Why do this?

Ever been in the head taking a shower and the whole placed turned into a steam room?  Well when a 10 x 10" hatch showed up at a local flee market I jumped on it.  I know, another project...

Prep and measurement

Only reference I had on the deck and in the top of the head was two screws securing the hand rail and the mast wiring pipe.  I measured three times from each screw to the four corners of the new hatch outline.

Do the corner holes

Just to be sure...I drilled corner holes to check the hatch fit within the head area. I knew the hatch hole would miss everything but maybe the  shower curtain rail.  Small hole are easier to repair then big holes...

Bigger holes..

After checking the placement below, I did the corners again using a 1" hole saw.  Worked great.  No turning back now.

Yep, this will work

I was off about 3/8" with my underneath drawing. 

No problem, had plenty of room.

I held my breath and cut away...

This part went really good.  Just connect the dots.  I did use a long blade to reach through the deck, not really knowing how thick the deck was.

Smoothing out the ruff spots

I needed to even out the places that I stared and stopped with the saw.

First fitting...

Dropped right in with out any play.  Tight is good.

So what's in that deck?

Top Layer of Fiberglass  - 3/16"

Center layer of balsa wood - 3/8"

Bottom layer of Fiberglass - 3/16"

Space between deck & headliner ~ 1/2" "

Headliner - 3/16"

Until I cut this out, I had never seen any picture of what the deck looked like on a P35.  I found that the core material next to the mast was hard wood and not balsa wood.  I guess the purpose was to provide strength to the mast base.  You can see this in the picture of the dark wood build up at the corner.

Digging out the balsa

I cleaning out about 1/2" of balsa wood out.  I needed to seal up the hatch with epoxy.

The corner mast support board

I figured that Pearson installed about a 2' x 2' x 1/2" piece of plywood, in the deck lay-up just under the mast.  Guess this was for support of the mast along with the SS mast support pole.  Dug this wood out about 1/2".

The rest of the balsa

I made sure that I had enough room to epoxy and completely seal the hatch opening.  I really thought about closing up the large space between the headliner and the deck. 

The work place

I have never worked with this stuff before.  I was temped to use 3M4200 but the more I though about it I felt I really needed the strength of epoxy to support this area.

First step...

Someone told me to take a syringe and apply some straight epoxy to the open balsa and wood before sealing it up with the epoxy paste.  Sounded like a good idea.  Still don't know why?

Now for the chemistry

Using the WEST 105 / 206 was real nice to work with.  It took about an hour to set up.  Gave me a lot of time to get into trouble.  This was the consistency of the paste that I used to fill the openings.  I used WEST filler 404 for this.  Just buy the pumps, filler and sticks like they say.  Make it easy on yourself.

  WEST application document.

Water Tight

At first I was just going to fill up the top balsa deck layer and not the complete opening and space between the deck and the head liner, however I got on a roll with this stuff and decided to do it all and seal it up.

Now to let the cure take place

I'll will give it a week to cure good before instilling the hatch.

Sanding down for the final fit

With the filler in the epoxy it sanded down nicely.  I just had to sand very little to make the final fit.

Cleaning off the body oil

I wanted to make sure the opening was ready for the seal

Drilling the screw holes

After I fitted the hatch base I drilled the eight screw holes.  You need to tape the drill bit so you don't drill through the cabin top.  That would really be stupid.

Hatch seal

This roll of hatch seal came in handy.  Had it around for some time.  It is very soft and went on without a problem.

Hatch seal

It seamed to be to thick at first glance.  After installation it compressed against the deck and hatch base nicely.

3M4200

I filled the screw holes with 3M4200 and put a small line around the hatch opening just because it seemed like a good thing to do.

Driving in the screws

The screws were long enough to catch the complete deck thickness without going through the headliner.  (top skin - balsa wood - bottom skin)  Good and tight.  Tight is good but don't use a drill to do this.

Found a headliner!

I looked and called high and low for headliner that would work inside.  I bought several samples of trim, both wood and metal (HomeDepot & Lowes in the trim section).  It was looking like a lot of work to get something that would fit, be easy to work with, and not cost much.  I needed something that would provide maybe a 1/2" of trim inside and cover the facing hatch opening area that I sealed up with epoxy.  About a 90 degrees bend would do.

Had it installed in 15 min

Turned out in Lowes, I found a trim in the hanging ceiling department that was $2.30 for an 8' length.  Color was perfect (Almond) it had a 90 degree angle to it and all I had to do a little trimming to make it fit. I used contact cement to glue it in.  I taped the corners for support to allow it to set up.  So, at $2.30 it worked fine for me and looks nice.  Bomar hatch wanted $130 for an inside frame.  It might have looked better, who knows.