WR18 aft deck radius

Posted by Mike D on Nov 5, 2005

Hello to all,

Finaly got the aft hatch cut out in the slowly evolving WR18 up in the shop.

Noticed a couple of things: The cut-out (planning on flush hatches) only had about 1/16" springback on the sides. But, The deck seems to have flattened a bit. When checking it with the planing gauge there is a 1/4" air gap at the front edge of the cut-out and 3/8" aft. The deck radius matches the gauge at the bulkheads. Used the kit supplied aft hatch for a template and positioned the front edge 10" behind the coaming lip.

After rambling on there is a question. Would it be advisable to try to recover the camber in the hatch area when I put the stiffeners, spacers, and flanges in? Or would it be better to leave well enough alone?

Also have finally reached a conclusion re: putting a garbage-bag & packing tape drip catcher in right before the deck went on. Sounded like a good idea at the time - yeah, right. Must have done something very wrong with the setup. In spite of all the plotting and planning it took a bit, OK, a lot of Rube Goldberg with hooks on long sticks to extract most of the tape and trash bag. What is behind the ring bulkhead will probably stay there. Can't see it, but the stick hits something that sounds like a piece of trash bag.

Anyway, how did the whole thing work to collect the great big gobs of dripped smooze from the deck gluing? Careful, very careful examination revealed that there weren't any drips in the aft compartment at all. None. For that matter, there weren't any on the drip catcher either. Oh well, one of these days I might learn not to make things more complicated then they need to be.

Happy building, MD

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