Another day, another question. I am about to put on the decks. In centering the cockpit section do I measure from outside to outside on the deck piece. Or from inside to inside of the cockpit. I have measured from outside to outside for the aft and align with the center of the aft bulkhead.
Use the most visible feature as your guide.
For the part of the deck that has no openings, the most visible feature is the deck itself. Secondary visible features are the grain and the join with the adjacent piece of the deck. As long as the hull is entirely decked over, the flow of the grain looks good and you have enough to make a nice joint with the adjacent piece (straight and perpendicular to the beam), that portion of the deck doesn’t even need to be actually centered. So center it however is easiest, or not at all if you can make it work.
For the piece with the cockpit opening, that opening is extremely visible and it’s critical that it be centered on the hull. Assuming that your hull has a symmetric beam and that the cockpit opening is laterally symmetric, I find the easiest thing is to determine the centerline of the cockpit opening and align that with the centerline of the hull. As long as there’s enough deck to overlap the hull, I use the opening measurements as my controlling dimensions.
If centering that way doesn’t cover the hull and I’m building from a CNC-cut kit, I’ll compress the hull on the assumption that the cockpit opening was accurately cut. If for some reason that doesn’t work out for you. I’d recommend splitting the difference between centering on the opening and centering on the outside of the deck piece.
I thinkthat covers all the cases, right?
Laszlo
Laszlo,
Yes that makes sense. It does appear that the opening is centered. I measured a 1/16 difference between the side overhangs. But I will center on the opening to see if there is a difference. Thanks.
Rob
On the Chesapeake kits, the cockpit hole that is cut into the deck panels is several inches smaller than what the final cockpit opening will be. When the cockpit coaming and spacers are installed, they are glued centered on the hull, then the excess from the deck panels is trimmed away. As a result, as long as the deck panels are close to centered you will be fine.
In this picture I have taped the cockpit coaming onto the deck panels. The coaming is the size of the actual cockpit opening. Looks like I will have to trim at least an inch from the deck on both sides.
Mark,
I think I am pretty close. I purchased a fancy digital tape measure since I have trouble reading a regular tape measure. Thanks for pointing out the cockpit installation. It helps to think a few steps ahead.
Rob