[Kudzu]

That looks slicker than greased snot on a door knob! 😁 Very nice!!

Ken

Don't look to close. There are still lots of flaws.

 

[BigJim]

If you ever want to see all the imperfections in anything, especially a sheetrock wall, lay a drop light with a shield against the wall, it will show every imperfection. It may work on your boat also. It sure does look nice, I would be proud of it.

 

[Kudzu]

Took a couple of weeks off after that hull refinishing marathon. I never stop but I worked much less and I worked on small things. Touch-ups, small repairs. Nothing worth showing because they really didn't show.

Pulled the decks off and finished up some things under the deck. Then put them on for good. I bet there are well over a 200 screws in that deck!

Hoisted her up and slide the trailer underneath.

She is outside now.

I need the shop space so I can spread out my tools. I need to make a few pieces and I have LOTS of sanding and varnishing ahead of me. Need a spot out of weather to work and there just isn't much room in there the boat.

Need to get a lean-too off the side of the shed to store her under really soon.

 

[Tree Hugger]

Took a couple of weeks off after that hull refinishing marathon. I never stop but I worked much less and I worked on small things. Touch-ups, small repairs. Nothing worth showing because they really didn't show.

Pulled the decks off and finished up some things under the deck. Then put them on for good. I bet there are well over a 200 screws in that deck!

Hoisted her up and slide the trailer underneath.

She is outside now.

I need the shop space so I can spread out my tools. I need to make a few pieces and I have LOTS of sanding and varnishing ahead of me. Need a spot out of weather to work and there just isn't much room in there the boat.

Need to get a lean-too off the side of the shed to store her under really soon.

Looking good.
Silicone Bronze screws right? I looked into Stainless Steel to save money until I read about crevis corrosion.
I spent about 15 years aligned with the fastener industry and never heard of it .

 

[Kudzu]

Have not updated this lately but been really busy. First big project was more stripping and refinishing. This time it was the inner panels. They are varnished, not painted. Lots of work. Sanded them all down. Then used a filler stain which has to be rubbed on and off by hand.

Started varnishing and snapped a photo. Forgot to get any photos after I got 4 coats on them. Will get that when I get back to them.

Cutting all new seats for the rear. Lower one was replaced at some point with painted plywood so I am really glad to see it in mahogany again.

There are two parts don't have a square corner on them. Nothing but compound angles. Mating compound miters and rolling bevels. They sit on the curved deck under the windshield, splayed backwards. Pretty proud of the way it came out. Granted I had a pattern but it was bugger to make!

This is still rough cut, before I fitted it to the deck. I will get better photos when I install them.

Dry fitting the inwales. More compound mating miters. A TON of screw holes to be drilled.

Floors cleaned up pretty good. Have a couple of panels to replace but most of it is still good. Still a lot to do but really feels like we are in the home stretch

 

[Kudzu]

I have spent all of this week working on four boards. 80% of that time on two of them.
These two!

These two really put up a fight. I would assemble them in place on the windsheilf frame. Put it on the boat and scribe the curve.

Trim and test fit and they fit the deck very well. Very happy so I then assembled them and when I put it on the boat there would be a big gap on both outside edges.

Scribe again, trim, test fit, then assemble and same issue.

Rinse and repeat

After thee attempts I was absolutely baffled. How could they fit and then suddenly not fit? I was when I loosened up the screws holding them to the frame that I found the issue. It was not the rolling bevels that were wrong, it was the top side! Tuns out they are not flat and parallel after all.

NOTHING, not one surface on these is flat, square or parallel! Even though they looked flat and inline, they were not. Every surface is at an angle. Nothing but compound angles and rolling bevels.

I mounted these to the boat and then trimmed the tops with a plane and it all finally lined up like it should.

Now it time to take it all apart (again). Then sand, stain and varnish all the parts I have made over the last two weeks.

 

[Woodworking Wolf]

Tell is about the gauges. Original, new replacements, rebuilt? Which functions do they monitor?

 

[Kudzu]

Tell is about the gauges. Original, new replacements, rebuilt? Which functions do they monitor?

Stock, standard things. RPM, oil pressure, temp and amps.

 

[Woodworking Wolf]

Stock, standard things. RPM, oil pressure, temp and amps.

Did you do anything to clean them up? They are far away in the picture, but they look clean, bright and shiny.

 

[Kudzu]

Did you do anything to clean them up? They are far away in the picture, but they look clean, bright and shiny.

No, just general cleaning.They show some age up close but overall good.

 

[m.n.j.chell]

.

 

[woodnthings]

Boat builders and luthiers are all in a woodworking class of their own!
To fit a curved cowl with a descending angle times two, certainly would tax my skills.
It's like making a giant template, I've made a lot of square edge templates, but never one with a variable angle edge. WOW!
I give you tons of credit!

 

[DrRobert]

Boat builders and luthiers are all in a woodworking class of their own!
To fit a curved cowl with a descending angle times two, certainly would tax my skills.
It's like making a giant template, I've made a lot of square edge templates, but never one with a variable angle edge. WOW!
I give you tons of credit!

Amen! I had a wild idea about getting a houseboat to use as a second home after I retire. The boss thinks I’m crazy.

 

[Kudzu]

To fit a curved cowl with a descending angle times two, certainly would tax my skills.

I had the old damaged one to use as a starting point but fitting them taxed me. It is a slow sort of tedious part. I actually enjoy it but it is frustrating at times too. Just takes lot of CAREFUL measuring and set up. Forgo the power tools for hand tools to fine fit them.

What is fun is all the coumpound miters. I could spend a half an hour measuring and setting up the RAS for a cut that takes less than a minute. But it is great feeling when it works.

 

[Kenh3497]

Amen! I had a wild idea about getting a houseboat to use as a second home after I retire. The boss thinks I’m crazy.

I think the boss is right! 😁 😁

Ken

 

[Kudzu]

Amen! I had a wild idea about getting a houseboat to use as a second home after I retire. The boss thinks I’m crazy.

if you can afford it is not crazy, just expensive.

Some of our freinds think we are nuts. We are very seriously looking at buying an Narrow boat (google it) and spending a couple of years cruising the UK canals. They make a House boat look like a mansion. If we can swing buying a boat it is cheap way to live and see a lot of the UK. There is over 2,000 miles of connected canals. Living on the boat is cheap, the boat it not. No way could we afford to spend a year there any other way.

 

[Kudzu]

COVID is no joke!
As careful as we are especially my wife, she caught it. Which of course meant I got it from her. Today is two weeks since the first symptoms and it is the first day I have felt like actually doing much. The last week has just been fatigue, to tired to do much at all. Short walks. Piddle with carb off my golf cart.

Today I managed to sand down the previous varnish work and apply another coat. It's lunch time and I stil feel OK so I must finally be getting better.

Working on my varnishing skills. There is a at to it and while mine is getting better it is still a long way to go. But I am getting there.

First coat on this one so it looks rough and it was. But after a few coats and sanding between coats is looks much better.

Expect to bring the boat back in the shop in couple of weeks. Time to start putting it back together. Still some small stuff to make but I can work with in there once I get all theses part varnished.

 

[Kudzu]

Still varnishing stuff.

Took the second seat apart and did some repairs and stripped the old finish off. Then more staining and varnishing. Big stack of varnished wood in the background.

Decided I had to do something else. Tired of sitting waiting on varnish to dry.

Rolled the boat in the shop, took it off the trailer and started to finish the decks. Filling the screw holes. Then time to sand it down, a coat of paint and after any touch-ups it should be ready to apply the vinyl to the deck. Then I can get serious about putting it all back together!

 

[Kudzu]

Still varnishing parts but between other projects I finally got the deck sanded and a couple of coats of paint on it.

While the boat sat outside it rained on it a couple of times. I found a stain on the transom that turned out to be rot I had not previously found. There is a trim strip that goes over this so I decided to just cut it out and put a small piece rather than remove the transom and do a proper repair.

I cut a piece from something I had replaced elsewhere on the boat. This will match the best and be the least obvious repair.

I am going to strip the transom again and bleach it, so it should be a pretty close match once done.

Next week I should start to put the interior back into the boat. Get some of these new parts fitted and out of the way. I can hardly move in the shop right now for all the pieces laying around.

 

[Kudzu]

If you have ever taken on a long term project like a restoring a boat you can probably relate to this.

My boat did not have rubrails when I bought it. A couple of years ago I got lucky and found a stainless set for free. If you have not priced them, stainless rub rails are not cheap!

We moved since then and I was very careful with these. I put them in a safe place where they would not be damaged of lost.

I have a storage room where a lot of the boat parts are stored till I need them. The rest went to my shop. For the last 3-4 months I have been looking for the rubrails but could not find them anywhere.

Today scouring the shop yet again behind the air compressor. I saw the bottom of them shrink wrapped together. I was so relived!

Then I looked up and was left rather bewildered. How the heck have I been looking for months and not seem them??