February 21, 2018
Jasmine 56
Wednesday
To finish up the handrails, I chiseled and sanded the new bungs smooth.
The new teak stock for the bow platform and coamings was rough and unplaned, so my first task was to dimension and smooth the new lumber with a thickness planer. I started with the 8/4 stock for the bow platform, and without much drama brought it down to just under 2″ thick from its rough thickness (2-1/8″).
The planer had trouble with the long (10′) and wide (10″) coaming boards, which started about around 1-3/16″ in thickness. It took many, many passes through the planer and several blade changes to eventually bring this stock to a finished dimension of about 15/16″, as I had to take tiny bites with each pass.
Once I had the boards ready, I laid out the old coamings on top and used them as templates, marking the new boards accordingly.
We had an afternoon of abnormally high temperatures (60s), and I had to take advantage of the nice weather for a couple hours to take care of some outdoor projects while I could, but once I was through savoring the taste of “fool’s spring”, I got back to work in the shop.
Beginning with the starboard side, I cut out the coaming to the marks, and then worked to finalize the fit in the cockpit, trimming and paring away a bit of material at the aft corner till I could push the coaming more or less into position. I used a little block at the forward end to help hold that end at the right height for this process.
Once I was satisfied with the basic fit, I used my old coaming jack system to press the coaming more tightly into the curve–the curve here was not extreme–so I could do a final check of the fit and also mark where the coaming met the adjacent decks to ensure I located the fasteners correctly. I left the coaming in the clamp overnight.
Total time billed on this job today: 5.75 hours
0600 Weather Observation: 34°, foggy. Forecast for the day: Fog slowly lifting, eventually growing abnormally warm into the upper 50s or low 60s