Rear deck supports and the motor well.

 I've spent the last couple of afternoons working on the rear deck supports and motor well.  The plans have the deck supports supported by screws through the transom and bulkhead.  I didn't like the idea of using screws, but I don't trust the epoxy to hold on its own if someone steps on the rear deck.  So I decided to notch the crossbeams and the deck supports. 

 

Here you can see how I notched both pieces.  I chiseled out the crossbeam notch and cut and shaped the deck beam with a pull saw and a saw rasp.  This way there should be plenty of support to handle any vertical loading caused by someone stepping on the deck.

 

Dropped into place, it's fairly flush.  I left it a bit proud and will shape it flush after gluing. There were two deck beams to do.  The second one of course went quicker, and fit better.

For the motor well,I found I first had to notch out the transom doubler as it's width intruded into where and additional bracing piece for the motor mount needed to go.

After that I had to cut the additional brace.  Due to having fiberglass taped the seams, I had to rasp away some of the rear so it would lay flush to the transom rather than riding up on the tape at the edge.  With the saw rasp this took all of about 1 minute.

Then it was a bunch of cutting of small pieces.  There were the sides, base, which I had to cut twice due to forgetting to take into account the 1/2 width of the plywood when measuring the width.  Then each corner gets a cleat to screw everything together.  Even after getting everything cut and shaped for a good fit, pre-drilling holes and dry fitting took a couple of hours as there is a lot of back and forth since the drill can't be used inside the space due to a lack of it.  That meant it was clamp it in, mark it, take it out, drill the holes , screw it together, move to the next part, unscrew it all, again and again.

I knew gluing was going to be a pain.  There were so many edges that needed to be wet-out before applying thickened epoxy, and others that needed to be sealed.  To keep from having to handle a bunch of pieces with epoxy on them, I did it in a few small batches.  This meant I had both un-thickened epoxy and thickened epoxy mixed and ready to go at the same time.  I worked in small batches using a scale to measure out small amounts.  It took a couple of hours to get everything put together and screwed in place, but it's looking pretty good.

Just forward of this is where the rear thwart (seat) goes, so I need to put in the support beams for it , which will be a similar process to the rear deck support beams.  Then it's on to the gunwales.