March 19, 2025

Miss Helen 8

Wednesday

I got to work on building new trim pieces for the starboard deadlight.  I found a teak board of appropriate size to work from, and laid out the original trims to ensure there was plenty of room to duplicate.  Then, I resawed the board into a blank about 3/8″ thick before planing it down to a final thickness of 5/16″, which was a bit heavier than the existing trim to better allow for bungs over the screw heads, but not so thick as to stand out from the older trim on the boat.

I traced the old trim pieces on the new board, and cut out the replacement pieces, leaving the line so I could ease them down to final contours as needed.  Then, with each corner aligned and clamped over the end of the bench for access, I shaped the four corners so the pieces would mate correctly, then lightly sanded down to the cutlines along the inside edges.

Using the old trim as a guide, I marked all the screw locations and drilled 1/8″ pilot holes through the new stock, which then allowed me to set up the trim in place on the cabin side with small nails through the holes for alignment, and some clamps holding the trim securely.

While the test-fit was generally a success, it soon became challenging when I attempted to match up the screw holes using the #8 machine screws that would be needed in the final installation.  I started with one piece of trim (the bottom trim) and enlarged the pilot holes slightly with a bit large enough to allow the machine screws to go through, and tried to get all the fasteners installed as a test.  But several of the holes weren’t lining up conveniently and I soon fell back on an idea I’d had earlier, and which I should have just done from the getgo, which was to slightly drill out and fill all the existing holes with a structural epoxy mixture.

I used a 1/4″ bit to enlarge the #8 holes–I would have liked something larger, but the holes were close enough to the edge of the opening that a larger bit would have caused problems there.  I filled the holes using a syringe, and covered each hole with some tape to hold the epoxy in since it was a looser mix than I might have used because of the requirement to get it into a syringe.  Once cured, the filled holes would allow me to simply drill and tap new holes for the fasteners, without the headache of trying to match existing holes to the same extent.

Total time billed on this job today: 2.25 hours plus one hour unbilled