”x3/4” laminated together around the moulds to make up the main shape of the boat. Lots of clamps and balcot
an polyurethane glue were used. These timbers at there longest were 37’ so most had two scarfs to make up the lengths.
The five inch timbers needed to be steam bent around the stern as they had a compound style curve to them. All had a staggered style lap joint into the stem and stern post which had also been laminated and fixed to the moulds.
Interestingly while steaming some 16’ sections to get the aft bend around the sheer, inevitably some of the scarf joints got steamed too. They did not move or even lift at the feather edge - good old Balcotan.
All the joints were epoxy-glued and fixed with silicon bronze fastenings. Where required bolted together with stainless steel bar.
Above is the stem in place - Laminated around a mold. It has not yet had the stringers jointed into the ends. On the right is a detail of the
staggered style lap joint used!
Now having made up the male mold to build the hull upon (its built upside-down) I decided to start from the bottom (top?!) and construct the steel framework for the fin keel. A few reasons for this firstly being that i thought it was too cold (-5!) for gluing all the boat timbers together and secondly to give the timber more time to season (dry out). I had the timber for constructing the framework and masts for the boat cut back in September 2009. All this timber is Scottish Douglas Fir locally sourced.
The keel.
The shape of the keel is formed using 13mm steel re-bar. Again starting with a full size drawing of the profiles taken from J.Benfords offsets then carefully bending the bar to shape and welding all the bits together. This framework then gets three layers of mesh tied to it and two tons of cement and scrap iron poured in. I have decided to leave this until the summer months when its warmer to ensure a good cement cure. TBC...!!
