November 29, 2010

As planned, I spent a most enjoyable long holiday weekend with Carol. Because the office was closed Wednesday, however, I was able to squeeze in half a day on Circadian. I installed the refinished table and the new cover for the mast support post. It all went pretty well, although some clamping pressure was required to squeeze everything into alignment. Of course I also had to do a bit of grinding, this time on the top of the post cover to fit it around a ring on the ceiling moulding. (Nothing fits the first time on a boat.) The final result, though, was a very snug fit: absolutely no movement or rattles when you jerk on the new attached grab handle.

As you can see in the photos, I still need to insert bungs to cover the screw holes on one side. That presents a bit of a challenge because normally the bungs are trimmed and finished with the rest of the piece. I can't do that in this case without having to refinish the whole thing, which of course I don't want to do. I plan to pre-finish a thin strip of jatoba from which I will cut the bungs. Hopefully I'll be able to insert and glue the thin, pre-finished bungs so they are flush with the surface. We'll see....

I also tried out my new screw extractors on the broken-off old bronze screws that secure the teak hatch hinges. They worked great. Very cleverly, the saw teeth are designed to cut counter-clockwise, so it encourages the screw remnants to come right out as you make the surrounding circular cut.I glued dowel pieces (which didn't need to match since they will be covered by the hinge) into the resulting holes and then trimmed them flush with a chisel. You can see in the photo that it's not as clean as what the flush-cut saw would have done, but I couldn't use the flush-cut saw because of the recess for mounting the hinge flush with the wood surface. Again, it won't be visible, so as long as it's a strong joint, it doesn't need to be elegant.The old generator is still sitting in cockpit waiting for a break in the weather so it can be removed. The prospects for the coming weekend don't look good at the moment, with yet another storm moving in later in the week. Looks like I won't be able to tackle the next port installation for a while either. Ah well, there's always something that can be done!