A little more work on the transom

Tonight I cut two more holes in the transom. A 1" drain hole, and a square hole for the boomkin.
That makes a grand total of 17 perforations through my transom. Six for the Duckworks motor mount, eight holes for the gudgeons, and three more for the tiller, boomkin and drain!  I hope the boat will still float despite all these holes!

Another challenge was how to trim all the planks flush with the transom. I thought about using a saw but was afraid of scratching the surface of the transom and chipping the planks. Then I thought Id carefully whittle away at them with a sharp chisel. That would have taken forever.  I ended up using the Gain Machine


I set the Gain Machine so that the router bit was flush with the bottom of the base, like this:

Then, holding the base firmly against the transom, I used the Gain Machine to route the protruding planks flush with the transom.

The planks were perfectly flush a few minutes later.

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Work has started on the super structure

The axle work continues, just not by me. Due to me being busy with work and not wanting to mess with re building the dually axle I procured, I happily delivered it to JCM Equipment so they could put bearings in the axle. This axle has turned in to a loosing deal, but Im too far in to it to call it quits at this point. The easiest way to explain the dual wheeled axle I got for free is that this has been  the most expensive "free"  Ive ever found. I should probably end this thought with a Gumpism and say that "this is all I have to say about this right  now"

So, while I wait for the axle to  be picked up from JCM, I started work on the wheel house and salon, which I will now call the super structure. All the parts for the super structure were scattered around the barn years ago, and it took me half a Saturday to round them up and inventory everything I actually  had some of the long frame pieces stashed away in the roof trusss. I found everything, and checking my stash against the working drawings, every piece is accounted for.

After inventorying all the parts, the first order of business was to drill all the frames for the bolts that would be used to fasten the framing timber with. One of the mistakes I made on building the hull was to not drill all t he frames before I erected them. Drilling on the drill press will save me hours of work. Using 1/4" bolt is what I plan on doing, so I drilled all the holes to 5/16. The overage gives me plenty of room for paint and will help prevent skinning up the hole when I drill for the timber. After I drilled all the holes, I used a counter sink to ease the edge and give me a more paint friendly hole.

When you break the super structure down in to its most simple form, its basically a box. Four sides with a roof. Because of having to build the boat in two pieces, it also made the most sense to build the super structure as panels. Assembling the panels went very quick. Because all the parts were cut on a CNC machine, the accuracy of the parts is amazing. The really nice thing about having the metal cut via CNC is that the designer also had all the layout lines burned in to the metal. My appreciation to Bruce Roberts and Hal Whitacre on their attention to detail. A nice surprise I discovered while assembling these four panels is that the designer gave each panel a slight outbound crown. The crown is slight enough, about an inch over the length of the 16 salon panel  you see hanging from my skid steer loader, but not so severe as to interfere with the window installation. I dont know the reason for giving these panels a slight crown, but my guess is that the crown puts some tension on the metal and will help it to fair up much nicer.

The salon skin showed up at the shop with the window openings already cut out. The wheel house has the window rough openings burned in to the metal, and only the door openings are cut out. Im going to wait until I have the panel welded in place before I cut out the windows.  I already have the windows on site, I just want to wait  until the panel is in place as this will be help keep the panel shape as per design.

You can see on this picture below how the wheel house sheathing arrived at my place. The precision of the CNC plasma cutting is amazing. As you can see from this picture, the wheel house side is in three pieces. All I have to do is grind a bevel in the outside joints that will be ground flush. Turn the pieces over, kick them together so they line up, and tack them. The next step is to put the longitudinal stringers on the layout lines that were laser burned in to the metal and tack them in place. Making sure the sheathing is tight to the longitudinal stringers assures the panel will take the shape the of the design. Once all the longs are tacked in place the frames are fit over  the longs and tacked in place. The frames have all the notches cut in them including the mouse holes so no water can get trapped and start a crevice corrosion situation. The longitudinal stringers were also cut by the CNC machine so the designed shape is formed by the longs.  On this size project, with all the framing I had to do, I have yet had an situation where no part fit any less than perfect. 

All the panels are assembled and stacked against the barn wall while I begin taking the boat off of the building cradle and sitting her on the axles. JCM has told me the axle will be ready for me to pick up mid to week. I have to make a trip to the steel yard and pick up some square tube to build stanchions for helping support the boat on the axles. I hope to have her sitting on the axles after this coming weekend.

Im feeling pretty good about finally being able to assemble the super structure. Its a big piece of structure, but I feel as if it will go together quickly and without any major hiccups. I am pretty sure I have a plan that will allow me to do some good layout and build the super structure so that it will mate with the hull in a good way.

Cheers

Cheers

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Work Bench

Im kind of in need of a quick easy project ( if there is such a thing on a yacht build), so I decided to build a work bench for the engine room. I have quite a few engine room projects coming up and I want to be able to sit comfortably while I get things done. Im also getting tired of having tools and parts scattered everywhere, so Im also contemplating some cabinets and a tool box in the not to distant future.

I dont have any decent plywood laying around the shop, but I do have about 1600 board feet of rough sawn Cherry thats been air drying for the last three years. Its a bit more work to have to joint boards and edge glue them together vs sawing some plywood, but I dont mind. If I can save myself $50.00 for the cost of a sheet of plywood and a trip to the supply house, Im happy to use some of the rough sawn lumber I have.

Its been a while since Ive messed in wood so I had to go over the jointer and make sure it was tuned up. I only had to make a slight adjustment to get the two beds parallel, but other than that, all looked good. After I planed some stock to 3/4", I ran the stock through the table saw a few times to straighten it out a bit. I cut the stock a few inches long, then I ran it all through the jointer to finish the edge. Using a biscuit joiner with #2 biscuits to reinforce the joints, I glued up the panel.

After the glue had cured, I flattened the panel with my air sander using 80 grit paper. My next step was to go over the panel with a DA sander a few times, finishing up with 220 grit. I rounded over the outside edge of the panel, and applied a fiddle to the starboard side. I put a fiddle on this edge since anything that can roll this direction has a good chance of landing in the bilge underneath the engine. Retrieving things from this area would be a pain so Im trying to head things off with the fiddle.

Im putting a satin finish on the work bench just to help it stay a little clean. Ive never had a finish on a work bench as most of my work benches are steel. I want a wood surface on the boat so Im not limited as to what I can do at the bench. Steel benches and wood working tools dont mix so well, so wood makes the most sense.

Installing the bench against #9 bulkhead was about as straight forward as one can get. I did have to mess around with the height of my stool/bench combination. The height of the bench came to 33", and the height of the stool will be 23". This is a comfortable height and allows me to sit upright while not hitting my my head on frame #10. I screwed cleats to the fuel tank and #9 bulkhead to support the bench and also fabricated a leg out of stainless steel tube. If the need arises, the bench will be very easy to remove and replace.

I bought a 5" vise to install on the bench, but after sitting the vice on the bench I was not happy with it. The vice dominated the bench, and just plain took up too much room. A smaller vice would not be the answer, as I hate being limited by having too small a vice for such an important tool. A vice is one of my most used tools in my shop, and I want one on my boat. I compromised with myself, and found another location. Aft of the bench where the sole steps up will actually become a good location for the vice. I can sit comfortably on the step and work at the vice. Im not as limited to the size of work as I would have been in the work bench corner. I can also remove the sole on the step below the vice and pick up another 10" of depth if need be. I"ll have to remove the sole around the vice, reinforce things, then re install a dedicated piece of sole that the vice bolts through. By doing this, I can leave the vice bolted in place and remove pieces of sole to a gain access under the sole for maintenance and future work.

Even though the bench is not as large as Im used too, its going to be nice having a work bench on my boat.

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Back to work on the boat

Its been a while since Ive made a post but Im happy to say that Im back to working on the boat. Life seems to get in the way of things we want to do, and Ive recently had a run in with just such an episode. Getting the house ready for winter, a short lived uptick in my business ( business is still way down and dropping), pulling the Caver boat out of the water and winterizing, cutting firewood for the shop and house, blah, blah, blah. I"ll quit bitching now, but Im sure all who might read this will be able to relate.

The next job at hand on Conalls big boat build is to finish getting ready for the insulator to do his thing. I need to finish painting the engine room witch is turning into quite a bit of unfinished business. My list of what needs to be done in the engine room is as follows:

- Install the generator and weld in all the fittings for the water lift exhaust system.
- Weld close the generator access hole.
- Install ac and dc electric conduits and various junction boxes and fixture boxes.
- Install the center baffle on the exhaust/intake trunk
- Re-prime the engine room with etching primer, then top coat with Alkyd Enamel
- Install all the wood firing.

This is the abbreviated version of my list as I still have ac and dc conduit work to do in the master stateroom, forward cabin, and head. All in all I would have to guess that Ill have a solid month worth of work to get her to the point of being ready to insulate.

I"ll start to post some pictures as I move forward. Ive found that this boat building thing seems to go a little easier if I break the "big boat build" down into about 80,000 smaller jobs that make up the "big boat build". I might continue this post and add to it as I mover forward, or Ill post a separate entry for each of the micro jobs I get finished.

Conall

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Foredeck finish work

Now that I have finish paint on the fore deck, I had a few bits I could wrap up and get them off of ye ole list.

The first item to wrap up was the door on the pulpit. This is one of those items I have to give an old WTF was I thinking when I designed this. The door part is OK as this will make a nice place to store anchor lines, dock lines and even a shore power cord. The WTF thing comes for why I put all those bolt holes in the door. All I needed was one bolt that I could use a large wing type bolt to hold the door fast. Im thinking I was planning on storing air in this locker, and maybe I was afraid the air thieves were going to stop by and get some of the old O2 I was keeping safely behind door number one. ??? I also had someone ask about the notch in the side of the pulpit for my air hose connection and my wash down hose connection. Heres a better picture of the notch I created in the side of the pulpit. I need to find nice looking flush, black plastic caps I can silicone in to fill all those bolt holes. The pulpit is framed out of 1 1/2" stainless pipe, and stainless plate was used for sheathing. Everything on the pulpit is stainless steel, so when I dont have to worry about rust from chipping paint while we handle the anchoring gear. I notched the bottom of the frame so I could easily hose out under the pulpit and make it easy to maintain. I had originally set this up for a chain windlass and I was afraid that water could get down into the pulpit via the chain hawser. The handle for the door is 1" stainless bar that I bent, and also doubles the step to get up on the pulpit. The door is hinged with fixed pins that I fabricated on the lathe so the door opens 180 degrees. I might need to add some gasket material to the door in case it vibrates or rattles... well see about that. I wrapped the handrail around the pulpit to help keep anyone on board when the need arises to to climb out on the pulpit and deal with something.

The other item I was able to finish was installing the guest cabin hatch. Early in the build, I had planned on making my own hatch. After I had the wood work finished in the guest cabin, I decided to use a commercially made hatch. Instead of re doing the hatch coaming, I modified it a bit and bought a Lewmar Ocean Hatch. I like the hatch, and it seems to be well made and robust enough for what I intend to do. Theres really not much I dont like about the hatch. It dogs down tight and compresses the gasket, it has adjustable tension on the hinges to hold it open in any position one would want, its lockable, and it opens from the outside as long as it is not locked. Im glad I did not try to fabricate this hatch.

The third item I have completed are the vents for the guest cabin. These vents are what I would call a dorade style vent. Because of the Portuguese bridge, and the high bulwarks, it made no sense to have the vents on the deck. To get the vents up where the air is going to be moving, I welded six inch pipes to allow the vents to be higher. The dorade end of this contraption is some boxes I fabricated out of stainless, and that I can bolt to the pipe/bracket/pad I welded to the deck and Portuguese bridge. The basic layout of this box is that the air enters the vent, and goes travels down the six inch pipe into the cabin. I welded a bulkhead in the frame to stop water from getting down the six inch pipe. I also held the pipe proud high of the frame as another damn to discourage water from getting in the boat. If things get real ugly, the cowl vents can be quickly unscrewed from the box and water tight deck plates then screw in. On the bottom of the box, below the cowl vent intake, I drilled a one inch hole in the bottom of the bracket. This hole is to allow water to drain out. To stop wasps from nesting in the box, I glued a piece of screen over the hole using some clear silicone caulk. Another reason I held the pipe proud high of the bracket, was so that I could use some hose clamps to secure more screen over the pipes to keep the bugs out of the cabin. I want to make sure that I can keep air flowing in and out of the boat while we are away from it while keeping it secure and weather tight. It also goes without saying that the more passive ventilation there is on board, will make the boat a happy place to be. When were under way, the Lewmar hatch will be closed and the Dorade vents will be supplying air to the guest cabin. Im not a 100% happy with the way I came up with ventilating the boat in this particular area, and I wish the designer would have offered a design for this. I think its good that the cowls are up high where the air can actually get to them, but Im not 100% keen on how I did it. I think in terms of being hatefull to look at , the pipes are not too hatefull, but it could have been better. I was going to make the intakes integral with the Portuguese bridge, but this conflicted with the interior layout of the guest cabin. An integral intake would have also been difficult to fabricate, and would have been more difficult to paint. The Dorade boxes are held in place with four bolts, and are very easy to remove for future maintenance. The dorade boxes are also maid of stainless steel. All in all, I think the pipes work good, but Im just "OK" with how they look. One thing I can say is this design is extremely robust, and in a worse case scenario, I have another place to tie the boat off from. Im thinking after I launch, the pipes might be a good location to weld a bit too, and hang dock lines off of. I had a fan blowing on me while I was working on the installing the cowl vents. Once I was finished, I left the fan blowing, and went in to the cabin to see how much air was making it in. I was pleasantly surprised by how much flow was entering the cabin. It looks like the design will work. I think Im going to re paint the cowls, and make the inside the same green as the hull. I took a picture of the cowls looking at them from the wheel house so you could see a little more clear how I wanted them above the structures to get air flowing.

Im going to keep working aft, and knocking off these easy to complete finishing jobs. This work probably goes five times as quick while the boat is in the barn and all the comfort tools are handy. All this work needs to be done anyway to have her weather tight for THE TRIP TO THE LAUNCH SITE. Next item to finish is the Portuguese bridge wooden cap, hang the Portuguese bridge door, and install the waster fill ports, and the gray water pump out port.

Cheers

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Axle work

I started work on the axles to haul the hull to the launch site. The front axle for the hull will be a steering axle, and the rear will be a dual wheeled axle.

The reasons for sitting the hull on axles vs having it hauled by a commercial boat hauler are a few. The main reason for going this route are that I had two boat haulers look at the job and both did not want to make the trip down my driveway. Our driveway is fairly steep, greater than a 30% grade, and paved with gravel. For a truck pulling a heavy trailer, getting up it is also a challenge as the truck drive wheels will spin in the gravel and rubber gets torn off. The other reason for using a home made dolly to haul the boat is the clearance I have to have getting under a highway over pass. The over pass measures 16 exactly, and as the boat sits on the cradle she measures 15 11". Putting her on a trailer would raise her up over 16 and would require me cutting off the bowsprit handrail. Another reason for not using a commercial hauler is that I built the boat in the barn backwards. I should have built her bow forward pointing out the door. Getting her out of the barn will still require a dolly of some sorts given my ass backwards way of building her, so I might as well leave her on the dolly and haul her to the launch site myself. Why did I build her in the barn backwards? I have no idea, but I cant cry about it now.

Getting her on the axles has run into a snag. Ive finished the front steering axle, and its ready to go under the boat. My plan is to jack the hull up, sit the hull on to the  steering axle, then fabricate some stanchions to hold her steady. Ill then weld some two "D" rings to the hull and two "D" rings to the axle and use some chains and binders to hold her fast.

I had to fabricate a hitch/steering arm to make the front axle work the way I want. I used some 3" schedule 80 pipe for the hitch arm, and fabricated a pivot joint using 1 1/4" round stock and thick walled tube for bushings. I bored the tube on the lathe to .005 over the pin diameter to make things fit a little easier. The hitch arm will swing left to right, and by welding an arm to this and connecting that arm to the linkage on the steering axle, the wheels will "steer" and follow the hitch arm. Because I have to connect the hitch arm to the haul truck, I welded another pivot point turned 90 degrees to the steering pivot to allow the hitch to also move up and down. Basically, I created a home made "U" joint. Once the hull is out of the barn and I can figure out how long the up and down part of the hitch needs to be, Ill join the two together. Right now the hitch arm is about 4 long.

The snag I ran in to has to do with the dual wheeled axles for the rear. A friend gave me the axle but once I saw it up close I knew I did not want them in the shop as they were. This is a pretty old axle and it  had two piece wheels that were in bad shape and what I viewed as very dangerous. I called the tire shop that sells me equipment and they told me they could get me some used wheels and rubber that would be safe and make the trip to the launch site. When one is working on two piece wheels, the wheels should be place in a steel cage in case the lock ring on the wheel fails ( the two piece part of a two piece wheel) and blows apart. The mechanic at the tire shop must not have followed this practice as the wheel lock ring came off of the tire and hit him in the leg with enough force to break his leg. Hes lucky he still has his leg, and even more lucky hes alive. The tire shop is still going to finish the job and has promised me I can pick it up mid week. Once in the shop with newer radial wheels and rubber, Ill have to put a bearing and race in one side, and after that I can get the hull off of the cradle.

Getting her off of the cradle pretty much means most work on the hull is finished until she gets to the launch site. Once off of the cradle, my main focus will be to finish the wheel house and salon. Theres really not much more I can efficiently do to the hull so having her remain on the building cradle makes no sense. It will be easier to get her off of the cradle with the barn free of the wheel house so Im holding off on starting that build until the axles are in place. Also, once the hull is on the axles, shell be sitting about 18" out of level in regard to the water line, and I dont want to be working on her in that position.

Cheers

  

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Wrapping up the super structure metal work

Getting all the little odds and ends completed before I can paint the super structure is taking quite a bit more time than I had anticipated. Im trying to work out a few problems as once I start paint prep, I dont want to stop to do some welding. Once the boat is at the launch site, I have a feeling Ill be doing some welding I forgot on the super structure, but my hope is that I get it all figured out now.

The first thing I did on the super structure was to install a temporary floor in the wheel house to bring  things close to the finish floor level. After I had the wheel house floor back up to grade I installed all of the cleats and tabs I need to bolt the lumber to. Trying to use up what material I have on hand, I cut my longer pieces of flat bars in to tabs, and wherever possible, used the tabs welded in place to bolt lumber to. Once I have the interior painted, Ill bolt lumber to the tabs and cleats, then have the insulator spray foam the interior of the super structure.

 Im limited to the wall thickness around the windows to 2.25" due to using the clamp rings. The clamp rings will make for a nice neat finish, but I wish I would have been able to get the rings for a 3.5" wall thickness. Im able to make the wall thickness on the front of the wheel house 2.25", but the rest of the boat is going to be thicker due to the framing, so Ill have to build some custom wood trim rings to tie everything together.

Once I had all the cleats welded in place I turned my  focus to the welding needed to be done on the super structure roof. The roof work has turned out to taking a little more time than I had thought it would. I am planning for using a LP fired stove in the galley, and I needed a place to store propane. I framed a propane locker on the roof that will be large enough to store two bottles. Even though Im not going to be doing any fairing work on the roof, I used pipe to make the corners of the propane locker. The pipe corners will paint up nicely, and will require little fairing to make them look good and cut down on future maintenance. The locker has two drains to let wasps in and water and any propane that could spring a leak out. I welded a 1/2" stainless nipple in the bottom of the locker to allow me to plumb the propane supply line in to the galley. The lid for the propane locker will be a simple lid with two pins for hinges and a simple latch.

In the center of the super structure sits the exhaust stack funnel. Im using a keel cooled main engine and a dry exhaust system. The exhaust system is basically like a truck, and uses a pipe to bring the exhaust up and out of the boat. Along with the exhaust from the engine, Im using the exhaust funnel to vent the hot air out of the engine room. I also am using the exhaust funnel to bring cool air in to the engine room. In order to do this, I partitioned the exhaust funnel in half, with one half dedicated to getting hot air and exhaust out of the engine room, and the other half for bringing cool intake air into the engine room. The largest hole I could cut in to the exhaust funnel at what I would consider an elevation where the hole would actually do something was 12"x16". So I have a 12"x16" hole for the intake, and the same for the hot air exhaust. I purchased a cheap coil stock louver from Lowes to see how it would work out, and Im going to buy some better quality louvers for the final install. Ill probably use the cheap louvers over the winter just to keep the weather out. Removing the louvers is also how Ill gain access to clamping the exhaust pipe to the 4" stainless pipe I welded in to the exhaust funnel top.

I like the way the exhaust funnel looks and in order to keep things looking good I had the metal formed on a press brake. The fab shop owners is one of my neighbors and it was fun helping him do this small job for me. The exhaust funnel is tapered so there are two different radiuss on the piece. In order to get the different radiuss Mark set the machine to hit harder on one side than it did on the other. His machine is a Cincinnati 300 ton press brake, and was built in 1942. Cincinnati is a good brand, and this machine was built in a era in this country that has faded fast. We need our manufacturing jobs. Mark laid the pieces out for 20 hits per piece, and in this picture, you can see him lining the die up to hit on his punch marks.

I welded a four inch stainless pipe in to the exhaust funnel. Im thinking about running the exhaust stack up the mast, and if I do that, Ill probably either do that in chrome or stainless. If I dont run it up the mast, Ill clamp a stainless or chrome 45 on the the nipple and call it done. I have room for a silencer on the exhaust piping, but for right now, Im not going to install one. If I run the exhaust pipe up the mast, the outlet will be so high and with the wind blowing the sound away from the boat, I doubt youll hear it. You might hear the whistle from the turbo, but I think that sounds good. I can always add a silencer if I need to, I just would rather not as they get hot and its just one more thing to buy and maintain.

The inside of the exhaust side of the funnel will be  insulated to help keep the heat headed up and out. Ill post more on this later down the road, but Ill be using some fans in the engine room to help air get in and force warm air out.

The salon roof is where well be storing our skiff, bikes, and kayaks. Because of having to work up there, I decide to install a hand rail around the salon roof. Im not ready to install the hand rail, and really dont want to do that job just yet, so I decided to cut some 1.5" discs to act as a doubler for welding the 1"  handrail stanchions to. By using the doubler discs, all Ill have to do is sand the paint off the disc and weld the stanchion to the disc. The disc will act as a heat sink and not burn the paint from the outside or inside of the roof. Ill be TIG welding ( Norm F. @ Kevin M ) the hand rail together, so splatter will not be an issue. I cut the disc on my mill using a hole saw and cooling the bit with water. The disc will also look decent with the hand rail stanchion, will not look like an afterthought, and allows me to keep things moving as doing this work is a hell of a lot easier with the hand rail not installed.  As per my locating the hand rail stanchions over a frame, I have kept in line with over building everything. The hand rail stanchions ended up being 30" on center.

I also will need a cradle for our yet to be designed skiff ( Kevin M), so instead of figuring out a cradle for a skiff I dont own yet, I just welded some 12" long x 3" wide doubler plates where I plan on building the skiff cradle. A 12 long skiff will fit nicely, but a 13 would also fit albeit tight. Im going to build the skiff in aluminum, but that wont be for another two years. Getting a little off subject, I sure would like to weld part of the cradle to act as a fuel tank for storing gasoline for the skiff. Again, the doubler plates will allow me to build the cradle later without destroying the paint outside or inside under the finished ceiling. The plans Im looking at for a skiff is 12 long, 5 beam, powered by 20 hp, and can carry 1000 lbs. It will weight about 300 lbs when completed.

The last roof job I need to complete is welding the tabernacle for the mast along with the pad eyes for the mast fore stay and shrouds, and brackets for flopper stopper poles. Flopper stopper poles are poles that extend away from the boat when at anchor and allow you to hang a device that helps mitigate rolling of the boat. I accepted some advice from an engineer I know and am reinforcing all of these parts to be robust enough to accept a more demanding paravane system to help with rolling while were under way. Because Im building a lot of these parts out of 1/2" stainless, I had to develop a cut list and have a local shop cut all the parts for me on a band saw. I just got all the parts back from the shop the other day, and Ill start putting it all together this week.

By the end of the week, Ill be able to move the welder off of the roof and finish a few simpler jobs on the aft wall of the salon. Primarily, the fill and vent points for the fuel tanks, the outdoor shower brackets, cutting the starboard side of the salon  so the boarding door works, and a few other smaller brackets. I feel pretty good that Ill be prepping for paint in a week or ten days, and should be done painting by mid September.. I might sneak away from work a few days to make sure I can get all this done, but early October looks to be about when Ill be moving her out.  

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Super structure metal work is finished

Tomorrow morning, before I take off for work, Im going to spend an hour or two so I can clean and organize the shop now that the metal work is completed. Im ready to prep the super structure for paint so I need to put away all the tools Ive been using to do battle.

Im a little blown away with how long it took to get the metal work completed. I did have a major set back in that the rough openings for the windows were cut for a four inch radius, and the windows are built using a six inch radius. There are 17 windows in the super structure and the repair consisted of me using my plasma cutter to cut out the 68 corners out of the existing rough openings. I then cut 68 new radius corners and welded them back in to the openings. The windows in the salon were easy as they were all square. The windows in the pilot house were a bit more of a challenges as they are all parallelograms, and required a little bit of noggin work to get the angles along with the radiuss correct. But, the window openings are now correct and all the widows fit the way theyre supposed to. Along with repairing the window openings, I added 60 or 70 more tabs to the window openings to bolt framing lumber to. 

 

 

 

 

 

Another job I got finished was fabricating the Tabernacle for the mast. After some indecision and talking with some other builders, I decided to go with a six inch mast. The primary function of the mast is going to be used to hoist my skiff to the roof of the salon. I am also going to have my radar mounted on the mast, and some lights and antennas. My long term plan regarding the mast is to be able to use it for a future para vane rig, and at a minimum, a flopper stopper rig. The Tabernacle is built out of 1/2" stainless steel. The pins used to hold the mast to the tabernacle are 1.25". The tabernacle is centered on frame #13. The tabernacle also has a doubler plate that it sits on and by doing some additional framing and reinforcing, I am spreading the load of the tabernacle to two additional frames, #14 @ # 12 . The bracket that will hold the para vane pole is also connected to frame #13 with solid 1/2" plates. I increased the flange thickness on # 13 to 5/16, and all is a continuous weld  were the reinforcing occurs. Two frames aft of the main para vane bracket, sits another bracket for another pole that will act as a brace for the main pole. The bracket for the brace is also connected to the frame with 1/2" plates. To connect the stays and shrouds, I welded 1/2" stainless pad eyes to frames.  I have two shrouds on each side, and one fore stay. I dont know if Ill ever use a para vane rig, but I do know Ill use flopper stoppers while at anchor. I had an engineering friend of mine give me some advice with beefing up the structure, and I feel good that I have things beefy enough. A fair amount of time and fabricating went in to this part of the boat. Because I will have electric winches for the mast/boom, radar, and some lights, I welded a 1.5" stainless nipple next to the tabernacle to run the mechanicals. I positioned the nipple so that  I can bolt a 6"x6" splice box to the tabernacle gusset, and use a grommet to make a water tight seal to the nipple. Ill use good quality cord grips to bring the various feeds out of the splice box.

The other job I  did was increase the width of the door at the salon to 32". Ill be fabricating the aluminum door, so I feel OK with the increased size. I plan on  having at least two dogs in the door to help hold it fast. Along with being weather tight, I want a door that will keep the thieves out.

Im using composting toilets on board and each one of those requires an 1.5" vent. I made those vents out of sch. 40 stainless. One is welded in to the soffit above the salon, and the below deck vent is welded in to the front of the wheel house.  Ill use PVC to connect the toilets to the stainless stubs I welded in the hull.

We have a shower for the cabins below deck, but due to the size of my posse, I felt it best if we had another shower on board. The easiest place to do this was on the aft deck in the port side corner of deck on the salon bulkhead. This will be a hot/cold shower. I fabricated a stainless shelf with a lip on it to retain soap, and a bar for wash rags and to hold back shampoo bottles.

I installed a 4" stainless vent for our 230volt clothes dryer.

On the aft salon bulkhead on the aft deck the fuel fills and vents reside. There is a two inch fill on both the port and starboard side. Next to each fill are the vents for the two port side tanks and two starboard tanks. The fill and vent pipes are welded in place. I really need a box around each set of pipes, similar to what Peter did on Koala ( now Kame Hele... not sure of the spelling). I have a little bit of time left where I can fabricated these boxs, and I might try braking them over the work bench. If not, my neighbor will do it on his press brake.

Outboard of the fill and vents are the two three inch vents for the lazzarette. These are weld in place.

I welded the six inch vent intakes for the master cabin. These vents are in the foreword wall of the wheel house.

To get up on the the roof of the salon, Im going to gain access via the wheel house side deck. Because of the raised pilot house, a five foot tall ladder is all that is needed to get on to the roof. I fabricated and welded some brackets to the salon wall to pin the removable ladder to. Its hard to describe it now, but because of the bulwark, and how I plan on working the salon roof hand rail, this will be a safe, secure way to get up on to the roof. I was going to get fancy and use a torsion spring to have the ladder self stow up on the roof, but my short time frame killed that idea and I decide to stow the ladder on  stainless post welded to the front of the wheel house. The forward  rake of the wheel house windows along with the almost 5 distance to the Portuguese bridge will allow all to pass by this area without bumping the ladder. It will make more sense once the super structure is welded to the hull.

Because I moved the aft salon wall, I had to cut the panel that extends down the salon line towards the aft deck. One of the boarding doors conflicts with this panel, so I cut it to fit. I gave this cut a nice looking radius where it meets the aft deck roof. It was important to me to keep some protection of the aft salon wall at this area, so we still have an inside corner where I cut the panel to accommodate the boarding door. Because both the port and starboard side panel are 3/16 material, I decided to treat each edge with a 1/2" stainless round bar. The round bar treatment should come in handy on the side where the boarding door is as this area will get some abuse. Hopefully, the stainless round bar helps with decreasing my  maintenance painting. Every exposed, exterior edge on board, has a 1/2" stainless round bar welded to it.  

I used 70 lbs of .035 welding wire to build the super structure. Im not for sure, but I think I drilled darn near 500 5/16 holes for bolting framing lumber to the steel frames. I might have drilled more holes, but Im going to order 500 2"x1/4" carriage bolts, nylock nuts and washers and see how that works out. 

As of today, my paint schedule is going to be blast the metal followed by two coats of epoxy primer. The inside of the super structure will get two more coats of Alkyd Enamel, then the framing lumber gets bolted on followed by spray foam. The roof of the super structure will get blasted followed by two coats of epoxy primer then three or four coats of Acrylic Urethane. Ill probably put a non skid on the roof, but that wont happen until after launch. The outside of the super structure will get blasted, two coats of primer, two coats of high build primer, fair ed, more primer to seal the high build, then top coat with three or four coats of Acrylic Urethane.

The last job I did to get the super structure ready to begin paint prep was to have my daughter and her friend Olivia walk around on the roof so I could fix the six or seven areas that were "oil canning". All that was required of that job was to find the offending areas, then weld a 1.5" flat bar between the longs and pull the roof sheathing down and weld it to the flat bar. Pretty easy job, but it still took us about three hours to wrap it up.

As anyone can imagine, Im glad to have this part of the job behind me. Paint and paint prep is going to be nasty, but I can now see the bitter end. Maybe by early October, Ill be able to post some sort of smiley face as I should be starting to take the front of the barn off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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