Hi Pat,

Just put the fillets on my Skerry's seats this Sunday! I am guessing your building from a kit as I did. I found that I had to spend a fair amount of time shaping the seats to conform to the hull panels. I beveled the edge of the seats and had to take a small amount off the frames where the seats meet to get the seat edges close to the panels.

The gaps that remained were easly filled by the fillets, the seats/fillets look good and feel very strong. Hope this helped.

Patrick

Patrick,

I was just out slowly sanding down the tip of the rear seat which is the one that really has gaps. The front should be ok. I still think I made the rear frame .5 to 1" too far back despite may repeated measurements. Anyway, I still have a gap in the middle of the rear seat close too 1/4" at least. It only touches in the last 4" of the seat. 

My seat is now sitting about 1" down into the panel 1. With the middle seat level, the rear seat is still tipped up toward the stern. Does your seat sit level compared to the middle seat?

If I level all seats to the middle, I still have some distance to drop the rear tip of the seat and still be level.

 How far down did your seat sit in the boat?

Pat

Pat,

Sounds to me if the aft frame is .5 to 1 inch further aft than the plans the rear seat/tank would be to long, I would slowly remove material from the tip as required to get the seat level. My seats ended up all level but this took alot of sanding, check fit, sanding repeat etc.

I had a tight close fit at the tip of the seat and where the seat meets the frame, the gap left between the edge of the seat and hull panel was about 1/4inch in the middle. 

The seat tip comes down to about 2-3 inches from the top of the bottom panel.

Patrick,

ps it's not sanding it's sculpting!

Yep, level is the effect you are going for....(it will keep "Cleopatra" from unceremoniously sliding off the seat while you row her around <g>).

Given that there is can be a lot of variation introduced into the system on any given boat (e.g. frame placement, depth of stem fillets, tightness of stitching, etc.), it's not surprising to have some gaps along the sides -- and that you may end up doing some serious hand-shaping of the seat to get it to fit level. No worries -- the end product will be fine, especially if you go to the effort of making neat fillets. (I masked off the edges with masking tape to get nice neat lines). Mix your fillet material thick so it doesn't sag through  the gaps-- the sagging won't show, but if you're not careful, you'll just have a bunch of unncessary epoxy-woodflour mix sagging down the inside of the compartment walls....

 Julie K.

Julie and Patrick,

 Ok, so tonight I will "sculpt my seat" till I get it level compared to the middle seat. Then I will check my tolerances on the sides. I will probably be about 3 " down the 1st panel before I get to level so I will be close to yours patrick.

since I could not add material, just wondered if everyone leveled the seat to the middle seat. With that done, I will know whether a fillet will look to fill without needing any interior support. I was playing with the idea of adding some cripples on the inside of the body of the seat area made of thin flexible wood to help define the framework for the seat and to help hold the fillet in place. Might be overkill, I know.

Will try to post a photo when I get the seat shaped.

 thanks,

Pat