April 25, 2019

Scupper 133

Thursday

After a light sanding, I applied the third coat of base varnish to the interior doors and companionway parts.

To finish off the cabin sole, I used 1-1/2″ wide cherry to install a small baseboard along the edges all around, beginning in the main cabin.  I cut and fit each piece as needed in its given space, but the stock was still unfinished so I planned to remove it all once complete so I could sand and varnish all the pieces before final installation.

At the centerline bulkhead adjacent to the companionway, I cut a small piece of trim but left it long since the eventual companionway and door trim itself would later take up some of this space and at this point I didn’t know how long this baseboard piece would end up.  In the photo, it’s just resting in place with no fasteners.  Also unfinished at this point was a triangular piece of flat trim required over the molded stepped area in the aft corner of the galley; I’d mill this piece in the immediate future.

With the main cabin complete, I repeated the process with the forward cabin trim.

After removing all the trim pieces so I could sand and varnish them separately, I cleaned up the cabin and masked around the sole in all areas, then lightly sanded it to prepare for varnish, which I did next.

Next, I sanded all the trim pieces as needed to remove layout and tool marks, and to lightly round the top edge for appearance.  Afterwards, I applied thinned varnish to all sides of the trim pieces.

With a little time left in the day, I turned to the two drawers from the galley.  I’d thought of reusing the original drawer bodies and just replacing the old teak fronts with new cherry, but there were several reasons I quickly decided against this:  First, the drawers were nailed together, and it was unlikely I could successfully separate the old fronts without damaging the old, dry pine drawer boxes; second, the bottoms of the drawers, made from 1/4″ plywood, were delaminating and semi-rotten; and finally, the whole construction wasn’t fancy enough to warrant efforts to save and maintain the old units, and the surfaces were worn and moldering from previous dampness and dry-outs.

I had just barely enough 12mm plywood of sufficient dimension left on hand from which to build new drawer boxes, so after measuring the sides of the original drawers I milled four new plywood sides to the proper dimensions.  This left me just enough material to make the drawer backs, but the backs’ final dimensions would depend on how I ultimately chose to secure the boxes together, so as it was late in the day I left that task till another time.

Total time billed on this job today:   8 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  38°, partly cloudy. Forecast for the day:  Partly sunny (what?), 58°