Finishing off the deck

This week I finished off the deck, so here's a few photos of how it all came together.

This shot shows the various blocking pieces cut and fit.  These are made of scrap 1/4" ply left over from planking/decking, and they add strength to various key parts of the boat.  For example, the foredeck will support a mooring cleat and, of course, there will be a hole through the deck for the mast, so there's a fair amount of blocking in that area.

With the blocking done, I finished rough-cutting the various 1/4" ply deck pieces.  Here are all the pieces drilled for screws (little #6x3/4") and ready for glue up.

This is called a "jump stick".  It lets you "jump" over something to mark on the other side. In this case, I'm marking the inside edge of the plywood deck where it meets the carlin.

The shrouds will be attached using these 1/8"-thick bronze tangs which stick up through the deck.  Two bronze machine screws go through the clamps and, for good measure, the tangs are bent around and under the clamps. This transmits the load coming from the shroud directly to the clamp which is securely glued/screwed to the hull and decking.

Here are the four tangs, ready for installation.  Why not two, you ask, since there's only one pair of shrouds?  Well, for fun I'm going to have two "settings" for the shrouds:  a "single handing" setting using tangs along the sheer about one foot aft of the mast and a "racing" setting where the tangs are about four feet behind the mast.  The shrouds, which will be made of wire with rope tails or possibly a modern low-stretch rope like Spectra, will terminate at a cleat on the coamings (not at a conventional turnbuckle) so I suppose these would technically be called running backstays.  When in the "racing" setting, the shrouds will provide extra support to the top of the mast but also require resetting for each tack.  The "single handing" setting should provide more-than-adequate support and, importantly, won't require resetting when tacking.  In either case, the windward shroud can be slacked off if necessary while running.  Note that this feature is NOT shown on the Sail Plan at my Sketches and Plans page...which I'll update after the boat is done.

OK I'm finally ready to glue in the deck pieces!  I started with the forward triangular piece.  I broke the deck here so that I could reach forward under the deck to clean up any glue mess.  The deck is screwed down about every 18" with addition small ring nails as needed...but, as usual with this type of construction, the glue is doing most of the work. 

Here's the rest of the deck getting glued in place.  I'll put some epoxy putty in the various screw holes and dings and sand it smooth for the Dynel later on.

Well that's it for now.  Next time I'll have some photos of the Dynel going on the deck...plus the start of the spars.   I figure it's about time to start on those since they will need multiple coats of varnish and I don't want that to hold up the launch spars.  Plus it's a fun thing to do, so I don't mind getting started...