Back to Bling

I'm working on finishing the decks before moving on to bilgeboards and so on. Laying teak in the cockpit was the final job before I could sign if off as finished.

 At the moment, I climb on and off the boat (dozens of times a day) over the stern and so the after end of the deck lockers in 'in my face' time and again.  I have covered them with teak, but wonder how often I'll see it again, because I shall have a boarding ladder for climbing on and off.  (Negotiating two rudders and the outboard motor would not be easy even if I liked getting aboard by way of the stern.  Which I don't.)

The petrol locker lids also get teak, of course.

With all the teak laid and sanded I have to say that I think it looks rather grand. 

The hinges were a shocking price in NZ, so I had to resort to Ebay.  I am very pleased with the quality of them, but they took the best part of a couple of months to get here!

Although they look like brass for some reason, in the photo, they are in fact stainless steel.  Purportedly 316.

It was about time to tackle the companionway, which was much more straightforward that I anticipated, with memories of the rather marathon effort that was required when I rebuilt Fantail's "washboards".  All that was really required was some additional framing for the acrylic to land on.

The plan is to have a Jester style pramhood and a bubble over it, like we had on Badger.  The bubble means that when the hatch is shut in cold weather, there will still be plenty of light coming in.  It also allows my taller visitors to stand up while working out how to negotiate their way to a seat!

The other thing that required fitting is my echo sounder - I should hate to sail without one, although plenty of other people seem happy to do so.  This took a ridiculous amount of time to fit, because I had to run wires from the electric panel under the cabin sole, all the way back to the lazarette.

 As ever, I was more than a little startled when I flicked the switch to see that it is apparently working.  I'm in 2.3 m of water, so it would have me believe!  I'm not quite sure why it's reading this ...

In winter, standing under a Perspex dome can be as effective as standing in a shower.  I had a second one made out of much lighter material (the outer one is 10mm, the inner one 3mm) and stuck them together with what I hope is an appropriate air gap.  Both domes, made to measure, only cost $300, which I reckon to be one of my better bargains.



Actually fitting it to the deck is going to be quite a problem because of the camber.  Indeed, it has caused me some loss of sleep, but this morning it occurred to me that the obvious thing is to make a flat area on deck and put the rings on that.  (I had been intending to build the rings up and shape them to the deck, but to be honest, that is definitely beyond my skills.

This is the piece of plywood from which the upper ring was cut.  It seemed like an awful waste of wood!  If you can't visualise how the pramhood works, All Will Be Revealed ... in due course.

 The framing is now fitted around the companionway and varnishing is underway.

Well, I might as well say it, because I think more than a few people think that my delight in varnish is a little suspect, but I like varnishing.  In fact the reluctance of the average person to put varnish on to their boat is a constant source of puzzlement to me.  In the days when people owned traditionally-built, carvel boats, they usually had quite a lot of brightwork, which had to be maintained every year, together with the work required to keep the topsides in good order.  And in those days varnish only lasted a season before requiring quite a bit of work to bring it up to scratch.

Now people generally have plastic hulls which require little or no maintenance and very little woodwork on deck, but even the little that they have is apparently too much 'work'.  How is it work, I ask myself, to beautify your pride and joy?  A mystery.  Anyway, it's been downright pleasurable to finish laying the teak and to be able to pick out the bits that I want to have a bright finish.  It would also appear that even people who don't like varnishing themselves often like the look of it, so it's nice to know that it will give other people pleasure, too.

And while I had some mixed up, I finally got to varnish the saloon table, which seems to work well.  Sadly, one piece of the tigerwood has developed a bit of a twist, so the table is far from perfect.  I had hoped that the table would be the stand-out feature in the saloon.  Never mind, it still looks attractive.  It slides fore and aft to allow people to get in at either end and now that it's summer, it slides almost too well.  I shall have to put something on it to hold the top in the right place!

Finally I get to varnish!

I have been working really hard on the boat these last few weeks, well aware that Time is Going By and that everyone else is off sailing while I'm still in a boat shed.  This has meant that my Sundays 'off' have been more than usually busy, plus of course there was the Tall Ships Regatta.  All this is to explain why I haven't blogged for a while.  So lots of pics today to make up for it.

 I may have already mentioned these natty little floor rings from Classic Marine.  There is still a wee bit of space for dust to get into the bilges around them, but they are the best that I've seen and feel robust when you use them to lift up the sole.  They don't hold the boards down of course.  If I go offshore, I'll probably simply put screws in for the passage.

 Making the cabin sole is definitely one of the 'lolly jobs' and I am so pleased with the end result.  The tigerwood sands to a beautifully, satiny finish that feels lovely under one's bare feet.

 Another lolly job - and a rather scary one - is making the saloon table.  Many boats have tables that are works of art.  A friend has just told me how she inlaid hers, but I don't have that level of skill, so am keeping it very simple.  I had made a 'pattern' out of MDF and scrap plywood to test out the idea.  Because of the fore and aft bulkhead next to the dinette, the table needs to be able to slide so that one can get access.

The table is designed to fold, but instead of the leaf folding down, it will fold up and lie on top of the other one.  This avoids the irritating business of everyone having somehow to remove their knees when you want to extend the table.  It also gives more leg room when the leaf is up.

 I agonised for ages over the height of the table, and finally got my friend, Alan, to sit at it.  I had a moment of cold panic - it was only just high enough and I'd thought of knocking off another 50mm to suit me!  As I would like my friends to be able to be comfortable, I have compromised.  Of course, the definition of compromise is that no-one is happy!  This photo also show the table top slightly off centre - slid to one side.

 I then glued two pieces of tigerwood together to make substantial feet, for bolting the table down.  I cut them to a shape that I hope will avoid toe stubbing.

 Oh no!  More hinges and they caused me just as much grief as all the others.  Somewhere in my brain the synapses fail where hinges are concerned.  I hate fitting them with a passion!

 But they do look rather nice.  As long as you don't look too closely.

 Meanwhile, I've been working on the headliner, cutting the plywood, fitting the pieces, coating it, painting it and finally gluing it up.  Two more pieces are waiting to go in, but I decided to leave them off until I'd done the varnish.

 So while glue is setting on the table and paint is drying on the headliner, I may as well complete closing in the boat by laying the decks.  As you can see, even 6mm ply doesn't exactly flop over the camber.

 I had plenty to screw to at the forward end, with all the reinforcing for the mast.  It was good to start off with a fairly straightforward piece.

 However, the next piece presented rather more of a challenge, requiring far more screws than I'd originally anticipated.  Even my vast weight on the edge of the panel only just persuaded it to bend.

 And the matching one on the other side.  Gluing things down in temperatures of over 35ºC is not a lot of fun, even with super slow hardener, and can get a little stressful.  Thank heavens for battery screwdrivers!

 The next panel has to go between the bilge board cases: I'm still working out exactly how to cut them down.  The original idea was to hang the control blocks from them, but I have visions of some large person slipping and landing with all their weight on the 12mm plywood, breaking it off.  So I think I'll trim them flush and invest in some stand-up blocks to take the lines.

 When I dry fitted the panels, I discovered that once forced into place on the camber, they formed hollows on the fore and aft line.  I don't quite understand this.  I'm hardly 'torturing' the ply, because the deck is horizontal (more or less!) from bow to stern.  However, mine not to reason why, so I put battens along the prevent it happening.

 Before gluing the panels in place, I put down some insulation material, more to prevent condensation than anything else.

 Then I had another session with recalcitrant plywood, trying to get it to bend as I wanted.  It would have been a lot easier if I could have done it in one piece, but the bilge board cases prevent that and I didn't want to cut them off at this stage.

 I doubt you can actually see it in the photo, but in spite of my best effort - and the batten, the panel still has a bit of a hollow.  By the time I have another layer of (4mm) ply and the teak on, I hope it will have smoothed itself out.  Anyway, it will keep out the water and strengthen the boat, which is its major purpose in life.

 I find people's attitude to the camber a bit of a puzzle.  When the boat is heeling, you can walk on the weather deck and have a pretty level area to move along.  When the boat is upright, you can walk along the centre line (sail permitting).  I don't see the issue myself, but the camber draws a lot of negative comment.

 I am leaving the stove installation right to the end.  I've put a few tiles in place behind it.  They don't really do much, but they look nice.  Supposedly you are meant to leave miles of space around a heater, but I've lived with many and I doubt any of them complied.  The one I'm fitting has good heat shields and will be 100mm from 'combustible surfaces'.  I don't think it will set fire to the boat, as long as I don't crank it up too far!  And as I only have a small space to heat, I'm unlikely to do that.

Finally, I could get down to one of my favourite jobs, varnishing this lovely wood.  Masking tape was required around the white paint, which is only a semi gloss finish.

 I put three coats on the areas that will get hard wear, two coats everywhere else. If only paint were so forgiving!

 I varnished under where the heater will be.  It's much easier to remove the dust from a shiny surface!  The varnish really picks out the grain in the wood - the strange mark on the kauri to the left of the passageway is in fact a golden whorl of wood that literally glows.  It's quite beautiful.

 I like the contrast of the tigerwood and the kauri.

 And the little locker doors all look rather sweet now that they are varnished.

And I've treated myself to two lovely brass, pumps for the galley.  I am so pleased with the way my sink has worked out.  Large enough to wash my biggest pot in, but small enough that I can use fresh water to do so.

So back to the decks. 

Three jobs at once

In theory, the boat should be coming along in leaps and bounds: I have three jobs I'm working on at present (a) reinforcing the deck around the tabernacle (b) fitting the deck liner in the heads (c) the saloon.  Obviously when something has glue or paint hardening in one place, I can get on with something else.  However, Life, as so often, has been getting in the way, and if it's not JRA stuff, it's long emails around selling Oryx, long phone calls to friends about Stuff, birthdays, visitors (nearly always welcome), a launching to attend (lucky devil) and so on.  Most of this is great fun, but it can get frustrating when I feel like I'm on a roll and then I have also to deal with tools breaking down and needing replacing, plywood to be bought or just the usual day to day cooking, cleaning, washing, etc, etc.  Whinge, whinge.  My apologies, but maybe it helps explain why I haven't blogged for so long.

 Anyway, once I had the deckliner fitted in the forecabin, it needed trim putting up.  This was essentially to hide the less than perfect joints: it's not easy manhandling large sheets of floppy plywood, trying to fit them to a pretty extreme camber and end up with gaps that you are happy for people to see.  Now that I have plenty of kauri, I can make the 'mouldings' that I want.  Just as well considering that the forward one snapped in the middle just as I was fitting it.  The photo shows all this trim on the table being coated, but I should not have coated the forward one: the epoxy stiffened it up too much.

 This is the quadrant at the after end, being trial fitted and the photo gives some idea of the camber.

 Here are all the bits of trim varnished and in place - including the wretched bit of quadrant on the forward bulkhead, which I ended up varnishing in situ.  When the deckhead was finally in place, it looked like the inside of an igloo and I wondered if I'd made a big mistake.  I'm not fond of acres of paint, in truth, but all this white paint is to keep the interior of the boat light.  However, the bits of trim made a huge difference to the overall appearance and it's quite acceptable now.

 Next job: to put the plywood around the tabernacle to reinforce the deck.  I made the first two pieces out of 6mm ply, which wasn't such a good move because of trying to force it down to the camber, with relatively little to screw to and nothing to clamp to. This is the first piece, coated underneath, sanded and ready to glue.  I decided to use offcuts from the 4mm deckliner for the rest of the reinforcing - there's heaps of it, anyway.

The 6mm ply is down forward of the mast and you can see wires leading from it, going back to the switch panel in fact.  I thought long and hard about this: when the wires corrode, as they eventually will, I won't be able to pull them out and replace them.  However, the alternative is to run them visibly inside the boat (David's clever idea of how to run the cables didn't work in practice).  I've decided to keep them invisible for the moment and when they do corrode away, then I'll run them inside the boat, with some sort of disguise.  And who knows - maybe I'll be dead before they do, in which case it will be someone else's problem!

SibLim Club members, Rob and Maren gave me a roll of foil-backed foam insulation, left home from their house build, some time ago, and I'm putting this between the two layers of deck.  It doesn't show very well in the photo, unfortunately.  You can also see the 4mm piece of ply I'm about to fit on the deck.

On the port side now, with the reinforcing being fitted around the tabernacle.  I've finally found plywood thin enough to staple - just like the Gougeon Bros recommend!

 Back into the saloon and getting the back rest sorted.  I decided on 590mm  because that's (for some reason) what David and I chose more moons ago than I care to think.  So here it is set up to cut using my latest toy, the most wonderful battery powered 150mm circular saw.  Every girl should have one!

 

 And here is the backrest in place.  Notice anything?  Yup, it looks way too high and interferes with the port hole.  So off I go to the Internet, to some magazines, to my sailing and boatbuilding books and look at everybody else's back rests.  I would say that 450mm is much more usual than 590, so that's what I'll go for.  Of course, somehow I've got to deal with the fact that the kauri 'tongue and groove' on the after bulkhead (to save **** weight) doesn't go down far enough now.  This tiny bit of weight saving has caused me heaps of grief - quite apart from finishing in the wrong place again, it's awkward to work round.  Let me suggest to anyone thinking of going for this effect, to cover the whole damn bulkhead in the panelling and forget about the 300 grams of extra weight.

 Meanwhile, I'm working on the deckliner in the heads.  Here's the port panel cut and coated on one side. Small and rectangular - what a joy!