Step IX - Seats and Knees

The next job is to install the seats and knees. Once again this is a time consuming activity.

The first thing was to install the rails which support the seats. After shaping and coating the back this was screwed and glued in place. I had no way of clamping these while the glue cured so I decided to leave a screw in the hole. I've used a good silicon bronze screw here.

Next I fitted the aft seat. The seat is made up of five peices of timber, edge joined. I've decided to use Queensland Silver Ash as the timber. It is a good durable hardwood timber and the yellow appearance contrasts well with the Cedar and Mahonogy. My brother Colin helped me cut the shapes and get the edges straight on the seat peices so they could join together. He also suggested I glue them together first and then fit them. It turned out to be a really neat way of doing things and I did the same for the forward seat.

The next job was to make up and fit the dagger board trunk. The trunk fits through the bottom of the boat. The hard part here was to cut a hole in the bottom of the boat. Because I couldn't bring my self cut a hole in my nice hull I asked Colin to do it for me. The pictures shows the dagger board trunk finished with it's cover in place. The cover was attached after the centre seat was fitted.

The centre seat was the easiest to fit. It was simply cut to length and sanded up. There is another mistake in the book here. The material list calls up a 8 inch wide seat but all the details show a 9 inch. I ordered my timber from the material list so my seat is an inch too narrow. I placed the back of the seat in the correct location which means the dagger board trunk is one inch further aft than the design.

As I am building the sailing version of this boat I had to fit mast partners underneath the forward seat. The mast partners provide additional strength. Another error in the material list, it called up 6 inch boards but 9 inch boards are required. So I have three boards edge joined instead of two boards. Again I glued together the mast partners and seat supports all together on the work bench before gluing them in to the boat.

Next was fitting the bow seat. Because of the curve on the rails, I had to check the seat in to the rails. The rest was pretty easy.

The next job was to fit the knees. The knees provide extra stiffness at the centre seat and for the sailing version at the forward seat. In the photograph the knees have been fitted, a very time consuming task, but have yet to be glued in place. You can also see the oar lock pads glued in place.

Tracey found the most wonderful brass oar locks for me for my birthday. She got them at Muir Marine.

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