I'm wondering if this has happened to anyone else: When installing the lower breasthook (yes I go it right--the lower is straight across and the upper has a decorative curve), I had to force the sides out quit a bit to get it in place. No problem I thought, the breasthook is CNC-cut so it has to be correct, right? Well now I'm not so sure.
When it came time to install the deck I found that I had quite a wide gap out to the sides, up to 3/4" or more in some areas. There was even a gap between the deck edge and the edge of the breasthook itself, as much as 1/2" on each side as I recall. This seemed very odd to me--the breasthook and deck should match exactly, even if the shape of the hull itself is not exactly right. Well there was not much I could do about it at that point and I had no way of knowing which part was wrong, the breasthook or the deck, so I forged ahead. I did not want to try to fill in such large gaps with thickened epoxy as stated in the manual, so instead I fashioned cleats out of laminated strips of 3/8" thick material--three thicknesses to make sure I had plenty of gluing area for the deck. By using 3/8" laminated cleats I did not distort the hull shape much if at all. This at least eliminated the almost impossible job of having to fillet the deck-to-hull joint from inside the front locker--a job I was dreading and wondering how to accomplish without a huge mess.
Anyway, all seemed fine until it came time to install the upper breasthook. At the two "horns" I had as much as an inch-and-a-half gap on each side! I tried building an elaborate Rube Goldberg clamping scheme to pull the sides in but this seriously distorted the hull shape. So I gave up on that idea and am in process of fabricating a new upper breasthook to fit the hull as it is now. Maybe it will be off some, but I think it will still float. It does not seem to me that a change in the shape that high up will have much effect on the shape below the waterline, where it counts.
The only theory I can come up with is that the lower breasthook is misshapen because the upper breasthook and deck are a fairly good match (breasthook a little smaller than deck because the topsides tilt inward a bit). Has anyone else had this problem or do I have something completely out of whack? I know there will be things that have to be adjusted here and there because wood does not bend the same on every boat, but why would the deck not match the lower breasthook? They are sandwiched together for Pete's sake.