Rubrail preparations. Decking.

Finally the temperature allows working with glue!

I started late today but managed to cut scarfs for rubrail and gunrail. I was ambitious and started with cutting them by hand. With rubrail (which is L-shaped) it kind of worked but I was not happy with the result so I build a jig and cut all scarfs on the table saw. Much quicker and results are repeatable.

While these are curing I worked with fo’c’sle decking. Some CAD (cardboard aided design) work was needed.

Filling fo’c’sle with decking is usually done with planks parallel to long axis and tapered towards the bow. I played with this idea, checking how much waste will this approach produce with my 120mm wide stock.

Well, that would be quite a lot of off-cuts indeed. I decided to use another pattern, mostly seen on yachts: with deck meeting king-plank in the middle. In my case the king-plank will be a hatch for anchor rode and other muddy stuff. This way I could use full width of my planks.

Spacing between planks is 5mm, as recommended in plans. This shall allow space for wood to expand and provides ventilation for bilge and flotation tanks.

The only drawback with this pattern are thin, sharp plank edges - fragile and catchy. To minimize this I will file them down in rounded shape. They will hold oil better, too.

I run out of wood when I worked on aft deck but managed to carve both side planks and a few for bench on port side. Final shaping will be done once all planks are in place.

During the week I got my rudder hardware delivered. Beefy stuff, silicon bronze from Davy.

The plan for tomorrow is to install rubrails and start working on the rudder and centerboard.

Once rubrails and gunwales will be installed I will finish filleting work in the bilge and glue all battens. Next will come epoxy coating of the interior.