16th May 2010

Spent the full weekend down the boat, arrived Saturday morning at just after 8am.  The plan this weekend is to get into a position where I could epoxy and fill the new roof line so I can sand it later in the week.

Karen had done a great job of striping the sides, but there bottom layer of paint didn't want to budge and I want Sabrina back to bare wood for the epoxying, it will probably be the first time in many, many years, or even since she was first built that shes back to bare wood.

I had at this point, already gone through over 60 sanding discs of various grits, I'd been to screwfix the day before and bought another fifty 60 grit and ordered another fifty 240 grit, although during the day I managed to almost run out of 120 grid discs.

I was pleased with the sides, I still need to tidy up where it joins the deck as neither nitromors or the sander will reach, elbow grease here we come! You can see the

Karen spent the afternoon striping the transom, she managed to scorch the wood in places as there was only a single layer of varnish on it.  Thankfully 120 grit, followed by 240 sorted it out.  I need to take the rail off and also the name badge and do the whole thing, but you can see the rich colour that it will be when sealed.

I spent Sunday finishing striping the inside and round the windows, three coats of nitromors and plenty of elbow crease, there is still more to be done, but you can see she is already looking better for it:

 

I also found time to remove the "fetching" vinyl that was behind the sink and cooker, the plan when I do the galley is to tile the back using small pale matt tiles, mosaic style.

Karen keeps saying that its a wonder I haven't killed myself yet, well I came a step closer today. We reinforced the canopy yesterday, screwing it to the sleepers that Sabrina sits on and adding new 3"x2" reinforcing timbers, the down side, when I walked into the frame, it hurt!

13th May 2010

I spent a couple of hours this evening sanding down the epoxy'd panel that I had made the day before, it worked a treat, 12 sanding disks later you can see the result.  Its as solid as a rock.

12th May 2010

Things at work lately had been getting a little mental and I'd worked the last weekend, plus many late evenings so decided to take a lieu day and go and work on the boat.

I'd been feeling like I had not been achieving much and all I seemed to be doing was cutting out rot so I decided to actually change tact on her and do some work on the rear, which I didn't think would need that much work.  There are a patch of rot on the rear where someone had spliced a new piece in and not sealed it properly.  I'd already pulled most of the rot out and decided to finish cleaning it up and splice in a new piece.

I was sat on board having some lunch with Karen (thanks Babe x) when I noticed daylight through the panel, I though it was just where nails have gone through, but on further examination I realised it was more rot!

I cut out the rot and decided to use epoxy, plus epoxy filler to glue in the new piece, you can see the new panel in place with the filler going off, as the new panel is slightly thinner than the old one, plus the old one has a slight curve in it, the only way I could think was to use small pieces of wood to hold it in place.  The obvious problem is the epoxy, I knew the support pieces would stick so I only allowed the smallest of overlaps.

I also decided to start striping the rear panel, using nitromors a heat gun and a very, very sharp scraper.  You can see the results below, the panel on the left is ready to be sanded and epoxy'd.

9th May 2010

I'd not spent much time on Sabrina over the last couple of weekends but managed to rebuild the rear hatch cover.  The cover was still covered in vinyl and I assumed that it should be ok and might just need a little filling, but like most things on her once I'd striped off the covering I found that the plywood was shot so I decided to cut a new piece from an off cut that I had.

The problem that I wanted to avoid was having to shape the roof, all the edges on Sabrina are curved, its one of the things that I love about her.  My woodworking skills are not bad, but if I'm not "in the zone" then it doesn't always work out how I expect, plus once glued, it ain't going to come apart again.

However it worked out and I was more than happy with the result, photos will follow when I mount it.

11th April 2010

I've spent most of the day cleaning up the rot behind the cockpit and cutting out the rotten piece of wood, as you can see from the following photo the rot is very bad:

I've spent so long cutting rotten bits out I decided to start putting something back together, there is a small locker below the wheel, all the ply had rotted and also one of the uprights.  The problem that I keep facing is find timber of the right thickness, 1" thick hardwood for example tends to be 22mm thick so I end up having to buy 2" (44mm) and planing it down.

I  made the new upright by doing that and then using a rebate cutter on my router, one thing i would say about doing a wooden boat up is that its a powertool-holics dream.  My current favourite tool is the thicknesser planer.

When I dismantled her I got a little impatient when doing the wardrobe in the front cabin and managed to break the upright that supported the marine ply, so I used the same method as with the locker to make a new upright.  I used a jigsaw to cut the base that clamps to the floor and am more than pleased with the result.

14th March 2010

I decided that today was the day to take off the front cabin that I had assembled as it was only dry fitted and to glue it and screw it back into place.  I started by carefully removing all the timbers off the front and then sanding the old paint off of them, its quite a large area the front cabin, but head height is restricted:

I started using brass screws when I first started doing her up, but they are too soft for use with a electric screwdriver, so I switched to stainless steel, there are harder, but their heads have a habit of twisting off so everything is drilled, counter sunk every 4 inches.  You can see from the following photos that the panels at the side have taken on their curve shape:

You can see the extent of the wood that has had to be replaced by the colour difference, I've used about 10 sheets of marine ply and will need at least another 5 to complete her.

While clearing out the bilges I found a small patch of rot, that turned out to be a huge patch of rot, about 4' x 2'.  It appears that this is an area that had been patched as the screws holding the rotten panel were stainless steel and the rest of the boat seems to be either copper or brass screws.  I was very disheartened when I found the patch as I had no idea how I was going to fix it.

But thanks to Karens support I've managed to work out how to do it and am not as phased as I was, although it did feel at the time that it was going to be the end of the Sabrina.

The back cabin had become a dumping ground for bits of the boat, its getting tidier since removing the sea toilet, more photos to follow:

13th March 2010

I'd decided that it was time to remove the old sea toilet that was in the boat, the hole in the bottom would need to be filled, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.  My plan is to replace the porta potti that was in the bathroom with a composting toilet from The Canal Shop they do a converted one that seems ideal for our boat, the model I'm looking at is Separett Mobile Composting Toilet.

The old sea toilet was a bit of a pain to remove, but I got there in the end, now that the room is empty I'm using it to store the wood that is waiting to be used on the boat.

As Karen my partner will testify Health and Safety and me do not mix... when using a lump hammer and a spanner on a metal toilet shaft you really should wear gloves: