Port aft beam bulkhead taped

Due to a late start today, progress was minimal.

I had some small work items to get done, before I could really get started taping in bulkheads. First thing to do, was tracing out the new beam mount cut-lines on the beam bulkheads. Ian sent this update back in April or so, but I never got around to updating my lines. I only had the PDF version of the new lines, but fortunately Kinko's can accurately print large documents - laser-printed, even - super cheaply.

Here I'm tracing out the new lines for the fwd beam bulkhead:

After finishing the tracing and cutting out the helper holes, it looked like this:

Similarily, the aft beam bulkheads looked like this:

It was interesting to compare the old trace-lines to the new ones -- the beam mounts obviously got much bigger!

After that, I got into the hull and sanded down all of my bubble patches, and all of the bulkhead mount lines. I now have essentially all of the hull interior laminate sanded down.

The last small work item was edge-filling the exposed foam edges on some of the bulkheads. I decided for now to only do the ones that for sure had to be done, or that would be very difficult to get to once the bulkhead was taped in.

I've read on other websites that sometimes builders will add chopped glass fibers to their bog when edge-filling, to give it some extra strength. I tried it today just for fun - but you can't over do it. My first filled edge looked like a shedding cat:

So I reduced the fiber ratio on the following mixes. Other than the bottom-most section of the fwd beam bulkheads, I also filled the access holes on the aft cabin aft bulkhead, and the drain holes at the bottom of the main cabin aft bulkhead, for both port and starboard bulkheads.

After that, since most of the bulkheads were set aside with curing edges, I decided to look at the aft beam bulkhead. The dry-fit was remarkably good, and the beam would even stand up on its own after being wedged in a bit:

This was pretty exciting, so although it was getting late I went ahead and taped it into place. I didn't have time to build a nice jig to hold it in place, so I went low-budget with a stick across the top to keep it from moving around, and also a screw through the hull into a batten, just in front of the bulkhead, to keep the bottom from moving around. I think it will be okay, but if you hear a scream from my vicinity in the morning, it's because it fell over in the middle of the night. :-) (if that does happen, I'll just grind it all out and start over)

Here's what it looks like:

The upper-most tape (two layers) are the ones that will actually stay in the boat; the two lower pieces are temporary, just to help the bulkhead hold the hull's shape. I hope this is sufficient enough for a "temporary tack" -- I didn't want to over do it.

If you have not yet seen the pictures of Oliver Dom's main hull yet, I would suggest taking a peek -- it turned out gorgeous. I was worried that the aft-cabin cockpit would turn out really small, but in the pictures it looks perfectly sufficient. I know that in the end it's still just a small, 22' boat, but those pictures sure make it look bigger than that. It's a nice shot of extra motivation to get my boat done.