Washboards

As commented on in an earlier post, I am using plywood for the washboards.

Here they are, in place with the trim almost finished. Also the sliding hatches also have their trim which fits over the top of the washboard.
I have been doing some prep work for the trampoline also but not much to show yet.

Bolted

A bit of a major step has been made here with the two hulls joined for the first time!

 

 

It was a lot of work getting all the measurements right twice and making sure I only had to drill holes and cut once. The platform feels pretty solid. Would be nice to put it in the water right now just to see how it floats, but I think I'll just press on with the fit out. :)

Trim

Just a couple of latest progress pictures here of the trim around the hatches.

The pictures tell the story here. This mahogany might be the only exterior wood to remain unpainted on the boat.

Painted

Here are the latest progress pictures.

Freshly painted here prior to the non-skid going on.

And a shot here of the non-skid which was just applied and still wet in this photo.

It was good to have a nice dry spell of weather to do all the painting. The paint seemed to go on a little better than last time, and I got some better rollers which helped also.

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.

Fairing + Beams

Fairing is now complete for the starboard hull.

 

Also I now have both beams. As you can see in the picture below. One of these beams is not like the other. One is some aluminium section I managed to get hold of early on in the build. But when I tried to get more it proved difficult so I researched other options and settled on a carbon fibre section made locally, it is still wrapped in plastic here, the finish is so nice I might just keep it wrapped up for a while. It is customised for the boat with extra reinforcing at the ends where the hull mounts are. It looks great and is much lighter than the alloy section. The alloy section is round, it looks a bit strange in the photo because I have cut an angle off at the end which will later allow securing to the beam mount.