November 28th, 2004
Took the week off from the job to work on the Jumbo and hang out with friends and family for the holiday. It was a very nice week indeed.
Fuel tank got its coating of epoxy, and I was able to cut out some 48" x 3/4" x 1/2" strips of UHMW and glue them with 3M 5200 Marine adhesive onto the bottom of the tank. Also glued on some smaller strips on either end of the tank. The UHMW is there so that if the tank moves around while underway the tank will not be getting rubbed in all the wrong places. I aim to keep this tank for a while so I'm taking a few extra pains to make it right. Also made some wooden corner brackets and epoxied and glassed the outside of each. These are for the nylon straps to sit on, so once again the tank doesn't get rubbed, rather the wooden bracket takes the brunt of any rubbing. Installed four chrome plated bronze one inch pad eyes to attach the nylon straps to. Looks like the tank should be nice and secure.
Drilled hole in the port side gunnel for the stainless fuel filler, and drilled another hole on the side below the filler for the fuel tank vent. Epoxied the holes and then cut out a round 3/8" plywood gasket to raise the filler so that any water flowing on the gunnel will pass on by. Glued that on and filleted it.
Cut holes in the rear deck at the transom to accept the 1 1/4" pvc pipe I installed for wire runs. Also drilled a second set of holes in the rear frame pieces for another pvc wire run just under the gunnel. Will run steering cable and control cables through the top run and run the wiring harness through the bottom run.
Back when I'd cutout the limbers in the stringers, I'd thought that I'd be installing a flotation chamber. Well I changed my mind and ended up with a set of limbers too far forward. So I drilled a second set of limbers in the stringers back at the transom, rounded them off, and coated several times with epoxy. I feel better about the drainage situation in the bilge now. It was a bear to drill these holes. First I tried using a Forstner bit, but being the rather crappy Chinese version that I had, it quickly got dull in the laminated stringer. I ended up using a combination of a hole saw and then the Forstner bit (after sharpening four times). Sometimes (usually) it doesn't pay to buy cheap tools. You get what you pay for and sometimes you don't even get that. I also have a metal box of some 60 drills that also happen to be made in China and these drill bits are so brittle that I've ended up breaking almost every one I've tried using. Funny I've yet to break an American made Fuller drill bit.
Glued in the rear deck at the transom and screwed it temporarily into place. Will remove screws tomorrow and then sometime this week fillet and tape the deck at the edges. Need to work on the fish box so I can also install that middle portion of deck. Then I'll make up a removeable panel over the fuel tank and permanently install decks on either side of the fuel tank. Will also try to get the splash well installed next weekend...
I feel like I made some pretty good progress this week. Temperature has been down in the forties and high thirties this week so it barely gets to sixty during the day. Because of this the epoxy is taking quite a while to cure. It's slowing me down for sure.