Lets try ply
for a bulkhead and the ..'forward lockers'? 'front roll'? chain
bin'?
Whatever you call those lockers up front...
and I wanted to make my main bulkheads out of ply for reasons
of strength and cost.. but how to go about it? So, I tried on
the smallest one and it worked just fine.
The smallest bulkhead I was to make
was the rudder bulkheads. Least to risk if it doesn't work. I
had a big stack of good 9mm marine ply and wanted to make all
of my main bulkheads out of it but figured I would test the joining
of them and fitting with these. I first cut a pattern out of
cheap bracing ply to use for a template for the other 4 pieces.
Port and starboard, front and back.
I did everything with a hand saw, but
a decent one.
Mix up glue and weight it down... BUT,
the first attempt failed. The panels slipped while the glue was
setting. I found I needed to put in just two nails to keep the
alignment.
I laminated the surface of the bulkheads
with 450 gr DB glass and epoxy and taped in place.. All good!
So I used a similar method to make the
front lockers bulkheads. At first I had this fantasy that I could
torture the 9mm ply into this curve... no way. So I tried making
kerf cuts into the backside by the roll, no way. So I took my
power saw and ripped pieces of ply o make some rough strip plank.
All good!
i can not live without bracing strap.
Very useful stuff. I stuck stuff everywhere to keep in place
and align and then glued on the inside. After that I put up the
main piece of ply and it was hard to bend even the very modest
curve left in it.
I am now removing all the screws
and bits. As my ply was 2400mm and the width was over 3000, I
taped a section on, see the joint on the left side. I did all
the heavy glassing on the inside and then ground off the tape
on the outside. It was pretty easy to sand off the strip plank
to a fair roll. As I was about to glass I applied a layer of
thin bogg to finish the surface.
Why I don't have any photos of the glassing
of this panel?? Because I stuffed up and had to press my photographer
into service in an emergency operation!! I
cut the glass (600gr DB) and had it hanging from the top with
little welding clamps. I figured I would wet it in place. I totally
underestimated the difficulty in wetting on a horizontal, let
alone reverse angle. I was in serious trouble and Kay gave a
hand to consolidate whilst I rolled resin on... or threw resin
in the general direction and hoped some of it stuck. It came
out OK but without the emergency help... I think It would have
failed.
