The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[GPW]

KC, all your tools ... seems you could whip out a threaded adapter out of some thick walled PVC tubing eh ? SCH. 80 ? Something has to be close .

[KCStudly]

KC, all your tools ... seems you could whip out a threaded adapter out of some thick walled PVC tubing eh ? SCH. 80 ? Something has to be close .

I didn't even have to make anything (well...), just scrounged. All I had to do was drill a hole and pay attention to the orientation (...oh yeah, and make the little press installation tool. )

Remember this: previous post.

[GPW]

Oh Right !!! Sorry, one tends to forget all the little bits and pieces that have gone before ... This IS a rather “complicated” build , and only you really know what’s going on eh !!!

[KCStudly]

...only you really know what’s going on...

Nope, not even!

Well, maybe a little.

[GPW]

More than we do ... I just enjoy watching and seeing what’s possible ... ( and the food pics )

[KCStudly]

The glue on that last spar dried up and shrunk fairly well… and it will never show… but I was still compelled to scrape it down.

Next I measured for where the vent fan wires come up thru the curb side wall and used the new trim router (for the first time) to make a small slot to clear them. By making a slot instead of a hole I can slide the ceiling assembly on and off from the street side without having to worry about threading the wires thru a hole. The ‘L’-shape scrap used here as a guide/stop was a former test piece that I made when I was working on cabinet joinery.


Next I set up the temporary locating pucks for the rear vent spar and side riblets; traced the fan rough opening; raised the whole panel up on a few pieces of 1-1/2 thk foam scraps; drilled a couple of starter holes; and rough cut the opening with the jigsaw. I left about 1/4 to 1/2 inch all the way around; the purpose of the opening, for now, is just so that I can locate the frame work easier and run temporary screws in for the glue up.

Then Karl helped me set the whole thing up on top for another dry fitting. The wire slot was bang on and the spars have taken care of all sagging issues, so we are good there.



Next we put a very critical eye on how I had fit the vent riblets. The angle cuts where they butt up to the spars were both ever so slightly off. This was making the fan side of both spars kick up slightly, and we were both concerned that if I clamped the spars down hard to get a good glue fit it would likely make visible creases in the panel rather than a nice smooth arc.

Then we figured that we were looking too close and it would probably work itself out… but it had already been bugging me… and Karl had picked up on it right away, too, so… after he went back in the house I cut the riblets off using the bandsaw (thin blade). In doing so I accidentally undercut the spar a little. At first I considered just flipping the spar around to present the remaining good face, but that would throw all of my layout lines and orientation marks off. So I took a small rip cut on the table saw to true the original face back up.

Also, to tune the angle cuts on the ends of the vent riblets, instead of trying to get the miter saw set to the exact partial angle and then cutting each riblet individually, I found that I could get a much finer and controllable angle adjustment by tilting the table saw blade and made skim cuts with the riblets paired up so that they would match exactly.

Dry fit showed that things looked a lot better now, so I reglued the riblets to the rear vent spar.


Now the whole vent frame/spar assembly fits the curve of the roof much better. The rough opening was reduced from 14-1/2 inches down to 14-1/4 inches in the front-to-back direction; but that is a lot less critical than leaving extra room for the wires in the side-to-side direction, which has not changed.

Mind you the vent frame/spars are not glued to the ceiling skin yet; still thinking about how to get that right.

[capnTelescope]

KC, one of the many things rattling around my brain is that you asked earlier whether pre-coating with poly on a piece of ply that will be bent will affect the bending. I have an answer.

Those of you who have been following my build might remember this picture of me "training" a sheet of ply to skin my hatch with:


Some time after I took this picture, I did a pre-coat of wipe-on poly on the inside side of that sheet. Time passed, the sheet got set aside and forgotten until yesterday, when I got started on skinning my hatch. The ply definitely bends better the "other" way now. IIRC, I let the sheet be flat while the poly cured.

I'm not sure what the lesson here is. Either the trick is to poly the other side from the bend. or let the poly cure while the ply is bent.

Hope this helps.

[KCStudly]

Thanks.

A lot.

I think.

So what you are saying is that the ply trained and bent "easily" raw; you laid it flat again to poly the inside of the curved surface; you let it dry flat; then it didn't want to bend the same way easily again? Was it impossible to bend, or just harder? Do you think it would make any difference if you sealed both sides (I can only imagine that making it even harder to form, but I wonder about equilibrium)?

I have a fairly tight 13-1/2 inch radius to contend with at the front.

Thanks a ton for the first hand feedback!

[capnTelescope]

Thanks.

A lot.

I think.

So what you are saying is that the ply trained and bent "easily" raw; you laid it flat again to poly the inside of the curved surface; you let it dry flat; then it didn't want to bend the same way easily again?

That is correct. It took the ply about a week of training to reach the floor.

Was it impossible to bend, or just harder?

It was just harder to bend, the "right" way. It was quite easy to bend the "wrong" way

I have a fairly tight 13-1/2 inch radius to contend with at the front.

I'd recommend that whatever side you poly, train it and let it dry curved.

Thanks a ton for the first hand feedback!

You're quite welcome!

Hope this helps.

[KCStudly]

Thanks capn. I'm not sure how I would pull that off, short of waiting to apply the poly to that front section in the front cabinet, until after the ceiling is all wrapped into place, glued and screwed.

I suppose that could work, but I am still tempted to finish it first and just go for it.

Got a late start tonight, but still made progress.

Spaced the ceiling assembly up on a second 2x4 directly under the clamp bar, plus a few chunks of 2x here and there to keep the rest of the ceiling from flopping around too much. This did two things. It allowed me to use the wedge shims to clamp the rear vent spar down flat to the skin, but still let the panel flex so that it could find the shape of the vent ribs, and it gave room to use the spring clamps on the vent ribs.



While I was staring at that watching it dry, I figured it would be a good idea to document the location of the fan wires relative to the spar because I figure that I will be able to locate the spars easily thru the canvas and if I ever have to pull new wires the turn at the top of the wall might have to be opened up to get the wires to feed thru.


And since this is where the wires turn, I decided that I should take the sharp edge off of the corner at the end of the slot. I wouldn’t want the wires to chafe here. A little sand paper wrapped around a dowel did the trick nicely.


Killing some time while the glue set, I went out and measured the broken ballista arms. There are some rumblings about what we might do differently and how we might modify them to get some more use out of them, yet still (hopefully) throw farther.

After that I broke the clamps down, removed the alignment pucks, cleaned up the excess glue, lined up the front vent spar, and temporarily screwed it to the vent ribs using the pocket screws. This will allow me to push the slight bow out of this last spar and place the temporary alignment pucks appropriately.


I should be able to get it glued up tomorrow.

[KCStudly]

Two mini milestones achieved this evening. First I glued the front vent spar to the ceiling panel assembly, completing the last spar to be glued.


Then, while sitting with my feet up in front of the fan, watching the glue dry and contemplating what else I could be doing while that happened (but feeling weary and not doing it), I started to doze off . Hmm, good time for another “test”. Climbed into the cabin with a slab of blue foam for a pillow and had myself a little cat nap; milestone 2, my first nap in TPCE! Successful test!

Tomorrow I should be able to dry fit the panel on top and screw it down in a few spots so that I can make some reference marks for the masking.

[bonnie]

All right! Naps are great, aren't they?

[KCStudly]

[KCStudly]

Did yard work in the morning then off to Mecca for the afternoon.

Before moving the ceiling panel assembly from the work bench to the cabin, I had Karl help me flip it over and I used the trim router with flush cutting bit to trim the vent opening flush with the frame work. Forgot to take a pic of it on the bench, but here is one from inside the cabin after we moved it up.


Karl was skeptical when I reassured him that the vent would fit (I had measured and allowed a generous margin in the rough opening), but he wanted to see how the vent would fit the opening, so we dragged that back out and had a look (no pic). The plastic inner trim flange has a slight shadow line where it doesn’t quite meet the curve of the ceiling, but it is not too bad and I might just get away without having to make a decorative wooden flange to create a truly flat surface. I might still make the flange just to tie in with the maple spacer flanges at the dome lights and light switch plates, but I don’t have to decide on that just yet.

Next I squared up the panel making sure all of the spar ends were flush to the walls, and started doing a dry run screwing it off at the bulkhead. I didn’t get very far before I found that the alignment was off a little bit, so I unscrewed what I had done and staggered the new pattern to avoid “half holing” the screws. This time I screwed across the rear cabinet face frame first (which had been my reference line anyway) and things lined up much better. Screws every 3 inches. This is the rear street side of the ceiling at the bulkhead.


It took all of the rest of the session to drill and screw along both walls and across the front cabinet face frame. I suppose it would have gone quicker if I had not felt compelled to measure and lay out each hole, but I needed to be careful to hit the frames and blocking so as not to have screws blowing out on the inside! Here is the front curbside looking back. You can see where I used the straight edge to draw a pencil line down the center above the front cabinet face frame. I had to drill these pilot holes plumb matching the orientation of the frame.


I'm very happy with the fit and how well the seams are coming together inside of the cabin; no corner trim or molding will be needed as all the joints are crisp and tight!

I put a pair of quick clamps up at the front vent spar (because the unity of the 2x vent frame seemed like a more solid base than any of the individual 1x spars) and another pair clamped to the floor and toe kick spar on either side of the front locker giving me attachment points for a pair of ratchet straps to start training the front curve. At one point I pressed down on the street side front corner of the panel just starting to judge how easily the panel will bend, and I heard a pop and thought I saw a fiber split right at the edge where it needs to bend over the front face frame (even though this is all fair and shouldn’t really be a “hard point”). Fortunately I think that was only a warning not to try to flex it unevenly. With the strap setup and pulling more from the middle of the front edge with temporary backers bridging across all seemed to be happy still.




I intend to take this nice and slowly. No rush. Tomorrow I will pull it a little further and work on something else; get inside a start making some marks to guide me on the task of masking; maybe cut some tapered slivers to finish off the outside flat area for the roof vent (square up the spars between the side vent riblets); or even get back to the galley and start fitting the hatch framework.

We finished out the day by going down to New London for the big Sailfest fireworks display.

[Ned B]

KC... see above, it is looking absolutely Fantastic!!