Considering the build order

[Dmksails]

My pocketship kit is here! The major build will start in the fall. In the meantime I'm reviewing the blogs. I'm leaning towards the idea shown in the idahopocketship blog where the lower hull is completed before adding the upper hull sides. I'm considering this as I'm a bit stiff and heavy to be crawling around in the hull.

I'm wondering if there is any advice on avoiding any potential issues with this process? Bent makes it look easy

[dbeck]

We did similar as Bent, but only bulkheads 4-8. Bulkheads 1-3 were inserted after the sidepanels had been stitched. I would do it again this way. See our topic ‚Pocketship Build in Europe‘ in this forum.

Dietrich

[Dmksails]

Thanks for the info. I'm looking at your entries now. Why did you decide to leave those panel for later?

[dbeck]

The shape of the bow is complex. We were afraid there would be issues difficult to resolve once the bulkheads 1-3 are fixed to the floor panels with fillets and glas.

We felt that filleting and glassing bulkheads 4-8 at an early stage is not critical and much easier without the sidepanels. Once this is done the additional bonus is that the builder can do some work from inside (!) the boat.

[Creekboater]

Congratulations on starting your build. And welcome to the forum!

I followed Brent's lead as well and left my sides off until everything inside was glassed and painted/varnished as much as could be. I highly recommend this, especially if you dread crawling around in the boat to do all the glassing and such. I'm not a big guy and am relatively young, and so in theory should be just fine doing all that but in retrospect I can't imagine how people do it. Seems like it would be quite a bear.

I can't think of any real problems I ran into doing is this way. I'd absolutely do it again.

Here's ONE thing I might do different : I'd consider stitching the sides in before doing any fillets anywhere. Just to make sure everything fits together properly before gluing anything up. Then remove the sides and have at it. I say this because when my sides finally went on, I wound up with a gap between the hull sides and hull bottoms that extended (on both port and starboard sides) from an inch or so aft of the bow to a few inches aft of bulkhead 1. The width of the gap was maybe 3/8" at the widest part. Try as I might, could never pull the panels together so I just filled the gap with thickened epoxy and kept trucking. I've no clue what may have been done 'incorrectly' leading up to that, but I have to think that had I dry fitted the sides before gluing anything I would have been able to make adjustments accordingly.

Martin