Footbrace Installation and Gluing the Deck onto the Hull

Last post noted I will be taking a little time off from the building project.  That time was to do a couple volunteer activities I really enjoyed.  The first was a week of working at a Senior PGA golf tournament.  The Boeing Classic.  I've done this for 5 years now.  My job is to be a walking scorer.  That means I walk with the pros and keep track of their scores.  Every shot is recorded.  Kind of fun to be closely involved with the golfers.  As I record each shot, I also record where the shot was taken from and what club is used.  All this goes into the stats.  And it is also real-time for the tournament scoreboards and The Golf Channel.

After that activity, I volunteered for the Jim Marsh Classic.  Jim Marsh is kind of a local basketball legend in the Seattle area.  He played briefly in Portland with the Trailblazers.  When that was over, he founded the AAU organization called Friends of Hoops that has sent a lot of local  kids, boys and girls, to D-1 colleges and the pros.  Jim has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.  So the tournament is run to support charity for the disease.  It's a 3 on 3 basketball tournament held in Seattle on the streets of Georgetown.  Pretty big event.  Sixteen courts are set up and basketball is played from morning to night.  My job there is called Court Monitor.  What that means is, get the teams organized to start the games, run the clock, run the scoreboard, clarify rules and generally keep the games running smoothly.

SO, done with that and back to the boat.  After fiberglassing the inside of the hull, it was time to install the footbraces.  First step is to locate the studs that the footbraces will be mounted on.  The kit comes with instructions detailing how to locate the studs. At the end of the instructions, it notes, but wait, if you are over 6 feet tall call us first.  What that meant was to ignore what the instructions say.  Essentially, move the braces further down the boat a few inches.  Here is what that looks like.

 

 

You will also notice in the above picture that I've sanded the inside of the shear in preparation for gluing the deck onto the hull.  That's the next step.

 

 

Gluing the deck onto the hull was pretty simple.  Surprising how well the shape of the deck and hull was maintained throughout the process.  It (the deck) sat fairly well aligned on the hull.  The process had me tape it down to keep the alignment correct.  I also added 6 stitches (3 on each side) to further secure the deck to the hull and maintain a good alignment with the sheer seam.  Then simply use epoxy to fill the sheer seam.  How I did this was prop the boat on its side to get one of the seams, and the next day, do the other.  I had to do this a couple times to insure I got the seams fully filled.  Here it is after I removed all the tape and stitches.

 

Have to admit, I'm pleased with the result so far.  The next step is to fillet and glass the inside of the sheer seam.  The instructions give me the option to put this step off until after I cut the holes for the hatches so I will have better access to fill the inside of the seams up the bow and down the stern.  So I'll wait for that, after I glass the outside of the deck.

But not so fast!  To glass the deck, first I applied a saturation coat of epoxy to the deck.  Then sand the sheer seam to give it a good rounded edge.  Then run masking tape below the shear seam locate where the fiberglass cloth edge will be cut after the initial coat of epoxy.  Then lay the cloth over the stern, cut it to the correct size, and use the remaining cloth to lay over the bow.

And this is where it went wrong (again!!)  When I laid the remaining cloth over the bow this is what I ended up with.

Not quite enough cloth to do the job.  You can see there is an adequate amount of cloth over the stern half of the boat.  But the bow cloth is too skinny.  I called Pygmy, and after they stopped laughing, we came to the conclusion that I must have made a mistake when I was cutting cloth during a previous step, probably while glassing the hull.  No worries, I can buy more.  Since I have planned to go to Port Townsend tomorrow, during the Wooden Boat Festival, I'll just get some then.