Lackey Sailing | Calliope Girl 59

February 6, 2024

Calliope Girl 59

Tuesday

Starting the day on the early side with a planned early departure for an appointment, and with some detail questions at large regarding the galley, I decided to finish up some work on the settees in the meantime. To support locker door catches on all the locker doors, I needed to install a backer block along the top edge of each opening–something I never think to do before installation–so now I cut a series of blanks from 3/4″ square stock (offcuts from previous milling operations) to span the top edges of all the locker openings. Over the course of the morning, a two or three openings at a time because of the number of clamps I had immediately available, I glued these cleats in place at the top inside edges of each opening, choosing to cover the entire length to give me options for mounting hardware later. When the glue cured enough, I removed the clamps and moved on to the next set of openings, ending up with the final three by the end of my day.

I began with the upper cabinets purposely so I could work on the locker doors in the lower cabinets without clamps in the way; as I worked through the locker doors, I continued gluing those cleats on all the other settee locker openings.

Previously, I’d cut the two blanks required for these doors: the 12mm plywood “inserts” forming the basis of the doors, and the larger, overlapping panels which would be upholstered and form the visible component. Now, with hinges on hand, I wanted to hang the inserts, then work on installing the upholstery panel blanks.

To hold the blanks in place in the openings, I installed some scrap wood spanning the openings, temporarily tacked in place with dabs of hot glue from behind. Then, setting the blanks in place, I installed the hinges to both parts of each opening. With a simple plywood template to align the position of each hinge consistently, I worked my way through the six locker openings.

I removed all the locker doors to bring them down to the bench for the rest of the operation, but while I was still in the boat I installed hardwood bungs in all the fastener locations on the settee backrests and upper cabinets.

Down on the bench, I prepared to install the two sections of the locker doors together. For this, I used threaded inserts installed in the “insert” part of the door (the hinged sections), to which I installed the upholstery panels with machine screws and 1/8″ spacers between the two parts, which would hold them apart to leave room for the thickness of the upholstery and backing that would eventually wrap the panels. I used a simple alignment template to drill pilotholes, then installed the threaded inserts and secured the pieces together for storage. I completed three of the assemblies before I had to depart for the day.