There's lots of little and big stuff to do before I can put on the vaka deck. Some hardware has to be installed forward and aft. Also, one of the trickier components to build is the leeboard upper and lower guards.
On the aft end I finished installing the gudgeons for the rudder control head. Nothing exciting there so no pictures. But the aft end is now ready for final shaping of the deckbeams and carlins and then I will install the aft deck. Did I mention already that I'm installing the deck in three sections. Seems strange after all the work to scarf the deck pieces into one long piece and then cut it up into three pieces again, but I have to do it. If I had help for mixing epoxy, I might be able to install the deck in one piece. But I'm working alone and there just isn't enough time to do it all at once.
The forward end is almost ready too.
Here is a simple jig I made for drilling the bow eye holes. This will insure proper alignment and only took a few minutes to make. Since I'm drilling through a very important part of the boat, I wanted to get it right the first time.
The flexible side pieces allow it to slide into place and get perfect alignment.
A couple pieces of duct tape on each side hold it in place. After drilling the first hole at the top I inserted a spare drill bit just to make sure nothing moved.
Perfect! I used epoxy with microfiber thickener on the threads and 3M 4200 on the external and internal washers and nuts. The bow eye is 5/16" stainless and goes through about 4 inches of stem wood, not to mention several layers of carbon, Kevlar, and glass. I have to add one more bit of backing block for anchoring chocks and the forward section will be ready for decking.
I also started the very fun project of turning a big block of teak into the upper and lower leeboard guards.
I forgot to take a picture before I made the first cuts so I put it back together and took this shot. This is a block of teak 2" x 8" x 48" finished on two sides and rough cut on two sides. Several pieces are cut and shaped from this block. This is a very expensive piece of wood so every cut has to be perfect.
This shows the first piece of the upper guard being glued in place. The side against the hull had to be cut to 16 degrees. Notice the single screw in the center (will be removed) and the single clamp. The clamp is in a precise location and applying just enough pressure so that the wood piece will be exactly aligned with the center line of the hull. Normally you would scribe the wood to the curve of the hull. But the hull is very close to a straight line at this point and scribing that close would be very difficult. Using the gap filling properties of EZFillet does a better job.
This shows the backing block for the lower guard. This is cedar not teak but has to be fit carfully. The bolts you see are for alignment and eventually will be used to attach the teak lower guard.
Those four bolts have to be in precise locations - exactly 1/2" from the bottom of the backing block. Once again a simple jig consisting of a block clamped to the drill press makes perfect alignment easy.
While all that is going on I have made the deck beams and carlins for the center section. This shows them being dry fitted. I can't install them until all the leeboard work is done and the lightning protection system is installed.
