Cut thru the deck today, and trimmed back the cabin liner from where the bearing surface will be. Figure to do the glasswork below first; there is only 1 thin layer of glass on the overhead now, so by doing it this way (bottom first) I think I can re-induce the original curvature in the cabin top. It had depressed about 1/4" with the OEM structure.
So, pics...
First, Katies new dinghy...
The area of deck to cut away - added about 1" all around the tabernacle base. Cut on the red line with the SoniCrafter tool, using the half-circle blade. Hey Tony - see how close I was to the hinges? Maybe 1/2". I have even more aprreciation for this tool after today - more on that in a bit.
Outline cut, & first try at top skin removal. I was really hoping I could manage to peel up this whole piece and then re-use it elsewhere, but the 40 year old FRP was just too tenacious. I wound up cutting with the tool and fighting to get this little piece off. Going from this point, ripping about 1/3 of the skin off, it came off very irregularly, tapering up from the edge to just a last, 1 thin layer of glass at the end. Hmmm...
Broke out the SoniCrafter, and BAM. Perfect tool for this. Use plunge blade, Insert into core, cutting that free all the way across, then cut across the skin at about the point which would have been maximum plunge, and you get nice clean blocks of skin and core.
A 6"x2.5" block takes maybe 1.5 minutes to remove, and the surface underneath you can almost eat off of. You can use the blade to clean off the underskin.
More coming...
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