<<
Also: we took thin pink insulation foam down below to make templates for the real deal....the pink stuff is rigid enough to stand up as a dummy panel, easy to mark and easy to cut....then we cut the Coosa from that pattern. The original plywood bulkies we took out were too mangled up to serve as proper templates for the job..hence the pinkstuff. darn...all this talk makes me want to start a project....>> Tim, maybe you should build a boat. Something fast, with an open transom. I mean, just to keep you out of trouble, eh? Back to the foam templates--good idea... I find that an electric knife (rummage sales, about a buck usually) works great for cutting the pink foam and other urethanes, as well as soft cushion foam--very little vibration and the knife won't try to make straight quick slices like a utility knife will when you're trying to cut a nicely-faired curve. Back when I was working with my bulkheads, though, I was dismayed at the size of the gaps about the edges, which Catalina had filled with vinyl windlace trim. I wanted a tighter stronger fit, and so I didn't use my old bulkheads as templates; instead, I used them as a marking board for a method called ticksticking. It's a boatbuilder's technique, and may be called something else in Texas, but I learned it from the Journal of Light Construction, which isn't about boats at all. Anyway, I'd try to describe it but it would be a better visually learned technique. I certainly expect you'll find directions on the internet somewhere. In the end, my bulkheads are a press-fit all the way around and they're bedded in white polyurethane. At least, they're a press-fit until I splash her and her shape changes <grin>. For what it's worth on the paint--my vote is for Interlux Perfection. But Brightside gives a beautiful finish and you don't have two parts to mix. Still, if I go through all the work of prepping and painting, I don't want to ever have to do it again, so two-part paint pays off. And Perfection looks like you sprayed it on... David Shaddock Rockford, IL (yep, still on the hard until this summer--with luck...)
