Centercase installation

Building a boat takes a toll on your relationships with your loved ones. Here is Chloe barking at me telling me to stop working and pay attention to her. I listened and took a break.



This week, the sides of the centercase were glued together. I also added vertical strips of lumber on the side of the case for attaching the bulkhead. I attached those at this stage, since I wanted to nail it from the inside before putting it together. I also drilled the hole in the case logs for the centerplate pivot bolt, since this would be almost impossible to do after it's in the boat.

The centercase was then installed in the boat. The case was wiggled into position and pilot holes were drilled for the 3" bronze nails. The oak is really hard to screw into, so I had to put it all together (to make sure the screws went in without a problem), take it apart, then put it back together again with glue. Quite time consuming with 20 large screws, but the epoxy cures too fast to try to do it all at once.



Here is a pic after its installed with thickened epoxy. After it was screwed in, I poured unthickened epoxy in all the cracks on the top to fill in all the joints. The unthickened epoxy would normally leak out of a joint, but the thickened epoxy underneath kept it from leaking out. Temporary wedges were jammed into the slot to close the vertical glue joints nice and tight. It went together without a problem, except its sitting SLIGHTLY crooked, but I don't think anyone will notice except for me. The top of the case is about 3/16" off vertical. Not a problem.



The next day when the glue is dry, the wedges are removed and the sides are trimmed flush with a saw.



This is a top view of the front of the centercase. If you look close, you can see a thin white layer of fiberglass on the inside of the case. You can also see that the inside of the case has some epoxy fillets that I made when I was gluing the case together.



The keelson (large backbone member) is then shaped (with a hand plane) into a wide v-shape, so that the curved plywood bottom can fit up to it. So I guess that's it ... here's a skeleton of a boat! Next week I'll start the plywood planking.