Another 25 Seafari goes under the knife

[Blue_Heron]

I should not be talking...now that I think about it I hired help for most of the sanding and grinding on my last two projects

Oh, so now I know your secret to quick completion. I thought those guys were just your buddies that came over to help on the "will work for beer" plan. Hired help on a boat resto. Whoda thunk?

Dave I am with you the heat is a killer this year. Hopefully it will break soon.

Yeah. Some say it's global climate change, but I think we're just getting old. I could work outside all day in this kind of heat when I was 30 and it didn't bother me. But now that I'm old and soft and have A/C in my shop, I think I'll wait until the weather cools off before I do any more painting. I'll need to set up the filter wall that converts the shop to a spray booth and run the exhaust fan, and I don't want to ruin a very expensive Awlgrip paint job because I was dripping sweat in it.

So, I've been doing some stuff in the shop. I bonded the live well tub to the outer box and started on the plumbing:



My fuel tank hatch had a little flex in it. It wasn't soft, but I felt like it had a pretty big span for a hatch with only a 1/2" core, so I added some more thickness:





In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that I'm making my cooler/compartment hatches in two pieces with a foam core so they will have a finished surface inside and out. It's a lot more work, but I like the results. Last weekend, I layed up the inner liners for the fish box hatches and the flip up thingy above the cabin door. I used the usual process; make a mold with masonite and spruce, coat the mold with clear lacquer, fillet the inside corners with modelling clay, and spray with PVA mold release (Partall Film #10):





Sprayed with gelcoat:





After the layup:





And popped from the molds:







Here's the flip up thingy trial fit:





And a trial fit of the liners for the fish box hatches:















Unfortunately, I screwed up on the dimensions for the hatch liners. I made the molds with about 1/8" of taper from the top to the bottom, but when I laid out the molds, I used the top dimension on the bottom. The end result was that my liners were 1/8" too big and a pretty snug fit. It didn't take long to figure out that I wouldn't be able to sand the mating surfaces enough to make them fit, so I bit the bullet and shrunk them both by an eighth inch. I did this by making a cut down the center of both panels on my table saw. The material removed by the saw kerf was just right. I ground a bevel on both sides of the cut and rejoined them with masking tape to hold them in place while I laminated the seam with a couple layers of 10 oz. cloth:








And back together:





And another trial fit:





After reducing the width of both panels by an eighth inch, they fit just right in that dimension. But I will need to take an eighth inch out of the length dimension of one of the panels to finish the tweak.

And that's got my thread mostly up to date. Next, I'll be fitting the hatches with hinges and then coring them. I'm using T nuts imbeded inside the hatches so you won't see a fastener on the inside. It's a pain to do, but leaves a clean look inside the hatches.
Dave