Seats and floorboards

I'm taking a break from spar making to put together the seats and floorboards.  The seats will be varnished, like the spars, so I figure I'll get those done.  Then I'll be able to get all (or at least most) of the varnish done while completing the rest of the boat.  With luck, the multiple coats of varnish won't hold me up in the end.

The slatted seats are attached to Douglas fir cleats spaced about every 18".  Here I've got them cut a bit overlong (they'll be cut down later) and back-screwed to the 1/4" ply top of the underseat watertight lockers.  I've also milled out the slats for the top, and I've placed one along the edge of the cleats just to take a look.  Note that the seats overhang the lockers by about 3".  I'm going with Cypress, 9/16" thick, for the slats, except the edge will be 5/8" Western Red Cedar.  This is a very soft wood, and I might regret this later...but it'll match the W.R.C. transom, which I really like the look of.  (Incidentally the cypress is renewable "ranched" cypress, NOT old growth.)  If it gets banged up, it can easily be replaced later with a tougher wood like, say, Douglas fir (that's one advantage of slatted seats).  I thought about oiling the seats, but the cypress looks so nice varnished I said "what the heck" and decided to varnish them.

Here's the completed seat on the port side, you can see how the W.R.C. edge piece contrasts with the paler cypress.  All that's left now is putting in some bungs, rounding the inside edge, and sanding/varnishing.   The cleats have been cut back to about 1/2" from the edge, which hides them nicely while still supporting the edge.  Along the hull there's a small shelf which hould be good for small items like docking lines, etc.  I used scrap pieces of 1/4" ply as spacers between the slats.

Meanwhile, the starboard seat is coming together and I've started on the floorboards.  These too are slatted, this time of Port Orford cedar.  This is a West Coast cedar, it seems to be a bit heavier then the East Coast varieties but it seems to be a bit tougher too.  A few knots, but that's fine--heck, they're floorboards, they will get beat on.   I've never worked with this type of cedar, but I know they use it for decking out West.  It will be left completely unfinished, so the sun should bleach it to that nice grey color you see on old houses with cedar shingles.  I used scrap pieces of 3/8" ply between the floorboards to set the spacing.

This photo shows the slatted floorboards in place.  Next, I'll remove the whole thing all as a unit and make various cuts to make the lift-out hatches.  There will be hatches either side of the centerboard trunk and a centerline hatch aft.  That grey "fish" in the middle is a lead weight that proved handy as a "third hand" to bend the boards down to the underlying floors.  I used blue tape to make various notes to myself:  Cut Here!  Don't Cut Here!  Plane to line!

In the last photo, you can see that there are fewer cleats for the seats than in the first photo.  That's because three cleats are permantlly attached to the seat slats:  one at each end and one down the middle.  This is so the whole seat can be removed as a unit for varnishing or what-have-you.  I'll try to get a photo of that next time.  About 10 screws then hold the seat to the cleats that are permanently attached to the 1/4" ply.  Hope that's clear.

That's it for now.  I'll be taking Thanksgiving week off from work, hurrah, but I do hope to have a few more photos in about 10 days or so.  Happy Turkey Day!