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You don't think about the transom that much when starting out. It is just the back end of the boat. You do have to decide on the shape. Whether it is reversed or sugar scooped or a canoe stern.  But the transom has a lot of functions besides keeping following seas out.   It has to support the back stay, provide access from a dinghy, have space for shore services and exhaust and most important, have space left to paint the boats name.

We decided on a sugar scoop with a door off the cockpit onto a swim platform.  Then came the problem of the other functions.  There had to be room for 2 30 amp shore power recepticals, a phone/cable receptical, shore water inlet and regulator, exhaust outlet, swim deck fresh water shower and of course, the back stay. In amongst all that there has to be enough room to paint "RUTU Macon, Ga" in letters big enough to satisfy the USCG.  ,

A sugar scoop is actually two transoms.  An inner transom that is the back wall of the cockpit and an outer transom that follows the line of the end of the hull.  The first step was the inner transom. It was the simpler because it is straight up and down but I had to deal with two cambers on the top edge.  The vertical camber  is similar to the deck but there is also a horizontal camber.  I tackled that by laminating up a beam with the horozontal camber and wide enough to cut the verticle camber from it.  It made a lot of waste so I used a couple fo 8/4 spanish cedar boards left over from an over inthusiastic effort to make cigar humidors. 

The jig was cut from a pair of 2x10s and used them to form the other transom stiffners.

Next I but joinde a sheet and a half of 4 mm okoume to make a blank to cut the inner skin from.  I made a pattern from a box the Divinicell came in. (Big cardboard is very valuable in a boat shed.)

Here I have set the inner skin in place and spiled it to the hull.  The top beam and cockpit level stiffner were clamped in place along with the transom door frame and marked off.

The 1 by strip marks the top of the swim platform so I could get an idea of the final shape.

Back on the layout table I made a jig for the transom from the jig used for laminating the top beam and stffner and a couple more 2x8s.

It had to be pretty strong because it had to support two layers of plywood skins, the foam and the stiffners. TO prevent snagging the vacuum bag I covered it with a layer of breather/bleeder material.

Even though the vacuum bag would hold the skins to the core, clamps were needed to hold the transom against the jig so I laid a couple of 2x4s under the jig to give me some clamping room.

Like the cockpit, the bagging proceeded in two stages. First the core and stiffners were bonded to the inner skin with FGCI Superbond Epoxy adheasive and vacuum bagged. Then the core was sanded even and the outter skin bagged on.

The blocking in the foreground is for the shore power, telephone and water connections. The transpm door and frame are in the background and the small blocking at the far end is for the exhaust. 

I have to admit, I still don't know where the shower is gonna go.

The outer skin of the transom is 6 mm okoume bagged in place.  That part was fairly easy.  I butt joined a half sheet to a full one and covered the joint either side with 6 oz glass. Turned out stronger than the bare plywood and bent fair so I saved a little labor over scarfing but not that much. Knowing that I couldn't get away with that method on the cabin top skins I spent a few minutes building a scarfing jig for the router.  See the cabin top p age for details on that.

The real work came in fitting the transom to the hull.  The bevel is constantly changing and to complicate matters, dispite my best efforts, the inside surface is not exactly a smooth curve.  Fitting required setting the transom in place and marking the high spots.  Then lifting it out and using the block plane. Then reset and mark again.   This was not going to be easy working alone so I rigged a snatch block from the ceiling and a trailer winch on the shed wall.  That way I could crank it up to plane and lower it back in place single handed.

Fitting it took an amazing amount of work but eventually I got it fit uniformly and set it one last time in epoxy. Then I added the fillets and tabbed it all in with bi-axial.