April 26, 2019

Scupper 134

Friday

For some time, I’d been ready–and wanted–to paint out the engine room and related spaces, but my focus on working through the various trim and finish details in the cabin kept superseding the aft spaces.  But today, I made it my priority, as I wanted frankly to get it over with.

The engine room and cockpit locker spaces were voluminous, but still fairly tight to move about within, so I planned my attack accordingly.  The sheer magnitude of the spaces meant that I planned from the getgo to paint in a couple stages, plus the fact that I still had some work to finish up in the starboard locker, so for now I focused on the center part of the space, beneath the cockpit, and the engine room, aft bulkhead face, and battery shelves on each side.

I started by vacuuming and then solvent-washing the spaces in question, then worked my way up and out from the aft part of the engine room (working from within the space itself), then the forward part of the engine room (working from the head), and then the outlying spaces on each side, working from the two cockpit lockers to paint the battery shelves and bulkheads at the forward end of the engine room.  I also painted the aft center space around the rudder post, and the entire inside of the transom, plus some areas of the inside of the cockpit well.  I left the storage lockers and other remaining areas on both sides for another painting session soon.

With that done, I turned to the day’s varnishing chores, going through all the standard preparation steps and applying more varnish to the cabin sole (3), companionway ladder parts (4), interior doors (4), and cabin sole trim pieces (2).

I rounded out the day in the woodshop, working on the galley drawers.  I began by cutting some cherry stock into appropriate lengths and gluing up two panel blanks from which I could later build the drawer fronts.

For the drawer boxes, I needed to perform a couple additional milling steps on the plywood pieces I’d cut last time.  Each piece required a rabbet at the back end, into which the drawer back would later fit.  I cut the plywood backs to fit properly within the rabbets, forming the overall drawer width required.  I also cut dados near the bottom edge of each panel to accept the 6mm plywood drawer bottoms.

Once the cherry front panels were cured, I could complete the shaping of the drawer fronts, cut the bottom plywood to size, and assemble the boxes.  That would all happen another time.

Total time billed on this job today:   7 hours

0600 Weather Observation:  40°, fog, partly cloudy. Forecast for the day:  Fog and rain, 50°