While the fairing epoxy set I decided to cut out the remainder of the parts so that I could be ready for the last steps. I ended up using my Harbor Freight vibrating saw which made easy work of it. I also used my "Cosco special" generic Dremel tool to clean up the insides of the mast steps rings which also worked really well!. I did notice though that the inside circles of the rings where not so round. Looks like there must be a glitch with the cutting file! Seems like I may have to fair the inside of them to make them round!
As you can see the Kit number is nicely routed into the cross member - #40!
Once everything set up I sanded down the area that I faired, and started the process of fitting the cross member to the hull. I started out by locating the center of the cross member @ 2800 mm from the transom. The plans also give dimensions to where the extremities of the cross member cross the gunwales, so I marked those off also. I then proceeded to spend the next couple of hours sanding, fitting, sanding some more, fitting, until finally all fit well. For whatever reason I noticed that the edges of the cross members tie into the top of the gunwales perfectly on all four corners which is a bit of a head scratcher since in theory it should be 4mm below... I guess there will be some fitting involved when I install the cross deck. The part that is a little confusing is that it seemed the rest of the hull was 4mm higher than the frames when I was installing the wing deck panels - go figure. I filleted everything into place, and used some of my dive weights to keep the whole thing in place!
I finished up the weekend by installing the deck doublers in place and weighing them down to ensure a good tight fit.
Next steps will be to install the cross deck structure and start gluing up the mast step pieces!
No comments:
Post a Comment