Side benches and buoyancy tanks

There are basic plans for side benches with this boat and the plans call for inflatable buoyancy bags which are placed under the benches. The plans do allow for tanks to be created but you have to guess where to put everything to make them. I chose to just have two side tanks and removed the rear bench as no-one would ever be sitting on it given that this is a sailing dinghy.

The frames were made of douglar fir and were epoxied to the hull and screwed through from the outside.

After the vertical component was attached, the tops of the frames were masked off so that the buoyancy tanks coule be painted out.

The bouyancy tank lids which were also the side benches, were reinforced on the underneath with 6.. ply epoxied  to them. The edges were masked off for gluing and also the strips which would sit on the horizontal frames.

The tanks were primed with two coats of International yacht primer and then had two coats of International PreKote. I didn't bother putting a Toplac coat on. Four coats plus the original epoxy coat on the wood should be enough.

The lids were epoxied onto the frames and held down for 24 hours with 25kgs distributed on each side. I had a look in the tanks to see if the epoxy was running. I made it fairly thick.

The lids were also filletted and taped at the edges.