With the deck in place and the edges cleaned up, we can now install the cockpit coamings and build and fit the hatches.
First I pre-assembled the hatch frames ( drill a small hole through each joint and pin them with a small brad. ) and then traced the outline onto the deck, making sure that they were positioned square and that the front one was in front of the bulkhead.
Carefully cut out the hole for the hatches and sand or plane all edges until the frames fit into the holes and the edges are smooth.
When you are finished fitting the frames to the holes, knock the pins loose and glue the joints together, put the brads back in part way only, leaving about 1/4" extended. Place the frames back into the holes and square the frames. Apply a little clamp pressure to keep the joints tight and let them cure. This will give you a perfect hatch fit.
After the frames are done, glue the tops to them and then give both sides a couple coats of epoxy and the tops 4 to 6 coats of varnish. Line the inside edges around the frames with foam tape to seal the water out and they are finished!
The coamings are really quite easy to fit. First mark the center of the cockpits fore and aft as a reference for the coaming spacers. The instructions called for gluing both spacers and the coaming ring all at the same time. I felt that this would be difficult since you are working with 5 pieces of epoxy coated wood all at once. Also, after they were in place, it looked like a real chore trying to sand the spacers under the ring.
So, I decided to glue the spacers first and then come back and install the ring after I smoothed the outside of the spacers. It took 27 clamps to force the curves into the spacers. When I removed the clamps, everything looked great and it was easy to smooth the outside of the spacers. Everything was going fine until the forward end of the spacers came loose from the deck. I think this happened because of the lack of the top ring working as a reinforcement brace for the hard curve here. However, this was not hard to fix. I simply put some more epoxy into the crack and then drilled and screwed the ends back down. The deck beam below the loose ends allowed me to use screws with plenty of bite to draw the ends back down. While I was at this, I also drilled and screwed the rear joint. When I installed the spacers for the next cockpit I started by pre-drilling the ends. This actually made gluing the second set much easier than the first since the screws held everything in place while I applied the clamps. I will use this method on the next boat I build!
After I took care of that little problem, it was an easy job gluing the ring into place. The ring is a lot thinner than the spacers and does not require as much clamping pressure. This allows more of the epoxy to remain in the joint for better adhesion. I have little fear that the rings will ever come loose!
After the clamps are removed you have a big sanding job to do on the inside of the spacer/ring assembly. I used a coping saw to cut away the excess deck panel and ring material on the inside of the hole. Then using a wood rasp I brought the edges into shape and then sanded them smooth. A few minutes sanding the outside edge of the coaming rings and they were done.
