Sunday 19 April 2015

Slowly creeping towards the water


So today I managed to complete one of the jobs, and made some steady progress on the other two

Trial fitted to check clamp.
The tiller bracket is now finished.  My kind neighbour has an extensive workshop and was able to bore the 25mm hole in the Ali bar. He also has a donkey saw so made short work of cutting the bar to length and putting the slot in for the clamp. 


I brought it back home and drilled the hole for the pivot and drilled & tapped the holes for the clamp. 

Block rounded off and spacers fitted.
Last but not least I rounded off the rear top edge to allow the tiller to raise and also made some spacer washers.  These were made from the chopping board which I'd bought to repair the stem head. I used a hole saw to make the spacers, drilling out the centre to suit and then rasped to thickness. 

On to the stem head fitting, last night I  had mixed up plenty of epoxy mixed with milled glass fibre and filled the voids before bonding the chopping board repair in place. 
Kitchen chopping board used as backing pad

Today I filleted the edges and covered with two layers of CSM. I will put another couple of layers on tomorrow. 

Oh, it looks better than this in real life :)
Also raising its ugly head was the state of the sandwiched wood just visible in the chain hawser. This got a good gauging out and filled with a resin and micro fibre mix. This will need tidying and painting tomorrow. 
Onto the antifoul, I wire brushed it to get rid of the chalkiness, then masked up the hull and applied some primer to the areas which had struggled for adhesion. The anti foul will go on during the week.  
That will be all the essentials done and so hopefully she'll be launched next weekend. 

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