Laminating Floor boards

JohnB 's instructions suggest laminating the floors on the molds before planking so that hey mirror the inside of the planking when installed later.

So using stiff battens screwed to the molds, the laminates are clamped to the battens and glued up in a plastic wrap to save on the epoxy mess....

Batens for laminating floors

It was an interesting stage for me as it was the first time I had several battens attached to the molds which gave me a picture into the shape of the hull, and onlookers could at last be assured it was a boat I was building!

Laminates cut from Douglas Fir in preparation for glue up

Cutting laminates became an easy task with helping hand from Ivor and my shop made feather board which ensure constant thickness in the laminates.  This is an enjoyable process which runs much faster than I had envisaged.

Here the floors are glued up, wrapped in polythene to reduce mess - it does have a down side as the next photo shows:-

Removing hardened epoxy from the boards was  a painfull, dirty messy job!

.  Were I to do this again, and I very well might have to, I would use more clamps.  I only used one clamp on each baten and two on the keelson, making 8 in total for each floor.  This left some voids between some of the laminates and you could see where more pressure was placed on the glue up where it was clamped.  Another issue showed up as by ensuring the floor was clamped tight to the bottom of the keelson, the floors then swept back at an angle to meet the batens.  Had I had my thinking cap on, I would have realised that most of the floors (at the centreboard) will be cut in half and in fact following the lines of the keelson was immaterial and in fact unhelpful.   Time will tell, whether I will have the re do these floors.

The finished floors