round corners « 1969chriscraftroamer46

Back in late January 2015, I thought we were going to get away with a very pleasant winter. I was wrong.

We have been hammered by temps down to zero Fahrenheit with wind chill piling on top of that. There have been a half dozen or so snow, sleet, and/or ice dumps. Through it all, though, Tent Model X has held up well (far better than some of my earlier tent attempts). I only intended for this tent to get me through to autumn 2014, when I planned to splash the boat. But when the tent was burglarized in May 2014, it knocked me completely off schedule. So Tent Model X has had to go through more than I anticipated, but it’s taken the abuse and held up well. Even when it’s way below freezing outside, the 70,000BTU kerosene-powered bazooka heater brings the interior of the boat up to a comfortable working temperature so epoxy will kick within 45 minutes or so. In spite of the nasty winter, our Roamer refit keeps moving in the right direction.

Snowstorm No. 4…or was it 5?

Snow storm No. 5…or was it 6?

Who really cares at this point…

The important thing is, things are moving along on the inside. With the main aft stateroom wall panels fitted and one installed, the second one was a breeze.

The closest panel lands in the middle of the porthole

Fortunately, the second panel attaches directly to an overhead frame.

Pocket screw holes done in 2 minutes…getting faster at this

Through bolted through the whole shebang

Good, tight fit…ready for through bolting and pocket screwing the base

Time to get the corner piece ready to glue and screw in.

First, clean up the corner so it fully seats against the panel

First, clean up the inside corner so the panel fully seats

There was some mahogany remaining in the inside corner from the saw blade not quite being set high enough. It was right at the corner and was making it impossible to fully seat the panel, so I ran a die grinder disk from end to end and plowed a bit of a furrow.

Next, drill 1/8″ pilot holes from the one side, spaced 6″ apart

It’s a lot easier to drill holes perpendicular to where the panel will be with the inside corner as a reference than to drill it from the back-side at an angle.

Flip the corner piece, and counter bore down the pilot hole

Flip the corner piece, and countersink the pilot hole

One line of countersinks done

Wet out the inside corner with straight epoxy

Getting the glue joint ready

After wetting out the cut edge of the wall panel 2~3 times with epoxy, I mixed up another batch with wood flour to a peanut butter consistency and applied it over the wetted out edge.