Friday, April 22, 2011

Cockpit coaming step 1: Wood strips

I’m building the cockpit coaming by first building a wood strip riser. I'll fibreglass it into place then put foam around the outside and use that as a form to create the coaming lip – at least that’s the plan.

First step is building the riser. To do this I followed Nick Schade’s instructional video and it’s seemed a pretty quick and easy exercise.

So far, the riser is in place, a fillet is on and when it dries I’ll wet sand and follow up with 2 layers of fibreglass.

It’s an ocean cockpit so fairly short and only 38cm interior width.

Current pic (plastic to protect the interior):

IMG_1327

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Black Pearl Update–Deck Fibreglassed

The deck’s been glued, sanded and fibreglassed – at least on the outside.

Mostly Paulownia but 3 strips on each side of Cedar as I was running a bit low of the lighter wood. I’ve decided to leave the deck natural colour so that I can forever see how it was built. The cockpit’s been cut out but I’m leaving the hatches till after the fibreglass sets up. It seemed a little flimsy to be cutting too many holes in the deck.

Not many staple holes, it was easy to glue most strips in place without staples.

I kept the surface to an even height and used the odd bit of chopped up credit card under a couple of thinner strips.

Quick pic: of the cockpit:

IMG_1324