Starting on the Water Tank Tops

Finally got to start on the port tank top today following a brief 3 day vacation to Philadelphia to take my Daughter (Beatrice) to the University of Pennsylvania. It was a very poignant moment for us, we will miss her very much but we are very proud of her.




Back to the work in progress. Here is a picture of a piece of
the aft cabin top that will be part of the Starboard tank top. I am not sure why but the builder only only cored about half of the top. That is the part in the foreground. I will be adding a layer of fiberglass over the plywood area towards the other end.

This is the uncovered area on the piece I used for the Port tank top. To the left is the cored area of the top and the uncovered ply is in the center. The top is longer than the pieces I cut out of the cabin top, so I have to join two pieces together to make the top. The second piece is glassed on to the right end of the uncovered ply. When done there will be 3 layers of 24 oz. biax tape on each side of the splice. Then I will cover the exposed ply with 2 layers of 24 oz combo mat. I plan to do that when I glass the tops into the stringers.

The picture to the right show the aft end of the tank with the top in place. You can see how I cut the the core and top layer of glass away at the edges of the top. I am going to glass the top on from the outside which in this case is the top. I did not want the plywood core to be exposed to the water in the tank.
Easiest way to do that is to remove the core and top layer to expose the bottom layer of glass to the outside. I will glass the tank top onto the stringers with 3 layers of 24oz biax tape.
I have not put the aft end of the tank in yet. I was waiting till I had the top made to determine exactly where the aft wall would land. As you can see the aft end of the tank is very shallow. I would rather have water storage than empty space to collect dust. The aft half of these tanks are under the master berth.



 I still have to remove the top, glass the underside of the joint between the two pieces and make the 4 access holes. Then I need to spray the inside of the tank and underside of the top with white food grade epoxy paint before glassing the tops on. I plan to fill the open tanks with water before the painting stage, just to make sure there are no leaks...