Made to measure

Time for the tricky business of getting the beams mounted. I don't think any amount of accurate measuring during construction could allow for the beams to simply slot in without some tweaking along the way. With the beams at almost 3.5 metres long, being only a millimetre out with the mounting points, would be a problem.

Since I have the hulls aligned exactly, here is some of the process I have been going through to get the beams precisely located.

Good old laser level lined up with the centre location.

Easy to see where the cuts need to be made, before gluing the mounts in place

One of the few times I resort to using a hand tool here. With the other beam holders I used a scroll saw to cut them out. Anyway this little coping saw was surprisingly quick at getting through the Mahogany.



Here is the aft beam, checking clearances before epoxy bedding.

And here is the beam in place with the epoxy mixture setting.

So the beams now rest nice and snug in their mounts.

It's actually this big.

Here it is with the hulls at the correct spacing, showing how big the boat really is. Too big for this photo even. The starboard bow has to go on the other side of a pillar in my garage.

In the photo I am part way through making fine adjustments to the position of the starboard hull, once again the laser level comes into it's own here to help me get the two hulls as close to parallel as possible before I finish the beam mounts.