The Tedious Tale of Zip Frame #2 — part six

I had been hoping to draw The Tedious Tale of Zip Frame #2 to a close this last weekend.

Almost. But, not quite.

After a seemingly unending amount of sanding, I finally got the deck beam to a point where I was ready to attach it to the rest of the frame. So, I drew, cut and sanded the pair of gussets, and laid out the parts on my construction drawing for fit & alignment.

The parts all laid out on my construction drawing.

The all-important centerline.

The all-important centerline

Making sure all the parts are arranged and aligned as accurately as possible.

With all that done, I marked one of the plywood gussets for the first set of holes to be drilled. Then, for the sake of symmetry, I aligned the gussets and drilled them both on my drill press.

With the gussets aligned and clamped back onto the vertical members of the frame, I drilled through them once again, into the mahogany.

Once the gussets were attached, I flipped the whole thing over, and realigned the whole thing once again on the drawing. Then I drilled and screwed the deck beam onto the gussets.

The last part of the process was to drill for the longer 1-3/4" screws to go through both overlapping pieces of mahogany. There isn't a lot of room on that lap joint for driving screws, so I only had space for one per side. On the starboard side, I accidentally drilled all the way through the wood.

After drilling for the #8 screws, I countersunk the holes with a 3/8" bit. I have to be very careful with this drill bit. It's quite aggressive, and when it bites into the wood, it'll go through it like butter.

Once those two last screws were driven in, the whole frame was officially dry-fit. By this time, however, it was almost 10:00 pm. So, the epoxy will have to wait for another day.

Zip Frame #2, all successfully dry-fit.