January 24, 2010

It’s been a busy week; some of the activity even contributed to progress on Circadian. A lot of time was spent dealing with a DMV snafu with my truck’s registration. Nonetheless, during the week I managed to continue with the restoration of the head locker doors and cut narrow boards of fiberglass from a piece of hull that Scott cut from a boat he scrapped. These strips would be used to correct a construction design flaw in the cockpit lockers. Ever since I had bought Circadian, I had been puzzled by water leaking into the engine room and sitting on top of the new fuel tanks. There were no deck or hardware leaks. I think I’ve finally identified the source: the cockpit lockers that allow water to enter at the bottom edge because there is no backing board to block water. Glassing in a fiberglass backing board to dam the flow and some weatherstripping around the perimenter should cure the leak. After the first post-repair rain or washdown, I’ll know for sure.

The challenge with cutting the fiberglass boards was making relatively straight boards out of a curved and irregularly cut hunk of fiberglass. To make a straight edge from which I could make parallel cuts on the table saw, I first made a cut with the circular saw guided by a straight piece of angle steel. I improvised a vacuum connection to suck up most of the nasty fiberglass dust. Once that base line was established, I made the remaining cuts on the table saw that has its own vacuum system. Of course I wore a mask anyway.

Saturday was a beautiful day that I spent mostly doing errands, but I also managed to pick up some parts and supplies for the work I would be doing on Circadian. I got new hose and the service kit for rebuilding the Gusher 8 bilge pump, self-mixing six10 epoxy for installing the fiberglass strips I had made, and anodized aluminum angle and 3/8 inch plexiglass for rebuilding the teak hatches with a better design.

Saturday evening I sanded and put another coat of varnish on one of the head locker doors and serviced a leaking and ineffective bilge pump. That all went fine, with no problems more serious than a cut thumb.
I expected Sunday to be just as nice as Saturday, and was disappointed when I encountered dense fog on the drive out to the Delta. I could only hope that it burned off soon enough to allow surfaces to dry and epoxy to cure. In the meantime, I marked and cut the fiberglass strips for fixing each of the four cockpit lockers and cleared out the aft head by loading all the left over paint, compounds and solvents into the truck. I would need more clamps to hold the fiberglass boards in place while the epoxy cured, and since it was still foggy, I decided I might as well go into town and buy them as well as pick up some lunch.
By the time I got back, the fog had burned off so I could use the epoxy to glue the boards in place. It took a bit of time to set up the clamps and boards to hold them in place, but it all went fine. It was still a bit cool, so I pre-heated the tube of six/10 epoxy and set up the heater and heat lamp to warm the locker area. I hadn’t tried the new six/10 system yet, so I wanted to see how it worked. It’s thickened two-part epoxy that comes in a conventional caulking tube and self-mixes in the nozzle as it comes out.
It worked very neatly. Unfortunately, it hadn’t cured by the time I had to leave (despite the specified pot life of 42 minutes and supposedly curing at temperatures as low as 50 degrees F), so I had to cover everything in protective plastic. Hopefully it will be fully cured by my next visit. We’ll see….

While I was waiting for the epoxy to cure, I went to work on the doghouse skylight that still had a small leak despite my rebuilding it earlier. I had concluded that when it was bolted down to the curved top of the doghouse, the bending broke the seal between the frame and the plexiglass window. Sanding the joint between the frame and the plexiglass confirmed that there were some new gaps. After cleaning the joint, I masked the frame and plexiglass in preparation for sealing with 3M 4000 UV. I applied the sealant and smoothed the joint with my usual tools: an index finger and thumb covered with a tight latex glove. Makes for a smooth surface and forces the sealant into the joint. After letting the sealant partially cure, I removed the tape leaving a clean line. Since I had opened the tube of sealant, I decided to apply a redundant seal around the new ABI port I had intalled previously. It was kind of “quick and dirty” and not the best job I’ve done, but it will do until the time comes when I sand the cabin in preparation for painting.
After cleaning up the inevitable caulking mess, I removed the two teak hatches for modification and rebuilding back in the shop and fashioned temporary hatch covers with boards and plastic sheeting. Because the epoxy for the leaky locker fix still hadn’t cured, I covered the locker openings with plastic sheeting. I loaded up some tools, cleaned up, buttoned up, did a final check and drove off into the sunset. I had accomplished everything on the day's task list, so it had been a good day.

October 4, 2010

You know you're tired when a glass of wine is too heavy to hold up. I was definitely tired Sunday night after having worked from 7 am to 7 pm. Still, it doesn't sound like I did a lot: re-installed the doghouse skylight and removed the two teak hatch lids.

Between household glamour jobs on Saturday I applied what I hoped would be the mythical "final" coat of varnish to the saloon table and did a quick test cutout for the Ta Chiao ports.

The varnish on the table came out almost perfect; I had finally found a room in the house that was free enough from dog hair that it dried without any unsightly embedded hairs. Unfortunately, there was one small holiday (spot that didn't get enough varnish), despite my care. While most people wouldn't notice it, I know my eyes will go straight to it every time I see the table, soooo......... I'll add some better lighting for applying the next "final" coat to hopefully avoid future "holidays."

Because all the bronze ports I bought have radiused fillets where the glass surround meets the mounting flange, I wanted to do a little experimenting with the best way to accommodate that before actually cutting into the cabin sides. I could either make the cutout a bit larger or round-off a closer-fitting cutout. The former would leave more of a gap between the port and the cabin side, which might actually be a plus for applying the caulking. The later would probably look better if I can cut smooth curves, since I won't be using trim rings to hide sloppy work. I did a quick test of the former approach using my new jig saw. While the approach does allow the flange to contact the mounting surface easily, it was clear that cutting a really smooth and perfect curve by hand is impossible with even the best jig saw. Next experiment: a circle cutter.

Ninety percent of my time on the boat Sunday was devoted to getting the doghouse skylight re-installed. While it doesn't sound like much of a job, it was tough because I had 36 through bolts to deal with, almost entirely solo. I estimate I had to climb up and down off the doghouse 50 to 70 times. And that doghouse is a good 3 ft higher than the cabin top and has no steps or ladder. Last weekend I had filled the existing bolt holes with epoxy thickened with cabosil because I didn't think that the all the holes could possible line up perfectly with the rebuilt skylight. So my first step was to grind off the excess so that the mounting flange would be flush. Next I applied the butyl tape to the inner and outer mounting flanges on the doghouse.After setting the skylight in place, I started working my way around the mounting flange from the center of each side in turn to the corners. I quickly discovered that each of the original stainless steel machine screws I was re-using had been cut off to be flush with the nuts on the underside of the doghouse roof. That resulted in each of them being a slightly different length. That resulted in some being a bit short in the place I was using them. Soooo....I had to grind off some washers that had been epoxied to the underside of the doghouse roof and get a few more longer machine screws. Of course I also broke a drill bit somehow, so had to get a replacement. SNAFUs aside, the routine was to drill a new hole one at a time, apply a bit of Lifecaulk around the top of the machine screw, screw it into the hole, climb down and screw on the nut from below. When I was lucky, I could snug up the nut; when I wasn't, the screw spun. The climbing up and down routine was repeated at least once for each of the 36 machine screws. I finally had to ask someone else to interrupt their work on their own boat to help me out by tightening the nuts from below while I held the screws in place from above. With the skylight finally secured, I just needed to trim the butyl tape and clean up the excess Lifecaulk, resulting in a pretty neat installation.

I removed the two hatch covers to bring them home and rework them, cleaned up the worst of the mess, put the tools below, hobbled to the truck and drove wearily home.

September 15, 2010

The aluminum “L” bracket that connected the corners of the skylight frame hit the concrete floor with a metallic clang. When I casually turned around to pick it up, I was a bit surprised when I didn’t spot it right away. Yes, the shop floor was covered with scattered piles of sawdust and small scraps, but that bracket was plenty big enough to spot easily. Thirty minutes later, puzzlement turned to real frustration after a thorough and futile search. Time to stop, sleep on it and continue the quest calmly and methodically in the morning. Not a good start to the weekend’s project to rebuild the doghouse skylight!

Saturday morning I continued looking with a couple of new ideas and a steely calmness. I had decided if didn’t find it within an hour, it would make more sense to fabricate a new one, and at worst I would have a cleaned up shop. Even with a cleaned shop and an extended search, I didn’t find it. I found several other long-lost odds and ends, but no bracket. For the first time, the wisdom of Sherlock Holmes had failed me. (When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, no matter how unlikely, must be so.)

I spent the rest of the day chiseling out old caulking, cleaning out the skylight framework with a wire brush, buying replacement plexiglass, and scouring hardware stores for a suitable piece of aluminum stock to fabricate the new bracket.

I wanted to leave the protective film on the new plex until the skylight installation was complete, so I trimmed off about a half an inch of the protective film around the perimeter to allow it to be inserted and sealed in the frame.

That night I fabricated the new bracket and reassembled the skylight with new plexiglass (smoked instead of clear) bedded in marine silicone sealant. The plexiglass is not fastened to the frame, but rather ‘floats’ within the assembled frame in a bed of sealant. The aluminum framework, in turn, is screwed onto a fiberglass flange on the doghouse roof. Below the frame on the underside of the doghouse roof is a teak trim surround.

Because the plexiglass panel floated in the frame, and the frame pieces could not be precisely and perfectly connected, I expected adjustments would be necessary to fit the assembled window back in place in the doghouse roof even though the replacement plexiglass panel was exactly the same size as the original and the frame was assembled in the same order as it was originally. Trial fits on the boat on Sunday confirmed my suspicions. It took quite a bit of grinding away of old sealant and some fiberglass to get the assembly to fit in place.

Even then, it was obvious some of the bolt holes did not line up any longer and will need to be redrilled. I was out of sanding disks to finish the trimming, and there wasn’t time left to start on the big task of rebedding and re-bolting the skylight in place. Instead, I sanded the teak trim around the opening and put a coat of epoxy on it.

Because Carol will be visiting next weekend, I had to allow some time to clean up the mess on deck and in the cabin. Being a pretty hot and humid day, I thought it was a good time to try out the funky airconditioning unit on board. After I got a few wires and switches sorted out, it came to life and actually worked. It was great standing right in front of it, but it clearly didn’t have the capacity to cool the entire cabin. With everything reasonably sorted out, it was time to head for home.