Thread: The project

This afternoon I fitted and glued in the last planks on both port and stbd side of the deck strips.
I also laminated up some Mahogany offcuts to make the nose block.

I decided to give the cheap belt sander I have a go. So I put a new belt on it and started sanding the aft deck. I was pleasantly surprised with the finish but by gosh it's noisy. Have to wear the earplugs when using it.
Tomorrow I will buy a couple of finer grit belts and some discs for the orbital sander. If I get time I will hit the rest of the deck with the belt sander and see how it comes up.

Cheers
Peter

The whole deck area has now been hit with the belt sander. The surface has come up really quite good.

Probably spent about 2 1/2 - 3 hours on the end of a really noisy sander.
This afternoon I started to set up for glueing the Mahogany onto the engine hatch. I am hoping to get a fair bit of it done over the next couple of days.

More photos soon.

It's a shame when paid work interrupts hobby work but that's what happened yesterday and again today.
As a result the work on the engine hatch cover didn't get to where I wanted but that's what happens sometimes. I have a couple of a couple of strips to glue in place on both sides of the engine hatch then I can think about the hinges. I have a couple already set to go, but will wit till I get all the strips on before I put them in place.
Tomorrow I think that I will work out the screw pattern for the transonic style piece and then sand off the top to the deck camber and then glue it in place. I may have to sand off some of the varnish on the transom before glueing it in place.

Sunday I may get a chance to glue one of the coamings in place.

Don't you just love predictive text. I have just read the previous posting and it changed the transom into something entirely un recognisable.

In the last week I have able to fit and glue in place the transom style piece, the port and stbd coamings and the laminated nose block. It looks really good.

I have trimmed up the hole for the engine hatch and hope that the engine hatch fits better when I next try the fit. If it doesn't appear to fit better than last time I will just junk it and start again. I'll find out this weekend when I try the fit again.

The cockpit Silver Ash trim pieces are made although I am not sure about the shape of the trim pieces. I may have to just try the ones that have been trial fitted and see what they look like.

Peter

Originally Posted by piquet

transonic style piece

I think my boat needs one of these. It could be a hip dance band.

The engine hatch doesn't fit any where neatly enough. So the decision is that I will have to manufacture a new one that does. I have most of the material but will have to buy some plantation Mahogany for the strip planking.Today I will cut the frame out and if time permits glue the frame together.Maybe get some more sanding of the deck done. It's down to the final sanding. I'm hoping soon that I can start to get some varnish on things. Maybe the front cockpit floor will be first.

Tha engine hatch framework was glued and screwed together today and the put back into he hole wher it has to fit and made central to all the sides of the hole with some 5mm packers right around.

I also cut the plywood for the top of the hatch roughly to size. Then spent the next hour vacuuming all the dust and shavings out of the bottom of the boat. Probably have to give it another go as there still seems to be a far amount still to be sucked up.
Coming up the next items on the to do list is the stiffeners for the engine hatch, the plywood top the re do all the engine hatch Mahogany strips. Have to go and buy some more Mahogany as I haven't any spare.
BUGGA

The new engine hatch frame work has now Ben completed with all the stiffeners being lued and screwed in place this morning.

I had a visit by a fellow Forumites today to have a look at the progress or lack on the boat. I think he was pleasantly surprised to see where we are now in relation to what the boat was like when I started. Steve gave me a couple of hints one of which was really good that I will be using to get a nice clean radius on the inside of the front cockpit corner knees. It involves making a template to clamp to the deck and the use of a router to ge the edge nice.

Now that I have a Festool RO125 sander that I bought from Cash Converters I will start to do the final deck sand. Tomorrow I will try it out on the aft deck and see how it comes up. By what I have seen and done with it so far I have to say that I'm impressed.
cheers for now,
Peter

The plywood was cut yesterday for the top of the hatch and then glued and nailed in place. This afternoon I will plane the edges to suit the outside of the frame and start to fit the Honduras mahogany to the perimeter of the hatch cover.
I didn't get a chance to try the sander out yesterday.

All the deck strips to cover the engine hatch are machined ready to go. I have changed the size so that it will look totally different to the rest of the boat. That way I don't have to try and line up plank lines make a mistake and make it lookout of wack.
I have also changed the size of the strip around the hatch and made it a little bit wider. It looks a lot better.
Today I will start to glue down the first of the strips and continue with a couple more tomorrow.

The strip planking for the new engine hatch has been glued in place. The sanding is the next big thing which will give the new sander a good workout when I get around to it.
I have also cut some plywood for the seat backrests and the bases. Also the divider between the engine compartment and the rear cockpit. The floor for the rear cockpit has been cut and put in place. Sanding off the engine hatch and the deck top is the next item on the agenda if the weather is fine enough to take off the covers.
If not it will be screwing the floors in place and getting them square ready for the fitting of the seat framework.

It's been a while since I have posted anything on the progress on the boat project. In the intervening period I have sanded off the full deck area with the ROS sander. I did the final sand with the Festool sander with 240 grit paper. Almost too smooth. I have varnished up the engine hatch with 3 coats of Norglass Gloss Polyurethane varnish and have now left it to harden. The dust got to it after the last coat so it will need to be sanded back and at leat another couple of coats applied.

Today after cleaning out and reorganising the carport so that I could get get the whole boat under the carport, I gave the deck one last quick sand and applied 2coats of the thinned varnish wet on wet. I will leave this till tomorrow afternoon before I think about applying another coat to the deck.

If I can't do any varnishing Ill go and play with the trailer. There is probably not a lot to that has to be done. The guards need to be re attached. I will check and redo the wheel bearings, the hubs were new when I bought the boat so they will be OK. The runners need to have new carpet fitted to them. I will probably put some varnish on the runners before I put the carpet back on them. I am also going to make an extra support for the bow of the boat.

Registration may be a bit problematic as it is a pre1991 manufacture and doesn't have a chassis/VIN number. I'm sure Vicroads will be most helpful when I go to register it. Same goes for the boat itself. I have no idea what the previous reg number was or for that matter when it was last registered. Could be some good fun!!

The amount of hook in the keel concerns me.

Have you access to any of the original plans to see if any hook should be present?

It can negatively affect steering if the bow plows due to excess hook in the keel.

Just curious.

Thanks for the comment regards the line of the keel.

When I first bought the boat I was a bit concerned thinking that the keel may have been broken and that the whole boat may have been a throw away item.

I have had a good look at the boat both inside and out and it appears that the boat has been built that way. I have no idea what the idea is behind having the line of the keel like it is but I have seen a couple of other boats that have the same construction.

I can't even identify who was the boatbuilder let alone having some plans. The best part of not having any plans is that in the restoration I have been able to do things to the boat that I like and to change some of the crappy things that were done previously without the risk of someone saying that's not how it looked in an earlier life.

In recent times I have now started to varnish the deck and the engine hatch. Last weekend I gave the whole deck a final sand and was able to sand out some of the water stains on the deck planks. I have since applied 2 coats of 10% thinned varnish, wet on wet, and a further two coats of varnish direct from the can. This weekend, after the varnish has had a 4-5 days to harden up a bit, I will sand the deck back and apply another coat of varnish. I will probably mask the boat up and spray the last two coats of varnish on the deck to get the gloss levels and the flatness of the finish up. The gloss levels are starting to really show through even after the 2 undiluted coats of varnish. It should come up really better when it's sprayed.
I will add some photos soon
The next items will be the upholstery, the engine and the trailer. Probably do the trailer next as then I can lift the boat back off the construction trolley and do the upholstery at the same time.
I am hoping that not much needs to be done to the engine. I will have some idea after I remove the sump and check out the bearings.

cheers
Peter