Pilothouse Overhead Composition Pic

[rnummi]

Since I didn't see one here before, here's the pilothouse roof looking out when I drilled the 1" wire run for the radar mount. This is one inch aft of the interior pilothouse light base.

[Beta Don]

That is considerably thicker (and no doubt stronger) than the pilothouse roof on my early version (SN#16)

Don

[rnummi]

It must taper down to lesser thickness the further aft you go. Definite air gap around cabin top handholds. Sigh, another delaminated mulch fest I'm sure. I filled all the holes for the grab rails with epoxy when I had them out. Just kept drinking it up. Did you notice (and I think JT commented on it) that there seems to be consistent delamination on all these pics.... Like the core wasn't properly attached at the factory? That would account for the drinking up of epoxy around each hull penetration. It also points out the need for "drill, use bent nail, fill, then redrill" on these boats. Seems to me all these core samples should show no air gaps between layers.

[sail149]

You are right there should not be air gaps in a usual cored laminate made as one piece.
On the pilot house I wonder if the inside was molded as a seperate piece and then assembled into the outer, this would then be hard to get a good one piece connection.?
Dunno , it just doesn't look like the inner laminate was laid directly against the outer core does it? Were they just expecting to use the bolts arround the Windows to hold everything together? My roof has a 3/4" gap between the outer and inner skin so it couldn't have been molded as one piece.

Don's early boat Beta Carina had a MDF pilot house covered in a special fabric according to JTs recent discussion with the orriginal builder/ designer Joe Pucca , which finally solves that mystery!
Warren

[rnummi]

My Pilothouse is definitely "linered" there are molded wiring runs from overhead light and windshield washer motors. The window delam problems are caused by water leaking from every cabin top penetration. Absolutely no bedding on any handrails! To make matters worse overtightening the handrail nuts caused depressions as the inner and outer layers were drawn together. Mini reservoirs of water around each point of contact. no bedding = balsa core rot. quite literally a 10 minute job properly caulking or bedding the overhead rails would have addressed countless hours of pilothouse misery.