Decking and Seat Tops

Following on from the end of the previous post here is the foredeck with the pavers removed. There is a bit of epoxy squeeze out and I have been removing it with the hot air gun and scrapers. The last two pieces of the margin were glued in place and the straight pieces of decking cut to length and glued down working from the centre outwards. Most of these planks have a curved end and the templates were very handy for marking the curve on the planks. I laid 3 planks at a time working out the spacing by eye; this was probably a mistake, I should have used tile spacers to get the spacing more consistent.

 However, I am pleased with the result. Here is the foredeck with all planks in place. If you double click the image you should get an enlarged view.

Having completed the fore and aft decks I decided to plank the seat tops. This idea had been in my mind but I was hesitant about the larger areas involved. The appearance of the decks convinced me to go ahead with the seats.

The edge of the seats overhangs slightly as shown in Barrett Faneuf's writeup on the Duckworks site. I cut the rebate in these boards on my tablesaw; a bit tricky to set up but much quicker than using the router which is what I did for the edging of the aft deck. With the boards shaped I mitred the corners and glued them in place. The curved margin planks against the hull had to be made in 3 pieces and, once again, I re-used the templates from when I cut the plywood seat tops. The next photo shows the margin planks being glued in place.

From here it was simply a case of cutting the planks to length, shaping the ends where necessary and gluing them down. Because of the longer lengths involved I did these plans 2 at a time working outwards from the centre of the boat. This went quite quickly - shape and glue 2 planks on one side then do the same on the other side. After a couple of hours the epoxy was set enough to hold the planks and another 2 planks could be done. As this process reached the sides I had to slow down a bit because the narrowing space between pavers and hull made access difficult.

Here it is, all planks in place and pavers removed. There is now a lot of sanding to do to clean off the excess epoxy but mainly to level the surface of the planks. I did the bulk of the sanding with a belt sander with 40 grit paper. The corners I did with a detail sander . All this sanding had to be done very carefully to avoid damaging the completed paintwork inside the hull. The 40 grit paper left surface scratches which I cleaned up with 80 grit paper. There's no point trying for the ultimate finish yet as there is more heavy sanding to be done once the caulking is complete.

I made a fairly careful estimate of the length of the caulking and multiplied the length by the average cross section of the gaps. Dividing this total volume by 310 mL (the size of a tube of caulk) came to 8.5 tubes. I bought 10 tubes of Sikaflex 291 and, to avoid another dose of boat building induced RSI in my wrist, I also bought a battery powered caulking gun.

This thing was worth the price. My wrist still works but my back and shoulders ache from bending and operating the device at arms length.

Both Barrett Faneuf and  Joel Bergen taped the planks to keep the black goop under some sort of control - make no mistake, it gets everywhere! I simply gunned the goop into the gap and then trowelled it with a plastic scraper. When it is set I will sand the mess off (I hope).

The next photo shows the caulking about half done. That much caulking took about 2.5 hours and I stopped for a rest overnight!

Another 2.5 hours this morning and it is all done. After 24 hours I will remove the blue masking tape and then wait for the black goop to set. The Sikaflex data sheets suggests that a 6mm thick bead will take 2 days to cure at 23 degrees C and 50% R H. It's hotter and more humid than that here in Brisbane at the moment but I will give it 2 days to be on the safe side.