Glen-L.com

I am nervously starting the fairing process and my first concern is where to end the battens.

I have run a plywood panel down along the bottom and I can see that the panel begins to push down on the shorter outside battens about eight inches short of frame #2. I intend to leave them a bit longer at perhaps six inches short of the frame and then fair them as needed to make even contact. I am ASSUMMING that slight pressure onto the batten at the forward most point when the bottom panel is fastened is permissible, if not desirable in order to assure good contact. Correct?

The longer inside battens have me baffled as they seem to interfere with the panel almost immediately....even with a nice simulated curve applied to the panel. As I move the panel a little further toward the stem, the problem obviously becomes worse. I would have to bend the panel to the breaking point in order to clear.

I'll attach a couple of photos, but it is hard to see the problem.

Sooooo..........how do I determine where to cut the longer ones off? Should I let the panel bend a "lot" to clear them? It had to curve some in order just to get past frame #2!

PS You might notice where I have added a huge shim to the chines. I intend to fair them out so that my panels go on WITHOUT an improper reverse curve. They just didn't seem to bow out far enough to allow accurate fitting and fairing as I mentioned in a previous post. It is going to make for extra work, but I will survive!

For clarification I'm not finished my boat so I cannot guarantee my information is correct. I'm building a Zip, which I understand is the 'Squirts' bigger brother.

I ran my battens as far forward as I could to provide as much support for the hull as possible, since the front end of the boat takes the brunt of waves. I also added 'stiffeners/strongback' to my battens for extra support.

I believe it's best to have 'tension' between the battens and the hull in the forward section of the boat. I ran a piece of hardwood underneath the jig longditudinals and run 7" gutter screws up through that piece of hardwood into the batten stiffeners/strongbacks and gradually pulled them 'down' until I they were at a height that I could 'fair' them. I then cranked the scews a turn two tighter to bring the battens further away from the hull to make installing the hull easier and to let the shape of the hull be determined by the frames, keel, chine and sheer. YOU MUST RELEASE THE SCREWS AND LET THE BATTENS 'SPRING' BACK TOWARD THE HULL AS SOON AS THE HULL IS FASTENED IN PLACE TO THE FRAME SO THEY WILL BE EPOXIED TO THE HULL.

Takes a bunch of test fitting pieces of plywood in several directions to get a feel for how forward you can run the battens. The battens will take a significant curve. Some folks also 'kerf' their battens so the can be bent easier and run further forward. The search engine might help you find how to kerf battens, but the arguement is you make a cut width wise on the batten and epoxy this 'kerf' once the hull ply is applied.

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This is my first, last and only boat build.

http://www.gdzipbuild.blogspot.com

On my Squirt the inner battens had to be cut just forward of frame 1 which is the forward frame in the plans. The outer battens I cut just aft of the frame as they would have interfered with the bottom planking.