vrijdag 9 november 2007

Hull joined!

When trial fitting the hull-halves I noticed some gaps, especially in the bow section (ranging from a few mm to app. 1,5 cm). Maybe the upper half distorted a bit because I was not able to support it much (as I had to lift it out of the way), or maybe this will always happen a bit in the areas where there is some tension in the foam and the marine ply insert (because of all the bending).
Luckily this didn't turn out to be a problem. To be sure of a very tight join, and for ease of mind, I thought out a way to clamp the halves together. Here is what I did:

On the outside of the upper half I screwed a batten along the whole joint, held in place with scrap piece of wood which overlap the joint. See the picture below. In the bow section I couldn't use woodblocks, so I only used screws (the joint is not flat in this area). Picture of the extra batten on the outside.
The preparation took about one hour (taking it easy mode) and was well worth it. After putting some putty on the joint it was simply a matter of clamping the battens together - 2 meters at a time, starting from the bow - and correcting any misalignment by screweing some extra blocks to the outside batten to pull the battens in line. See the picture below. By the way: this part had a gap, and needed more clamps than usual.
After aligning and clamping the battens together, I fixed them with some screws and went on clamping the next two meters. The whole process only took about one hour (taking it easy mode).
Result: an IMO very nice joint.

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