PocketShip Build in Europe

[slash2]

Looking good and great progress!

I also added fiberglass tape on the inside joint of the cabin wall. That joint will see a lot of stress.

[dbeck]

Here is an update on our build: We made two things differently than described in the manual.

1. During a trial fit of the sheer clamps we discovered that really a lot of force was needed and we were afraid of braking them. The sheer clamps provided with our kit are made of douglas fir. Although this type of wood is not optimal for steam bending, we were happy with the result.

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The force required after steam bending was much less. This is not described in the manual, but it helped and was a good training for the upcoming mounting of the rubrails.

2. After struggling with the dorade box fit, we arranged the panels of the dorade box slightly differently.

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Shown is the modified arrangement of the tack-welded dorade boxes as well as an exhibition of almost all of our clamps while the epoxy at the sheer clamps cures. The vertical lines at the outside of the carlins mark the position of the dorade boxes as described in the manual. We moved them about 3.5 cm more to the outside.

Dietrich

[dbeck]

As I wrote here we decided for mushroom instead of dorade vents.

But how to do this? On the hand hand we want the drainage of the foredeck sealed from inside the cabin, but on the other hand we'd like to keep the 'dorade' boxes to accommodate the mushroom vents, to stiffen bulkhead 2, as a small storage space and for the look of the boat of course

Our solution is to guide the water through the 'dorade' boxes via short tubes. We looked at some options but finally decided for PVC tubes that are intended for plumbing installations and to glue them with epoxy. We know its not optimal, but we found some guidance here. Moreover the famous 3M 5200 sealant does not seem to be available to the end-user in Germany (only from obscure sources). Our tubes have 16(13)mm outside(inside) diameter.

To get well aligned hole at both sides of the dorade boxes, I used a cheap 16mm HSS spiral drill of 40cm length (intended for formwork and installation, its basically a 10cm long drill on a long steel rod). Starting with 2mm diameter pilot hole(s), this finally worked out pretty well. Uff!

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Drilling through the starboard dorade box. The two chunks of wood prevented the drill from slipping off the fillet when drilling through the 2nd wall.

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A look through the boat. The holes in the side panels received a countersink shape at the outside. The idea is to have some sort of thickened epoxy ring around the outside end of the tube. If I was more courageous, I could have drilled the holes even 1 mm more towards the fillet between deck and BH2.

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The portside dorade box with tube installed.

Of course, all surfaces of the tube outside and holes inside were sanded, treated with alcohol and then received unthickened epoxy and finally thickened epoxy.

Will it finally work out? We will know next year maybe. At least the holes are above the waterline, all wood is sealed with epoxy and in the worst case we'll need to figure out plan B.