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!

Mainly drawers

Still moving along in the galley; still scratching my head trying to decide what is going to go where.

 I decided to use offcuts of 12mm ply for the drawer bases.  A bit over the top, perhaps, but there were sufficient around of more or less the right size, most of it coated on one side and none of it much use for anything else.  It seems a shame to waste it. So I cut out the bases and using my wee router, put a rebate on 3 sides.

 I am now in the spectacularly happy position of having heaps of kauri (thank you Gordie!) and as it is about the correct thickness for the sides and front of the drawers, I decided to use it.  Again I routed rebates along the edges.

I found the best way to do this was to clamp a big chunk of wood to a saw horse and then to line the edge of the kauri along it and clamp that.  This worked nicely producing a clean result.

I then offered up my kauri planks, cutting the wood to length as necessary.

And finally ended up with a kit of parts for six drawers.

I laid them all out, coated the edges with epoxy and then coated the joints along the bases with thickened epoxy.  The drawers were then fastened with pins through pre-drilled holes, which ensured that they lined up truly.

My original idea had been to then glue on the fronts, but these seemed impossible to position.  I consulted a friend who told me that even professionals make a full box and then add the front, so this is what I did.  I cut 6mm panels and glued them flush at the open end of the box.

He was quite right!  The fronts were a lot easier to fit now.  I fitted the drawers and then one at a time, fitted the fronts, screwing them into place through pre-drilled holes in the plywood.

Then I disassembled them and glued them back together.  The screws were replaced in their screw holes with infinite care and gently tightened to ensure that new holes weren't created.

 In spite of my best efforts, however, the alignment was far from perfect.  While irritating, this was far from surprising.  My skills may be better than they were, but I'm still a long way from having the necessary tricks of the trade to get these things right.  However, judicious use of fine saw, plane, belt sander and the odd shim got them to look acceptable.

I drilled finger holes, coated the drawers and fitted them one last time.  Good enough.

Meanwhile, I've been cutting, fitting and coating the locker which will be under the sink and hold my two 10 litre water containers.  My eccentricity in not wishing to make a hole even for salt water, even using a glassed-in pipe has been commented on elsewhere.  But actually, with a lot of the rivers and anchorages being quite silty around New Zealand, it will be nice to have clean seawater on tap all the time, even if it does mean hauling the odd bucket.

I need to proofread the magazine for the JRA, so I'm not sure if I'll be getting a lot more done today.  But we are slowly getting there.  Although I have to confess that when a visitor last week, kindly told me that I "still have heaps to do", he was very lucky that I didn't have a chisel in my hand!!

Agonising over details

I've been trying out ideas, scrapping them, trying others, going back to the original and generally giving myself a lot of grief about the galley.  My friends have been tried to the limit by my vacillations and cries of woe, but I've finally come to some sort of a conclusion.  My only consolation is that I went through the same process for the saloon, and I'm now delighted with it.

 I'm not sure if I mentioned my cunning idea for extending the settee into a wider bunk.  But here it is in action.  I may require A Stick as well, to support it, but that can be easily arranged.

 While I've been agonising, I've also been varnishing and am pleased with the end result.

 It will be fun choosing the fabric for the cushions.  I have no idea what I'll send up with and suspect that I'll be spoilt for choice when I start looking.

 The kauri that Gordie gave me looks wonderful and the cosy corner produced by the bulkhead is going to be a favourite spot.

 One of the knock-on effects of any decisions made is that the cabin sole has to be divided up into hatches to allow access to the bilge.  I plan to store most of my water in the bilge and reckon on having at least 120l.  Most will be in 10l containers like the one in the photo: the rest will be in 5l jerricans.  The piece of wood along the galley will probably be glued into place, because I can get at the hull from the centre, if necessary.

I wanted a stack of drawers in the galley.  Drawers are immensely useful and it's hard to have too many of them.  However, the galley counter is pretty wide and I didn't really want super-long drawers, so am making a wee stack at the forward end of the galley.  The original idea had been to use them for dinner plates, among other things, but I can't make them quite wide enough for that without sacrificing other things.  So the plates will have to go elsewhere.  Unfortunately, the portholes make putting lockers along the outboard edge of the counter impracticable.  However, one needs light and air.  I could put a locker in between, but I don't think it would look that good.  We shall see. Here is the bulkhead for the drawers, being panelled in kauri.  Now that I have a plan, I'm excited to get on with it!