This weekend, with no commitments and a lot of free time, I intended to bring the brightwork to a close (at least get the brightwork roughed in), so that I could turn my attention to paint preparations - filling, fairing, priming, and topcoat. Saturday, August 23rd, was spent working on dry-fitting of the aft thwarts, inboard transom rail as well as the outboard transom rail. The aft thwarts are important components in the overall brightwork scheme as they serve to anchor the rails, but they also allow me to measure for the inboard rails...which was next on the list. The brightwork going onto the sailing dinghy is all custom work, and so I am following the path of least resistance in the order of fabrication and installation - completing part "A" allows for the completion of part "B"...
To begin, I removed the steam-bent outboard rails, curious to see what kind of spring-back I would get upon removing them from the boat's sheer. The outboard rails were steamed and clamped onto the dinghy's sheer a couple of weeks ago, and I considered the process a success. When I removed the clamps I observed some spring-back, but a lot of the boat's curve remained in the rails. Below, with one clamp remaining, the boat's beamy curve is still somewhat captured in the outboard port rail.
I observed the same results on the starboard rail after removing all but one of the clamps.
With the outboard rails set aside, I removed the glue blocks and solvent washed the surfaces that had held the glue blocks. After this chore, I turned my attention to the aft thwarts. Again, these thwarts were and important milestone to reach as they would allow me to move forward with the balance of the inboard rails. Prior to temporarily securing the thwarts in their future homes, I completed some last minute shaping of the thwarts to improve their fit. After spending a good amount of time obsessing over the details, I called it good and took to the hot glue gun to "install" the thwarts.
The port side aft thwart, hot-glued in place. You may notice that the thwart sits just proud of the sheer line and transom. It was purposeful to install the thwarts in this manner so that a camber could be shaped into the top surface which will promote water run-off.
With the thwarts temporarily secured, I established a plan for the installation of the fasteners that will ultimately secure them. Measuring from the forward end of the port thwart, I marked for the 3/4" #8 at 1", the 1" #8 at 2.5", and the 1 1/4" #8 bronze screws at 4" and 5.5". I replicated this pattern for both sides of the each thwart.
Below, the starboard thwart with a 3/4" bronze screw secured in its aft side (transom). I pre-drilled all holes and counter-sunk to recess the screw heads. These screws will be covered by addition brightwork - more to come on this.
After all fasteners were in place, I removed the screws and carefully broke the glue bonds, removing the thwarts. I cleaned the boat's surfaces with solvent, and then reinstalled the thwarts with their fasteners. I then turned my attention to the inboard transom rail that would span the port and starboard thwarts. Sorry that I did not get pictures of this process, but got into what was an organic process of creating a rail for this space: templating with cardboard, apply the template to a piece of teak, cutting the rail out of the teak with a band-saw, rough fit, and then final shaping.
With expectations to get to the inboard rail on Sunday, I knew I needed to get the bow thwart roughed in so that I could measure for the inboard rails. So with that, I templated the bow thwart with a piece of cardboard, found a couple pieces of teak that could be used to create the thwart, and epoxy-bonded them together. Shown below, the blocks being "glued-up" with epoxy. I taped the edges to protect the teak from squeeze out, wrapped the entire bundle in plastic sheeting, and clamped them together. I would shape and rough-in the thwart tomorrow.
The final to-do on the day's list was the outboard transom, or stern, rail. The sailing dinghy's rudder hardware is a simple installation of two small gudgeons that the pintles drop into. I had planned to install teak blocks for these to gudgeons to mount onto, and to this end, I created two rails for port and starboard - shown below. I templated the rails with cardboard and transferred them to teak material, and cut them out with the band-saw.
The starboard transom rail, below, in the process of creation. However, after I removed the rails from their teak stock and did some preliminary hand-shaping, I was not satisfied with their appearance in situ. Once I had them up on the transom, with the top teak gudgeon block also clamped in place, it seemed way too much brightwork for this small transom. So, I scraped the outboard transom rails and opted to go back with the gudgeon installation directly onto the transom. The outboard bronze screws securing the aft thwarts would treated with some stylish creativity - more on that later.
Total Time: 6 Hrs.
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