I can almost smell the paint

Yes i'm almost there with the deck, i have a few more bits in the cockpit to fill and fair namely all then and we'll be ready to prime. I've also been busy prototyping the coamings with an eye to getting them made this coming week. That said i have a set of wardrobes to make and fit this week too but i seem to have found my mojo or a bit of it despite the heat wave.

It is because of the weather i've been keeping odd hours on the boat - either starting early or working on into the night as this is when the temperatures are at their lowest. I'm hoping over a few evenings next week i'll have the cockpit ready for barrier coating and then i can mask up and get priming.

I'd like to say that the filling and fairing on this project has been fun but that would be one bloody great lie for it is a truly arduous task that i will never repeat; i promise you that. If i ever buy another boat (which i don't think is likely) and it has osmosis - tough shit, its not getting a peel knowing what it takes to remediate

I still feel a little anxious as we move into the latter half of the year with no topcoat on the hull but judging how inconsistent the UK weather is its got to be done in the next couple of months as i can't face the hassle i had at the beginning of the year with all the delays the weather bought.

One thing i have never quite reconciled is how long everything takes when you work alone, it drives me to despair at times, going about my tasks ticking them off one by one and you stand back and see what its contributed to the overall project and i think is it ever going to get finished? It will of course, but i would happily sit down with anyone contemplating what i am doing and try to talk you out of it.

I thought the other day how it would of been easier to have started with a brand new hull & deck (if such a thing existed) but then i thought no it wouldn't as i have structurally modified so much it would of been easier to have built a new boat from plans. I'm being slightly gloomy and i have no one to blame for where i'm at but myself but i just can't reconcile the sheer amount of effort required on a constant basis to make the smallest of steps.

So i look to August as a pivotal point in this project as when the boat's primed and the engine on its bearers it should will be downhill all the way.

Right, where was i?

Spending all of June and the first week of July working on the bungalow wasn't really what I envisaged. I only intended to shoot-in new internal doors and give them a lick of paint. However when looking at brand new painted doors against cracked walls as well as discoloured gloss and the now shitty looking original joinery I inadvertently set about tidying the place up unintentionally re-decorating, re-plastering and re-making all the joinery in the process.

Now some six weeks later I can get on with the business of boat(re)building. Right: now where did we get to last time? I'd just finished the cockpit speakers and that weekend I started cutting bales of cloth for the windows.

Thats right I'd just started work for the second time on making the windows having not been particularly excited about the wooden frames I'd made some two years previous. Still the idea was sound just the execution poor so decided to copy the frame i'd made in marine ply using epoxy and cloth so no chance of rot.

I would make each frame as a three part affair; outer frame (the bit you see externally) then the mid section and then a trim piece to sit over everything inside. Now to speed this up I would batch each lot of frames so i would make four outers then four middles and four inners, sounds good no?

Infact I'm still abit pissed off with the amount of time and money i wasted (2 days and £100). I thought it'd be a great idea to laminate all four panels up in one hit separated by peel ply. Long story short i ended up with a panel of solid bi-ax 1000mm x 600mm and about 20mm thick that I only managed to separate with wedges and a large mallet and not without alot of damage to the panels but as with everything on this project another lesson hard learned.

If i'm being honest the work on the bungalow was a convenient distraction, as by the beginning of June I had worked some four months straight give or take the odd day for paid work and was finding it hard to keep the pace.

It hasn't helped though going straight back into fine filling & detailing the deck and companionway, tedious at best but with extra-ordinarily high temperatures it makes the day a little more tetchy when epoxy kicks super fast. Still; taking a positive the stanchion bases that were all previously knackered look brand new and should look great once painted.

To help ease myself back into it some more I tackled a job this weekend to make a few more roller bearing bars to hang the various rolls of cloth and peel ply on as the rope was slowly cutting through the cardboard rolls the cloth's mounted on making it impossible to un-roll. At the time of writing this i'm still optimstic about getting the deck primed in the next couple of weeks but i have moments still of feeling totally overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work thats left not to mention money to find.

Roger

Speak to me

I really should make a master list of every single item that will go on the deck moulding as i nearly forgot the housing's for the four speakers in the cockpit. After taking delivery of the Fusion 402's via Ebay i got to work measuring and making and have to say they look pretty blooming good. The goal as with everything in the cockpit is:

1) Flush-mounted so no crick in your back when sat against the coaming and

2) It looks like they should be there, you know 'factory fit' look.

Having acomplished this my mind turned to the locker lids as the last one i made the other day has now been lipped so its time to reinforce them both. The big one i made a while back had started to bow where i had been walking on it un-supported so I decided to dust off the vacuum pump and put the lot in the bag to get the lid straight.

As of this evening to be doubly sure i placed a couple of boxes of plaslode 1st fix nails and a saw on top of one lid while the other didn't look too bad, here take a look.

A week (almost) in pictures

I've really been at it this week having got the last in the trilogy of cockpit lockers fitted out and almost complete. Barring a temporary lack of materials it went quite swimmingly although that did slow my pace a bit.

Next week i'll start on the speakers housings for the cockpit then coamings for the coachroof and finally make the composite window frames after this its sanding time and barrier coat everything thats made of ply with 422B additive as i've got tonnes of the stuff left.

The move after that is to the engine room to start working out bearer placement which i'm none too looking forward to but it must be done. The original plan at this point was to get the engine in and bolted down on its bearers then paint but seeing how much damage i'm doing to things like the cockpit and companionway area i will get the interior bulkheads and frames in so as to minimise any further damage.

The reason why i need to fit interior bulkheads and frames is i'm gutting the saloon as i have figured out an astonishingly easy way of getting a decent size galley and a usable (4'6" x 6'6"') double berth into the main area but more on that another day.

Cheers

Rog

Pull your finger out!

Spent Sunday resting my face..... sounds odd; but too much fine glass dust in contact with your skin and no matter what mask you have - eventually it gets through and quite frankly i was on fire and not in a good way. 

Being a bit bored i took a look at my usual t'internet sites, no not those ones boat ones and thought i'd have a shuffty at Tim Lackey's rather excellent site , (i recommend everyone to by the way) and was amazed to see in the time its taken me to get my boat ready for primer he has completely stripped and rebuilt four whole boats (one a year).

I don't know if Tim has an army of workers or whether he doesn't sleep but i can't figure out how the guy does so much quality work in so little time. To be frank it got to me as i've been working solidly since February give or take for work and thought i was making steady progress but this guys in a different league.

Undeterred i wiped everything from the wipe-clean board and re-wrote my tasks then broke each task down into smaller tasks and now have a site diary with everything written in daily that i want to accomplish. 

Two potential outcomes might occur: either you'll see the Centaur hit the water quicker or i'll hit the bottle quicker, one of two. 

I hope its the former but in all seriousness i have let the day to day planning slip a lot finding myself plodding instead of crashing through the tasks. So todays goals were to cut the hatch garage out and fix a ply panel to it and cut out and frame up the final locker in the cockpit.

I'm pleased to say Job done

Ah that's what I should've done!

Its a little frustrating working on the boat at the moment as i'm cursed with a hindsight-based problem-solving capability. Its happened a few times where i've spent the day making something only to sit back; look at it & instantly come up with a better way of doing it.

I now intend to plan a bit more before jumping in, i did this when it came to making the instrument binnacle as normally i'd look through one of my many sketchbooks and go "that one" and then to the shed to make it.

Not so - since my new-found powers have emerged, i spent half a day making a cardboard prototype of said binnacle and sure enough it looked a bit ridiculous so after a couple of alterations came upon the winning design to which i set about making the thing for real.

I don't know if its down to the fact i'm slowly losing the interest that i'm throwing everything at it or if its just my default setting of 'jump in' and worry about everything afterwards but once more with an eye to my ever reducing wallet  i need to stop and plan more so as to keep waste to a minimum.

Still that said i now have the binnacle and hatch garage all finished, i just need to glass in the hatch top but for some peel ply which i ran out of and then onto the coamings which i'll start this week. 

After that frame up the cockpit tidies cut in the speaker housings and frame up another locker to port and we're ready for primer. I've still got just under three weeks to achieve this so will push like crazy to get there.  

All hand's on deck!

After what seemed an eternity (two months) working my amateurish magic on the hull i could finally look upwards to all things deck based..........yes! I'd finally have gravity working with me for a change. I got done sanding the hull back to 400grit by mid April then had a couple of days tidying away the canopy and getting sorted for a move upstairs. 

I was trying to remember the last time i did anything on the deck as there was plenty of unsanded filler about, the main goal was to get a lot of the detailing sorted like filleting and glassing-in all things wooden. Originally i was going to barrier coat the wood but like the keels i don't ever want this job again so have gone for the 'belt and braces' approach of sheathing everything in 450g biaxial cloth.

First thing was rounding over every square edge to get the cloth to sit down, not a big job on paper but in practice two very long days. 

I decided i'd mask up as much as i could as i have an almost pathological aversion to avoidable sanding and hoovering. As i write this all the woodwork is now waterproof if a little ribbed in places. I've also fitted the front end piece to take the bow roller and windlass so that went on today so i'm getting through the jobs but with only one pair of hands there's still  loads to do.

Next on the list is to fill in the centre of the old hatch garage to avoid water getting trapped and then onto making the instrument binnacle and coamings. Seeing as paid work's at an absolute minimum i want the deck ready for primer by the end of May...........here's hoping.