The floors were cut out of Douglas Fir and are not the heaviest of timbers in the boat, but every bit of excess wood counts towards the total weight of the craft. Based on the scantlings for a craft this size, the floors only need to be 2.2 inches tall, and 0.7 inches wide. As you can see, these floors are greatly oversized at 5.25 inches tall and 1.5 inches wide!
I want to keep the width as that provides more wood for fasteners to drive into, but the height is a bit much. The other negative caused by the extreme height of the floors is it will greatly reduce the interior space of the dinghy. The height of the hull will be 18 inches, and a 5 inch floor would only leave us with 13 inches of interior depth. Naturally, height was on the chopping block!
I marked a line that will give me a uniform height of 2.25 inches and then cut along the line with a bandsaw.
The central portion of excess wood was removed, which reduced the weight of the floors considerably without significantly impacting the strength of the floors. The weight reduction in the front floors was negligible, but quite significant in the aft floors. After sanding and fitting the frames, the setup will be ready to fasten permanently with glue and bronze screws.
