Friday, March 14, 2008

More hatch work. The other side.





Ok, so now the two halves of this Shearwater are welded, wires cut, the hatches cut out and the deck removed again. Now we will work on assembling the rest of the hatch parts underneath the deck, as these hatches are recessed. Recessed hatches are much more work but make for a nicer end product with less deck clutter, a cleaner, sleeker looking hull.

The hatch spacers require beveling to match the angle of the sheer panel for a snug fit. As you can see in one of the pics, I had a problem here with beveling a piece of wood no larger in size than a shoelace. Broken off, they can be glued back in place but I got a little frustrated here and just cut the rest of the sides off and did away with them, using a fillet later on to take on this shape and fill in, which saved me time and turned out just fine in the end.
Parts glued and clamped in this manner calls for silica as the media for thickening the epoxy, to a thicker mustard type consistency. Topsides of the glued sandwich of parts you will see pieces of wood wrapped in plastic. We use plastic on everything we do not want glued to the kayak. These pieces of wood clamped topsides are important, they take out the curve of the deck right at the hatches. We want the hatches flat, both for aesthetics and for a proper seal to keep water out.

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