Pilot House Roof...

You will notice portholes are in.  The fence to the right is gone now and in its place a 16' gate.

Miss Addy sees the light of day... at least for a little while.
I lead off this post with a picture of Miss Addy pulled out of the shop so we can finally get some idea of what she looks like. I think we are all pretty much in agreement that she has taken shape as hoped.

Bo likes it (or is he just hungry?)

The picture shows a finished roof on the pilothouse and this post will cover what it took to get it there.
The first step was getting it out of the shop.  We at first tried a Warn Power Puller winch, no good.  It bogged then shut down repeatedly.  We then resorted to the tractor which did great and had wished we just tried it before.  We bolted in a couple of heavy duty D's and used large yellow straps to pull it.  Once out it was time to start framing the ceiling.

First layer going in...

The ceiling at this point was comprised of one layer of 3/8" bead ply epoxied and screwed to the walls of the PH (I'm going to abbreviate this from now on).  As was the case with the cabin roof, I wanted recessed pocket lights, as well as, wire chases for the air conditioner, anchor light, horn and search light.  We also wanted a little insulation up there so the roof wasn't so apt to turn into a radiator.
What was decided is a frame grid of 1" x 2" pine (and wider in places to support handrail) and an infill with two 3/4" layers of polystyrene foam sheet.  Instead of epoxy this time and because we were basically putting in a frame on 2' centers, we used a generous amount of PL Premium adhesive and screws.  All layers screwed and glued together.  The first layer was attached and allowed to setup overnight so that I could route and hole saw recesses without gumming up the bits with soft glue.

Recessed holes for 2W LED pocket lights and access holes for
future equipment (to be covered with small plates).

Brackets were fabricated from 8/4 Mahogany with a hand drawn sweep that looked pleasing to my eye. The top was beveled to match the roof and were screwed and epoxied in place.

Now that this was accomplished we used a router with a  3/4" mortising bit and played "connect-the-dots".  This was to receive 3/4" PEX tubing which has a larger OD than the foams thickness so we had to route the bottom of the second layer of foam as well as the next layer of 3/4"x2" pine battens.

Now for the pipe.  It was simply mashed into place and took a little squeeze from a pair of pliers to get it into the wood on the batten crossings.

This left us with the 1/4" covering skin of Marine AB fir.  Clamped, marked and glued in place it was pretty straightforward.

Screwed and glued into place, it was time for the Xynole fabric and epoxy.  Wet out was much easier than the hull as temps were in the upper 90's.  Just worked quick, poured and slowly dragged it around with squeegees.  This was after the normal screw hole and seam fill using an epoxy and microballoon fairing mix.

All surfaces were flush planed and sanded and the edge rounded over slightly so that the fabric would roll over without creating a wear point.

The roof was primed and painted without a full weave-fill like the sides will see.  We wanted that "painted canvas" look. the last coat was rolled on.  Spraying just wasn't building it fast enough. One note and this can be seen if you zoom into the roof at the AC opening is where we had to deal with a fabric edge seam.  I fought this on the hull and knew that the best tack here would be to treat it as something that cannot be convincingly hid by careful matching.  What was done instead was to lay two pieces of Frogtape about and inch apart, centered on the seam.  Then, using a filler mix, we squeegeed' an overlapping fill from the AC opening to the edge and down to the end of the fabric.  Immediately pulling the  tape off each side left a thin, clean line that would make you think it was somehow seamed professionally.

That was it.  the roof is complete and using a few nailed-together 2"x6"x16's as a pusher, we shoved the boat back in her house for now as we move on to glassing and painting the outside final.

Deck Install and a big ol hole...

12' wide gap in the building.  Next comes a ramp to pull
the boat out on using skids (yet to be constructed).

Installing the Deck...
(and BTW, I cut a hole in my shop)

As you can see I have a large hole in the side of my boat shop.  I'm not sure why I bring this up now, but its always worth noting when you cut away a large chunk of any structure.  I knew it wouldn't be too long before we were ready to open this up to work on the roof and, well, the reciprocating saw was just sitting there so down she went.

Cardboard pattern laid out for final marking and transferring to 1/2" AB Fir Ply

So, here's how I did it..
Again, hot glue gun and cardboard.  It really doesn't take too much explanation so I'll gloss over some of what you see in this series of photos and let the captions do the rest of the talking. The procedure was to glue together enough cardboard to cover what the limits of a 4' x 8' sheet of ply will do.  I made sure that I landed on a frame with my joints and simply marked under the ply with a pencil or Sharpie marker, flipped it and traced it out.  To my surprise the pattern for the rear deck could be flipped along the centerline and used for both the Port and Starboard.



Port side shown upside down to be undercoated with epoxy before installing.

Heavy ribbon of glue.  Probably 12oz of epoxy plus silica and 4 tablespoons of milled fiber
till its as thick as peanut butter.  Not that greasy organic crap, thick like good old Jif!

Look at the glue.  We used a lot of epoxy mixed with milled fiber and fumed silica to seal and bond the deck. Again, get those Wilton cake decorator bags that come in a tear away 50 pack from Walmart.  Works great.  Use a tall tea glass to stand it up or have a helper hold it open after you roll it down a few inches and grab the stir stick full of goo, raking it off through the bag.  Or just have your cake decorator show you how its done.  I will recommend that you snip a small hole in the tip to allow air out the bottom as you load it.  You won't loose much.

Roughed in pattern. Note that I have left the excised exterior wall
rest where she fell.  I am bad about this sort of thing.

The curved deck around the cabin will take a little scribing for a close fit.  The first picture shows rough fit cardboard with hot glued butt blocks.  The second picture shows the scribing of the cabin wall.



Deck is in and needs to be trimmed flush with the hull.  Planer was the tool of choice and
worked pretty quick.  Belt sander got it close and following the hull angle.  Transom gets flushed down to the rear
deck later.  Lots of 1-5/8" SS screws. Get an impact driver if you don't have one.

Solid pine breasthook let in and planed to curve of deck.

Ply deck installed over breasthook.

Sheer Strake

Stagger the boards back the distance you want the scarf.  The
strake will be 4" or so wide so the scarf is 8" long.

The sheerstrake is the trim board along the hull's edge that the sheer cap will attach to and will serve as the furthest outboard edge of the hull.  This is generally not what will hit a dock or submerged object first so it doesn't have to be solid rubber.  Bumpers should be deployed when docking.
To build these we need to join our 12' stock together to give us around 25 total feet of  1" x 5" once we split the 1" x 10" rough sawn stock.  We are using pine again, very dense and resinous. We join through the use of a long glue joint at a very low angle.  The power planer does a good job of hogging a lot of wood using some general guidelines.  It is pretty straightforward as you just step the stock back and let the planer run across the board's edges as it slowly creates flats.

You can see the layout guidelines penciled in and the formation of the scarf joint.

Final joint should be close enough for epoxy to work it's magic.  Remember that a little gap here works wonders with epoxy, it is actually preferable to a super tight joint.

You have an idea of the total length.  It eats up all of the shop, plus a little.  The joints are glued up using black poly plastic pieces to protect the backer blocks. The board was split then planed to 3/4".  Do this after the glue up so that the planer takes out any inconsistency in the scarf joint and they will look perfect.




































Installing them (get your clamps ready and maybe a car jack)

Prep the hull. We used epoxy to glue this in and so need to peel off the paint so we can get a good bond to the underlying glass. It was really just the last step in flushing the edge of the deck and holding the belt sander at waist height and sighting down along the hull, was pretty easy to get a good flush edge.  If there were gaps, the epoxy would fill those in as we faired the deck joints.

The final photos don't say much about what it took to get these suckers in.  We started in the middle, gluing our way back about six feet each way as we neared the ends.  That is where it got tough. We used a combination of clamps, jacks and brute force to follow that sweeping sheer. It was tough but the results are worth it.  The sheer strake really accentuates the sweep of the hull that gives this hull such grace for a hard chined vessel.

Sweep shows elegantly...

Nice joint.  Hard to tell but the epoxy is clear and filling what looks to be a dip along the face.

The final step to finish this out is to plane and sand the sheer strake flush with the deck.  Then a round over bit so that the Xynole fabric can round the deck and tuck neatly behind a future sheer cap.

Circling back to the hole in the wall...

It was time to make this thing mobile and I'll end this post with this project.  We need to finish the roof and there is no room.  The only way is to skid it out past the wall. 
So two things needed to be done: 1) build skids and get the old cradle out from under the boat and 2) build a ramp to get the boat out 16 or so feet. 
The skids were cut to fit the rocker from doubled up 2" x 12"s nailed together and carpeted on top.  I also used some old 1/4" cutting board material HDPE from a leather cut table and heated the bends on the bottom and nailed them in place.  We jacked up the boat and slid them under without a hitch. 

Just a pretty simple deck to skid out on.  I'll use the tractor to do it.