Moving a little faster

It seems like the pace has really picked up in the last couple of days. I have gone from a cardboard pattern, to completing the last seam in the marine plywood, to the finished hardtop cutout.

Here's Buffet Wesley Bettencourt following a careful inspection of the newly-joined 8x12' sheet of marine plywood. If you click to enlarge this picture you might be able to see the lighter-colored strip of plywood running across the large sheet. This is how I clamped the completed scarf joints after glue-up. Wax paper goes across the table under the joint. Another strip of wax paper goes over the joint, under the clamping board. Then the clamping board gets screwed down with drywall screws every 6 inches or so.

The screws come out and the clamping board comes off after about 24 hours. Then I placed the cardboard pattern on the large plywood sheet, aligning the cardboard's straight edge with a center line marked on the plywood.

Next, I pencil around the pattern. This photo shows the pattern placed to outline the port side of the hard top, as seen from aft.

Then I flip the cardboard over to outline the starboard side. The 2x4s on the cardboard in the photo to the left are there to help hold the pattern flat while I trace around it.

Some effort was required working up the courage to make the first saw cut into this pristine 8x12' piece of plywood. This piece of wood has consumed a lot of my life in recent weeks.

I started with a few tentative edge cuts... 

 

...then pressed on, carefully, around my pencil line, making a lot of sawdust, all the way back around to where I started.

That must be sawdust in my beard--I couldn't be going gray.

The resulting plywood cutout is still too unwieldy for me to handle alone. So a quick call to my friend Major results in the additional manpower needed to get the top off the bench and out into daylight.

We estimated that the finished cutout weighs between 60 and 80 pounds. Its final dimensions are 9' 11 1/2" long at the centerline and 7' 1 1/8" wide at its widest point.

The dark stripeing across the plywood is epoxy glue that squeezed out of the joints that made three sheets of plywood into one. I will sand these joints smooth.

Ultimately, the whole top will be covered with epoxy and fiberglass cloth, then painted.

It will still be some time before we'll be looking at Albin-25 #1117 under this top, but I am very encouraged now by the speed at which this really complicated project seems to be moving along.