Builders' Forum Archives

Re: Can't bend deck

Posted by gober on Jul 20, 2006

Ok Alan let me give you my 2 cents. I have completed two of these MC13's and I will be real honest I screwed almost everything up. I left my wood standing of the concrete causing major water stains, "faired the crap of it" I sanded the blanks almost half in too short; I modified the location of the bulkheads. I really did something�s the designer probably did like but it worked. Saying all that when I looked at your picture it brought back some memories and troubles I ran into.

I studied your picture and I started it a bit differently. I started by rough cutting the fore deck looks like you got that down. Then I applied two coats of epoxy under the deck and laid a bead of thickened epoxy on the 1/2x3/4 wooden strips. Then I went to the very front of the boat and drove a nail at the point. Then I marked it with the gauge shown in the manual. Then I alternated placing nails on each side, three left side, six right side, six left side and so on. And then you get close to the bulkhead and it gets all tricky on you. This is when you need a combination of an extra set of hands, ratcheting straps, and a few 2X4 or 2X6 about four feet long. As you near the bulkheads you get that big ole lump that I see in your picture. This is where the above mentioned items come in. You get your helper to hold the 2x up and wrap the strap around the hold contraption. The idea here is to prevent straight downward pressure. This pulls slightly outward and downward preventing the cracking of the deck. Then you drive a few nails and then put the other 2X and strap around the boat leaving the first in place. Next you hop one over the other playing leap frog and tacking the deck down along the way..

I say ditch the rope go with a flat nylon strap and the 2x�s with a helper. This method worked really well when I got to that big ole crazy hump. If you have some extra straps you can use a combination them.

Did you already epoxy the underside? If so they may causes you some additional trouble.

If this doesn�t make since I think I may have some pictures I could email you.

Good luck ~gober