Coamings laminated

Here's the dry-fitted and dry-cut glass for the fwd cockpit coamings:

Wetted-out and peel-plyed:

The glass that wraps-around into the beam mounts was a pain, and I suspect some of it probably lifted off after I quit for the night; will have to fix that later.

You can see in the pictures that I already did the rear cockpit coamings; I used a red sharpie pen to mark the cut lines, but it looks ugly so from now on I will keep to black :).

Here I'm scribing the settee storage compartment top:

Scribing is one of those things that once you "get it", your life becomes much easier...it's a very cool technique.

That first night I taped the undersides of the settee tops (lots of fun), then did the top taping the next night:

I've also been trying my hand at welding. I can safely say that it will take some practice before I try to do anything important:

Here's some observations on welding from a complete newbie:

• It ain't as easy as it looks on YouTube. :)
• Heat control is everything. The tenth bead in a row on a piece of aluminum requires a lot less heat (amps) than the first one.
• "Dipping" the rod without contaminating the electrode takes practice - each of the dark spots in the picture above is a spot where I screwed up.
• Proper sharpening\shaping of the tungsten electrode makes a huge difference in how the arc behaves.
• The foot control is easier than the hand torch finger control (since you already have the "give it the gas" instinct from driving a car).

Those of us here in the U.S. of A. have a three-day holiday coming up (Memorial Day), so hopefully I can make some good progress over the next few days.