Back to work!

Not real work although i have got a weeks worth at the end of this week so i guess having everything ready for primer at the end of June has gone for a burton still could do with the money tbh. Just spent the entire day fighting the rudder tube assembly, i wanted to remove the rotten plywood pad the boss sits on and also when it comes to painting i want the minimum of masking so no chance of any paint peeling.

I had this down as an hours work this morning but hadn't banked on it not playing ball and so ended up wasting most of the day in the workshop fashioning various tools out of mild steel to undo said boss. As is always the case the tool that worked was stupidly simple - a piece of 50mm flat bar about a foot long with two notches cut in to fit around the two pins on the boss, (Centaur owners will know what i mean) and bobs yer uncle.

As of writing i have just got done, such was the effort i've had enough for today plus i smell of wd40 & acetone so beer-a-clock me thinks and back to the cockpit drains and bulkheads tomorrow.

cheers

Full ahead stop!

Have come back from Bournemouth Hospital having had my left knee x-rayed and have found the reason why i've been hobbling around the last few days.

It turns out i've damaged the medial ligament in my left knee. Funny really as i had an ace day out on Sunday on a friends Beneteau 285 and the pain seemed to ease either that or as i think was the case i was still drunk from the night before.

Still we had 8.5 knots of boat speed at one point but i did have it on her ear the entire time from Cowes back to Ocean Village, great fun though getting into an impromptu race with a Sadler 29 and a Dufour 325, we beat the Dufour and had caught the Sadler up but then he unfurled his genoa and left us for dead.

However after getting home i sat down for an hour or so then went to get up and realised i could hardly walk and it just got worse throughout Monday, i remember it hurting when i got up from tabbing in a bearer for the gas locker bulkhead but thought nothing of it.

So i've been told to rest my knee for a week or two which is a bit of a pain as all the work for the foreseeable future requires crawling around on my hands and knees.

Cheers

Almost down to a crawl

Managed to hurt my knee quite badly just my putting all my weight on it via a blob of hardened resin - bloody painful so i have awarded myself a day off (Sat).

Still pushing the jobs through though its funny as its a a bit chicken and egg at the moment in terms of to get one job done i have to undo another.

For example i need to cut the floor away in the aft locker to get access to rudder tube and then this creates access problems to the rest of the area so tabbing in bulkheads blind or at best using a shaving mirror placed in the bilge isn't helping things move none too quick, but progress is progress i guess.

I really don't want this to run past another week as i'm tiring of squeezing myself into spots that are slightly smaller than me.

Slowing down a bit.

Yes the reality of the task is setting in not that i'm surprised but it must be said working on my own is wearing me down of late, i'm still ticking jobs off but the original time frame was 4-6 weeks to get the deck moulding up together to prime.

Well i've had a few work commitments to fulfil but other than that have spent the rest of my time on the boat but somehow it doesn't look any different - its funny had a guy come over to pick up an outboard i'd sold him via ebay and got talking to him about this.

Turns out he was at Southampton Institute the same time i was studying yacht design, he was on the boat manufacture course in the same faculty he encouraged me saying in a few weeks it will suddenly take shape as you pull all these seemingly disparate jobs together. Needless to say he's no longer in boat building, no money in it - i feel this way with cabinet making (the job i had before going to uni and the one i subsequently returned to after dropping out).

So with this encouragement and the fact works scarce i'm still driving through the jobs one of which was cutting away the floors in the back of the boat this included adding two longitudinal bulkheads also got the toe rails cut and glassed in.

Success!

After finishing the pads on the inside of the coach roof it was time to cut in the gas locker so after waiting a couple of minutes for the brave pills to kick in i measured then measured again and just to be sure had one more look then went for it with the air saw.

These are great tools - no vibration relatively light too so all you have to worry about is holding the tool on the line, this enabled me to cut a perfectly accurate shape. I decided to start off small so did the gas locker on Friday which went successfully although i couldn't get over the thickness of the lay up in the cockpit (12 - 14 mm).

On Saturday i framed it up with marine ply creating the drainage detail and sides which will take the hinge and ram. It feels a bit hairy as the grain is raised from me drowning everything in resin but i'm pleased with the initial result so will start filling/fairing later in the week.

Monday came and buoyed with the success of the gas locker i decided to retire the brown trousers and red tunic such was my confidence and began marking out the big locker on the starboard side.

I'm pleased to report it went without a hitch and i now have the beginnings of two decent looking lockers. The point of this was to create storage and obviously to adhere to gas regulations but above all i hate those bloody sit-on mouldings that westerly made and fitted from the late seventies onwards.

They leak they don't look great imo and they're uncomfortable to sit on, the early boats (laurent giles era) had proper moulded-in lockers so i guess the accountants had a say in the making of the newer ones shame really.

That's that bit done.....................

Got the last reinforcement that i can do done as irish as that sounds i have two more on the forward part of the coach roof to take the organisers but until i know where a couple of other pieces of hardware are going to go i can't place them yet.

I have got through all of the 25kgs of polyester with about an 1" left in the bottom, decided i'm going to take my brave pills tomorrow and start on the cockpit lockers. I say brave pills as this involves alot of cutting in the cockpit and in such a way that if done wrong will take a lot to put right.

So will spend a large part of Thursday drawing lines all over the cockpit and checking where existing bulkheads are, i was going to jump onto the hatches and companionway hatch but since i'm still waiting for the two hatches for the saloon i will concentrate/do battle with the cockpit area once more and just when i thought the aft locker was a memory too.

I'll post some piccy's of the reinforcing work end of the week.

Still kicking ass and taking names.

Yes as the yanks would say its still full steam ahead in the shed and what with the epiphany i've had this week about using polyester resin its all going swimmingly.

Since the start of the project i've been using west's epoxy but what with money being thin and the need to get on with work i have decided to use polyester for internal/non-structural work and leave the epoxy for external/structural stuff - its saving a small fortune.

This past week i have got all the deck reinforcements bonded into place and have started tabbing them to the hull, the only fly in the ointment is the styrene fumes - in a confined space its postively awful even with a full respirator & eye protection but at one sixth the price of epoxy i will be using this stuff alot more.

Next week after i've finished the inside of the deck my attentions turn to the outside of the deck. That entails cutting away the old box hatch surround and to get the new ones made primed and dry-fitted to the deck along with continuing the filling and fairing i'm on course to get the deck finished in the next couple of weeks.