How can it all take so long?

Well, I dunno, but it does.  I have but a paltry collection of photos to show you: little indeed for the hours that I've been putting in during the three weeks since last I posted.  All I can say is that I've been working long days and there isn't much to show for it.  Still, one day I'll get there!

 With the dividers filleted in place, I made framework for the lids/seats to land on.  As ever, things didn't go perfectly as anticipated, so there was a certain amount of sanding or filling to be done to get everything level so that the lids don't wobble.

 In the meantime, I finished off in the lazarette, making a removable sole panel which is at a little less of a steep angle than the bottom of the boat.  The idea is that it will be a little less uncomfortable to sit there when I am getting things out of the lazarette.

 Belatedly, I recalled that I had intended to make a bar either side, to keep the boxes in place.  Actually, there is not much headroom for them and the fiddle on the shelf is quite high, so they are very unlikely to jump out of their own accord.  Still, if they can, they will!  It would have been a lot easier to fit before I closed in the cockpit!

 The seat framing is glued into place and the screw holes plugged.  (I often find it quicker to use wood plugs for screw holes than to fill them with epoxy.)

 Before I painted the lockers, I cut up strips of decking for slats, in the hope of preventing things in the locker from standing in pools of water.

 I then masked off for the slats and proceeded to paint the lockers with four coats of low-sheen, two-part polyurethane paint.

 I stopped painting when the lockers looked white!

 Pulling the masking tape off was a satisfying job.  The locker is now ready for the teak slats.

 I am trying to fit a nice teak capping to the outboard motor transom.  My thicknesser stops at about 4 mm.  I sanded the teak some more, but it's still rather too thick to bend easily.  Using a silly number of screws and heating the teak with a heat gun, I managed to force it into place.  I will leave it there for a couple of days, but I have no great hopes that I will be able to glue it back in again without it breaking.

 A little bit of teak trim around the cockpit gives a pleasant illusion of solid teak.  I happened to have a long length that I'd made up for the forward end of the centre deck, but which had broken when I tried to bend it too far.  It was made from recycled timber with old screw holes plugged.  This recycled timber will now be recycled again.  Teak is inconceivably expensive and I can't even consider buying any new.

I don't think I've included a photograph of the little rail next to the fire.  It does a good job (assuming it doesn't delaminate due to the heat!), but is still awaiting the varnish brush.

And finally, I have managed to paint around the galley hatch.  I was waiting for the final use of the low-sheen paint to do this.  I'm pleased I remembered - I don't see my using that paint again.  Which is a nice feeling!

Another year - more boatbuilding

Well, here we are comfortably into the New Year of 2019, and may it be a good one for everyone reading this.  I should like to think that my little boat will swim this year, but to be perfectly honest, I shouldn't like to bet too much on it.  So we'll carry on as before, one day at a time until the job is done.

The best news is that the New Year will see me starting a new project.  The interior is almost complete and I can get on to the decks at last.  That will be exciting.  It will also be very hot as I shall be laying them through the middle of summer in temperatures that will be in the 40°s C at the top of the shed.  However, if my usual progress is anything to go by, it will probably be winter by the time I finish and things will have cooled down.

 My last post saw me fitting the galley sink.  I then coated everything and have to say it looked rather magnificent!  I put this coat on immediately to stabilise the rather excitable tigerwood.

 I then sanded it all down again, and fitted wood plugs to all the screw holes.

 Finally I could start one of the real lolly jobs: putting down the cabin sole.  I've been looking forward to this.  The bits of masking tape have numbers on, so that the pieces all go back in the same place when they get glued down.

 Gluing the pieces in by the settee front was more than a little awkward, as I had to work under the lift-up settee extension. I decided to take the wood up the side of the boat - the white paint just looked out of place.

Screws out, glue cleaned up and everything sanded waiting for plugs to be fitted.

 I rummaged around and found some offcuts of tigerwood that were perfect for fiddles around the top of the drawer locker.  Oddly, the athwartships one looked too heavy and needed to be planed down to look right.

 I have spent a long time agonising about how to drain the sink and finally hit on the idea of a 'grey water tank'.  This eliminates holes through the hull, means I don't need to empty a container every time I use the sink and avoids a lot of pipework cluttering up the space under the sink.  I realise that this solution would not suit many people, but it fits in with my way of thinking.

 The water containers will live under the cabin sole, so the floor boards are effectively hatches, to give me access to the bilge.  In order for them to land securely, once they were cut down, I had to add some thickness to some of the existing floor bearers.

With everything cut to size, I could then start fitting the rest of the planking on the cabin sole.  I decided to fit the planks full length, running across each hatch.  Traditionally, the hatches would be framed, but I felt that would look far too fussy and, besides, the full-length planks look rather lovely.

 Everything was 'dry fitted' and all the pieces of wood were carefully marked so that they would go back in the right places and not get mixed up.

  Again, I covered the side of the boat with tigerwood, leaving white paint only on the stringer, which I think looks rather good.  I used paper to make a pattern

 and then MDF to make a more solid one I could fit accurately.

Finally, all the wood was fitted  and I could get down to gluing it down.

I took out all the hatches and put them on the table.  Quite apart from anything, it's about 5°C cooler down at floor level than it is in the hull, now that summer is well and truly here.  I added some microballoons to the glue mix, so that it is closer in colour to the wood.  Some of the pieces of wood needed a bit of persuasion to line up to the one next to them and occasionally there was a small gap that couldn't be straightened out, however hard I tried.

Then I had another big sanding session, followed by the cutting and fitting of no fewer than 420 tigerwood plugs.  My knees are looking rather the worse for wear after all this!

Because this part of the boat will have stuff spilt on it and a lot of foot traffic, I wanted to be 100% sure that there were no little crevices to trap dirt and go mouldy.  So I mixed up filler and went over the whole sole carefully, filling in every little hole I could find.  And then, of course, it all had to be sanded.  Again.

One major job left to do in the interior: make the saloon table.  You may remember that I mocked one up several months ago.  I got it out and dusted it off.  I tried it out.  It seemed too high.  I cut 50mm off the legs.  It still seemed too high, but everything I read told me that I'd already made it too low, so I daren't take off any more.  I hope it's OK.  I hate eating my dinner at chin level.

I pulled down some more tigerwood from the stack and cut it to length.

I assumed it is called tigerwood because of its stripey appearance, but have come to the conclusion it's because the wood goes wild as soon as it's unlocked.  Send it through the saw and it wriggles and wobbles all over the place.  Somewhat hopefully, I clamped the pieces to be glued into the table leaves, to saw horses to 'keep them straight'.

Then I glued them up and left them overnight to get used to the idea.

After sending them through the thicknesser one leaf was perfect; the other still showed a tendency to bow.

 I slapped epoxy on both sides as quickly as I could, clamping them flat again, each time.  Again, I left them overnight hoping that they would stabilise.  Once this is posted, I'll be taking the clamps off.  Fingers crossed that the tiger has been tamed!

The bulk of the galley completed.

I'm sorry that I haven't posted for so long.  I went away to Nelson for a week and it took me two weeks to catch up on all the things I neglected to do in Nelson.  (I'd gone with good intentions of sitting at my computer, writing emails, doing tasks that I had neglected as Chair of the JRA, editing articles for the magazine.  Instead, I chatted with my friends, loafed in the sun, pottered around and did a lot of reading.)

I came back full of energy and good intentions, but although I have certainly been putting in the hours, life and hordes of visitors have slowed down progress.  However, I love seeing my friends and if it means that boat is launched a few weeks later than would otherwise be the case, well so be it.  But there are many times when I wish either that there were a few more hours in the day, or that I didn't need to spend quite so much time in bed!

 The next- indeed, tigerwood apart, the final - big job in the galley was making and fitting all the doors.  My technique, now, is to use Gorilla polyurethane glue for the initial glue up, and then let the epoxy coating finish the job.  This allows me to put the doors together more quickly and with less mess, one at a time.

 Any gaps where the panelling meets the frame are filled with neat epoxy, which also percolates between the plank edges.  The result is a very stiff, very light and very attractive door.  I should like to take credit for this wonderful concept, but in truth, they are exactly the same as the doors we fitted to Badger and China Moon.  The only difference is that this time I'm allowed to make the frame, as well as fit the panels!

 I fitted the slats for the vegetable locker, which, I hope,will help keep it dry.

 And remembered that the end of the counter still had to be cut and fitted.  So that was duly done and glued down over the cutlery drawer.

 The shelves being painted and the slats being coated, finally everything could be glued into place.

 One of the very good things about epoxy is that it doesn't require any pressure to set.  The little lead weights were quite sufficient to ensure a good joint.  The slats simply required pushing into place - and at the last moment I remembered not to glue in the final one, so that I could get my hand underneath for cleaning.

 I made up a tray for the second shelf down.  This is to hold my glasses, some of which are Waterford crystal, bought for 5 bucks each from the market.  Well, why not?

 This was made in exactly the same way as the shelf fiddles and, once again, I relied on the coating epoxy to finish off the gluing job.  It is surprisingly robust, considering how flimsy the materials are.

 Four more doors yet to make, so I set up a sort of production line.  This is the one from the veg locker.

 And these are the frames for the lockers under the cooker.  Made in this fashion, I can be sure that they will fit.  I wouldn't trust my measurements to make them 'on the bench'.

I dry fitted them into place before coating them and then facing the agony of fitting the hinges.

 The 'door' at the back is actually going to be fixed in place.

The only thing more heart-stoppingly expensive than barrel bolts, are hinges.  Some time ago I bought a length of brass piano hinge and I used this to make the hinges for the cabinet.  (This was Paul Marine's brilliant idea!)

 Cutting the rebates on the door was the easier of the two to cut, but I find it very difficult judging the correct depth.  My perusal of You Tube didn't help much (what's 1/32 of an inch in real measurements, for heaven's sake?)  For a start, they all assumed that I'd had the sense to plan the hinges before I assembled the cabinets.  Yeah right.

And then, due to a distraction, I drilled the finger hole on the wrong side of the aftermost (right hand) door, which meant that the hinge had to be fitted on a piece of wood that extended beyond the door.  I won't tell you how long it took me to get from the coated doors, to this stage, where they are sanded and fitted.

 But then, they all had to come off again so that the rebates could be coated.  I debated this, but some of the screw holes had been refilled with so many slivers of wood, that the doors and frames looked as though they'd been attacked by woodworm.  I lived to regret it: another distraction caused me to fit a couple of hinges to the wrong frames (having carefully set them down so that they went back where they came from.)  Because the hinges are individually made - 'crafted', I should say!- they were all slightly different.  But not different enough to be noticeable until I tried to shut the door.  It took all day to put the never-sufficiently-to-be-cursed hinges on the correct rebates.

However, the final result is rather splendid don't you think?

So now, I have a bit of trim and a spice rack to make, the portholes to install and I need to machine up a heap of tigerwood for the galley counter, the cabin sole and the saloon table.  Then I can fit the deckliner and call the accommodation finished.

I had been hoping to complete it by the end of they year.  Ah well, nothing wrong with hoping.