Deck Trim

After installing the rub rail around the outer edge of the deck, all that’s left to finish the deck trim is to add trim to

  • The top of the transom to hide the plywood edge
  • Around the cockpit where the coaming meets the deck
  • Down the center of the front deck to hide the seam where the deck plywood halves meet
I started with the trim around the cockpit. This was challenging because it had to bend around the front of the cockpit, which is a semicircle with an approximately 26” radius. The trim is made of 3/4” x 3/16” strips of Sapele and will lie flat on the deck against the coaming. I installed the trim in two pieces of about 44” long each that meet at the front of the cockpit. Each piece needs to bend around half the semicircle (i.e. 90°).

My very basic understanding of wood bending is that heating the wood softens the lignin in the wood so the fibers can slide against each other.

In my first attempts to bend the trim, I used my new steam machine to heat each piece in a “box” made of a 5’ length of heating duct. This worked at first but the wood cooled before I could bend the whole piece in place so I switched to a heat gun and bent the wood in about 6” increments clamping as I go. I used cutoffs from the seat slats to make clamping blocks. Each block is about 4” long and has a 3/16” x 3/4” rabbet to fit over the trim and hold it tight to both the coaming and the deck.

This worked pretty well but I’d get splits in three or four places every time. I got a few pieces where the split was just a splinter on the outside edge that looked like the clamp blocks could hold back in place while epoxy dried, so I think these pieces are probably usable. A few of the failed attempts are shown below (believe it or not, most of these pieces were originally bent and clamped in a full 90° arc, they just sprung back when unclamped):

Since it’s too cold to epoxy and I had a few scrap pieces, I tried an experiment. I tried sealing the trim pieces in epoxy before trying to bend them and it worked much better than trying to bend the bare wood. My theory was the epoxy would help prevent the wood from splitting but still allow me to heat the wood fibers enough to bend it. My biggest concern was that the epoxy might prevent the wood fibers from sliding and make it more difficult to bend, but that didn’t turn out to be a problem.

I brushed some Raka epoxy on all sides of the trim, let it cure over night, steamed the pieces for 45 minutes, and then bent them using a heat gun and the clamp blocks as before. The epoxy seemed to make the wood more pliable and prevent cracking (maybe it sealed moisture in the wood so the heat gun didn’t dry it out?) and also prevented water stains from the steam and scorching from the heat gun. I did get one split which I hope won’t be very visible if the epoxy and clamps can glue the crack shut. Overall the epoxy coated pieces bent much easier than the bare wood.

After bending the trim around the front of the cockpit, the trim on the sides of the cockpit was comparatively easy since the sides are relatively straight. This picture shows all the pieces installed.


Next I made a piece of trim for the top of the transom. The transom is angled 12° so this piece required some creative table saw work.  The trim on the top of the transom will extend the whole width of the boat, but the trim on the front side of the transom only extends the width of the cockpit. This is why the front edge is notched.

The above piece is cut from of a single piece of Sapele and is attached with epoxy and no screws. It took a lot of clamps to hold it in place while the epoxy cured.  


The last piece of trim is a strip down the center of the deck that extends from the front of the cockpit to the tip of the bow. This is just for aesthetics and to hide the seam and nail heads where the deck plywood halves meet. The trim is also made from a single piece of Sapele.  The deck is slightly crowned so I had to cut a very wide and shallow V shaped groove down the length of the trim so the outer edges will make good contact with the deck.  The deck center trim is only 2-3/4” wide and the deck crown is relatively minor, so the V is only about 3/16” high.  I trimmed the top side as well to end up with a 2-3/4” wide piece with a very shallow V profile.  This will also be attached with epoxy.

The front of the deck trim is shaped to a point to fit against the rub rails where they meet at the tip of the bow.  The bow plate will sit on top of the trim piece as shown below.

The deck center trim is attached with just epoxy, no fasteners. There wasn’t anything to clamp the trim to, so I used weights to hold it down.

Now I just need to sand everything a bit and the deck trim will be finished.

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