110 Cookson Lane | Whitefield, ME 04353 | 207-232-7600 | tim@lackeysailing.com
Snow Lily | Thursday, April 4, 2013
I continued the varnish work on the engine box. Later in the day, the wooden vent fitting I'd ordered for the forward side of the engine box arrived, and I began the varnish process on it at once.
While I continued work on another project in the shop, which had taken most of my time over the past few days, I found a bit of time late in the day to make up a section of mahogany trim for the exposed edge of the head platform; this trim would wrap over the edge and hide the plywood end grain and the raw edges of the sole material. After milling the piece and sanding smooth, I began varnish work on the trim before installation. Once I completed and installed this trim, I could move forward with the C-head installation.
Armed with some measurements and photos of the actual battery storage "boxes" (they're not really boxes per se), and with these and the 16 lithium ion batteries hopefully on their way soon from California, I made a couple quick plywood mockups to double-check their fit within the space available. Constrained in two units of 8 cells each, reportedly as required in order to keep the lithium batteries under compression, the retention devices featured 3/16" aluminum bases and end plates secured together with tie rods and aluminum angles. To simulate the angles in my mockup, I used 1-1/2" scrap blocks, the same dimension as the angles.
In the boat, I tested the fit of the two "boxes" in two orientations: with the batteries following the natural slope of the hull (allowable with these batteries); and with the boxes held in a level attitude. Following the angle of the hull seemed to be the preferable method, to keep the weight lower, provide additional headroom, and make the support structure simpler and more straightforward to construct.
Following the slope of the hull:
Held level fore and aft:
There seemed to be adequate space in either orientation, and now that I had the final measurements I could proceed with building a support structure in anticipation of the batteries' arrival--one of the final significant pieces of the puzzle remaining.
Total Time on This Job Today: 2 hours
