Helm and console integration part 2

The helm and console took several trips to the boat in order to refit and so the post you are reading is a continuation of the prior post on this subject.  Please review that post before reading this one so you can see everything happen in order.

With the basic frame of the console unit bolted and glassed into place, we then began to figure out how to make the unit a bit more integrated and natural looking.  The "floating oval" notion that we originally started with looked like a wart once bolted and glassed into place.  Sturdy as heck, but not very attractive.

No worries though, because that is the beauty of working with fiberglass.  Besides the great strength and noncorrosive qualities of fiberglass, the main benefit of working in this medium instead of, say, wood, is that it is so flexible in terms of mid course corrections.  It doesn't matter what you did before, if you don't like it at the final stages just cut, chop, sand and grind out the parts you don't like and then rebuild them.

A big part of the problem here is vision.  Anyone can pretty much walk up to something and render an opinion on it.  For example, I love it, I hate it, it's just OK, etc.  And some of those people can even tell you why they feel that way.  For example, it looks dated, it looks like a bolt on after thought and such.  But very, very few can walk up and say, "and to fix it to an acceptable degree in the easiest way you need to do exactly these things in order to achieve thus and such effect which will (make it look more integrated, modernize it, take the sharp visual element out of it or whatever)".  Neither Kyle or I profess to be one of those people who are able to look at something and easily see what it needs.  In many cases we can hardly even verbalize why we don't like it.  In this case all we knew was that it looked like a bolt on after thought.  Which makes sense because that is what it was.

In order to find direction on this, we quickly slapped some sandpaper in place with tape just to see if it would give more direction.

Well just that little bit of effort began to provide inspiration and so Kyle found some foam and mocked things up a bit more.

The foam then served as cutting templates for the 1/2" coosa board which was then glued and screwed into place.  Hmm.  Already looking better.  Kyle was taking the lead on this and was clearly on the right track.

As you can see from the lower left picture below, the use of thinner 1/2" coosa allowed Kyle to bend the product.  Backing wood that followed the general curvature provided something to screw the coosa to in order to keep it in place until it could be glassed in.  This bend allowed the console to conform to the original contour of the flybridge cowl while leaving no space back there for water to pool in or for dirt to accumulate in.

With the coosa board pieces screwed and glued it was time to fill and fair a bit with TotalBoat Total Fair epoxy filler.  This is a heavy body filler that is good for filling larger cracks and voids between material but it is not as easy to sand off as, say, 3M lightweight filler.  But the 3M stuff cannot be put on very thickly compared to TotalBoat epoxy based filler.

After this, the unit was sanded and shaped and then covered with a couple of initial layers of #6 cloth.  It may be difficult to see but the #6 cloth has been epoxied in place in the picture below.  OK, so not really looking like a bolt on wart anymore.  Well done, Kyle!

They say that you should not show or demo something before it is ready and that is so true because most people can't build anything themselves.  They either buy it finished or they think something is wrong with it just because it's not finished yet.  While we clearly know that we are now headed in the right direction with this integration effort, it still looks ugly to the average eye.  But this is how custom stuff is fabricated, America.

Adding a finished piece always helps people envision things better so here is the unit with the vertically removable lift out door that will allow access under the flybridge cowl when it's all said and done.  These pieces can be custom ordered online from boatoutfitters.com.  This is a really nice service for making custom size doors of all kind.  Sure, you pay a bit for them but the time you save trying to do something like this yourself instead of letting them run their CNC cutter is just not worth it.  And it will take a long time and a lot of care to get this level of precision on your own.  Face, some things were just meant to be cut by a CNC mill.  This is one of them.

Part 3 can be found here.