A few projects, a trip to Minnesota and some summer sailing has kept me too busy to work on the boat, but I was able to spend some time on it today. Since the last post I managed to get conduit installed. I also installed a drainplug in bulkheads 1 and 8. Today I installed the floorboards. I made these from western red cedar and covered them with 5 coats of varnish. I think they look good!
This is a nice milestone for me. I milled my floorboards from a pair of large western cedar planks. That was a fun job made easier by having access to a full woodworking shop equipped with a large bandsaw for resawing the planks into smaller boards and large jointer and planer to finish them to size. It took some head scratching but I finally was able to get a pretty fair curve on the boards. Now I'm ready to varnish. I started by putting a layer of epoxy on all surfaces of the boards. Cedar is a pretty soft wood and the epoxy has hardened it up nicely. For varnish, I'm planning to apply several coats of Epifanes. At this point I'[m using the high gloss but may decide to use the satin as the last coat. Space is at a premium so I came up with the idea to string wire between the cradle arms to hold the long boards while they dry. I also made to smaller stands to support the smaller boards. This has worked out great.
Just back from a 2 week sail up to Nanaimo. Now to get back into building. I'm almost ready to add the hull sides, but before I do I want to get the battery box setup. I decided to go with a 46AH LiFe battery. It is compact and quite light. I've build a shelf to hold the battery against BH1. I also made a conduit to hide the cables, which will go up and across the roof to the instrument panel.
What a tricky part of the build. Looks great!
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