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.

[dbeck]

The manual foresees two holes in BH2 into the dorade boxes. I drilled three holes. Why?

As I wanted to do everything carefully, I started by drilling a pilot hole on the starboard side at the best position. Then, I became concerned and I cut out some patterns for the inspection ports, placed them until I was happy and drilled a new set of pilot holes.

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Then I used a big hole circle cutter and drilled to big holes. I really took care to center the drill onto the pilot holes. First I was happy with the result. I had two big holes with clean edges. I reached into them with both hands. But wait! They feel differently and somehow symmetry was broken. What happened? I picked the wrong of the two pilot holes on the starboard side although the correct one was properly marked I felt there was no other option than gluing the cut-out disk back in with thickened epoxy.

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Next day, I drilled a third hole into BH2.

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What a mishap. But finally we have two proper holes in BH2.

[SMHolmans]

I did something very similar with the ventilator openings in my Dorade boxes. In completely the wrong place! Very frustrating and a complete waste of time.

[dbeck]

I did something very similar with the ventilator openings in my Dorade boxes

Steve, that must has been way more difficult as the deck above the Dorade boxes is slightly curved and access from below is very limited.

[SMHolmans]

It has been a total bl**dy nightmare! Lesson learned? look ahead at the deck hardware layout on page 272 before you cut any holes in the Dorade boxes ....

Steve

[dbeck]

Hello Pocketship builders,

as usual we have changed the sequence proposed by the manual. Many of the things from page 129 to page 175 were done in different order. One the one hand, this allowed us two builders to split tasks and do things in parallel. On the other hand, there are lots of details and one can work on one end, while epoxy cures at the other end.

Painting the cabin interior is foreseen much later, page 219. But I was concerned to do the paint job in a confined space with little ventilation (even using a mask) and I painted all surfaces, cleats and carlins prior the cabin roof was installed. With open access, some things are easier and it feels much better if one can work with sufficient head room or even standing up.

The walls and cleats are done in semi-gloss 'cream' white, RAL9001; I have no idea how this translates to a US color scale. After the cabin roof was installed, we were eager to see everything painted including the cabin roof from the inside. We liked the scheme by Sean's Pocketship and decided to give it a try.

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Actually, it was the first time we tried to varnish s.th. on our Pocketship. There are some minor imperfections, but it feels good to see how the finished boat will look like. On the photo, the white looks a more pale than in reality due to the LED lights. The nice wooden floor will remain covered until the cabin roof is glassed and some work on the companionway has been done.

Dietrich

[dbeck]

It has been a while since my last update. We have been quite busy, but basically just followed the manual: We even copied the shape and round-overs at the drop board retainers and - yes - they are made of 9mm plywood, glued on with epoxy and will be painted white later.

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After completing the glassing of the cabin roof, seatbacks and bow covering the long joint between upper and lower side panels, my co-builder started with rub-rails; scarfing, steam-bending and so on. This was (as usual) more work than expected. Unfortunately some of the temporary screws teared off and it was quite some work to get the remains out. For the third pair of rubrail cleats it was decided to go again screw-less with mortising and clamping. Mortising just prevents the rails from slipping away, while clamps are used to apply force. This also avoids the wood plugs that would have been necessary later in case of temporary screws.

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We also spend a lot of time in puttying and sanding the imperfections of glassing like the joints/overlaps of glass cloth from bow to stern. This will also make the areas of fillets look more pretty after painting. I prefer to do it at this stage and have things ready to paint. Maybe this explains why our build is progressing slower than expected :-/ .

Dietrich

[dbeck]

Our boat is flipped. We finally decided to use the 'strap method' (see here or here) and built a rig with four winches.

As a caveat, our PS did not want to turtle thanks to its heavy keel. The friction of the straps was too little; once the keel was almost horizontal, our little boat turned a bit back. We decided to lower the boat until the rubrail touched the floor and placed an improvised support under the keel, then lifted the straps on the keel side and gently pushed the boat over the tip point. The rest went easy using the straps as planned.

Our boat new rests on three points, the enforced part of the seatbacks - where the aft mooring cleats will be mounted - and the breast hook at the bow. All three supports are on rollers and we can move the boat around inside and even out of the garage. With the chosen height of our supports (aft: ~44cm, bow: ~22cm), the keel is horizontal and the 'top' of the cabin is about 5cm above the ground.

Dietrich

BTW : Upside down, the boat appears much smaller.

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