-Week 23 Write Up- Finishing the cabin sole and trim on panels

This week, we came to the end of a long process of cutting and fitting trim to panels and bulkheads, and began what will be another long process of gluing the trim onto each bulkhead and panel. I have talked a lot about the bulkheads and panels in these last posts, and now we are finished cutting them out, and cutting up trim, which is a very good thing because we started to get very low on solid Butternut Plywood and it got a little stressful near the end when we didn't know if we would have enough or not. We ended up having 1 small piece that wouldn't have been usable anyway because of all the knots.

The process of gluing trim on has gotten easier as we've figured out our method, but some of the larger panels and bulkheads will be difficult. Especially where the trim is in the middle where a clamp wont fit. In these cases, we use large Fir boards to lay across the whole panel and clamp it to the table. Even this bends the Fir and its hard to get uniform pressure down on the middle of the panel.

Meanwhile, Brendan nearly finished installing the cabin sole, as you will see in the photos. It looks really beautiful and when the bung tops are sliced, and it is sanded, it will look even better.

Meg joined the team this week and started varnishing our sanded panels with the trim on. She also faired out the two layers of Awlgrip primer that we put on the topsides, filled in any pin holes, and prepares for a final paint coat.

Dave helped out as well by working on the fiberglass engine mount, which will be fitted to the wooden engine bed that Brendan made. It needed to be cut down by about 4 inches in order to fit in the boat properly.

Here are the time lapse clips from the month of February: