hull panel alignnment

[Dmksails]

I've wired in my hull panels which seemed to go pretty well - no major gaps to speak of. I do have a problem in a few areas where the panels are out of alignment. Instead of smooth bottom on the outside, in places there is a 1/8-in step where the panels meet the keelson. I've tried pushing them together without success. My next thought was to use blocks and screws to squeeze them together. Before I do that, is this something I really need to be concerned with? Would this get faired out when applying fillets and glass to the outside?

[dbeck]

Sometimes its an issue that both panels join with a edge. When wiring together, one panel might 'snap' over the other one. We had relaxed the situation by taking away the top of the edge with a plane. Just a little bit as indicated by the red lines on the attached (lousy) drawing. This helped a lot especially at the joint between floor and side panels.

I can't remember we had an issue at the joint between keelson and floor panels; at least not a step of 1/8". Are you building from kit as we did?

On page 61 the manual says, that the bottom panels will lift off the cradle when wiring things together. In case you fixed the floor panels to the cradle prior wiring: That could make a difference maybe?

panel-join-edges.png (9.47 KiB) Viewed 188 times

[Dmksails]

I fixed it by placing a 1/16 inch shim under the keel at each cradle . Now they fit correctly and the bulkheads are fitting better also