19th December 2010

Haven't been down to Sabrina as much as I would have liked to recently due to holidays, this is the first day in over a month and it was a little cold:

Spend a couple of hours tidying up, but after a couple of hours I couldn't feel my toes so had to give up.

17th October 2010

I spent today sorting out the hole in the starboard side and also that side of the cockpit. The cockpit is just a reassembly job.

 

I'm getting to be an old hand at cutting out the rot and replacing it with good timber. The trick is to cut it back to good wood, trying to get it in line with a support timber so that the new panel can be easily screwed in place, where that isn't possible I use hardwood behind to create the support, making sure there is an overlap of at least 2 inches. I coat the timber with epoxy mixed with some filler to create a very thin paste so that when the screws tighten it squeezes out of the ends. I then run a finger over the excess to create a small fillet to add strength and to make sure its well packed in. I then make the new in fill panel and do the same, making sure all the joints are full of resin and filler, making sure the resin is proud of the joint so I can sand it flat once the resin has gone off. It does get kinda messy as the resin paste is very thin and its advisable to wear gloves. Its all held together with stainless steel screws. Once you have got the hang of it its actually very easy and quick to do and it makes more sense to just chop out the rot just to be on the safe side.

   

I also planed off the side timbers for the sliding roof, originally the sides were plywood so overtime rotted as part of the changes I have made to her I have been replacing some of the ply with hardwood to help prevent any future rot.  Thank goodness for the thicknesser planer.

22nd August 2010

It was a nice day weather wise so off with the canopy so I could see how things we going and have a bit of a clean up, shes almost back to bare wood and is looking boat like, the front cabin is all done. You can see the cockpit is almost back together and the rear roof is looking good on its new gas struts.

15th August 2010

What a surprise, more rot, this time its on the starboard side, next to the cockpit. There is a rotten patch on the side, about 6 inches by 2 feet and a 2 foot x 2 foot hole in the bottom.  Out with the plunge saw and the angle grinder.

 

8th August 2010

At last I managed to get round to working on the sliding roof, its not complete but I'm pleased with it so far. All but one of the supporting timbers that make it up was ok so it only needed one slat to be made, however the sides were too far gone so a couple of 3" x 2" timbers and a lot of sanding later and they were shaped.

The original roof was covered in 12mm plywood, but the roof was very heavy and you needed some muscles to slide it, the new version is made of 9mm which hasn't altered its strength but made it a little lighter.

   

By the time I had finihed the root it was getting late in the evening so one of the jobs that needed doing was filling the screw holes where the new roof was bonded to the old one, so 5 pots of epoxy filler later and it looks like the roof is covered in cotton balls.

  

 Its been a milestone of a weekend, the last patch of rot was cut from the deck and replaced.

There are only a couple of minor jobs left to do and that will be all the repairs above the water line complete. Its been a long year so far, but I reckon another 4-6 weeks and she'll be ready to go back on the water.

1st August 2010

I only managed to spend one day on the boat this weekend, but managed to cut out the windows that make up the windscreens. It might look simple, but to cut the first window out took nearly three hours, the actual cutting only took 30 mins, slowly moving round with the jigsaw so it doesn't damage the wood.

The other 2.5 hours were taken up by marking it out, making a template from the old window, making sure its centred.  The window actually gets aligned from the inside as that is the horizontal reference point.  To then transpose it to the outside required me to drill some small holes on the outer edge of the template at the exact middle of the horizontal and vertical edges.  The template can then be ligned up on the outside using those four hours and then the window cut out.

To round the corners off I bought a sanding drum kit that you attach to your drill, then carefully and I mean carefully round the corners as sandpaper on the end of a drill removes wood at a rapid rate of knots!

    

18th July 2010