~MENU~

Archives Menu     Main Project Menu

January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December

mi·nute2    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (m-nt, -nyt, m-) adj. Exceptionally small; tiny. See Synonyms at small. Beneath notice; insignificant. Characterized by careful scrutiny and close examination: held a minute inspection of the grounds. [Middle English, from Latin mintus, past participle of minuere, to lessen. See mei-2 in Indo-European Roots.]

I made minute progress on the boat this week.  All kidding and official definitions aside, at least I started to get back on track.  Read on.

In other shop-related news:  I actually finished the Etchells job last week, though I hadn't had a chance to post any further information or photos at that time.  Now, however, the boat is done and out of the shop, and I've posted some pictures of the priming and painting.

Click here to see the primed and painted Etchells.

With the Etchells out of the shop, I took the opportunity to move all five of the jackstands beneath the Daysailor, to better place the pads for some of the hull work that would be coming up soon.  Moving the stands exposed the last remnants of bottom paint, left over from last summer's stripping.  Then I set the port staging--which I had removed to make room for the Etchells, and to steal the planks for staging for that purpose--back up, once again surrounding the entire boat.

Time to get back to work.

There is also lots of new stuff on Glissando's site, so be sure to check it out.

Looking back, I see that the last time I did any substantive work on the Daysailor was during the last week of April.  That's a long break--longer than I ever anticipated.  With my situation finally getting into something of a normal summer groove after myriad springtime projects and other demands on my time, I was pleased to be able to start dedicating time to the project again, starting this week.

It was a little tough getting back into the groove after so long an absence.  I found that I didn't really know where to begin again.  I spent some time wandering around the boat, inside and out, trying to reacquaint myself with where I had left off.

Eventually, I decided that it was time to get serious about final preparations leading up to deck sheathing:  it was definitely time to get a deck on this boat.  It was a year ago this very week that I cut the original deck off, so it seemed fitting that I press onwards towards its very replacement.

Click here to revisit last year's deck removal, if you want. (Opens in new window)

To prepare for sheathing the deck in the near future, I had a punch list of projects to attend to, mostly surrounding the deck beams and related areas.  These projects had been on my mind for some time, but I just hadn't gotten around to them.  None were large in scope, but each small step is part of the overall process, and cannot be ignored.

Click here for more information about the final pre-sheathing punch list.

Searching for small things to do with the minimal amount of raw materials I had in the shop (I've been postponing another large plywood and lumber order...I like the project better when I avoid those large outlays), I  cut and installed the plywood at the forward end of the cabin sole, filling in the space between the two sides of the passageway.  Then I worked on some planning for an athwartships support for the V-berth plywood, about halfway between the chain locker bulkhead and the chainplate bulkhead.

Click here for more details on the continuing interior substructure.

I continued this week with the pre-decking projects, and made good progress towards that end.  By the end of the week, there was little of any significance remaining before actually beginning the deck sheathing.  However, the installation of the plywood decks will have to wait a bit more, since as of this writing I had not yet purchased the plywood needed for the decks.  My decking plan calls for two layers of plywood:  first, a down-facing layer of cosmetic beadboard plywood, which will be visible between the deck beams from the interior; and then a top layer of 3/8" Meranti plywood.  Finally, I planned to install a couple layers of fiberglass over the entire deck.

Since the beadboard plywood requires a number of coats of paint before installation, I'm looking at at least another week before any installation can occur, assuming I get a chance to buy the material early next week.  We'll see how it goes, though I am anxious to start priming and painting the sheathing.

So what did I get done this week?  

I ground the first coat of epoxy filler over the sheer clamp boltheads, and filled in the resulting divots with a second coat of fairing compound, all towards the goal of a smooth, fair hull in the long run.

I continued work on the breasthook, and got it roughly cut to shape and permanently installed in place at the stem.

Click here to read more about the breasthook.

I installed a cosmetic bulkhead at the aft end of the chain locker, using plywood beadboard, which I intend to use throughout the cabin (to be eventually accented with varnished mahogany trim in the Herreshoff tradition).  It would have been nice to have been able to simply attach the new bulkhead to the 4" web remaining from the original chainlocker bulkhead, but I had discovered long ago that this bulkhead, in the Triton tradition, was horribly out of alignment and way out of plumb.  

Click here for more details.

With most of the work at the forward end of the boat complete and awaiting decking, I cleaned up and painted the entire chain locker with two coats of gray Bilgekote.  Each area I paint is a small step, but the new paint sure makes a pleasing change from the old, raw fiberglass.

On the interior, I completed building and installing an athwartships support for the V-berth platform.  It seemed as if building this small piece took an inordinate amount of time, though much of the glasswork was wonderfully accelerated once I started using my new, custom-made post-cure autoclave.

A new tool?  No, not exactly...but placing my glassed parts outside the shop in the hot sun sure does speed up the curing, though!

Read more about the continuing interior structure here.

Finally I continued work in the "main" cabin by installing a simple set of fiberglass-encapsulated foam supports along the hull at the same level as the plywood skeleton of the settees.

Click here to see more detail about this area.

Anyway, the grand passage of time notwithstanding, work on the boat continued.  I began the week by spending much of Sunday in the shop building some of the substructure inside the to-be-settees, and milling and installing myriad mahogany cleats to add further support for the plywood settees and V-berth platform.

Click here for more information about the settee work.

Continue to July>