I pulled all the screws in the hull and the stringers first thing today, except for the ones all the way forward. I really wanted to give that area time to cure since there was so much stress applied yesterday.
The next step should have been laminating the second layer of 1/4" plywood on the hull but with the screws in the way that couldn't happen, so on to the framing.
There are two pieces of wood on each side of the hull that span the gap between the chines and the shelves. They do two things; one is to provide support for the sides to keep them from flexing and two is to keep the spacing between the chines and shelves constant. Normally these are spaced so that one is about two and a half feet from the transom and the other is about half way from there towards station 6 (station 6 is the magical point 10 feet from the bow where the hull transitions from the curve coming from the bow to the straight run to the transom).
And this is where the customization really starts. I've decided to place mine differently. I placed one at station 6 for the front bulkhead of the cabin, and one at the rear bulkhead of the cabin. Further back towards the transom I've provided additional support plus the start of a pocket shelf on each side for storing things along the sides.
You're looking at what will be the starboard (or right hand side) of the boat. The vertical piece of wood nearest you is at station 6. The next one back is at the rear bulkhead for the cabin. And the two verticals and one horizontal at the back are the rear support framing. (You can also see two flaps of poly hanging off the edge, we'll get to those in a second.)
Those five pieces of wood look pretty simple, and they are, but a lot of planning and work went into their placement. First I took off all the clamps, screws and supports at the rear of the boat so that everything was floating freely. Then I confirmed that the chines were still level from front to back and started working on getting the shelves level. A block here, a shim there, a clamp there and after about an hour I had a straight, flat run from station 6 all the way back to the transom on both sides. Then I started cutting wood pieces, mirroring dimensions for both sides, and dry fitting and screwing things together. When all the pieces on both sides were done, I took them all apart, mixed up some epoxy and peanut butter and put them back together. When I looked at the lines of the shelves things looked just ok, but not really fair (a fair line is a smooth continuous line that is pleasing to the eye without any abrupt transitions). So I pulled the rest of the clamps and Voila'! all the lines cleaned right up!
Now, about those pieces of poly. When you install the sides on the boat, you do so by attaching them to the outside face of the shelves, then climbing inside and tracing the shape of the chines against the sides then cutting to that line. You then put three layers of fiberglass overlapping the chines and the sides. But how do you keep the sides from flexing in under the shelves? In the places where there's framing, it's not a problem as the framing provides support, but in the larger spans you screw wooden "tabs" to the chine to provide that support. The poly is hanging over those tabs. Wouldn't want to glue the sides to those temporary tabs now would we? :-)
I pulled the last of the screws in the hull and did some clean up and called it a long night. I'm out of town working for the next few days, so no progress reports for a while.
This project leaves me with a smile every night when I go home!
8 Hours