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03 December, 2017

I can understand why people skimp on coating with epoxy

I am not really the soul of patience and am in accord with Tilman that it is a virtue easily exhausted by exercise.  I am more than ready to move on to another stage in the boat and this final locker in the forecabin is really proving rather testing: I keep getting held up because there is sticky wood around which can't be handled or touched. 

Of course there are approximately 10,732 other jobs I could do while the epoxy goes hard, but I can only hold so much in my brain and I fear that if I move on to another job, I shall make a mess of what I'm doing here, by forgetting some crucial part.  I keep forgetting things anyway, like (as Marcus pointed out), what do I intend to do to keep the books in the port bookshelf?  (Bother.)  And how long am I going to put off trimming the door frame?  (Go away.)  I also spent an inordinate amount of time trying to use the remaining offcuts from to make an end to a couple of big bookshelves I've been making.  Not possible so I made a nice panelled bulkhead which will probably look better anyway.  The 'big bookshelves' is a misnomer: it's more accurately the bookshelves for big books, dominated by my need to find an easily accessible home for my greatest treasure: The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze, given to me by my friend Gary Underwood, prolific designer of houses and boats.  He has been slowly offloading some of his fantastic library and I was the lucky person he thought of for this book.  I have managed to get most of G.R.G. Worcester's books, which are delightfully written and beautifully illustrated.  I look forward to the time when I can read them properly and at leisure.  However, J&SY is a mighty tome and set the standard for the bookshelves that were to be built.  In addition, there are David Thatcher's cruising guides plus some others, along with several other 'oversize' books that, for various reasons, I want to keep. They could all be put into lockers, of course, but I'd prefer to get to them more easily.  The space at the forward end of the forecabin (once set aside for a sewing machine, that, alas, would not fit easily) seemed to offer the perfect solution.

I had some kauri left over from doing the drawer fronts so I glued it together (using Gorilla to save a bit of time.) Having framed up the area, I carefully fitted the two shelves.

Having decided that I had insufficient left for the end of the cabinet, I scouted around and found a bit of kauri panelling that was a bit too narrow to use elsewhere, but could be used to make a perfect endpiece for the shelves.  I glued up a frame and then routed round to make a rabbet in which to set the panels.

Because the whole area had been intended to be an enclosed locker (and The Great One disapproved of the weight of the kauri panelling) I then had to panel the space under the shelves, which will be seen.  Again, short ends that I had refused to throw away came in useful for this.
This is where my patience was tried.  I was more than ready to assemble the whole lot, but the panel is better coated on the flat and the bottom of the shelves required a good thick layer of epoxy to ensure that they stay stable.  At least I won't have to varnish them!

So time to go and actually start gluing it all together!

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