Another big day today, I have glued the side deck on and glassed the bulkheads to it. I also took a bit of a risk but it paid off. I decided I had time to glue the hull side to side deck join and the bulkheads in one go, alone. I had the side deck lifted away from the hull side and bulkheads by a series of blocks holding it elevated. I quickly buttered the edges and removed the blocks to lower the side deck onto the glued hull panel edge and bulkheads and attaching the ratchet straps to pull it down tight. I then removed the glue that oozed out of the joins and filled voids where I found them.

This is where the fun started. As the hull and side deck are long panels there is a need to pull the 2 edges up or down to each other. I do this with timber blocks each side and long screws. Last time Jake helped me by holding the block on the inside as I screwed a block down from the outside, but this time I had to do it alone. There has to be a block each side or else the screws just spin and don’t pull in tight. My solution was to push the screw through and then go around and manually screw a block to the screw by rotating the block, then going back inside to hit the screw with the driver again to pull it home. Often the block on the outside would just spin without pulling in tight, so I would go back out and put another screw into the block to stop it spinning then back inside to finish by pulling the blocks tight with the driver. It worked. A bit nerve wracking because again the clock ticks as you work, and you have to get the panel joins fair before the glue sets. It is heart in the mouth stuff as every little set back makes you think you are gonna be in trouble with panels gluing to each other way out of fairness but in the end it all pulled down into place and started to set.

I then coved all of the bulkhead joins and glassed them wet on wet. This saves a bit of work with sanding the coves. And to top the day off I was able to cove and glass the daggercase to the side deck. The joins were much tighter on this side. The port side is still not done yet. I will do them in the next few days.