| Bolero
Project |
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 Details, details: virtually all that remained was a few details. For instance, I completed the minor modification to the cockpit sole that I began late yesterday. I drilled and counterbored the holes for the machine screws with which to resecure the bilge pump, and then bunged the holes once I'd secured the pump. This made for a much cleaner and more attractive overall installation than my original attempt, and completed the work on the cabin sole. |
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Next, I installed the solid cherry locker door on the forward bulkhead. I secured the hinge section with two bronze screws, which I hid beneath the hinges themselves. Once I had the door hung, I determined the proper location for the latch assembly, and epoxied the small block in place, using a dab of hot glue to hold it while the epoxy cured. |
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Similarly, I reinstalled the after bulkhead's elliptical hatch. Intending to spray-paint the little handle that came on the hatch--which looked like a cheap, terrible piece of insignificant metal--I started to sand it lightly to prepare for paint. Imagine my surprise to discover that the little handle was bronze. So I cleaned it up a bit with sandpaper and reinstalled it, then installed the hatch with some gasket material on the flange and four machine screws, to enable later removal if desired. |
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I applied a coat of gray paint to the bottoms of the v-berth locker hatches, to match the lockers beneath, varnished the companionway hatch slide once again, and then installed the cabin sole with four bronze screws and some brown sealant along the edges to fill the gap against the hull. |
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To protect the toerail against chafe in way of the after mooring cleat, for the projected rare dock tie-ups, I installed 18" lengths of brass half oval on the top of the toerails, centered on the cleat and secured with bronze screws. |
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With all the major work on deck complete, I decided I could reconfigure the staging and install the cove stripe. Earlier, I'd determined that the top of the stripe should be 2" below the toerail, so I applied a strip of 2" masking tape as a spacer, stretching the tape out to allow it to stick in a fair line. Then, I installed a 1/2" wide gold leaf cove stripe just beneath the tape spacer, using a premanufactured vinyl product with the appropriate simulated gold leaf pattern and further fairing the final installation by eye as I went. |
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It was a beautiful day, so with the staging now out of the way for good I pulled the boat outdoors for a looksee. I took a few photos, too. |
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Lest we forget from whence we came, I've included here a few photos of the boat from June 2007, when I traveled to inspect the boat in Connecticut before purchase. |
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Afterwards, since some hardware I'd ordered late yesterday defied all shipping logic and arrived a day earlier than I expected, I worked on installing the teak blocks I'd started for the underdeck oar storage. I found that the through-deck compasses affected the placement of the oars, so I had to re-make the two forward blocks to offset the oar handles to one side of the protrusion. Then, I epoxied the blocks in place. For the section with the blade, I arranged the blocks so the paddle end was held in place between the deck above and the block's shape itself, and at the other end I installed a silver-finished brass slide bolt that slid into the large hole at the top of the section, securing it in place. (The brushed sliver finish on the barrel bolt nicely matched the machined aluminum of the oar body.) |
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For the straight handle section, I lucked out: by boring a slightly smaller hole in one of the supporting blocks, the smaller insert section of the handle (which slips into the oar section when assembling the entire oar) would be naturally limited in movement by the machined shoulder on the handle; additionally, the push button that secures the oar sections together worked well for this storage system, preventing the handle section from sliding out of the support. At the other end, all I needed was a basic hole large enough to slip the end in. |
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The list of items remaining before I could call this job complete was remarkably short, and I planned to attend to the remainder within the next day or two.
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