April 26, 2024

Calliope Girl 110

Friday

With the satin varnish now cured overnight, the cabinet door frames and companionway ladder were looking pretty good.

Continuing the varnish base coat buildup was next on my task list, with the usual round of light sanding and cleaning followed by another coat of gloss varnish on all ongoing parts–head bulkheads, interior trim, and the various loose trim pieces.

Over the past week or two, since completing the cabin sole, I’d noticed a bit of flex at the seams where the large bilge access panels met the sole, and while I expected that the 1/4″ teak planks would eventually help stiffen these areas, I thought it best to add some support cleats now and ensure that the sole always felt solid underfoot.  So with eight pre-made cleats cut to fit, I epoxied and screwed them into place beneath the outer sole edges as needed to help reinforce the sole.

I’d now made or installed nearly all of the interior trim as needed, but now I could address some of the last “major” trim needed:  the lower edges of the cabin trunk, where the plywood sheathing (installed during some earlier iteration) had a raw, sharp edge along the sides and aft end of the main cabin.  Trim would dress up the appearance and also ease the cracking of skulls on the low and sharp corner, something with which I had become painfully familiar over the past few months.

I used bevel gauges to get a read on the angles involved so I could start to conceive and cut trim to fit.  These angles turned out to be just under 14° on the cabin sides, and 7° at the aft bulkhead.

From here, and with a series of milling steps, I came up with a prototype trim profile.  The basics of the profile ended up OK, but when I test-fit it I realized it would be better if I cut the angle portion into the short lower leg of the trim (where it covered the edge of the plywood), rather than the longer vertical leg, as in its current iteration the trim seemed overly chunky and ended up vertical on its main and largest side, at odds with the angle of the cabin trunk.  Otherwise, beyond some minor adjustments in height (mainly to ensure clearance beneath the two opening ports forward), the trim profile was  on track and the changes would be an easy fix, just adjusting how I cut the inside faces of the the piece to change how the angle played, and I’d continue with the second prototype next time, but for now I had to leave for an appointment.

Total time billed on this job today: 4.25 hours

0600 Weather Observation: 27°, clear. Forecast for the day: Sunny, 55°