Cradle Assembly

The heat advisories continue in Virginia. For the last 4 days, we have had head advisories with heat index of 105-110 degrees, so it has not been very enjoyable working in the garage.  I still wanted to work on the boat, so I suffered for a while, but had some big results. I put the cradle assembly together and put it on 4 furniture dollies. This will help me to move the boat around the garage to work on.  Each of the dollies supports 800 lbs, so they are more than enough. I assembled everything with 3" screws and it is sitting very level, but I will probably shim it up or block the hold thing up when I start doing the epoxy fillets. The dollies raise the cradle about 5-6 inches. I don't think this will be a issue. I have a portable work bench that I can use to help me reaching into the boat. I will post a picture of that.

Here is the completed cradle with the keel assembly. I probably should have had someone help me lift it in there, but I was able to move it into position, since it was sitting on 2 dollies. I would recommend getting some help. I had to lift and install it a couple of times until I got it where I think it should be. 

Here is a closeup of the cradle. I used a 2X8 and a 2X6 I had in my shed and screwed them to both the cradle and dollies.

Another view of the cradle.















Once I got the cradle all put together, I could not resist putting in one of the bottom panels. I had to drill out some of the cable holes and had to cut the copper cable I purchased from CLCBoats. While trying to tighten the cables, I broke two. I had some 17 gauge electric fence cable, so I cut a couple pieces of that. I think I will be using more of that, since I have already broken 2 pieces of the copper.


The pictures below is the starboard bottom panel stitched in. I will need to go back and tighten everything,  but I wanted to see it in the cradles. I also wanted to have something protecting the front of the keelson. I can see me walking into it and breaking it! :-)

I had to take down both of my plastic tables that I had been using to work on. I did a rush job, since it was hot, but I will need to do some reorganizing of the garage to make working around the boat easier. I will try to do that over the next week.