Meet the Frames

A major Milestone for myself and for my Driftingdonkey.

And Quiet literally one of the worst holiday weeks I have ever had :-) I sent between 6 to 9 hours per Frame sanding back the Epoxy. Thats one week of full time work. As I have said, for me it was one week holiday. The only thing that made this bearable was a beer every couple of hours and gloves to protect the fingertipps.

On frame P (transom) I added a double layer of 10mm Plywood for the daggerboard supports. I took the widest measurement allowed for their Position. I also added a doubler on both sides, in case I want to fit a U-bolt later on.

Frame B has no support across the top. It will be installed later and was already made while building the frame. I have added the bunk dividers as the aft side doubler like its done in the Kit boats

I will be doing the same on the next frame (C)

For clear coating the frames I used west system epoxy with the 207 special clear hardener. Three thin coats all applied wet on taky gave me just enough thickness to sand everything back nicely.

I started with a 120 grit paper to sand off all the high spots. Once I was almost down to a flat surface, I switched over to a 180 grit sand paper

Frame D' the main bulkhead, gave me quiet a headache and not only because it was a lot of sanding. The Kit boats have a different version to what's shown on the plans. I would have liked to see a cross section of this frame and frame E on the plans.

I decided to Build it like the kit boats with the mast supports on the forward side of the ply bulkhead and straight above the keel floor.

I also added a couple of very nice inserts at the bottom. and some oak covers on the sides of the mast support beam

I would have actually preferred to build the version with frame D as the bulkhead and Frame D' only as a mast support inside the cabin. Very sadly its not allowed for class certification so ... voila

The last of the frames, frame E I also built like it is shown on the blogs of kit builders. I switched the bulkhead part of the crash box to the Forward side. so I could Present the pine cross brace support and for ease of later fitting the crash box cover.