March 14h, 2004
Was a busy warm weekend. We've gone from cold wet days to hot days and no real spring in between. What this means is that Epoxy cures very fast and yesterday I had two small pots go off on me. I was hot, sweaty and then cranky after the first pot went off. And since the day's chores included glueing and filleting in the rear cuddy cabin bulkhead blocks (under the deck) I was on my hands and knees for quite a while.
I also had issues with getting and keeping these blocks to line up on either side and center of the stringers. I finally screwed small pieces of plywood (buttons) in the stringers to hold the bulkhead blocks into place. Once I had them positioned I put temporary tabs of thickened epoxy here and there to freeze them into place. After a couple of hours, these small spots of epoxy had cured enough that I could remove the plywood buttons and finish fileting.
Today I made up a pattern for the rear cuddy bulkhead from the stringers up. It was actually fun making the pieces and putting them together. Next step involved measuring and drawing the rest of the bulkhead parts like the sloping sides and curved top, as well as the hole for the door. Cut out all the parts I was supposed to and tryed out the fit. It was almost perfect. Since I'd put fillets on the rear frames where the 
bulkhead mounts I realized I'd have to plane off the sharp side edges to get a good fit. Well I found that a 3/8" round over bit in the router did fast work of fixing those edges. The bulkhead will slide into place and the sides will fit perfectly. Finished up by epoxying and glassing the outside of the cuddy bulkhead.