Floor Laying

Earlier in the week I did some finishing work on the sliding hatch.  More on that later.

Over the last few days I have started fitting the flooring.  We have chosen laminate flooring as it is very durable, attractive, stable, and easy to replace in time.  Modern Laminate is IMO better than real wood in appearance.  The one we have chosen for the lounge is a thicker than normal.  Its 12mm not the normal 6-8mm and a good textured surface with enough grip for our aged dog.  I have used a 5mm HD foam underlay for a bit of extra insulation, it also has a foil layer supposedly to reflect heat back up.

Before

After

This is a far as I go for the time being.  The rest will be laid once the boat is afloat.  I need access under the floor to add ballast to trim the boat.

Of course in the kitchen nothing other than Sicilian Slate could be used.  OK, its expensive but boy does it look good especially now its oiled.

Before

After

Other jobs done are some work in the bedroom on the ceiling and making the steps to the bow doors, and dressing the stern entrace to the boat.

You will notice all the wires. Im redoing this as I wernt happy with the appearence.

In fact I have a lot of small jobs on the go, but noting complete enough to be blog worthy ATM.

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Aligning Frames and Laying the Keel

After the confirmation that this boat will make it out of the basement, I secured my frame pieces to the leveled form rails. After checking a hundred times if things were square to each other, I aligned the stem using a string and plumb bob method. I tried a laser but it was better at confirming the set-up than actually doing it.

I used steel carriage bolts for the dry run set up of the keel and transom knee. When I was satisfied with alignments I took the keel and transom knee apart and did the glue-up. When all was, glued, bolted and screwed in place I called it a day. The next day I sighted down the keel and saw hump between frame #1 (middle frame and frame #2 (front frame), which wasnt a real issue, but there was a dip between the transom and frame #1 which was a problem. The picture is sighting down the keel from the front and the flash didnt illuminate the keel after the middle frame. After sleeping on it, I decided to try and realign the transom a bit to straighten the keel forward of the transom.

I decided to shim frame #1 rearward about 1/16" and this gave me some room between the transom and form to re-align it. I pulled a 1/16" shim out to lower the transom, added one at the top of the form angle to the transom and this allowed clamping of the transom near the bottom of the form and I could dial out the dip in the keel with a twist of the clamps. So with the keel flat from transom forward to frame #1, I could move on.

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