Rear beam mount taping plus settee work

I've been forming the rear mount tape flanges by using pieces of plexiglass as mold plates; it was a slow process, basically doing just one side at a time, but I was able to complete the job without having to roll the boat over, and without too much contortionism:

Tonight I glued on the foam pieces:

Tomorrow or Saturday I will be able to trim these up, round the corners, and start laminating them over.

I started working on the poptop setup again. Before our move to the new house, I had drilled pivot holes in the coaming, but they were too low - the bolts could not bottom out. So I filled those holes and then redrilled new ones a bit higher:

You can see I am trying out the plastic bearing pads, but it is hard to get them smooth and clean looking - I think I will switch over to a ply-based pad.

Here I have dry-fitted the settee backrest and am drawing a cut line (with a very crude jig) to make the top of the backrest parallel with the settee seat:

In a previous step I also positioned the backrest to be parallel with the front of the settee seat. Due to a lack of any real sailing experience, I have been unfortunately very indecisive about how to organize most of the storage space in this boat. Deciding that any decision was better than further delay, I've decided to organize the settee rests (both port and starboard) into three simple compartments:

The top of these storage compartments will be a piece of solid foam\laminate; the storage space (what there is of it) will be accessed via small removable doors in the backrest (to be hidden by the backrest cushion).

I also formed the reinforcing shoe for the back of the daggerboard case; here it is, not yet laminated over:

In the "New Toys for Jay" department, I just bought myself a new welder this afternoon, from the Central Welding Supply store in Redmond. It is a Miller Diversion 180 TIG welder:

You can argue that this is overkill for finishing up the small handful of parts on this boat (and you would be right) but I look at it as an investment for additional projects down the road. For starters I plan to make a welding cart to wheel this thing around, then I will move onto the mast support pieces and the pulpit. No I have never welded before, but I've read several books on the subject so I'm sure I'll have no problems (that was humor, by the way).

I am also looking at anodising options for all of the aluminum pieces on the boat (no other builders seem to mention this - are most folks skipping this step as a "nice to have"?). So far I have not found a business that will do small jobs for any kind of a reasonable price. My backup option is to learn how to do it myself. Reading around on the internet, the process just doesn't seem that hard (famous last words? :)) and there are DIY kits available, for example from Caswell Plating. You can even get color dyes to jazz up the boat a bit.