January 4, 2020
Upon arriving at the boat, I got started with transferring the shape of the top surface of the molded fiberglass winch cubbies to cardboard; thereby creating a more sturdy template to use in transferring the shape onto a fresh length of teak.
I managed to cull a nice length of 8" wide teak from the inventory. The board was 1.25" thick, so it would need to be planed down by 1/4". I laid out the new winch base templates onto the teak and transferred the shapes in order to cut it out.
Prior to removing the new winch bases from the fresh teak, I ran the board through the planer to remove a 1/4" of the board's thickness. Next, I used a jigsaw to remove the new winch bases from the teak board.
I cleaned up the edges, and then routed an ogee around the outboard edges of the winch bases.
After further fine-tuning with sand paper, I applied a thinned coat of Epifanes Clear Gloss varnish the bases - a sealer coat.
Next on my list for the day would be finishing the new deadlight spacers. Because the laminate of the cabin sides is but a hair over 1/4" thick, the deadlights and interior frames would bottom out without a spacer. When the boat came in to the yard, the spacers being used appeared to be cut-outs from pieces of white starboard, and gooped up with copious amounts of butyl tape. I enjoy a good butyl tape application here and again, but this was ridiculous. Anyway, the plastic spacers went into the trash, and I set out fabricating some new spacers out of teak. For both of the cabin's deadlights, I selected 1/2" pieces of teak to then glue-up in a rudimentary rectangular shape. I cut the lengths and widths to sizes that would allow for the correct dimension so that I could remove the new spacers, custom for each deadlight. The first thing I did was to line up the rough teak frame onto the deadlight itself, then clamp the two pieces together. I then flipped the assembly over, and transferred the inside edge of the deadlight onto the teak.
Using a compass, I scribed a secondary, outer line around the inside line, creating the dimensions for the spacer to then cut out of the fresh teak. I accomplished this with the jigsaw.
After cleaning up the edges, I placed the new spacer onto the deadlight and was satisfied with the fit.
I repeated the same process for the other deadlight, and then sealed the spacers with a thinned coat of Epifanes Clear Gloss varnish.
The last thing I wanted to knock out for the day was to spot fair the cockpit one more time. With good daylight left, I took my time and slowly covered the surface of the cockpit looking for voids and pinholes - I found plenty. I donned a used 150-grit disc of sandpaper and a pencil, then set out to sand and mark each area requiring filling and fairing.
After I sanded and marked each spot, I came back with the vacuum and removed the sanding dust. I followed that effort with a quick solvent wipe down.
Using TotalBoat TotalFair, I mixed the components of the two-part fairing compound and applied it with a small squeegee. I made sure that the the fairing compound was adequately pushed into the voids and that the fairing material stood a bit proud of it surrounding surfaces.
I decided to fill in the old / original coaming block return fastener holes on the cabin sides, opting to drill out new ones when I install the new brightwork. I tapered each side of the old fastener holes, and with a small patch of sandpaper sanded the interior of the fastener holes. After solvent-washing the holes, I taped off the interior side and applied fairing compound to the exterior opening. I later came back to remove the tape and apply a skim coat to the interior side. I'll fair the surfaces by sanding them, and then apply primer paint.
Total Time Today: 4.5 hrs
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