1st ama interior

Five hours today. First we cut the specified 10 cm holes in the bulkheads with a cup saw. I'm not sure of what these holes are for: I think they're there to allow some air circulation. We then fitted the butt blocks to the bottom taking care to cut some bevel on the sides to avoid water pools inside. The blocks were glued over the bottom panels butts with the usual microfiber thickened resin. In the picture you can see the blocks in place with one plank each acting as a weight.

We then gave a double coat of unthickened resin to the bottom, the bulkhead faces and the butt blocks. Here's another pic showing one of the butt blocks

Total work time to date: 165 hours

Cradles done

2 more hours, and the cradles are done. I tested them under my not so light weight and they did not collapse. Anyway, here's a pic showing one of the amas rightside up.

The distance between the holes for the bolts turned out to be right on the spot, but there is indeed some twist in the hull (the top of the two bulkheads do not look not exactly parallel to each other.) Nothing alarming, but a bit disturbing. The building sequence does leave much space for such adjustements...

Total work time to date: 160 hours

Cradles

The cradles for the amas required quite some thinking. Here we are in the process of cutting the pieces, which we will assemble next time.

The second photo shows a partially assembled one (the one drawn around the aft bulkhead)

Each cradle will have 4 wheels, one at each end of the two base logs.

Total work time to date: 158 hours

Yet more fairing

4 more hours today (mostly by Cinzia) to complete fairing of the chines. Not much to show other than wood flour. Next step is going to be filling/fairing screw holes, dents and epoxy runs in preparation for fiberglassing.

Here's a view of the chine at the stem

and one at the stern, showing the sort of holes we'll have to fill and fair.

Total work time to date: 156 hours