Tabbing the hull between the stitching

[Noklin]

My CS 20 is ready to have the inwale installed and then to be glued up. I am about 200#. Is that too heavy to be inside the wired hull doing the tabbing between the stitches while its on the 3 station cradle? Do I need to recruit someone lighter for that job? Just how strong is the stitched up hull? It appears to me that it would be impossible to do a good job working from the side.

[JeffM]

I'm 200lb also, so I shoved stuff under and up against the keel at a point midway between the cradle stations when I knew I'd be in the boat. Once, when I got lazy and overconfident, I broke the tabs aft of the temporary bulkhead for a couple of feet. It wasn't hard to fix -- once I cooled off.

[Howard]

I'll toss this out, and if it's a bad idea, I'm sure someone will stomp on me for it:

When doing the Spindrift, I've had good luck on joining some of these seams by putting a piece of masking tape behind the joint and pouring a somewhat runny mix of epoxy into the seam, letting gravity take it in. This instead of trying to force a thickened fillet mix into the same place. The thinner mix flows into all the cracks and soaks into the endgrain. You might consider this for your "tack" welds along the seams between the wire stitches. A few inches of this along the keel line, every foot or so would do wonders. Once that is cured, you can get inside and do with it what you want. You only put in a slighly proud pour that will end up level when it all soaks in. You fillet over that to smooth out the seam later. And of course it gets taped over that.

[Scott Dunsworth]

I am 230 and I got inside my Belhaven with just the wires. Then I tabbed it about every foot on the chines and down the center. I used a smaller spreader for the tabs so when I did the main fillet the larger spreading tool would glide right over the tabs.

The tabs really stiffed it up. The hull did flex while I was tabbing it so when I got out I rechecked the hull to make sure I didn't pull it out of shape.

Scott

[Tom Williams]

On my CS17 I filleted and glassed the chines first. When that was fully cured, I went over the transom and filleted the CL for about 6 feet. At that point I was worried about the stress I was putting on the copper ties. I allowed that to dry overnight which really stiffened the boat. The next day I was able to work my way to the forward bulkhead.

If I could do it again, I probably would have tied it every 4 inches instead of 6.

Good luck!

Tom