KiwiGrip Part 4

Last year I got most of the KiwiGrip completed but the cold weather in late October kept me from finishing up the last few sections.  I deliberately left the aft deck un-KiwiGripped because that's where I get on and off the boat most of the time and want to reduce the amount of wear that gets until the last possible moment. 

The aft end of the cabintop was the other section that I didn't get to last year and I have been keeping my eye on the temperature and humidity over the past few weeks.  I needed at least 50 degrees and low humidity to get the job done.  Spring has come a bit late in New Hampshire this year and it has been on the cool side but over the last week the temperature has gotten into the low 70's and really dry, making for  perfect KiwiGrip conditions.  The downside of the warming temperatures at this time of year is that it wakes up the black flies and by this time most years, being outside can be pretty unbearable. Black flies just suck and worse than that, they are stupid and love to get into paint.  

Knowing this, I got up early on Saturday and pulled most of the trim off the cabintop and then taped and sanded everything by 8am.  The temperature was still cool (mid 40s) at this point and although it's below the KiwiGrip temperature range, it is also below the operating temperature of black flies and I wanted to avoid them at all costs or I would have lots of black specs in the paint.  Fortunately, once the sun hits the boat shed it warms up nicely so I went ahead.

I had roughly a third of a gallon left from the previous year that I had saved by laying a sheet of saran wrap over the surface of the KiwiGrip before closing the lid to prevent the excess air inside the container from drying out the remaining paint.  It worked and the leftover paint had no dry spots in it and gooped out nicely onto the deck with a trowel.  

I split my work out into 4 sections where I plopped the KiwiGrip goop down on the deck, spread it out with a notched spreader and then rolled it out.  Repeat.  Once everything was done I carefully pulled all the tape off and put a fan on it to facilitate drying.  The black flies didn't show up until I was finishing up and it was still cold enough so they didn't have the numbers needed to make a real nuisance of themselves and jump into the paint.  It was roughly 55 degrees by the time I finished and when I came back an hour later, the surface had skimmed over and was well on the way to hardening up nicely.  I left the fan on for the rest of the day and it was hard enough to walk on (I didn't) by the next morning.  Next up: mounting the companionway trim, hatch tracks, and handrails for real. 

Ooooh Pretty!

I haven't had much time this past week, but the temperature is beginning to cooperate a little bit more so I was able to start practicing my very rusty varnishing skills on our sun porch.  I'm using Epifanes Wood Finish Gloss for the first few coats because it allows no sanding between applications.  I'm probably going to do 3 coats before I mount these pieces and then do the rest of the coats in place once I plug the screw/bolt holes.  I was just anxious to see something look nice and varnish-y for a change.  Of course after 1 coat there is virtually no gloss because I thinned to 50% so the wood would get a good soaking prior to beginning to build.  I'll do 25% thinner for the next few coats and see how that works and then I'll play it by ear.  The final 2 coats I'll use Epifanes Clear Varnish (the standard varnish) because I'm told it's a bit harder for protection.


I also glued up 2 of the 4 scarfs in the cap rails with a mixture of epoxy and wood dust.  I've been carefully saving all the fine dust from some of my cutting operations so I would have a filler that matched the wood.
At some point this week, I'll get the other 2 glued up and hopefully make some more progress on the cap rail installation this weekend.  I'm still haven't fully decided my approach (see "I Haven't Screwed up the Caprail Yet!" post for more details).

Fiddling About

April is usually a really nice time of year to get boat things done, but this year has proven to be a cold spring. I woke up Saturday morning to 19 degrees F with the wind gusting to 30.  Not really conducive to working outside and certainly no good for epoxying scarf joints.  I had planned on going to Ragged for some spring skiing but a friend on ski patrol called and told me that the skiing was definitely not spring like.  So it ended up being a bit of a wasted weekend on all fronts, but I did manage to get a few things done on Sunday.

Raw hatch fitted.  Not pretty yet, but functional.

I spent more time than I had wanted getting the grabrails drilled and fitted; the bolt pattern was not even and because I wanted to use the original holes in the cabin liner (and the interior grabrails), I had to carefully measure and tap each hole and double check for proper fit.  Some were spaced 12", some 11", some 11.5", couldn't the builders have been a little more careful? In any event, I got the job done but forgot my camera. I still need to order 12 - 1/4" x 5" bolts, nuts, and washers to completely finish the job (The original bolts are serviceable, but a bit beat up, so I'm replacing).  Once complete, I'll bed the whole thing down with butyl tape that I ordered from Compass Marine.

I also worked on fully mounting the aluminum slide track and fitting the companionway hatch.  This proved to be a bit tricky because the track on the hatch doesn't allow for much tolerance; 1/16" off in either direction and the hatch will either bind or derail.  Mounting the hatch itself proved to be a bit of a puzzle as well.  Because of glassed-in stops on the hatch itself, you can't simply slide it onto one end of the track.  I finally figured out that you have to actually un-mount one of the aluminum slides, get the hatch on the other side, and then slip the unmounted track into the hatch track before screwing down.  Difficult to explain but I managed to get it done without too many choice words that I'm not supposed to say in front of the kids.

Making Grabrails

I'm not sure if the old cabintop grabrails were original or not, but they were so thin from being sanded so many times that they probably weren't safe and just weren't going to cut it.  They were also pretty badly bleached and stained from so many years in the sun that they looked pretty ugly.  So I went to Goosebay Lumber earlier this week and picked out a nice 5/4 x 6" piece of Sapele to make a new set of them.

I know there are many ways to make grabrails and by staggering the rails on the single board I could have cut down on the waste, but it's a lot more work to do it that way so I chose to make them by opposing each rail on the board so I could cut each of the six the bases of both rails with one cut from the hole saw.

I started by laying out the old rails to mark the base positions on the piece of Sapele.  I never noticed before, but the old rails were not the same size.  One was about 3/4 inch longer than the other and the bases didn't quite line up.  Dammit, can't anything be easy?  So I took the rails back over to the boat and found that although they weren't the same size, they were bolted to the cabintop with the same 12 inch on center pattern (there are matching grabrails on the inside of the cabin that they afix to).  So using 12 inch on center as the known center for the bases of the new rails, I carefully layed out the dimensions and marked the radius centers to cut.   

Using a 3 inch hole saw, I cut each hole about 3/4 of the way through the board, making sure the center drill penetrated the entire board so I could use that as a guide on the other side.  Then I flipped the board over and finished each hole cut.

Next I set the tablesaw fence to 2-7/16 inches to account for the 1/8 inch blade kerf on the tablesaw and ripped the board down the middle.  Now I had two pieces that were rapidly starting to look like grabrails.

I moved onto the band saw and cut out the waste wood between each of the holes.  I initially tried using the bandsaw fence so the cut would go straight, but it seemed to bind things up a bit so I removed the fence and just cut it freehand along the line I had previously drawn that connected each hole.  I've found that as long as I have a line to follow on the band saw and the radius isn't too tight, I can make cuts with it that are almost perfectly straight.

I put a rough 5 inch radius curve on either end of each with the band saw.  Once that was complete the two rails needed to be cleaned up a bit with my Shinto rasp and then the finer standard wood rasp.  

After I was satisfied that everything was reasonably fair, I moved the boards outside and set them up on sawhorses and busted out the router with the round over bit.  Then it was just a matter of carefully following all the edges and smoothing everything out.

I finished up by going over both grabrails with 150 grit paper. I'll follow up with 220 grit once I'm ready to varnish.  This weekend I'll tap out the holes for the bolts and get them dry fitted on the boat.  I will probably have to bevel the base edges to account for the deck camber.  Once I get the proper angle I'll just run them through the table saw and that should take care of it.  I think they turned out looking really good. I like the larger base width and the overall size of them is a bit beefier and will feel more sturdy.  I can't wait to get a few coats of varnish on them, they will be stunning.

Companionway - Check

I'm amazed that I've kept this blog going for as long as I have, but today's post is the 100th since I started.  It's become a kind of therapy for me and makes me look forward the next task no matter how unappealing because I know I can write it up and whine about it later.  It also makes good reference when I forget about what I did 3 months ago.

So now I'm in the middle of the sort of work I like and the weather has been pretty damn nice.  I can sit up on deck in a t-shirt and socks and not freeze or die of heat stroke.  I've been picking away at the c ompanionway trim and finally finished it up today.  I still have to do the washboards and pull everything off to sand it down, but the cutting work is done.  There turned out to be a lot more crazy angles to cut than I expected and that just took time to measure, measure again, and then cut.  I also spent a ton of time with my new best friend the Shinto Rasp (see picture).  It's the perfect tool for taking material off and provided crisp accurate cuts.

I ended up making another change to the original design where I extended the border trim around the perimeter of the companionway from 1/2 inch to 1-1/2 inches.  I think it makes the overall appearance look a bit better.  So after spending time lounging in the warm cockpit this afternoon admiring my handy work, I'll pull it all off tomorrow for sanding.  Then I'll probably get a coat of varnish on before I put it all back on.  At that point I have to choose a bedding compound.  I want something that's tough and waterproof, but not 5200 tough. There are few places on a boat where 5200 has a place and bedding trim is not one of them.  I haven't done much research yet, but I'm leaning towards Sikaflex 291 but I'm open to suggestions.

A Lucky Break

Glue time

In the limited time I've had this week, I've been picking away on the companionway trim and washboard track.  As with everything on this project (or any boat project for that matter), there are so many odd angles and curves to cut, trim, and fit that progress goes at a snails pace.  I'm really glad I took lots of photos and save the old trim, it would have been difficult to reproduce without reference material. It's fun work though; I'd much rather be doing this than coring decks or painting.

Still need to cut down to original size

I started by epoxying together the pieces for the right and left sides of the washboard track assembly.  I used the leftover 1 inch sapele boards from the cap rails I had cut out a few weeks earlier.  While waiting for the glue to cure,  I cut out some other trim boards that go below the threshold on the inside and outside and was able to get them fitted and temporarily screwed into place.  I'm finally making some nice wood shavings instead of a horrible toxic waste dump.

The next day the epoxy had cured so I cut the pieces down to size (removed about 1/2 inch from the sides of each) with the table saw and then began cutting out the profile of the threshold so they would fit nicely.  This seemed to take forever because I was just using my block plane, Shinto rasp, and standard rasp.  The original design called for side boards screwed to the edges of the washboard (hard to explain, see picture below).  I followed suit and cut everything out and screwed the side boards onto the washboard track assemblies.

Original design called for boards screwed to washboard assembly

Unfortunately, I stripped one of the screws and because it was just a test fit, I had to get it out.  When I attempted to drill out the screw in the drill press, the bit slipped and tore into the wood, ruining part of the washboard assembly.  I made up some really nice words to describe how I wasted expensive wood and lost time doing a stupid move.  I should have tracked down my screw extractor to to do the job, but being impatient, I figured I could just drill it out instead.  Oh well, what's done was done.  Time to move on.  As I looked at the piece I started to think why the original design was done the way it was.  It really wasn't that good an idea to begin with, trying to butt join 2 pieces together and expect them to look seamless and hold varnish well is always difficult, so I decided to cut out the front face of the original washboard assembly and laminate on a single, wider piece to extend the trim out and eliminate an unnecessary butt joint that would only look bad over time (the original certainly did).

Anyway, fast forward a few days after another round of waiting for epoxy to cure and I think I've improved the design and it will ultimately look better in the long run.  I still have to fit the top to the sliding hatch and get everything rough screwed in and sanded, but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

Hence, the lucky break.  Just because that's the way the original design was pieced together, doesn't mean it was good to begin with.  I should know better by now than to trust things on face value.  Question why; always.

Too Cold for Glue

As much as I want to move forward with the caprail, the weather has not been cooperating and the cold is keeping me from epoxying the scarf joints (12 degrees F is not optimal if you want epoxy to cure). So I'm out of luck until things warm up.  Fortunately, I have plenty of other, smaller things to do so I moved to my basement shop where the weather is much better.

The companionway has been one of the sections I haven't done anything with since I took it apart 3 years ago, so I figured it was time to get crackin.  I started by sanding down the hatch and filled the many gouges and dings with epoxy and set it aside to cure in the shop.  Once I sand and fair the hatch, I'll prime and paint with PrimeKote and Perfection, followed by Kiwigrip for the non-skid.  I'll need to do the same for the 2 lazarette hatches and the icebox lid, but decided to move on to more appealing projects that involve wood (if given a choice, I always choose wood projects over frozen snot).

I decided to get started on the companionway woodwork that is in need of total replacement because the old wood is pretty much a rotten mess.  I saved every piece regardless of its state so I could copy the pieces when the time came; that time is now.  I also took a bunch of photos when dismantling because there are a lot of strangely shaped parts and piecing them back together without a photo guide would prove difficult. I chose to start with the companionway threshold because everything is built off of it.  I epoxied 2 pieces of sapele up to get the required rough dimensions, clamped it and let it cure overnight.

The next day, I took closer measurements and cut the piece to proper size.  There were several odd bevel angles and an inset rabbet cut that I partially completed with a blind cut on the table saw and finished up with a chisel in the corners.  I was pretty happy when I took it over to the boat for a test fit and found that it fit like a glove and looked nice.

There is alot more to do on the companionway, but I'm chipping away.  Most of the other pieces will be reasonably simple and don't have the angles and odd cuts that this piece did.