Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Frenetics

I've been neglecting to post here for a while now, but it's not because I've been off skiing or mountain biking somewhere and blowing off boat work.  I've been busy getting the boat ready to launch in two days and I just had a ton of little projects that were either partially completed or just never got to them last year.

First off, I finally finished the new hatch and got it installed.  Most of the work since the last post involved varnishing (6 coats), installing hardware, and final fitting.  All went well and I'm happy with how it turned out.

At the same time I was working on varnishing the brightwork, bolting on the builders plate (finally), and installing a new VHF cable that runs from the radio to the mast.  At any given point in the past month I've had 5-6 small projects going in various stages of completion.

There were a few larger projects that I should have done over the winter, but I just don't get much boat work done over the winter, so once again, I was under the gun once the weather warmed up and I was sure we were going to launch this season.

Last fall I had started putting bead board on the main bulkhead in the cabin, and I had finished the port side but didn't start the starboard side until last week.  It isn't a difficult project, and installing the bead board is quite easy, but cutting and fitting the trim just takes a lot of time.  In particular, the trim board covering the chainplate bolts took forever because I had to get longer chainplate bolts and I decided to use some old chainplates as a backing plate for the chainplate located on the other side of the bulkhead.  I finally got it done and I think it looks a lot better (See before and after photos below).

Bulkhead before
There were a lot of other projects that amounted to a pain in the ass and were time consuming but required no creativity or much skill.  I did consult the considerable talent amassed in the wooden boat forum to determine the best approach to repairing a split along a glue line in the boom.  I just wasn't sure what to do, but in the end it was quite simple to do (open up the glue line with a japanese pull saw, fill with epoxy and plug the end to keep the split from continuing).  Hopefully it will last and I plan on re-building the whole thing for next year.

Bulkhead completed, minus the clock that still needs to be installed.


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