More snow

More snow fell on Friday.



Between the snow and the cold it was another weekend of inside work. I was able to finish up the edge banding on the settee back cutouts.

Then I glued down the blocks that the door latches will mount to.






And I glued down edges to the two side opening doors on the aft ends of the settee backs. On one of the cutouts there was a miss cut that needed to be covered up.



And then because the basement shop temperatures were in the low fifties the epoxy was going to take a long time to cure so I had to stop at that point.

More snow expected Wednesday so hopefully I will get the doors mounted on the setttee back panels and the panels will then be ready to install next weekend.

Not much to add. Progress is progress.

Det Snør...

Det snør Det snør, ti-del-li-bom!

(Winnie the Pooh singing about snow in Norwegian)

That is the song that constantly runs through my head these days. Some people get Metalica stuck in their head. I get Pooh.

The boat itself is fine and the structure sheds snow like a champ.




The problem has been getting to the boat.





I have spent three of the past ten days shoveling. The weather did warm enough to make my basement shop habitable for a day. So I did a little work on the settee backs. To make the edges of the plywood look a little better I bought some adhesive backed cherry banding.




$36 for 250 feet. I had never used the banding before and it took a little getting used to. Once I got going though it was pretty simple. First step was to clean up the cuts I had made when I cut out the panels. The intention when I made the cutouts had not been to re-use the panels and I had anticipated some framing aournd the edges so the cuts needed some touch up. Then, using a normal clothes iron I just ran the iron along the banding to melt the adhesive and bond the banding to the plywood edge.




Using a sharp chisel I sliced down the extra width of the banding to match the panel. This was the trickiest part of the operation. The key is sharpening the chisel often. That and covering most of the settee back with cushions once it is installed...




I was surprised at how long it took to do one panel, a good part of the day, but it does look nicer now. I still have some work to do to fine tune the joinery but an improvement over raw plywood edges I think.





Now I have to go shovel again...



I still need to do some touch up around the corners and such.

Inside Job

Falling snow and the subsequent cleanup kept me from the boat this weekend. Instead, I spent some time at home working on the settee panels. Specifically, I worked towards getting the doors hung so that the panels could be installled permanently.

While the snow fell, I spent some time shopping around for a table saw. I didn't find what I wanted so the bandsaw was put in charge of ripping some cherry to width.



And then, since I didnt' need the pieces to be so thick, I re-sawed them.



And yes, I realize I need a better outfeed system...

When I made the cut-outs for the doors, my intention had been to build doors that mounted over the cut outs. After looking at the cutouts some more though I decided to go with flush doors that used the removed sections as the doors themselves. The cutouts were much cleaner than I had anticipated and the doors will be covered by permanent cushions so there really won't be much to see when they are all done anyway.

I ordered some cherry edge banding to cover plywood edges. Since I was going with flush doors I needed something for the doors to fit against. That is why I milled the thin strips out of the cherry.

When I layed out the pieces to be glued up I realized that I would need 20 clamps to do the job. I could only find four kicking around the house. Instead, I tried a technique that a friend of mine has been trying to convince me to try for some time. The technique is to use a hot glue gun to tack the pieces into position until the epoxy could set up.

Wow.

I have no idea why I didn't try it out sooner. The technique works brilliantly with epoxy adhesives. Epoxy doesn't like much clamp pressure anyway. I spread out straight and thickened epoxy where the pieces met and then put a little dab of hot glue on the ends. In just a few seconds the pieces were held together with no danger of moving around.






Once I had the strips glued down I milled up a thicker piece of cherry to use as mounting pads for the door latches. At this point I decided that the panels should not be disturbed until the epoxy had set up. I should have thought of that first and made the pads before starting the glueing.

Oh well, there is always next week...

Good and not so good

I had one good day. And one not so good day. Sometimes the key is knowing when to quit while you are still ahead.

I started off by cutting a new piece for the engine box cover. I just wasn't happy with the fit with the first one. I am still going to have to bring the lower step out a few inches.

Then I fit the panels that go below the settees into place. They needed some fitting to mesh with the engine box.

Then I cut and fit the hull insulation that goes outside of the settees.






The fumes from the contact cememt inside of a closed up boat were too much and so that is where I ended the good day.

So, the next day I was expecting some great progress to report. Instead, the lack of sleep from the recent holiday weekend caught up to me and everything I did introduced a bit of error into the project. I either scuffed the woodwork with my dirty shoes or dripped glue where it should not have been or installed a part forgetting that I hadn't finished something behind it, or the adhesive was a bit old and starting to harden up, or I just plain ran out of adhesive...

I got something done but I introduced small errors that will have to be dealt with at another time.

Anyway. The lower settee panels are in place. I am going to have to re-fit them a bit but they are in place.










I decided to quit before I did more damage or did something really stupid. The panels behind the settees will have to wait for another weekend.

Two steps forward and one step back.