Sole Man

August 16, 2015  Hours spent building to date:  1,309

A pretty boring week installing floor joists, painting the deckhouse with tie-coat and fitting the cockpit and deckhouse sole subflooring (1/2-inch marine ply in the cockpit, birch in the cabin proper).  Also did a lot of shop reorganization, since I am now back to cutting big sheets of plywood in a shop that is full of trawler.

I’ve done as much as I can with the subfloor, but at last I can move from the stern all the way forward without clambering over frames.  Still a little spongy until I can tie things down tight after the tanks are in, but nevertheless a big improvement.  As usual, it looked like some of the pieces would be nice and square, but that was not to be as there are subtle curves even back at the stern, and every piece had to be scribed, fitted, trimmed and refitted.

There are some seams in the cockpit, since it was easier to cut around the frames using narrow pieces, and I have to conserve my marine ply stock in the event of a cutting disaster while fabricating the forecabin sides, the next big piece of carpentry.  Everything is going to be overlaid with solid decking, so the seams don’t pose a problem.  I would love to use teak out in the cockpit, but that is unlikely since I spent a lot of time pricing it and we’d be looking at something like $1,800 even for a small boat like Tardis.  Since this is a Pacific Northwest type boat, I think vertical grain Douglas fir set in epoxy will look just fine at about $200.