The whole thing was rigged part 2

Posted on by David

The boat needed two hatches fore and aft. This is one of the scariest points in construction. Cutting into a perfectly good boat.

By the way, you may have noticed that some of the pictures seem out of sequence. The hatches construction pictures are an example. I built the hatches before the varnishing.

I used measurements from Nick Schade’s Wooden Building a Wooden Boat book. I used the building technique called lofting. It’s basically geometry and trig. You pick offset points to plot the lines.
I made cardboard templates and then fit them on the plywood
I traced the outline and cut the pieces on the jigsaw
I used the overall template to give me the opening to cut
Ready to cut. You can kind of see the hatch lips in the upper part of the picture. Here we go.
Carefully cutting into a perfectly good boat.
This is the lip cut out of the plywood, glued and ready to be clamped on the inside of the hatch
Clamping can be fun.
Mounting blocks for the bungee cord. I opted for an “invisible” hold down with no visible hardware.
Theses two cords hook into hooks under the hatch and hold them in place
Here is the hatch with the hooks installed. IT also has the rubber gaskets installed to keep the hatch dry
This shows the hatch lips finished. The rubber sits on the lip. You will also note that there now is hardware on the one hatch. The hatch had some stress built in to it and it would not set tight enough with just the bungees. It looks ok I guess
Cargo bungees. One in the front and one in the back. This holds a water pump or maybe extra paddles.

It’s almost done!!

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