Sawdust, resin, and paint fumes.....

The unfortunate truth is that I really did not get much accomplished this weekend.  Fortunately, I have been catching up on some sleep, talking to people about things I need for the boat, and in general spending time thinking and trying to prioritize what needs to get done to get the boat in the water!!!!

LAST WEEKEND!!

Last weekend I built yet another hatch (foredeck hatch).  I also made some serious progress on the main hatch.  The main hatch you've seen me standing on.  While it is strong enough without glass, I decided that I needed to glass it for the waterproofing nature of fiberglass, as well as adding strength without too much weight.  

The first thing to get accomplished before the glassing began was to remove the cross piece from the hatch that had been glued into place.  My dad has been so eager to help, he took care of this for me during the week.  It was not exactly a clean separation, but what do you expect with high quality wood glue?  The reason the crosspiece needed to be separated before glassing is this: I do not have the hands of a professional fiberglass tech, so I would have ended up glassing it into place, on top of it already being glued into place. 

 The next order of business was to round all of the corners on the hatch.  I might have mentioned this before, but glass does not like to conform to sharp angles.  By taking a belt sander to all of the edges, I was able to achieve a nice gentle curve for the glass to follow.  The other bonus of doing this is that when the glass hardens, it will have a nice curved edge, which will look really nice. 

Finally I was ready to glass.  I was going to do one layer, let it cure, and then move on to the consecutive layers.  I don't know why I thought that was going to be a good idea, since it just meant a lot more work.  It ended up not happening because I did not have a big enough container to mix resin in.  If you mix too big a batch of resin, sometimes it will start to set WAY TOO SOON!  When I got the first batch mixed up and started wetting out the glass, I realized I did not have quite enough.  I had to mix another batch, and so I did.  I then had a lot left over, so moved onto the next layer of glass (or mat in this case).  Again I ended up with not quite enough resin, so I kept going.  The third batch of resin and layer of glass went on.  As it turned out, I had to make another small batch to finish up the third layer, but looking back, I think I went about doing it in the quickest, most efficient way (read: all at once).

Sometimes you end up with imperfections in your glass work.  It is a pain, because you have to go back and fix them.  Unfortunately, I did not see this one until after it had cured.  If I had spotted it before it cured, I might have been able to get the air bubble out of the glass layers.

 This weekend I got some Alkyd primer on the underside of the hatch.  Alkyd paint is an oil based paint.  It is generally what they use on boat interiors because it repels water, oil, grease, etc.  This was yet another tip I picked up from Don Casey in This Old Boat.  I am going to try to get exterior grade Alkyd paint, rather than marine grade, because it is basically the same paint, but the can with a boat on it has a serious markup on it!  I might have to spend the bucks on a marine grade primer for the fiberglass parts I am going to paint, like the hatch tops and bilge. 

YET ANOTHER HATCH

Just building hatches for the boat has been a huge project.  Luckily the foredeck hatch is simple.  It was not to be curved, and it was going to be made even more robustly than the main hatch.  The reason for the simplicity and beefy construction is because this hatch, being on the foredeck, has the potential to take green water.  For you landlubbers, when I boat takes on green water, it means that a wave has broken onto the boat's deck.  Think about the force of waves at the beach.  They are remorseless when it come to anything.  I would like to think the hatch I have built will stand up to green water, but who knows.  Hopefully I will never have to find out.

 The previous hatch never had a good seal, meaning that should there have been any kind of water taken over the bow, it most likely found its way into the forward cabin. I do not want this to happen.  Unfortunately because I am using free wood to build it, the wood is in less than stellar condition.  Some of the boards were cracking.  I took some glue and forced it into the cracks and clamped the crap out of the boards.  You might think that this is overkill, since none of the cracks when all the way through the boards.  You will see the method to the madness in a second.  

 Have you ever heard of a dado?  I had not heard of one either until working on this project.  It is a blade set used in a table saw to cut a groove in wood, much like a router would.  By using the table saw and a dado, we were able to achieve very straight cuts, which is important to getting a good seal on the inner lip of the hatch. 

 This is the result of using the dado.  We had to use 2 passes to get the right width.  With the mitered corners, the grooves matched up quite well.  The boards were not exactly the same widths, so there is a little variation, but nothing major. 

 The final component to making the hatch was to attach the plywood top to the hatch.  Instead of using 2 layers of 5mm plywood, like the main hatch used, I went with a piece of 1/2 inch marine grade plywood left over from the bulkhead project.  Remember that project?  Yes, I will be getting back to that once the hatches are done, and no, it is not done yet.  The forward hatch will be glassed, but like the main hatch, I wanted to check that it had not been screwed up somehow before putting the time and money into glassing it.  

Today's plan is to run around to a few marinas and chat with them about moorings for the summer.  It is crunch time for getting something secured for the summer.  With the weather warming up (well, kinda.... we got snow this week....), others are thinking about their boats and mooring/docking arrangements, so it makes it crunch time for me.  I also hope to get out on the motorcycle today, even though its going to be a bit chilly (only about 50 degrees F).