On Schedule !

Week 5

It is hard to believe that we've had the boat for four weeks. We're not sure whether we've made great strides in that short time or whether we really ought to have gotten further. So far we've varnished the floor - to protect it from the after effects of condensation on the vents and Houdini hatch. We've removed the excesses of the foam insulation, and patched up where we'd been a bit heavy handed in doing so. There's the basis of all the 12volt wiring in place and, as we start our fifth week, we've almost completed varnishing over half the plywood that we'll use to line out the cabin. In addition we've cut the cover for the bow thruster locker to size and applied four coats of external varnish to each side. The cover was taken to the boat on Monday morning. Oh, and by the way, we seemed to have spent quite bit of money in the process of doing all this.

Our plans were a little fluid at the start of the week. The current round of varnishing was scheduled for completion on Monday. Any further varnishing had to wait the delivery of the outstanding thirteen sheets of plywood. We weren't prepared to start lining out until these were delivered and varnished because we wanted to avoid the dusty atmosphere that would result from sawing the boards to size prior to fitting.

We'd buckle down to some more varnishing if the remaining plywood arrived during the week. We also looked like having a trip to Braunston during the week. Our stove and chimney should now be in stock and our friends also wanted some items from there. The journey would also provide us with an excuse to do some other shopping for, on the way, we pass Good Timber. This is where we planned to buy the supply of Ash that we will use for the trim around the cabin. Provided that there is room in the car we'd attempt to purchase some unprepared boards that could be taken home and worked on in the absence of any varnishing on the boat. The trim will be wanted in eight foot lengths in places and we had to be able to get this size of board in the car. Anything shorter would mean joining lengths on the boat, anything longer would be sticking through the windscreen of the car! We can just get the required length in the car, provided the boards aren't too wide.

Monday morning was relatively still after a fairly breezy Sunday night. We arrived at the boat half expecting to find that the wind had rocked the boat sufficiently to cause the plywood sheets to fall over. Fortunately this was not the case. We closed the windows and the doors briefly and lit the heater for a short while to dry the air before we started varnishing. We'd worked up quite a sweat by the time we'd moved all the panels around as each had to be turned over as well. As a result, the heater was turned off quite quickly and the front doors were opened to cool us down.

There followed a reasonably mind blowing few hours. One of us started off lightly rubbing down the Ash faced side and then wiping it over with a tack cloth to remove the dust. Then the other got to work. First with the roller and, subsequently, with a brush to lay off. We were following advice on this last task from a colleague, although we're not certain what the benefit of the brush work is. We were joined by our friend Dick shortly after we'd started and this enabled a production line to be set up. One person could just about manage to rub down two sheets in the time it took two people to varnish and lay off two sheets.

Rubbing down started with 000 grade wire wool but, no matter how large a piece was used, it had fallen to pieces by the end of a sheet of plywood. After a couple of sheets of plywood, and with stocks of wire wool beginning to run out, we switched to 400 grit abrasive. Each piece was sufficient for about three sheets of plywood and the before and after difference was easy to feel, even if you couldn't see any difference. We also used 240 grit abrasive where the tears from previously varnishing the edges were still visible although we're not sure if we've managed to stop the tears from showing through.

We'd finished by about lunch time and, with nothing else that we could reasonably do, we cleaned up, locked up and went home.

We went to Braunston on Thursday to collect our stove, an Aarrow Arley 5. We also collected the flue pipe, the chimney - with stainless steel rather than brass bands - and the rain hat. We weren't sure whether to get the twenty four inch chimney or the eighteen inch variety. In the end we went for the shorter one in the hope that we wouldn't need to remove it so often when we were passing under bridges. We also picked up a long handled aluminium windlass to complete our set of two long and two short handled windlasses.

We'd not heard anything from the plywood supplier by Thursday evening and reasoned that we were unlikely to get a delivery on Friday. So, as we happened to be passing, we visited the boat briefly and stacked all the plywood flat on the floor. It looked like being at least a week after the sheet were varnished before the next delivery and leaving the sheets vertical all that time didn't seem like a good idea. It was a real brief visit because we didn't get a chance to look closely at the sheets to see if we'd managed to disguise the tears. Mind you, as they didn't stick out like sore thumbs as we stacked the sheets, we can but believe that we were successful.

On Friday afternoon we visited a local sawmill to see if they had any Ash that we could use for trimming the plywood sheets. They did have some but were a little worried that it might twist or split once it was cut. However, they did offer to cut a few strips for us to see what happened. We're to call them back in a couple of weeks to find out the result. In the meantime we'll just have to wait for our next delivery of plywood, which won't be until next week at the earliest.

Introduction | Previous | Top | Next