Trampoline Saga, Continued.

It seems like such a long time ago that we researched and came up with a plan for trampolines, but this week while my Dad was here we decided it was time to have them done. It was a time consuming and hard job that took pretty much the entire week to do.

This is the starboard, forward section that needs trampolines, the wood had been prepared before by the previous owners, the frame of wood with holes running around the decks.

Unfortunately the port side was not as ready to go, due to damage being done to the port ama, it lost some of it's framing and they never got the trampoline frames back on. You can see how it goes 3/4 of the way across the deck and up the vaka but none on the ama.

So this needed to be dealt with first, we needed to fabricate these frames for the rest of the port forward and for both of the aft sections, which never had any frames at all.

We used 1/2 inch by 2 inch red oak, drilled our holes (9/16 drill bit) down the center...

Then cut up the middle through the holes and after some sanding and rounding off the edges we had our frames ready to be attached.

Our dock space is always a disaster. It's a good thing we are at the end and no one comes down here.

Next we cut the frames to the right sizes and drilled them for screws.

The deck needed to be prepared also. We used a high strength adhesive epoxy to adhere the frames to the hull as well as some screws for added strength, so we need to get down to the bare fiberglass, no use gluing it to the paint.

We love West System and this is what we used to affix the frames. Epoxy resin 105, hardener 205 and high density adhesive filler 404.

This being our first time using the filler it was trial and error at first.

You mix the resin and hardener together as normal and then add spoonfuls of the filler which is a white powder and mix it until it becomes a paste. They give you viscosity examples such as mayo thickness for wood to wood, or ketchup thickness for fiberglass or toothpaste for metal and so on, we aimed for somewhere between mayo and ketchup.

Once you add the filler to the epoxy it starts to heat up, smoke starts rising from it and it's best to mix it in something other than half of a take-out coffee cup because Marks hands were burning.

Our first attempt at mixing ended up as this, the thickness of dried cement. We had it pretty close to what we wanted but decided to add a bit more and it solidified instantly, we set it aside to smoulder, it took a good 20 minutes for the container to cool down again.

Actually adhering the wood to the deck took a few phases. First we needed to plain epoxy on both surfaces, a coat on the frames and a coat on the deck.

Next we apply the thickened epoxy to just the frames, in a thick enough layer that it won't drip but once we placed it on the deck we screwed in the screws just enough so that a small bit of epoxy squeezed out, then stopped to let it harden completely. You don't want it so tight while it's drying that all the hardener squeezes out or there will be nothing left to solidify and create a tight bond.

Once this is done you paint epoxy over the whole thing to seal the wood.

Completed and ready to paint.

Next came actually stringing the netting. We went with professional, woven, hockey netting, one inch squares. Firstly we stretched the net over the opening and laced it with twine initially to get the right shape.

Next we ran the guide rope around the outside of the netting, for this we just used regular, three strand cord...

...And connected the ends together.

Then we used amsteel to do the final lacing, going from the deck and around the guide rope. One continuous strande of lace took a lot of time and a lot of tightening.

But the end result was worth it, thank you Poppy for our new trampolines!

They are a big hit, so much fun.

Bouncy too.

Kid tested and approved.

The two front trampolines are completed, next come the aft ones. These are going to be a project for a later date, both aft sections have a lot of dry rot around them, we are in the process of Git-rotting them but the frames have been made to fit and once the deck is solid and ready to go we will adhere them the same way as we did the front ones.

It's been a gorgeous week, beautiful and hot sunny days and we have enjoyed having my parents down with us and are so grateful for Poppy and his building expertise to do such an amazing job on the trampolines, a project that was too daunting for Mark and I to tackle alone.