Rigging

 Now it is time to start rigging the boat with the motor, cables, gauges, etc. Before installing the dash I needed to figure out exactly where to place the controls for the motor so that it's in a comfortable position and doesn't impede with the dash position. I wanted the control unit to be hidden in the inside of the coaming. The flush mount control for my motor was quite a bit bigger than my coaming so I needed to add a board to the coaming to make it work. Something that is aesthetically pleasing. I took a scrap piece of mahogany and by hand drew a curve to follow the motor controls. Bellow you can see that piece.


After cutting the piece to shape the next problem was that the piece for the control was a straight board and the coaming is curved. You can see the control mount does not sit flush and I want it to be one smooth solid piece. 


I used a wood chisel and sander to chip out the center of the board and curve it to match the coaming. Took quite a bit of work, checking frequently that I didn't over do it. 


The control mount now sits flush. I plan to make a similar curve in the dash to accent the steering wheel. 


Once the controls were in place I sat in the boat making motor sounds while determining where I wanted to place the dash. After marking the dash position I drilled the wholes for the steering helm. I then hand drew a curvature around the helm to give the dish a bit of design other than just being strait across. Should match the control mount nicely. 

I drew half of the curve and really liked it. I new I couldn't duplicate it on the other side by hand and I wanted it to match perfectly. So, I took a piece of wax paper and traced over the line and flipped it to the other side to get it to be symmetrical. You can see the process below.  





Cut the dash to shape and then cut the holes for my gauges.




I decided to go with a tachometer, speedometer, and a voltmeter. The speedometer is a GPS speedometer because I didn't want to have to drill a hole in the bottom of my boat to install a piece of tubing to gauge the speed through a regular marine speedometer. Also the voltmeter on the left of the dash has two usb ports to charge electronics. I hope to make a spot for a bluetooth speaker so the charging capability will come in handy. To get the ignition switch to sit flush I had to use a large forstner bit to counter sink outside of the hole and then used the whole saw through the center for the switch to run through the dash. 




I got the non-feed back steering system 14 ft for my squirt. I know you don't really need the non-feed back for such a small boat but since my yamaha 20hp motor doesn't have a lock to keep it in position when trailered I decided to got with this system. The non-feed back steering keeps the motor locked in the position you have the steering wheel. So without NFB if you give it a lot of gas the torque can cause the steering wheel to turn on it's own especially with a large boat. With the NFB system when my boat is on the trailer it keeps the motor locked in position because the motor will only move when the steering wheel is physically turned. It takes a little more effort to turn when on the water but keeps the motor safe when being towed. 





When putting the helm together I had a huge gap between the steering wheel. I epoxied some washers together to make some spacers and corrected the gap. I don't have an after photo.


I installed the steering cable upside down so that the cable could loop under the bow. Right side up the radius would be too small and damage the cable. 



Took the following pictures later in the build process to show how everything is wired and connected.









Fuel water separator 


Installed some stainless steel brackets and strap to hold the gas tank in place.

After getting all of the rigging done there was no way I wanted to start the top of the boat without knowing everything works properly. Once the top is on it's going to be pretty difficult to get under there to work on anything. So, I took it to the water!



It works! This allowed me to idle around for the 1st hour since the motor has to be broken in properly. Now when the boat is finished I can put her in and go!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Fiberglassing It's exciting every time I get to the next stage of building the boat. After filling the screw holes with famowood and using system three QuickFair to smooth out the scarf joints in the panels it is time to start fiberglassing. I sanded down all of the sharp corners of the boat, mainly around the chines and transom because the fiberglass won't bond well to sharp angles. It will end up creating air bubbles on the corners witch we really don't want. I used the fiberglass kit from Glen-L. I couldn't find any instructions on how to use which fiberglass sheet where, so I finally decided to use one sheet to cover the bottom of the boat and the transom. Then trimmed it to size. I invited some friends out to help in the process. Much easier to do with extra hands than by yourself. When dealing with epoxy and having to work quickly it is nice to have someone to mix the epoxy and multiple people to poor and smooth out the epoxy into the fiberglass weave....
Read more
Image
Encapsulating the Frames My next task was to encapsulate the frames using epoxy. This helps protect the wood from moisture and rot. Everything I've read says 2-3 coats, with 3 coats being ideal. I'm using the MAS epoxy resin and Low-Tox hardener sold on the Glen-L website. I've read great things about that epoxy so ordered the MAS instead of Glen-L's poxy-shield. I thought encapsulating the frames before I mount them to the building form would be a fairly simple task...I was wrong. The First coat went on without any problems. There was quite a bit of bubbling but this is normal and a good sign that the epoxy has seeped into the wood pours and the air has surfaced to the top. I applied the first coat at night to some of the frames and the next morning it was still quite tacky. My plan was to allow each coat to cure then sand it and apply another coat, but with the cure time of this mixture that would take forever. So, I set up some heat lamps and that really spe...
Read more
Image
Bottom Planking Prior to top planking, I put in some corner braces along the chine and transom and made some timbers in the battens near the transom. Instead of using a router or some fancy power tool I just used a wood rasp and smoothed it out with sandpaper and it turned out pretty nice. Timbers are small cutouts to allow water to pass through to one area of the boat. In this case it will allow most the water that gets in the boat to pool up near the middle of the transom. When I take the boat out of the water I can just sponge up any water remaining in the boat before it is stored. I know some people will go crazy about this but I decided to not put in a drain plug. The benefits don't seem to out way the risks. I could completely mess up the angle when drilling through the transom, not only that but it's probably more likely to rot there first. The only time I'd ever use it is when the boat is on the trailer and I want to drain water out. Which from what I've read ...
Read more