ranchero50
The project looks good structurally. Esthetically, I'd have liked the forward line of the side glass to rake with the overall windscreen. I like the sketch/scan of the cabin better with its raked forward line compared to the vertical line. I do like the brow overhang forward, this is often skipped by some metal builders or minimized to a very small overhang, and I prefer the look of the longer overhang as you have built. It will probably be a good idea to consider hand rails at two locations, one the top of the cabin to provide grip while walking along the sides of the cabin and the other vertically at the after cabin sides. Even while standing on deck in a sea, its very comfortable to have the vertical hand holds that could be welded to the after verticals of your project.
In the corners of metal cabins, lots of time we'll use hollow extrusion, pipe or even a pressed shape to create a column. Where the raked aft windscreen meets a side window or side panel, lots of times these will be sliders that are plenty expensive but even in Alaska considered worth the cost to get some air circulation in the cabin, the forward corner of the cabin becomes critical to hold the cabin loads. So a hollow element there is more rigid in both compression and deflection, and the hollow is where the wiring from helm level to the cabin top are run.
Fixed windows, especially using rubber extrusions to mount the glass, would look a little nicer on this boat if you used the white rubber. I realize the rubber extrusions are not widely stocked so often to get the lighter colored glazing mounts you have to order them and wait for the product.
Cabin top hand rails are tough to do discretely as they can get a little obtrusive in design, but using 3/4" pipe and keeping the legs low (harder to weld under ) even raking the legs to match the windscreen's angle to the waterline, will make the railing more or less 'hide' in the background of the camber of the cabin top.
Nice choice of camber for this top, the rolled or formed framing and pipe shaping look nice, and help the cabin to stay relatively low profile while giving good head room. I like a longer after overhang, if possible just to make the shelter a little bigger but also to stretch the lines of that top in profile view.
It looks like the cabin top framing elements are tangent to the perimeter pipe? That seems like a nicely designed feature so the to sheet can weld to the 12:00 tangent of the pipe, and that weld could be dressed to a paint finish without any loss of integrity. Depending on the running attitude of the hull and the local weather, the after end of a cabin top is often fitting with a vertical coaming to stop run off from dripping on the aft deck. The rain, spray or whatever water runs aft then the coaming ( only an inch or two tall) would divert the water to the outboard sides and from the guard deck or shear clamp (walk-around side decks) it will run off the boat instead of into the cockpit aft the cabin.
If the boat is fished regularly this coaming and a rod holder or 'rocket launcher' as some call the rod rack of raked tubes, are combined into one bench built fabrication then added to the cabin's after edge.
If a cabin is short, fore and aft, and has an almost full glass side panel to give the most visibility and openness, then the side-to-side structural stability can be a challenge. So boxing the forward windscreen corners will go a long way to take that sway out. An after bulkhead will do the same but an open aft house makes for a challenge. I most often make a press braked or welded from extrusions box of the after corners for this reason. I see an angle extrusion there on the after corners as near as I can make out in the images? You may consider a piece of 2" round corner square tubing to run from the cabin top to deck, just inboard, and aft a 1/2" of this angle to give A) a wider box section at the after cabin plane B) a lower bolting location instead of just the raised trunk cabin line of the glass bolted on top, you could connect the after 'post' at the deck and the inner hull sides- might have to add blocking? and C) this would round the corner, and give a fine stiff location for a hand rail.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents and Welcome to AAB.com
Your project looks good so far
and I think it's surely an improvement over an open boat or rag top of this size so; keep up the good work. Metal work on boats is more challenging than land based welding projects, that's for sure. Thanks for posting.
Cheers,
Kevin Morin
