Friday, March 28, 2008

Closing in the Hulls

Work on the Tiki 30 has continued at a steady pace since the last update here. Below you can see that the cabin roof has now been installed on the starboard hull. These roof panels are built in foam sandwich construction, with a foam core and top and bottom skins of 4mm plywood. This construction insures a stiff, lightweight panel in larger spans such as this.

The photo below shows the solid lumber parts that went into the cored roof panel at the edges of the hatch and companionway openings and around the perimeters.

In the port hull you can see that the galley sink has been installed and the opening for the ice box is finished. The ice box door is a 5-inch thick foam cored plug with a plywood panel on the interior side. The sides of the opening taper inward, as does the top, and the bottom tapers down, so that the plug fits tightly in place and forms a seal. Addition sealing will be fitted to the inside of the plywood panel.

Here, we at last have a finished ice box, shown here with a coat of primer in the interior. The area around the top edge is the mating surface for the top part of the box, which is built into the underside of the stern deck.

This is the matching top section of the ice box beneath the top loading opening in the stern deck. This plug fits perfectly to the surfaces surrounding the top of the box, shown in the photo above.


Here is a view into the starboard hull navigation station, showing the finish paint coat in the interior before the cabin roof was installed. The shelf edges, bulkhead edges, and ring frame edges will all be trimmed in natural-finished teak to offset the white paint.

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