Building The Vera Cruise

[Milhouse]

You have made great progress Carl!!!

[footer]

Looks really good Carl. Nice clean lines.

[X23]

Good show Carl, I like her looks.

A thought on your electric panel from a few pages back - hope you planned to have it fold down (or to the side) for access to the rear when necessary. Remember to line the inside of the space with something non-combustible. Breakers sometimes fail by distributing hot fragments in their vicinity, rare but it happens. Something like thin aluminum, or stainless, or thin insulation. This was recognized several years ago by the NEC National Electrical Code. Remember when home breaker panels were found on the sides of closets? No longer permitted for the same reason.

Hey, you have a boat! So glad you are sharing this adventure with us.

Jack

[mrintense]

Thanks for the feedback Jack, footer and Jim.

Yes the electrical panel will be hinged for access, although for the moment, the work on that is on hold.

Here's an update. After making and shaping some of the helm parts, I started working on the internal structure of the platform that the seat will set on. It was at this point that I realized that I needed to get the veneer applied to the plywood before proceeding. Unfortunately, with the shipping situation be somewhat slower due to the virus, my veneering supplies won't arrive until next week. I wish I had ordered them sooner since I was off this week, but it is what it is. So I switched gears and went to work building the fuel tank compartment. This requires a bunch of panels to be prepared with fiberglass for protection so I've been doing that for several days. I also started sanding the exterior of the hull where the epoxy runs from the deck installation (last year) needed cleaning up.

The garage is pretty cramped right now because I've got all the forward cabin parts out of the boat while I am giving the paint in there plenty of time to cure. I'm going to try and get the helm and fuel compartment and aft cabin wall work all done before installing the forward cabin to avoid having to clean out the bilge more than once from saw dust.

No interesting pictures right now, but I should have some soon.

[mrintense]

I'm making progress on the fuel tank box. Here it is with three sides attached. All of the seams will get fiberglass reinforcement and the entire inner surface will be painted with bilge paint. This box will be ventilated with a blower (which I will only run when needed). Maybe overkill, I'm not sure, but I do not want any gasoline fumes accumulating in the bilge.

The floor structure in the forward cabin has blind fasteners installed for the floor boards (side boards only at the moment. I will be adding a strip of rubber on each piece to eliminate any squeaking.

The helm station as it is currently at. It's waiting for the veneering to be accomplished on the main parts before continuing. I have most of what I need to do that, but haven't started on it yet as I am working on the fuel tank box first.

Helm station in work

Forward cabin floor panel fasteners installed

Fuel tank box in work.

[DrBryanJ]

Looking good Carl. Any concern about galling with the fasteners?

[Hercdrvr]

Looks like it’s all coming together. Have you started thinking about what to do with your life after your boat is finished? The only thing I know to do is , build another boat.
Nice work Carl,
Matt B

[mrintense]

Thanks Bryan and Matt.

Actually Bryan, I didn't consider galling when I installed these. I did a bit of research on this to get a better idea of the problem. It appears it can be somewhat mitigated by lubrication. Also if the screws are not over tightened and screwed in too fast, the risk is lower. These panels will be semi permanently mounted, meaning that they will only come up if complete access to the bilge is required in the future. The center panel will require opening more often, so I will consider this situation when I get to it. I think for the side panels, the galling can be mitigated by slowly installing the screws and not over tightening them.

Matt,

Ha, This will be the only boat I build. It's taken far longer than I thought it would and there are still several years worth of work to complete here. After the major work is completed, I'll be launching her. Then all the remaining trim work will be done and after that, tweaks and improvements. So no worries for the foreseeable future about running out of things to do.

[Bill Edmundson]

I have SS fasteners holding much of the Tahoe seats and bulkheads. Lock-Tight has an anti-seize lube. It seems to work pretty well.

Bill

[mrintense]

I'm waiting for my fuel tank hold down kit so I can continue with the fuel tank box. While waiting on that, I started working on veneering the cabin wall parts (which also a part of the helm cabinet). The first part was the trim piece that fits to the roof top aft edge. This matches the curve of the roof and forms the top part of the wall connected to the helm cabinet and the fuel tank cabinet.

The plan for the aft wall of the cabin is to have the inside cabin surface veneered with Mahogany and the outside will be painted. The upper edge of this trim piece also forms a small lip (fiddle) across the back of the roof as this area of the roof will also double as part of the helm. Probably hard to visualize right now and it will make more sense when I get it installed.

But what I was going to share today is the veneering of the trim piece. Using the vacuum pump that Neel so kindly sent to me and some additional equipment that I've since picked up, I applied the first veneer yesterday using epoxy between the plywood and the mahogany veneer. The first photo shows the part under the vacuum bag and it worked perfect;ly.

The second photo shows the part after cleaning up. As mentioned, the veneer side will be inside the cabin.

The veneer being applied under vacuum bagging

The trim piece after the veneer edges and surfaces were cleaned up.

[JimmY]

Very nice, Carl. Vacuum bagging is pretty straight forward and results in a very strong bond.

[Roberta]

That is way cool.

Roberta

[hoodman]

That's like one huge clamp with perfectly even pressure.

[neel thompson]

Carl.... Happy to see the vacuum pump in action. Did you have to do much to it to fix the shipment damage ? My buddy Glenn built the pump just before he got sick and passed away. He was a perfectionist, so I had a feeling it would work properly. Nice job.!! Neel

[mrintense]

Thanks Roberta, Matt, Jimmy, and Neel.

And thanks again Neel for sending this. The damage was not too bad, mostly just some items broken loose from the carrying handle. All of that was fixed, I replaced the oil in the pump and replaced the fitting on the end of the vacuum line so it would work with my vacuum port.

I used to do this kind of work when I was an aircraft mechanic doing composite repair and fabrication for the airlines. So doing this here was quite easy to get back into even though it's been well over 20 years. The hardest part was finding a reasonable supply of the various bagging materials needed and trying to determine how much I need.

I've gotten the second wall piece veneered and will be starting on the third wall piece today.

Just to recap what I have in mind. The aft wall of the cabin will be wood veneered on the inside surface (cabin side). The outside surface (aft surface) will be fiberglassed and painted white. The helm station and fuel tank cabinet will be attached to these wall pieces and these will also be veneered and finished in natural wood. I think the natural wood helm and fuel tank cabinet will offset the white wall quite nicely.

Since it's easier to vacuum bag the parts when they are flat, I want to get all of this done before doing the assembly work. So some parts of the walls will be cut away depending upon the application, but it's just easier this way.