So this boat is missing it's companionway hatch. It was lost when hurricane Juan blew through here in the fall of '03. Fortunately, it was the only substantial damage the boat took out on it's mooring. The boat did loose its primary set of bridals, but it was saved by the second emergency pair he had attached right before the storm hit.

The first thing I like to do with projects like these is to draw it. I find it's useful when I have to go back later and find some esoteric angle or measurement, especially when working with curves.

Here are the raw beginnings. On the left are the three false work forms I'll use to give the hatch a camber. On the right is the first skin that will form the top of the hatch. I'll laminate two of these together once they're bent over the form so they'll retain the shape of the forms. Above the three form boards on the left is their cut off tops.

The form boards were just some old pine boards I had laying around. They're half-rotted already, but I think they'll be up to the task. I cut them to the inside size of the hatch so I can attach the sides directly to them. The curve was cut with a jigsaw and then cleaned up with a belt sander until it eyeballed fair. To obtain the curve, I used a "spline" to connect the two end-points and centre of the arc. The spline was just a thin strip of plywood that had a consistent grain, but a nylon tent-pole or any other consistently bendy item would have worked better.

The plywood I'm using here is meranti that I got from the local home centre. I'm using this stuff for a couple reasons: it's inexpensive, it is very smooth with no knots or checks, and it's easy to work. I've previously given this stuff a boil-dry-boil test and there was no sign of the glue weakening. When I got to the home centre, I found a piece where they had accidentally gotten a piece of teak in the plywood factory as you can see by the underside of the skin in the first picture. I think I'll leave this exposed on the inside.

As you can see, I've nailed the forms square to the deck boards.

I'm nailing the skin to the forms with plenty of 1" finishing nails. I should really get an electric brad nailer for this sort of work, but it only took a few minutes to bang them in by hand. When the hatch is done and ready to have the forms pulled, I'll be able to pull the finishing nails through and leave little damage.

The sides are ripped and ready to go. The material to make the fronts is sitting to the left of them. I'm laminating the teak faced maranti to some douglas fir for the front and back, making a three species sandwich. For this I'll use some Dural brand Marine Glue, which is a water based adhesive I like to use for undemanding applications. Essentially, I use it where you would use yellow wood glue in carpentry.

The notches and camber are cut from the front and back pieces, and they're almost ready to be installed. I'm using a pile of drywall screws and epoxy to bond them to the skin. Normally, I would use a proper wood screw but in this case I think the flat head of the drywall screw will work better on the thin meranti. I'm using Interlux Epiglass for an epoxy with thickeners to form a fillet on the inside of the end pieces.

Here's some pictures of the epoxy getting mixed. On the top left is HT9000 resin and HT9001 fast hardener mixed together. Right of them is the HT220 wood fibre I'm using as a filler. The bottom picture is the 55cc of epoxy mixed with one and a half 50cc scoops of filler. Although the can suggests 1:1, this makes a nice paste for gluing wood and forming fillets. At an equal ratio it was far too runny to be much use.

I've found the pot life to be substantially longer than Interlux suggests. Perhaps thats because it doesn't self heat much in the small 55cc batches I've made so far. It lasts over a half-hour at room temperature.

Here you can see the second red fillet I made. I'll leave out the first one because it's embarrassingly messy. The red colour is from the Epiglass fast hardener I'm using. I was a little surprised when I first saw it as I was expecting a yellowish colour. Perhaps they use red dye in the fast hardener to warn you!

The Epiglass was much thinner than other epoxies I've used. That makes it less than ideal for my purposes since it can't be used raw to fill any kind of gap. On the positive side it soaks into the wood very well.

Since this was the teak veneer I am bonding to, I first washed it well with acetone to strip the oils out.

These go on the same as the front pieces. Except I had to use nails rather than screws to hold them on since the screw heads would stick out because the sides are only 1/4" thick. I ended up using douglas fir for making these and scraped the meranti ones I had cut earlier. I felt they wouldn't be strong enough. The douglas fir was ripped at the 7� angle I found in the drawing so it would fit the curve of the top perfectly.

I laminated on another piece of meranti to the top making the total thickness about 7/16". I failed to get a picture of it because I was in too much of a hurry to get the skin down. Mostly the reason was that I grossly underestimated the amount of epoxy I would need, and had to mix new batchs.

In total, the seven square feet took 350cc of epoxy and 250cc of filler. I made this stuff a little runnier than the fillet mix to make it easier to spread. I spread out the mixture with a cheap v-notch trowel used for laying down linoleum adhesive, which worked perfectly.

Incidently, I now know what the red 'dye' in the hardener is for. I've been using the mixing cups that came with the epoxy kit rather than pumps for determining the ratio of resin to hardener. The inevitable happened and I mixed the epoxy I used on the sides fillet a little light. It took a few days, but fortunately it cured up hard enough. These fillets are dead white though. As the hardener was consumed, the red colour disappeared. If you look closely at the fillets in the previous image, you can see that they're already sort of a pink colour.

In this photo, you can see the cover all assembled, with the edges of the top sanded flush with the sides. A belt sander made quick work of that job.

With the top well cured, it was time for the moment of truth. Things went according to plan and the little 1" finishing nails provided little resistance. I was expecting the hatch to spring a bit once it was free of the forms, but there was hardly any at all. The curve stayed perfectly true.

The next test was to make sure it would support my weight. With great apprehension I stepped on the centre of the hatch. The sides deflected slightly and the top sunk in slightly, but there was no creaks or cracks. I'm happily surprised by how strong and light it is turning out.

Pictured here is the hatch sporting a fresh coat of epoxy. Before this I rounded over the corners with a router to hopefully give it a bit of a fibreglass look. I don't like hard edges on boats anyway. I had to deeply countersink all the nails so the router wouldn't catch them. I wish I had simply used lots of clamps or made up a clamping form since a number of nails poked through the sides and had to be driven out.

Besides the nail-holes, there were a number of small voids visible in the ply edges, and a gouge caused by a slip of the router. These I filled with a thin filler mix like I used to laminate the top on, letting the epoxy stand a little proud. A little sanding and filing and those hacks and holes were all just bad memories.

To do one side took 150cc of mixed epoxy with no thickening agents. The Epiglass epoxy redly soaked into the wood without the need for thinners. After rolling it on with a foam roller, dry spots began appearing quickly. I knocked down the bubbles left by the roller with a piece of flexible plastic quickly liberated from an
ice cream container.

I've only got around 200cc left of the epoxy and I've still got the other side to do, and another coat over the whole thing. I don't think I'm going to make it. But no matter - there's still the paint to buy too.

I thought It would be smart to toss the roller in the freezer so I could save it and the epoxy it was saturated with. Within an hour it had ballooned into this rock-hard formation. I think the epoxy is reacting with the foam as the excess in the bottom of the cup is fine.

Well, I got tired of waiting around for the epoxy to cure, so I added 1000w of light to speed things up. This had a dramatic affect and the epoxy was dry to the touch in about 1/2 hour.
Now we're on the home streach since the whole thing only needs one more coat. But I'm down to my last 25ml of hardener and I'm completely out of foam rollers.

After a bit of break, I'm finally getting to paint. The hatch was washed with water and TSP to remove any dirt and whatever amine blush remained. Then it was scuffed down with 220 grit, and finally washed again. Areas to be left varnished masked off with tape.

Here I am in the middle of painting the hatch cover using the "Roll and Tip" method with Interlux Brightsides paint. Simply, the paint is rolled even with a foam roller, then 'tipped' or given a light single brush with a cheap, large foam brush to burst the bubbles created by the roller. The paint then self-levels, disguising any brush marks. Brightsides sets up pretty quickly without any "Brushing Liquid" added, so I was only rolling on about eight inches before tipping. The self-levelling time is short, so the sooner the tipping is done the better.

Brightsides needs to cure 16 hours before being recoated. Also, it needs to be scuffed with 220-320 grit between coats. With the number of coats going on and the long recoat time, it took quite a while to paint.

This is the fourth and last coat of paint, and it's really looking good. I only gave the bottom two coats since I'm not really very concerned with how that side looks. Although the Brightsides is incredibly demanding, it is an excellent paint which levels nicely and leaves a great finish. The first coat didn't go on very smooth but the later ones got progressively better.

In retrospect, I should have done a few things that would have paid off in the finish. I could have been more careful sanding the epoxy and saved myself a coat of paint. The douglas fir, being a soft wood with large growth rings, left a bit of a mottled look to it no matter how hard I worked the epoxy and paint. A hardwood plywood - even just a veneer - would probably have made better sense here. Also, I should have purchased a second tipping brush for the final coat for a perfect finish. The one I had used all along was falling apart and leaving chunks behind in the paint, which weren't welcome on the final coat.

All in all, I used 1/2 of a quart of paint.

Well, I couldn't help but show off that teak a bit, at least on the inside mostly where maintaining the finish won't be so much work. This is getting Minwax Helmsman Spar Varnish for UV protection. The Minwax leaves an excellent finish and is easy to work with: it only requires 6 hours and scuffing between coats. Unfortunately, it's not particularly durable, and not really suited to a boat. My chief reason for choosing this product is I've got just under a gallon of it sitting on the paint shelf.

Installation was a snap. Looks good on there I think - too good for that old boat!

(Coming soon, New windows for the Shark :) )