Re: spring back of flush

Posted by Dennis Rioux on May 25, 2005

Patrick,

I took the belt and suspenders approach for the flush hatches on my WR18 and it worked out modestly well but not perfectly. The photo there sort of tells the story. I started with the extra thicknessing rings which did not hold the shape good enough for my tastes. Then I added the ribs made of plywood. But the radius was still off a little, so I cut some kerfs in the plywood ribs, added another rib in the middle, and glued it back up again with clamps squeezing the kerfs together to tighten the radius. The ribs cannot reach out all the way to the edges, so as Lee points out they can flare up which is the case with mine. Curiously enough, my fore hatch cover fits better than the aft even with the tighter radius of curvature. The bigger aft hatch cover can get distorted in a nonaxial way pretty easily and I think that is what happened with mine. You can check my site to see if I said anything more intelligent about the process (I don't remember so well right now -- I think there might be more photos (yes, I checked, there is one more showing the clamping)). Good luck.

Dennis

In Response to: Re: spring back of flush by LeeG on May 25, 2005

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