Thankfully I am done with glassing the bilge (and 95% of the sanding) and am now on to floorboards. As seems all too frequent, this isn’t quite as straightforward as it seems in the manual.
But it’s fun trying to figure out. I’m working with timber from a kit and the non-full-length boards seem short to me. It’s hard to tell without started to cut them to shape but it appears that there will be what I feel are substantial gaps between the boards and the hull. I don’t want the boards sitting flush to the hull i don’t think, but I think it’d be nice looking to keep the gap no more than, say, quarter of an inch.
So I’m doing a couple of things…
1. Before I start making significant cuts I’m working on making a cardboard template formed to the shape such that the bottom of the boards would meet flush to the hull. I figure I’ll cut to that and then carefully shave back from there. The template cut will help as the boards will sit better and thus hopefully allow for a better sense of what’s going on.
2. I went out and purchased two full length oak boards to add to my 16 kit boards. Now having 9 boards on each side, this should allow for enough available square footage to eliminate all gaps that the short boards were creating. Plus I think the oak boards will create a nice contrast to the cypress boards included with the kit. Winding up with 9 boards on each side (about an extra 3” each side) I might have to monkey with the widths of the boards so I don’t wind up with too narrow a sliver of board at the most outboard points. We’ll see.