Day 125

It's a small start but we are back outside and working on the boat at last! My project is making the portlites, Genas is to weld in plate for the fuel tanks under the engine. She always gets the fun stuff! Her progress will be shown in the upcoming days. We aren't able to put in full days on Saturday yet so only four hours today. Making the portlites looked simple at first, just bend some flatbar around for a frame, back it, and weld it into a hole. Not so. Upon realising that, yes, the cabin sides are angled inward, and therefore the windows would collect water on their ledges, things became slightly more complicated. There are four possible solutions: [1] inset the windows more on the lower half, as some ships are, meaning a substantial ledge that still may collect water on a heal [2] don't inset the windows. This makes sense, but that's not what we want at all. [3] tilt the lower edge downward to allow water to run off, even when somewhat healed over. [4] don't have any windows ! ( Had to put that one in )
Cool 3D picture!		The solution for us is #3. I will be showing the whole "proposed" lay out in days to come. To the left, the graghic shows how to make a ledge that is abled down, and it seems to have worked! The lower half is actually much shorter hieght-wise, hence "not to scale", and is comprised of 2" flatbar as opposed to the 1 1/4" of the top part. For the templateI bent the lower piece, clamped the two together, overlapping them, set and marked the 10º turn, and layed it on a box. After the box was marked, that part of cardboard was slotted out to allow it to sink into the box so it would be flush again. The surface of the box was used to mark the line along the 2"on both sides.
The two were pulled apart, and the lower carefully bent back out and flattened, then the excess cut off with the plazzie. This formed the template for all the pieces I have been cuttin today. ( pic at top of page )
		The 2" flat bar was marked using the template piece, then bent, then cut. I had to remember to leave a few inches of excess bar on each end so the bender had something to grab on to. For 20" portlites only a 30" piece was needed. Of course cutting them out mostly freehand wasn't perfect and some ginding has to be done. It would have been easier to cut the curved ends first then bend it, but unfortunately the thing would slide out of position and make all sorts of funny angles! ( I tryed last year! ) Good for a lawn ornament I guess! The pic to the left doesn't show it well, plus the frame is upside down, but this is how it will look....well sorta.

Heres the bender for those who have never seen one before!
They need to be bolted down to the concrete, use good bolts!