Hatch curve

Posted by M Davis on Mar 27, 2006

The WR18 slowly inches towards launching. Working on the flush hatches now with the spacers and rims in place and ready to accept the hatches.

When I built the molds for laminating the doublers to the bottom of the cut-outs I noticed that the radius at the front & back of the cutout opennings didn't exactly match the planing guides and were different from each other so I carefully copied the radii for an exact match. So far so good - but. But that left me w/o the one inch tighter radii to compensate for the springback. Darn! The hatch miesters were right - gotta deal with the spring back.

The sides of the front hatch are flush with the deck while the middles of the ends are about 4mm below flush.

The plan is to recut the mold to bring the edges down by about 6mm (assuming that springback will happen again). I'll use a slitting blade in the Dremal tool to cut several lenghtwise slits 4mm deep on the under side, fill with thickened epoxy and clamp to the remade mold. That is tonight's plan anyway.

Dose this approach sound like it will work, or do I need to go rest in a quiet place till the urge passes? Any input from some of you master builders out there would sure be welcome.

Happy building, MD

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