Bow, Stern & Bulkheads

The bow and stern where the deck meets the keel was never fitted perfectly as I had planned to do final fitting only after joining the two pieces. While it’s close there still is a gap that needs to be filled. Instead of trying to get a little piece in there I cut back the deck a bit to create a larger opening. I want this piece to match to the keel so I used the Spanish cedar to fill it in. A few small strips were cut and glued. Once dried I slowly planed and sanded until I had a snug fit.

I repeated the same process at the front, the pictures above are the back, and then saturated them with epoxy to “glue” them in place.

Since these need to dry before I can trim and do the final shaping I turned to the bulkheads. Some final fitting was done to ensure they could be put in (now that the boat is assembled) and a bit of sanding and tweaking until I was happy with the fit. I then ran the random orbit over the entire surface to smooth it out, remove any remaining glue and pencil marks and prep it for fiberglassing.

A few pieces of scrap material were cut to size and mixing up a small batch, dabbing it on with a brush and then using the squeegee to remove the excess I got one side of each done. Hopefully they’ll dry sufficiently overnight (they should actually be dried to the touch in a few hours) that I can epoxy up the other side tomorrow.