Bolero Project | Saturday, July 26, 2008

I began with some varnish work--I sanded and revarnished the small parts up in the finishing room so that I'd be sure to have time to keep the process moving.  Some of the exterior parts still required many coats of varnish before they'd be complete, and since I didn't have time to varnish yesterday, I knew I had to continue today.

Next, I cleaned up the now-cured (or mostly-cured) sealant squeezeout from around some of the deck hardware that I'd recently installed.


    


Then, I installed the stem casting, this time using mahogany-colored sealant so that I could create smooth beads of visible sealant around the edges of the casting where it met the adjacent toerails.  Later, I'd clean up the excess.



I masked off and cleaned up the v-berth platform, then applied the initial coat of paint to the platform and its numerous inserts.


    


Next, I completed the construction work on the cockpit sole grate by installing the remaining screws as needed, and then cutting and inserting teak bungs in all the holes; I left the glue to cure fully.



The manual bilge pump was slated to be installed on the underside of the cockpit grating, with a through-deck mounting plate for pumping access without removing the grating.  Additionally, we planned on installing a dual-purpose deck fitting in the grate:  for attaching a discharge line to the bilge pump (again, to avoid a need to somehow run hoses through the installed grating), and also to   support a threaded table leg for a cockpit table.  I had to ensure that the spacing between these two items would work as intended, and also found a need to install some blocking to better support the new installations. 

So I lightly epoxied some teak blocks of appropriate size to the underside of the grating, weighted it down to clamp it in place, and left the epoxy to cure overnight.


    


Total Time on This Job Today:  5.25  hours

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