Week Five - Amateur Woodworker

Work progresses on the hull. Despite still being extremely cold the sanding and priming of the hull continues. Still more snow has shut down operations in this area on several occasions. During the last week I have been away much of the time, back in Arlington visiting friends and seeing my family.

I checked in on Ronin last Friday and not much the way of “action photos” to show but Charlie and I did spend some time discussing the merits of painting methods and the appropriate spray guns. After listening to Charlie describe shooting techniques and the quality of guns he uses, I really felt out of my depth. I know that when I go to shoot my decks that the results will be “interesting."

A spray gun for every job (pro tip, the Sata, 2nd from right):

Primed and ready for yet more sanding:

I’ve turned my focus back to working in my shed on the cabin sole yet again. Confession time: a few weeks back I set up everything to make a rip of the first 4X8 sheet that would become the two pieces in the main cabin. I measured, measured again, set up a guide and took my time to make sure that I had everything set up correctly. It all looked okie-doke.

One thing though. I wasn’t sure about what was the best blade to use in my trusty old Bosch jigsaw. Now, I have used that tool for many things over many years yet for some reason I overthought the problem. So, since we know that everything on the Internet is true, I did a search for the correct blade to use.

Put the recommended blade into the jigsaw, flipped the switch and started in on the cut. About half-way down cut, the blade torqued, veered off on an angle and that was that. One completely ruined expensive sheet of teak and holly plywood. After calming down, I inserted the blade that I had originally planned on using, set up the guide and made a “test” cut on the now useless piece of plywood. Perfect...

After ordering another sheet, I went the simple route after getting some advice from my friend Vincent who built our house and just used my Skillsaw. Another perfect cut.

Sooo, after after getting over my understandable doubts about my abilities I pulled out the router to carve out the section that will be used for the hatch boards. After practicing many times with some cheap stock, I put in a 1/2” by 1” router bit and fired it up.

I got it about 97% correct this time. I wasn’t paying attention but the old cable sole being used as the template had delaminated in some spots and as I was running the router down the line, the guide dropped into some voids in the ply. Not pretty but I will do some work with West System and pieces of salvaged laminate and it should be okay. The 1/4” teak edging on each side will hide some of the problem I hope.

Prep and router cut:

The problem with rotten templates:

Prepping the cut-out for three hatchboards:

Later during the week I pulled the second sheet of plywood out and started laying out the templates for the two sections at the navigation station and galley. The one in front of the head is still on the boat so I was only able to cut out the one in the v-berth.

By and large these cuts went okay although there is a very slight gap between the two sections in the galley/nav area. That’s due to the problem of making a third cut-out based on a (rotten) template of the original cabin sole boards.

Laying out the old cabin sole templates and screwing them down:

Finished with routing the edges:

Panels arranged on the shed floor:

When the weather warms up and I can get stable temperatures in my shed I’ll start sealing the plywood with epoxy and then applying the finish coats to the surface.