Thursday, November 30, 2017

Back in the Shop

Finally back to posting after a long hiatus.  I've made some progress on the boat; all the steel screws are out of the hull, all ribs have been repaired,  the interior of the boat has been stripped of paint, cheap poly faux varnish, and old varnish.   I am finishing up the repair of the planks before they go back on.  Some repairs require drilling out an area and gluing in a plug.  Larger areas require chiseling out a section and putting in a dutchman/scarf, and a few areas under the waterline (which will be painted) just get some epoxy.

filling a few screw holes with epoxy.  When a screw hole is ok, but has been roughed up to the point a screw won't seal in it, I normally just put some tape on the underside of the hold and then drop in some epoxy.  The end result is a finished surface on the front that can then be redrilled  and the back can be planed off.  Its a pretty good solution
You can see all the repairs to the stem and the ribs.  These planks are almost ready to go back on


A view from the stern



Whisker Pole Repair

I also took some time to repair the whisker pole.   It broke during the move, but I was glad it did because it would have never lasted on the water.  I had been broken before and the tip had been replaced with some straight dowel that had been glued into a hole drilled into the original inboard piece.   instead of the butt joint, i did a similar scarf joint to what I did for Gigi's mast last summer.


here is the new section laid up with epoxy, just waiting for it to set
A view from the inboard end; I'll need to add some leather here in the throat.  You can just barely see the joint at the other end after the excess wood has been planed off



Here is the jig I build for cutting the scarfs on the whisker pole.  As you can see, its pretty simple, but effective.