Ben started the week bitching about the planer. He needed to plane some boards and the machine needed adjusting. I started changing the blades, then showed Ben and passed the job off to him. First he leveled all four corners of the bed.
He removed and replaced one blade at a time and set the height plus or minus .005" using a dial indicator.
Dogged down each blade.
And tapped them into place. Hey, this is as exciting as our week gets. The romance of sailing. my ass. This took the better part of a day+. Finally. he started planing the first piece of wood.
Only to discover it was thicker at one side. After much trying (the second day), we figured out that the bed was worn down in the center of the table. This will require a machine shop to level the bed again. We remedied it by running the board through twice, swapping ends to get it consistent. Some day I'll break the machine down and get it machined, but not in the near future (or the far future). Now a lengthy and boring description of what we are doing with the mast case. This is for all those Tiki 38 builders out there. Our mast case sides are made of 18mm ply, doubled in spots and reinforced with white oak.
And why?????? Because, dammit.......... We decided to use the case as the mounting base for the windlass (electric............because I'm lazy and have nothing to prove anymore). We will also store the anchor chain in the case, so we deepened it, too. We moved all this behind the mast to distribute the weight between the beam in the center of the boat. We will also have another locker for storage.
This Mo-Fo started getting complicated, so budgetboater came out to assist. I watched Grin and Bear It, the boater kids, while they worked.
The Blue Hand Group................... This is hard to describe, but, since when has that stopped my literary meanderings? OK, closest to us, bottom of photo is a notch that will sit on the forward beam. That divider in the middle is where the mast sits, leaned back to 81 degrees. The holes are for water drainage. The second divider is a storage locker behind the mast. The extended portion behind will accommodate the winch on top and have anchor chain stowage below. It will have a floor. Another notch in the rear to sit on the next beam. They glued up half the case as shown.
And dry fitted the other side, hammering and muttering was involved....................................
Ben Finally had to prep the other side. He's either sanding, or tryouts for a superhero job are open. He'll go as The Sandman. On Saturday, Budge had a previous commitment, so Mrs. Boater, driven mad by Grin and Bear It, came out to help us glue on the other case half.
Applying epoxy to coat the raw wood, then thickened epoxy to glue the two sides together.
It went pretty smoothly.
Meanwhile, I proceeded to pursue my perpetual picayune projects.
Like the patented pivoting paper products holder. I had nailed a couple sticks on the epoxy bench, but the Texas winds blowing back and forth would unwind them slowly. So I had Ben loosely screw a couple of more sticks to hold down the towels. It works great! Small victories............................
I worked on trim projects cleaning up the shelves and such. I just stuck the camera through the hatch and pressed the button, ergo, the tilt.
It's hard to take pictures of stuff, as the cabins are, like my mind, narrow.
Galley above, Chart space below. I cannot say chart room, as it's tiny.
Top
Bottom. No top on it yet. And, it needs more trim pieces. I also worked on the Mirror dinghy.
Sanded to prepare for painting the interior. I also applied three coats of varnish to tiller, rudder, dagger board gaff, boom and mast ends,
That boxy thing is a tilt-out for the galley. That blue thing in the bottom left corner is my tea cup. That hand thing on the upper left is Ben's hand. The rest is gaff, boom, tiller.....and a rag.
And put the bits and pieces together. The rudder is reassembled and things are screwed to gaff and tiller. Now I'm bored............did I really post a picture of a roll of paper towels??? This is supposed to be a website of mind blowing (numbing?) awsomness, not pictures of sticks on paper towels. OK, let's hang it up for this week.
The Music ♫♫: Age and Ages, "Do The Right Thing"
We just heard this this week. Soooooo much good music out there................
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