[shine]

good day for picture uploading, 40 degrees in south FL :?

progress on the hatch mold. Did not leave enough room to allow for router collete to fit :? so I had to manually round over the edges with profile sander. Was actually very easy and only took a few minutes. Sealed the MDF up with a coat of epoxy, then added fillets on the inside turns. Next will be high build primer







Tanks arrived. Two 55 gallon belly tanks. These will sit between the stringers. Positioned with at least 1.5" clearance all around to give space for foam. Epoxied mounting blocks to side of stringers. With tanks located, we made frames and glassed them in. Tanks get two heavy coats of coal tar epoxy







two of the three frames.





tanks are sanded with 80 grit immediately before the epoxy coating. Aluminum oxidizes so fast that you have maybe 20 minutes to get the epoxy on and have a good bond.






Chase tubes:

With the additional glass covering the stringers I no longer have the room to fit in a 2.5" tube in the stringer notches. It was close, but could not get the sweep position where I want using regular PVC. Decided to try 2" flexible electrical conduit for the side chases. Fits very nice. I will have a couple other chases down the center along with these two 2" down the side.