2365Hrs – Beams And Ports

A solid day today working on a mix of tasks, first job was to rip the beam timber that arrived yesterday down to the correct 330mm width. The planks were delivered at a standard width of 345mm so there wasn’t much to come off but far easier to do it on the table saw now than to plane it off later. It took about an hour to rip down all 90 metres but I was just glad I wasn’t doing it by hand!

After that I decided to make a start on my one-a-day beam plank glueing. Since I’d spent a bit of time prepping the timber I figured I’d tackle the shorter mast beam first.

It’s a straightforward operation, I rough up both surfaces with a coarse 40 grit paper on the big belt sander, coat both surfaces with a neat application of epoxy, stir up a glue mix of neat epoxy with added microfibres, spread that generously on one surface, position the plank correctly on the beam, clamp and screw down with temporary screws and washers then clean off the excess adhesive that has squeezed out.

Below left you can see the plank coated with neat epoxy and the beam covered with adhesive.

Above right the plank has been added and temporarily screwed into position.

After that job was done I spent an hour cleaning up the second hand fixed ports for the bow sections. They’d been protected with masking tape many many years ago and subsequently the tape had gone hard and was impossible to remove. I had to use acetone and a soft scraper to get it all off. The tape had done it’s job though and they came up like new.

I’ve now fitted all three in the starboard hull bolted down onto marine bedding compound with stainless M4 countersunk machine bolts and nuts.