Floors
Floors | |
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10 floors have to be made to support the floorboards. After making the first 2 a bandsaw was added to the workshop.
There are five floors each side.
3 floors are at the position of frame B, C and D and the offsets for these 3 frames were used
to determine the size of the floors at these positions. The floors are 20mm wide which is enough to make one
side of the floor a different size to the frame offsets. Each face on the floor was planed at an angle (in two planes) to fit each chine on the hull.
The floor at frame B was fitted during the fitting out of the forward section allowing the floor the be screwed to frame B before the bow tank top was fitted. Once the floors at frame B, C and D were in place a length of wood was placed over the floors allowing measurements for the intermediate floors to be taken. |
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All floors were cut oversize (too high) to allow plenty of spare wood for planing and fitting to the hull.
A floor would be cut to the offset dimensions and then placed against the hull. One side would fit well, the other would have a gap somewhere.
The part of the floor causing the gap would be marked and planed away a small amount at a time. The first floor took ages, the last one was easy.
The floors at frames B and D require rounding to fit against the frame / hull fillets. The floors were cut roughly to shape, the fillets marked with a pencil and the floors pressed against the frame / fillet. Any high point on the floor would be marked with pencil. |
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Once the floor fitted the hull its top was planed to be horizontal, a spirit level was useful for this.
Finally measurements were taken from the datum or from other floors and the floor planed to the correct height.
Scrap lengths of wood were pinned to the floors to ensure that they stayed in the right position while the epoxy cured. The floor at frame D was screwed to the frame. |
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| I had a lot of douglas fir left over so decided to make the floors from this. This dictated the dimensions of the wood the floor was made from - 38mm wide. This meant lots of pieces of wood totalling 50m in length to be planed square. The narrow gaps between the wood make any slight errors more visible. |  |
| On my next build I will have wider pieces of wood with larger gaps between them as this will be much less work and any slight errors will be less visible. |  |