We also paid a visit to the Liberty Yachts facility in Riviera Beach to photograph the empty hull that this interior is going to be fitted into. This is a view of the cabin area corresponding to the drawing above. To the left you can see the main bulkhead with the companionway opening to the cockpit.
The following sequence of photos shows our process for making the contemporary rounded corners on the interior furniture of the Liberty 42. We use Tri-cell panels for the cabinet components, which are later laminated over with a finish veneer.
The Tri-cell panels look like 3/4" plywood, as they are skinned on both sides with a ply face, but they are extremely lightweight and stiff. They can be bent into curved shapes by cutting saw kerfs on the compression side, or inner face. Below is a form we use for laminating the corner components. Note the flat piece in the center of the photo, with the series of saw kerfs down the middle of the inner face. After the corner parts are cured and removed from the forms, a 1 1/4" by 9/16" spline made of juniper is glued into the edges where the part will join the main panels of the cabinet.
To remove a section of the core in order to let in the joining spline, we have a custom router jig set up. Every adjoining edge will get the same treatment, so with this set-up we can quickly prepare each part.
Here is a view of the process of removing the core from the edge of one of the flat panel components.
Below you can see a partially assembled cabinet with a corner component resting on top. The furniture for the entire interior is drawn out on the cabin sole that we laminated as described in the previous post.
And here is a finished sub-assembly showing two junctures where we've installed the rounded corner parts.
Construction of the interior for the Liberty 42 Flybridge begins with the cabin sole, which is built in foam core construction with 1/4" plywood on the top and bottom faces. Our assembly of this core begins with joining the plywood panels that make up the bottom layer. The panels are joined with 3"-wide 1708 triaxial fiberglass tape.
Before taping the joints, we first dish out the areas that will get the glass seam using grinders so that the finished tape joint will be flush with the surrounding surface. Below you can see the tape being applied to the joints.
Here is a closer view of one of the joints, showing how the plywood has been dished out to receive the tape and epoxy.
Here all the panels that make up the bottom of the sole have been joined and faired with thickened epoxy fairing compound.
We use 25lb. bags of lead shot to hold all the foam panels in place while the epoxy bonding them to the plywood cures.
This view shows the plywood panels of the top skin weighted in place joined at the edges with the fiberglass tape. You can also see the level platform we had to first build to assemble the cabin sole on.
Here is our epoxy mixing table in the foreground. This epoxy station is located between our two major current projects: this Liberty 42 interior and the new Tiki 30 catamaran (not visible here) that we are building in the front of the shop.
Building a Custom Sportfishing Yacht Interior is our second online documentary journal of projects here in the Boatsmith Shop. We are presently building a wood/epoxy composite cruising catamaran, the Tiki 30 design by James Wharram, and posting our photos and progress reports on our first journal: Pro-Built Tiki 30.
We hope you find this journal informative and helpful in your understanding of how modern yacht interiors are constructed. Feel free to use the comment links below each post to join in our project and ask questions if there is anything you want to add or do not understand.
