Cabin Sole: Part I

Out of all the things we have done so far on this boat, the cabin sole has been the most finicky.
It has been tricky and dusty and mildly frustrating, but mostly just finicky.
We spent well of the 'day of work' estimated by the Pocketship manual and have thus far spent two weekends and another trip to the wood store just getting the basic layout done.
However, having given it the attention it deserves has yielded a beautiful sole with an even symmetrical curvature.

Looking good! Now time for a mile of roundovers and some Polyurethane.

The floor is pretty hard on the knees. The pillows are definitely worth it.

However, there were quite a few stumbling blocks in our way.

NOT ENOUGH WOOD! (We needed approximately another 32 board feet to finish the floor)

Beginning with stumbling block #1. We went to check if all the bulkhead cleats were level, using a straightedge, and found that indeed they were not. The cleat on bulkhead 2 was higher than all the others by approximately 7/16". You can see it in this picture below. The horizontal pencil line marks the height of the rest of the bulkheads.

Here is the cleat on bulkhead #2. A little bit higher than it should be.

We checked our dimension again (having pulled them from the plans in order to attach the cleat) and found that they were correct.
We are not entirely sure what happened, all of the bulkheads were snug with bottom panels of the boat and we followed the dimension in the drawings.
My guess is that somehow our cleat ended up in the wrong spot since all the rest ended up at the same height as each other.
If I had to do it again I'd put that cleat on after placing the center bulkheads.

There were two possible solutions....We could either make the front cleat shorter by grinding/using a router/whatever methods we could figure out OR we could raise the rest of the cleats using a little piece of wood.
As you can see we chose to raise the rest of the cleats by 7/16". It ended up being a very tidy solution. We glued them down using some neat epoxy with the fast hardener, then covered the boat with some plastic and put a heater in there to force a faster cure.
1 hour later and we were on our way.

Nice and neat... You can see the extra bit of cleat glue on top of the old.

Another view of the extra cleats. It actually looks intentional!

Stumbling block #2 was the wood itself.
We went for a very vivid looking cabin sole and decided to use Tennessee Red Cedar, sometimes also called Eastern Red Cedar.

Some of the beautiful purple patterning in the wood we bought. We are hoping that a UV protective coating will help preserve the beautiful color.

Unfortunately it only comes in 8 ft lengths. Alas, the Pocketship is 9 ft long in the sole.
For the two boards flanking the centerboard trunk we ended up just butting two pieces and creating a splice plate underneath. The result isn't our favorite, but it does blend in with the floor finished.

This is where our splice plate will go underneath. Note the slight warping of the boards.

Our other solution was to scarf a shorter piece onto the 8 ft lengths to create a board that would span the whole way. We kept the scarf towards the rear end of the boat so that it would be hidden under the footwell and deck. This works a bit better because the board is still able to span the entire way without needing some little splice plate.

A pair of unsanded scarf joints with a shim above. Notice that our boards are two different widths. We used an alternating 3 1/2" to 2 1/2" plank layout because of the widths our raw lumber came in.

Stumbling block #2A (perhaps)
Tennessee red cedar is not the most stable of woods and as we started ripping it down we began to realize that there were some definite warping issues. In the middle it was easy, we just used shims and forced the pieces to the 1/8" gap required, but at the ends of the curved pieces where the boards float we will need to do something to stabilize the gaps.

A smidge of warping can be seen here, but also note the sharp edges. We are still trying to figure out how to treat these so they don't snag on us and our gear.

Putty and Guide Coat

Where did I leave off?
It's amazing how fast things change on a little boat like this, and yet, when you look at her nothing seems to have changed at all.

I'm in the middle of processing several thousand photos into video from the past two weekends. I fear that when I finish all these videos that the full build will take upwards of an hour to watch....not really a youtube friendly video haha.

I left off with the application of putty to the interior of the boat....

We let that fluffy fairing putty dry and then I brought home some guide coat from work. Guide coat is great stuff. It's typically an automotive product (I think) and comes in several colors. It's basically a very thin spray paint.
What makes it so fantastic is that you spray it on, and then, when you sand it remains in all the low spots and gets sanded off all the high spots so that you know where to add more putty and what need to be sanded down.
You can also draw lines with a pencil or even go with a light misting of real spray paint if you can't get your hands on guide coat.

Also, we only put putty in the cabin where you will be able to see it. We didn't bother sanding under the floor boards (yet) and we aren't too concerned about the area behind bulkhead 2.

For all this putty work we haven't been using the MAS epoxy. T brought home some leftovers of this nasty industrial epoxy that we used on a really big project at work and we used that for all the putty. The stuff smells horrendous and has more safety warnings on it than a toxic waste dump, but it did work pretty well. Its a bit thinner than the MAS and takes much longer to cure completely but thankfully it did the job.
P.S. This epoxy is why our putty turned out so white... The MAS cures a little yellow, but this epoxy cures almost clear/greenish. (in case you were wondering)

You can see the guide coat as dark spots at the top of the putty