Small Boat Plans And Kits
Now that the salon is fabricated and welded to the wheel house, I will officially call this the super structure. 
The wheel house was fun to build because it has such cool design elements and its the wheel house. The salon was fun to build because building these structures goes so quickly that you really feel like youre getting something done. Now that Ive been welding on the super structure for the last week, Im ready for this part of the build to be finished. I can tell you that 90 % of the welding is finished, and if I didnt run out of welding wire this morning, the job of heavy welding would have been almost complete. I say almost complete because once Im finished with the heavy welding I still have a few small jobs to complete including: all the window stiffeners and nailing cleats need to be installed, the doubler plates for the hand rail and dingy cradle, the vents for the composting toilets, the mast step, mast framing, and mast rigging pad eyes. I also need to weld future brackets for paravanes, and bushings for the ladder that will be used to gain access to the roof.
This is still a fair amount of work, but the hours and hours of heavy over head welding are behind me and whats left is not really that much. to do.
To build the salon, I had to jack up the wheel house to get things in the relative position on how the boat decks step up as you move forward ( raised pilot house design). The wheel house is now pretty high above the barn floor, so Im going to have to install a temporary floor to paint along with scaffolding on the exterior of the wheel house.
The door in the salon is off centered to port because the salon table/settee goes on the port side. That port side corner will be nothing but table, so by having the door favor that side, we have more room on the starboard side for other things.
To increase the size of the cockpit I had to alter the bulkhead where the salon door and windows is. Because this wall move forward, I needed to install a 1" filler piece on either side of the bulkhead. This was a fairly small change that has required a little bit of noggin work. The real challenge with moving this wall and the small design change I made to the cockpit was the starboard boarding door I added. Adding the boarding door now requires me to cut the starboard salon side panel in such a way as to not offend the very cool line the designer had originally drawn. I need to put some good though in to cutting this panel to make panel look as if it was not some aborted afterthought.
The other change Im going to make to the salon aft wall is Im going to increase the size of the door going in to the salon. Right now, the door width is 25 1/2". Im going to increase that door size to 32". 32" is not a huge door, but it does feel much better walking through vs the 25" door. The larger door will also make getting the stove and fridge through the opening much more doable. Im still debating on making the door a 36" but that seems large. Since I"m building the doors myself I should probably go larger. I open to suggestions.
The salon roof over hangs the salon wall by 5". The design has a piece of trim that forms a soffit similar to a gutter board on a house. The ceiling Im going to install for the cockpit roof will tie in to this soffit on the same plane and make for a nice, neat looking finish. The ceiling will have about 4" of clearance so I"ll be able to install some LED cans for some nice lighting.From a construction point of view regarding the clearance allowed for ceiling material, I wish that the designer had allowed a little more reveal so that using 3/8 ceiling material would still allow 1/2" of the metal trim piece to be seen. Right now, using 3/8 material will allow less that a 1/4" of reveal, and in my opinion, thats cutting it too close. The last thing I want to see for aesthetics and maintenance, is the ceiling material below the metal trim. I also dont want to use 1/4" ceiling material, but I will it means seeing the ceiling below the trim. Some of the push boats that work up and down the Ohio river have taken to running some accent lighting as they move at night. I think Im going to install three LED cans in the soffit centered above the salon windows for accent lighting. A lot of the push boats use a blue light that I think would look sharp as long as its not to bright.
The salon has 8 windows and all of those are sliders with screens. I went with a dark tint on these windows as I feel the tint helps with the heat.The windows are about 37 x 23... not hatefull huge, but a nice size. Before I paint, Im going to test fit .
I"m a little behind on my schedule as I was wanting to be starting prep work for paint this week. Being realistic, I wont be fully into paint prep work for another week and a half. I still think Ill be finished with painting the super structure by the end of August but its going to be tough. My plasma cutter went down on me today and thats going to slow me down. When you operate on a shoe string as I tend to, small problems can cause delays. I guess the positive aspect of operating on a shoe string is that when small problems pop up, Im flexible and easily able to switch modes.
All in all the super structure has been fun to build, but like I said above, Im ready to be done with it. Another week or so, and I"ll be full blown into paint prep and that will be a good thing. Im sure, as Im now singing the welding blues, Ill be singing the paint prep blues in a few weeks. As you might be able to tell from some of the pictures, the shop is about as full as it can get. Theres still room to work, but it is very tight. Ill be able to take the gantry down once the funnel is in place, and that will help with room. I not so sure Im going to know how to act once the good ship Conall leaves the barn with all the room Im going to inherit.
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The window stool extends past the plywood by 3/4", and will receive a 1/2" bonnet under the stool to trim out the underside of the stool. The window casings will be 1/2" thick and will cover the extension jamb/plywood joint while finishing the trim detail. All the reveals on the windows are a 1/4". I left the jambs off of the window clamp ring by 1/4", the stool will be proud of the bonnet and casings by 1/4", and the casing edge will be 1/4" off the edge of the jamb. The window stool edge was rounded over using a 3/8 round over bit in the router, and all the other edges will be eased by hand sanding.
I used screws to hold down the stools, and all the other parts, jambs, casings, and bonnets are fastened by the nail gun using galvanized finish nails.
The wheel house windows lean out at 7 degrees, but the wall under the widows is plumb as she will sit on her water line. This part of the wheel house wall, the aft salon wall, and the water tight bulkhead on station # 9 are the only plumb walls on board. I created this chase so I could fit hose for a window defroster system and also to house windshield wiper motors.
The window stool under the two fixed center windows is removable, while the two stools under the port and starboard operational windows are installed for good. The basic layout of the front wall will be a navigation desk @ 30" above the floor to the port side of the wheel, and a 36" tall top will start from the desk and wrap around the starboard side of the wheel house all the way over to the stairway. The desk and the console top will both project 24" off of the wall. The 36" tall console/cabinet gives me a huge area for all kinds of stuff.
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When its all said and done, the console top will die into the angled companion way top, and a cabinet will be fitted above that as to not interfere or requiring notching the trim of the small window in that corner. 
Ive never owned a boat with a wheel house, but I can without a doubt say that the wheel house is huge. The other thing I can say about the wheel house is that, the designer got it right when the designed the reverse rake of the forward windows and the trim ( the bill that extends from the roof) for the wheel house roof... its perfect. Ive seen some pictures of other boats of my flavor completed by others, and a few of those the builders decided not to install the trim as designed. I have always felt that it took much away from the look of the wheel house, and not that Ive seen it up close and personal, I now know it to be a fact that eliminating the trim detracts from the look of the boat.
The first step in getting serious about building the super structure was to build a gantry. The left over 4" beams from the building cradle strong back provided most of the steel to do the job. The main lifting beam I had saved from the gantry I used to build the hull. Because things are getting tight in the shop and the gantry just fits between the metal lathe and the hull, I had to pad the gantry with a canvas tarp to prevent it from gouging the hull and causing me some serious paint repair. I"m so glad I decided to do this as the gantry has already bumped the hull. I can say that the rub rail is working.
The first thing I did was establish a center line on the barn floor, then squared another line off of that. The squared off line became the line for the wheel house front. Positioning the various panels in relation to the line and bracing them was about all it took to get the show started. Once all the panels were in place, I then installed the roof beams and the room longitudinal stringers. The roof sheathing, obviously was the last item to be installed. Because of having all the layout lines laser etched into the sheathing, it was just a matter of putting the blue line on the roof sheathing on top of the side wall and tacking the sheathing down.
The roof sheathing is what squares up the structure, so paying attention to detail for this part of the build was a key strategy. I first tacked the sheathing in the forward corner then worked my way down one side bringing the side wall to the layout line and tacking the pieces together. Because the roof sheathing is now tacked to the side wall on the layout line, I then started to bring the forward part of the wheel house to the layout line of the roof sheathing and tacked it in place. I started this process from the same corner. A lesson one learns quickly with metal work is never tack yourself in to a corner...always start from the closed end of something and work your way outbound. The other strategy with metal work is to tack all your parts together first, and leave the serious welding until EVERYTHING IS TACKED TOGETHER. Welding generates serious heat and caused the metal to move quite a bit. Final welding before youre finished fitting will only cause one grief.
Now that I had
two panels tacked to the line, the third panel easily moved to the line and was tacked. I then installed the aft part of the wheel house and the box was complete.
The trim for the roof section was another story. The trim wraps around the wheel house and creates a drip edge to keep water from running down the sides of the wheel house. The forward piece of the trim extends down over the room sheathing a little further than the side trim, and creates a bill to keep the sun out of the captains eyes. Its the exact same as wearing a hat, and not that I see it installed, I love it. The other piece that gets installed to complete the trim is a piece that angles up from the room at 45 degrees, and welds to the bill. This 45 degree piece
creates a gutter on the inside of the roof and also stiffens the bill piece of the trim. The gutter piece is another nice detail that will make painting and maintaining this part of the boat easier. There are no tight crevices for bad things to start working against me and everything is open and easily reached. This same gutter detail will be repeated on the salon roof, and all the rain will travel this course and discharge overboard without hitting the decks. There will be a lot of rain running this path, so I need to have a way to capture it and get it in to the water tanks if the need arises. All the trim parts when installed ended up having funky angles with compound bends. The funky angles and compound bends required some patience, and about as much time to do as assembling the main wheel house panels, but in the end it was worth it. All of the trim is fair and should paint up nicely.
super structure. Because the deck of the boat falls from bow to stern, the back of the wheel house is sitting on the barn floor with the front up on some blocks. Before I can assemble the salon, I have to jack up the wheel house the same distance as the step that is decks. I could leave it as it is, but that would mean being crouched over as I build the salon, and that wont work for me. Ill probably end up putting in a temporary floor in the wheel house to make painting the inside easier.
The first decision I had to make on the wheel house door build was how to build the frame. I found a piece of 2 x 6 x 1/4 " angle at the scrap yard and ripped the six inch side to 4" to match my 4" wheel house frame depth. The angles on the rough opening are a degree off of 90, so a little fitting had to be done before I could tack the frame together. I guess at this point I should say that I TIG welded the wheel house door. The frame was assembled using miters, with all the cuts being made with my miter saw... you gotta love Aluminum. Once the frame was fit in to the opening, I built the actual door frame using some 1" x 2" angle and some 2" flat bar for internal framing.
I had the hinges in the shop, so figuring out the reveal of the door was not too big of a deal.
With hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had used a hinge that did not require a mortise. I ended up having to create a mortise for the hinge in the door, and while not a deal killer for the success of the job, it was sort of a pain.
On As per advice from my paint vendor, I conditioned the aluminum with some material I applied with a spray bottle. The conditioner had to sit on the metal for 15 or 20 minutes, then I hosed the metal clean and let it drip dry. My paint guy said the conditioner is good for 24 for hours, so after baking in the sun for a few hours, I hung the door from some lines and gave it two coats of epoxy primer along with the frame. After priming the door, I faired the ground edge of the door first using West epoxy mixed with fairing compound, then finished with Rage filler sanded to 320 grit. Spot painting two coats of primer on the filler to seal it, then three or four coats of acrylic urethane top coat and the door was ready for assembly. 
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Most every time I show up to work on the boat, I have a small armload of parts or material hauled from the storehouse in the barn. Sunday, before I applied the last coat of urethane on the counter top, I took a couple of hours to clean and re organize some space. Just about every cabin is overflowing with material, parts and tools. But since the salon is the next and last really big wood working project, I had to make room in there. Still to be completed in the salon before the room can be sheathed is to run water lines for the fresh water flush toilet and associated sink along with turning the three 1 1/2" waste lines down in to the lazarette. A few wires need to be pulled along with deciding on where to mount the stereo, but no real big work has to be completed before sheathing can begin..jpg)
This is a fairly straight forward door, but like all things engineered by the seat of ones pants, I have to build a little forgiveness into my designs. The biggest guess I had to make was how much of a gap to leave between the door stops and the door to accommodate a sealing gasket.
For this purpose, I made the hardwood stops easy to be removed by installing threaded inserts into the door. The threaded inserts are installed by drilling a proper sized hole, then using a special tool to crimp the insert into the hole in the aluminum.
This is almost identical to a rivet, but is extremely robust. I bedded the hardwood stops in silicone and used a 10-24 x 1.5" stainless pan head screw to fasten the stops. The screws are 12" on center. The other alternative to fasten the stops to the jamb would have been to through bolt the stops in place, but if one ever have to remove a stop later down the road, the casings would also have to be removed to access the nuts. Through bolting is also kind of sloppy in my opinion and alignment seems to be a fuzz more difficult when through bolting. 
Because I did not want to see the edge of the plywood I turned to my tried and true method of ironing hardwood veneer. Ive been using this iron on edge banding for years now, and have never had any issue with the adhesive failing. 
Once you iron the edge on, you trim it off with a special tool that cuts both sides flush in one pass. A light sanding with 220 is all thats needed to make the edge perfect. I love the edge banding system. 
