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I know these pictures are a bit boooooring, but I'm excited to be closing in on fair decks. Please forgive the poor qualitiy of the photos, as well. It was a rainy day here today. So, I vacuumed dust all day, and took these shots under the tarp.
I have been off from work this week spending my time at home fairing decks on the Triton. I am very pleased with the progress, but I still have a ways to go on them. There are about 10,000 small spots I need to fill, but the bulk of work on the decks is complete.
I also managed to install the engine access hatch hardware and gasket. The latches were adjusted and the hatch seem so to fit well with the gasket compressing evenly around the opening.
It feels like a lot of work!! You?re right though, I need to post pictures more often.
The side decks, with this awning frame is less than ideal to say the least.
Maybe we will both have newly painted Tritons in the spring!!! I can?t seem to resolve the issue of topside color yet, so it is just as well that I will not be ready to paint this fall.
Do yourself a favor on that aft deck. The backstay chainplate will always flex forward and make a little crack at the joint between the toerail/curb and the deck. You might as well accommodate it. Dig out a bit of that joint and extend a little bit of the toerail/curb farther forward.
Dig out a bit of that joint and extend a little bit of the toerail/curb farther forward.
I confess that I really didn't understand what you were saying initially. Thanks for the captions. Do I need to laminate some biax material on the forward side of the toerail? How about from below? If so, how many layers? Do you have any pictures of what was done to yours?
If I were "fixing" that little problem, I'd be inclined to make a sort of "power bulge" forward of the chainplate, thickening and reinforcing only that area. I'd fair that cleanly and smoothly into the remainder of the taffrail molding.
If you add material, do it from the top side; adding more thickness below is only going to decrease the available clearance for the chainplate, and may not eliminate the problem (never mind the difficulty of working in that space beneath). The molding in that area is extremely thin and fragile to begin with, so additional material, even over the entire leading edge of the taffrail, would be a good thing. Heck, the entire poop deck on these boats is wafer thin and fragile, for that matter.
I never noticed this problem on Glissando because of the way my boxed toerail works, but it is a pretty standard feature on Tritons with this sort of molded taffrail and chainplate design. 75% of the Tritons currently in my care feature this little annoyance (assuming that it exists on 381 as well, which I expect it does).
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I was thinking along the same lines. Don't try to resist the inevitable, but accommodate it instead. Rather than try to limit the movement or resist the (quite considerable) force, I'd give that thing all the space it wants.
"power bulge"... yeah, I think if I were to come at it fresh I'd precast a thickness of reinforced epoxy in the bottom of a coffee cup or something, and then cut it in half. Basically make a smaller mirror-image of the "power bulge" that's just forward of your new hatch-hole, the one originally intended to accommodate the mainsheet blocks.
