In the saloon, with a slight diversion towards rudders

As I concluded in my last blog, I was ready to put in the fronts and sides for the dinette area.

 It was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, putting them all together, because they had framework or overlaps that meant they could only be fitted in a certain order.  However, I 'proceeded in an orderly fashion' and got them into place satisfactorily.

 Pete, having found a new-to-him boat, and having packed up or disposed of all that he had on Oryx, had a bit of time on his hands and offered to give me some help making the rudders.  We sorted through some of the saligna in the wood store and found what was needed.  Pete measured and sawed it to length and then spent a long time planing it all.  Saligna is hard and we went through three sets of blades doing it.  The blades have two sides and I had just put in a brand-new pair, which we turned when about a quarter of the way through the job.  When they were blunt, I replaced them with another pair that I'd had sharpened, and these did the remaining half of the wood and were still sharp at the end of it.  There's a moral there, but I'm not sure what it is!

 The rudders are built from three layers, with the middle layer of 23mm running up and down, and the outer layers of 12mm, running parallel with the trailing edge.  The centre portion of the rudder was edge glued

 And then we glued and screwed the outside layers.  You have to be very careful not only preparing the pilot holes for the screws, but both sending them in and backing them out.  The electric screwdriver has to be set on about 5, and the screws finished by hand, otherwise they may sheer.  The same applies to backing them out - if they are held too hard by the wood, the electric screwdriver will sheer them off. 

 My 18v battery circular saw was powerful enough to saw up the thinner pieces of wood - but needed recharging at regular intervals.

 Once the rudders were glued up, I sanded off the excess glue and moved them out of the way to wait until their time comes for shaping.  Pete packed his bags and flew to USA, but his help was much appreciated.  And yes, Oryx is still for sale!

 So, back into the saloon.  Here I'm installing little athwartships bulkheads, which serve the dual purpose of supporting the seats and breaking up the lockers into sensible sizes.  The next stage is to paint them white.

 The end of the U is to be a lift up flap to make the settee wider and thus a more comfortable spare bunk.  Many people do this by making a table that goes up and down to fill the space, but I'm not really fond of these and it would make it difficult to get access to the after seat, by the little bulkhead.

The extension will be hinged up: here it has had the kauri glued down to it.  When the glue is cured it will be sanded and coated.