3172Hrs – Platform Seven

I spent most of todays seven hour session working on the aft platform. There’s not a lot to show because the bulk of the time was spent figuring out how I was going to build it.

As with all of these off plan modifications it’s incredibly time consuming deciding on the best ways of doing things. In the case of this platform I had to come up with something that functioned as I wanted it to, was strong enough to take heavy loading (me + fuel and water containers) but at the same time it needed to be as light as possible.

I ended up re-purposing an old hardwood window sill and a couple of pieces of oak to form the main support frame. I’ve notched it all together, screwing and glueing the joints and it’s sitting on the barn floor ready to put in place tomorrow.

I’m not going to attempt an explanation of how it works tonight, because if all goes to plan I’ll have it in position with the plywood deck fixed on by close of play tomorrow and a few pictures will show clearly what I’ve done.

For now though here’s a picture of the raw frame glued together:

As I said it took me most of the day to get this far, although to be fair getting my reclaimed timber into a fit state to use took some time as well. Anyway to finish off I thought I’d drop the dinghy onto the stern ramp to see how it fitted and to have a bit of a ponder.

The good news it that it seems to fit perfectly although I’m not sure about the clearance for the port tiller and tiller bar. I’ve had a good look at the plans but I can’t find any dimensions for the clearance of the tillers over the aft decks. The dinghy does sit down quite nicely into the ramp and as my photo shows, at the point of the midships gunnel it’s only just over a foot above the ramp side deck. I’m pretty sure that’ll be fine for the tiller bar but I’m not so sure about the tiller itself. I’ll have to see if I can get some measurements from another Tiki 38 owner

The bad news is that there’s isn’t room for the aluminium ladders I’d thought of using so I’ll have to re-think that idea.