Lots of Floor Work Done!

I spent a lot of time this past week and weekend working on the floor boards and have made a big dent in it.

I made some tools to help with the process. The three pieces below are spacers for the 1/8 inch space you are supposed to leave between each board. I used some spare pieces of wood and some old roofing nails. They worked pretty good.

Below shows them in use. 

The first 3 or 4 boards that are installed on both sides of the centerboard are full lengths, so there is no need to cut angles so they will fit up against the hull. As you work out, you have to start doing a rough cut of the boards, so they will fit. 

To help measure where to cut the floor boards, I cut a piece of wood that was the same thickness as the floor boards and was 3 1/8 Inches. The boards are 3 inches and the 1/8 is to compensate for the gap you are supposed to leave. 

I used the piece of wood below to help mark where to cut.  I would start at either end and hold the piece of wood up to the already installed board and move it until it touches the hull. I would then mark this on the floor board to be cut. I would mark that spot on the outer edge and draw a line diagonally to the inner edge that touches the already installed piece. The result would be a triangle piece of wood being cut off. I hope this make sense. 

To make sure all the screws were lined up, I made a template to mark and then drill the holes. 

You can see the holes I used to mark. I used a center punch/ice pick sort of tool to put a small hole to allow the drill bit to have a small indentation to sit in, so to not slip and damage the boards. Each screws are in the exact same place on each board. You can see how I marked them below. The center pencil mark is to line up on center. The two outside lines are to line up on the outside edges of the floor supports. 

I would say I have easily 17-18 hours of work just on what I have done and I still have the outer most 2 boards to go on both port and starboard. 

Below are some pictures of the boards installed. I am using some pieces of scrap wood to work on to not scratch the boards. Glad I did since I have dropped the drill or square more than once. I am also happy to say, I have only dropped one drill bit below the boards! lol. 

Notice the triangle cut I was trying to explain earlier. The upper or out edge  is marked by the little piece of wood. 

More pictures of floor boards. I used the brush to get the saw dust out of the hole. The black bag is something I picked up last week to help carry tools into the boat and also to offer protection to the boards. 

Notice the small tray on the board. This is one of the screw trays that  has a magnet. This helped a lot to have some place to lay my drill bits and center punch. I think this help to not loose any tools underneath. 

I have the last two boards on each side to do, but I need to figure out how to install the last board. There seems not to be enough floor cleats to be able to screw into or at least with the length of screws I have. I may need to get shorter screws or figure out another means. 

Still pending are cutting out the floor access as well as trying to figure out how to deal with a little bit of warping of the floor boards. I have some ideas.