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.

All boxed in

The engine that is.







Somehow the fiddles that support the removeable panel were positioned an inch or so too far forward. The easy fix will be to extend the lower step an inch or so forward...


For the time being, I am going to keep the old repaired lower step in place so as not to damage a new cherry step with my clumsiness. The middle step will be mounted permanently on the removable panel. The basic geometry of the stairs will remain as per original. I like the original and I am used to it so I am going to keep it.

I also managed to install fiddles to support the starboard settee back against the galley structure and the forward lip that will support the 'trash hatch'.



While I have this picture posted, there was a discusion on last week's blog comments about the shape of the settee locker area. On the original Tritons, the biggest turn in the bilge is right around the bottom of the locker area. That combined with a more sloping settee back positioned further outboard means the lower portion of the locker is larger than the top opening. This creates a problem when there is a full bag of stuff in the locker and you need to pull out through the top opening.

On this installation, there is an inner liner (ceiling) covering the hull insulation. Rather than make it too complicated and follow the curvature of the hull, I made the inner liner out of one piece of plywood that effectively 'cuts out' the curvature. I think I may also have slightly less slope to the settee back. I am not sure about that. In any case, the bottom of the locker is smaller than the top.

There is still an issue with the aft trash bay. The top opening is clearly smaller than the rest of the locker and getting a full bag of trash out would be impossible without emptying the contents of the trash bag a piece at time. Not a great design in my opinion. To correct the problem I cut an access door in the front of the settee panel. I can dump trash down the small opening on top and I can remove the full bag from the front opening door.



That's the plan anyway.

If I don't squeeze a blog in next week I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas or whatever else they chose to celebrate over the coming solstice period.

All the best wishes for the coming year. -BC

Great Expectations

not my favorite Dickens novel actually but probably his best known one. I think David Copperfield might be my favorite, "poor boy makes good after some hard lessons" but that is just me...

Anyway, the pattern for this blog lately has been to list the excuses for why boatwork has not happened.

That is going to change. Suffice to say that Real Life reared its ugly head and Boat Life cowered in a corner.

The most interesting item accomplished is that the settee locker door openings were cut out. I have been obsessing for months about how to build the doors. It seemed like every other day I had a new idea. Well, in the end I got sick of thinking about it and just cut the damn holes. At least now I can install the panels which will allow other work to progress. In fact I do have a plan for the doors but I can spend three paragraphs explaining it or just show pictures when it gets done. I am voting for the latter.

First, I laid out where the openings were going to be and clamped a straight board onto the panel to act as a guide for my skilsaw:




Since I couldn't cut the corners completely with my circular blade I had to finish the cuts off with my pull saw. I love that pull saw. When my old standard push saw(as in I got it when I was 10 and it expired when I was 41) was finally judged too dull to live and too cheap to sharpen I decided not to replace it. I haven't missed it.




Two panels, cut and ready for the next step(s):




If I had equally spaced doors on both panels I think it would have been easier to build the backrests out of solid wood. It would have looked a lot nicer to. As it is, the starboard panel only has one door in it and plenty of flat space. For that reason the plywood panels seem reasonable. In my opinion though, from an aesthetic view, the less plywood the better. On the port side there really wasn't much panel left after cutting out three door holes.

Other than that.. I bought some solid cherry and ordered some door hardware - twice - since I changed my mind about how to build the doors after I ordered the first set of hardware. Oh well, I can use it somewhere else.

Last week, I found the boat pretty dark under the tarp and went shopping for some lighting. I bought an extension cord with outlets every six feet along its length. I ran that down the boat - bow to stern- and attached hanging lights in various locations. Its nice and bright inside now and I don't have to figure out what to unplug to use a power tool any more. Plenty of available outlets now.

Now I have to go and try a homemade mushroom soup recipe.

Em tasol wantoks ;-)