Fun with seats

February 20.  Happy National Cherry Pie Day.

The big sand is almost around the corner.

A couple of days ago after reading the manual three times before what i had to do sunk in i installed the cleats which hold the wooden hip braces to the underside of the deck.  That turned out to be easier than i expected.  I even managed to keep from gluing the hip braces to the cleats!  Yay.  Not insignificant, since i had to put a couple of blind fillets on the back of each cleat to fasten each to the deck, and i was concerned that the epoxy might drip down and touch the braces, fastening them forever.  Which would be bad.

As it happened, there was just one small drip holding one brace to its cleat, which i was able to get through with a chisel and a teeny bit of oompf.

Last night i finished off filleting and glassing the cleats and glassed the back of the hip braces onto the bottom of the seat with two layers of cloth.  Messy, only because i lacked a suitable perch to place the seat on so as to prevent the cloth from touching the bench and being pulled away from the top of the braces.  Solution: clamp that sucka.

Next steps:  Feather off the edges of the glass tape i used to hold the braces in place prior to glassing the whole enchilada, then 2 layers of glass cloth over the inside  of the braces into the top of the seat. Then installing all of the seat hardware and bolting the seat into place.  A couple more sessions to bury all of the cloth on the hull, and the big sand is nigh.  Yum.