·:[ Darryl's Coot Building Journal ]:·
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[0.5 hours] One of the treasures that I snagged from Fran Nealy (story here) was a foredeck, windshield, instrument panel assembly. The dash comes with a throttle quadrant and some instruments. I spent a little time cleaning and inspecting this today.

The windshields cleaned up pretty well. I noticed a small crack in the left windshield (it is barely visible in the top photo).

The shape near the nose wheel differs slightly from my hull, but Russ assures me that the two can be blended together just fine.

[2 hours] Last night I finished trimming a couple of frame pieces for the bulkhead at station 127. I’ve begun the process of gluing the frame to the web. This work will take a few days.

[2 hours] I finished trimming the top of the station 127 bulkhead webbing. Also, I cut all of the spruce frame members for the bulkhead. I still must cut the blocking. I should be doing some gluing on the station this weekend.

[2.5 hours] Previously I mentioned that I was completely cleaning up the tape on one side of each bulkhead for fitting the new webbing of each bulkhead. Today, I painstakingly removed the second side at several bulkheads. I believe I have every bulkhead completely cleaned of old tape, except station 96. Station 96 will require a bit of work still.

There is still much prep work to do on the interior of the hull.

I have started removing the FG tape from the keelson. It seems that the previous builder got no adhesion between the tape and the underlying wood!?! I may need to replace the wood itself, although I haven’t inspected the wood carefully.

[1 hour] I started shaping the sides of station 7 to the hull today. I really helps to have the old nose box to work with. Still more work to to in the trimming of the sides—better to work slowly than to take too much off!

[2.5 hours] I cut out the web for station 127 today. I cut it slightly oversized and spent quite awhile trimming the lower contour to the hull. The most time consuming thing was cleaning up the old tape and resin to ensure no interference.

[3.5 hours] I did the final fitting of bulkheads at stations 168 and 148. As part of this, I cleaned up the remaining old fiberglass tape from the two stations.

I also finished cleaning up the old station 127 bulkhead, removed all old hardware, flattened all the old staples, and used it to draw a template onto the marine plywood for a new station 127. Did additional layout work for the bulkhead.

[1 hour] I’ll only claim one hour of work today, but I did much more.

In doing my spruce inventory, I discovered that I had plenty of 1.25″ by 0.75″ spruce. Unfortunately, it was chopped up into 2 foot and 3 foot sections. I believe I ordered enough of this stuff to make station 127, but I may have forgotten to specify that I needed long pieces. In any case, I took about 12 feet of the 1.25″ x 0.75″ and chopped it down on the jointer to 1″ x 0.5″ Now I have all the spruce and plywood to finish the nose box.

I did a little more prep on the old station 127 in order to use it as a pattern for the new station 127.

I borrowed a friend’s pick-up truck and went into Seattle to the “Home Building Center” to get some more marine ply wood (Okume). I got 2 sheets of 1/8″ and 1 sheet of 1/4″. This should get me through the project. The 1/8″ stuff is slightly thicker than 1/8″ because it is a metric size (3 mm?).

[2.5 hours] Finished the station 14 bulkhead. Here are photos of the front side of the completed bulkhead. (Click on photo for a larger image.)

Unfortunately, I made a mistake in placing the 1″ x 1/2″ notches in the uprights. I placed ‘em an inch too low (D’oh!). I repaired the error by gluing in a block of spruce after cutting the notches in the correct spots. The error will not be a problem because, in the completed nosebox, 5 of the 6 faces of the block will be glued to spruce.

Still to do on installation: (1) taper the side supports near the bottom to fit the taper of the hull (notice that the front webbing is cut approximately to the final size), and (2) trim the excess lengths at the bottom.

And here is an updated view of the nosebox.

Of course, there is much to do before the nosebox is completed, including final fitting of each bulkhead to the hull..

[2.5 hours] Finished cutting spruce frame members for station 14. Jigged and glued the rest of the spruce frame. Cut and finished the eleven gusset pieces for this bulkhead.

[6 hours] Worked on the station 14 bulkhead. This was a little more complicated than other bulkheads. I actually had to create a chipboard template. There are three reasons for this. First, the original bulkhead is embedded in the nose-box, so I could not use the old one as a template very easily. Second, the existing bulkhead at station 14 is in very bad shape. Third, the previous builder had made this bulkhead using 1/2 inch spruce, rather than the 3/4″ spruce specified in the drawings. Therefore, I had to shift the outer pieces of spruce slightly to account for the taper in the hull.

In any case, after creating a 3/4″ rough template, I tapered the edges so that the template fit into the hull snuggly. Next, I cut most of the spruce pieces for the bulkhead. I’ve glued about 50% of the frame. The rest will be glued tomorrow.

[0.5 hours] Finished the station 7 bulkhead. Did some trimming and clean-up. Here are photos of each side of the completed bulkhead. (Click on photo for a larger image.)

Still to do on installation: (1) taper the side supports near the bottom to fit the taper of the hull (notice that the front webbing is cut approximately to the final size), and (2) trim the excess lengths at the bottom.