December 23, 2019
Scupper 208
Monday
As a sort of break and change of pace, I chose to focus for a day on some ancillary, yet still critical, portions of the project that could otherwise tend to be pushed aside in favor of some of the larger ongoing jobs.
To begin, I checked the fit of the after bilge switch platform I’d glued up last time, and found that indeed it would still work fine even though I’d mistakenly glued the top piece on backwards, so I went ahead and sanded the two platforms as needed to clean them up for paint and final fitting. I added wire tie mounts near the top of each platform to help guide the switch wires, then painted the platforms with bilge paint.
I surface-planed some rough teak 8/4 stock as needed to smooth the sawmill marks, and dimension the wood as needed for the bowsprit. Afterwards, I straightened one edge with a simple plywood straightedge and a circular saw, then trimmed the opposite edges of the two boards on the table saw to prepare for gluing up into a blank wide enough for the new bowsprit.
Afterwards, I glued the two board together and clamped them securely.
After setting the assembly aside to cure, I got back to work on the original cabin table, which I’d stripped and mostly sanded during the end of Phase 2 earlier in the year. Now, I went over the table base, leaves, and top and sanded everything with 220 grit to prepare for finishing. Then, after vacuuming and solvent-washing to remove dust, I applied a sealer coat of varnish to all sides of all pieces.
To finish up some of the lighting and wiring in the cabin, I required a few additional trim pieces, including the following:
- To cover the exposed wiring on the forward bulkhead (from lights and fans)
- A purpose-built strip to hold two recessed puck lights the owner selected for the galley, plus a wire chase to hide the wiring from there
- A ring to hold a third recessed puck light that would be mounted on the overhead near the companionway
- A cover plate to hide a wire chase that I planned to build into the mast compression post
During the rest of the day, I milled, sanded, and otherwise prepared these trim pieces as required, so that by the end of the day I had everything ready for primer or sealer coats of varnish as needed.
Total time billed on this job today: 6.5 hours
0600 Weather Observation: 18°, partly clear. Forecast for the day: Mostly sunny, 42°