On Schedule !

Week 7

We visited the boat briefly on the previous Saturday to show some friends what we'd been up to and what we hadn't been up to! As a consequence, the temptation not to wait for the rest of the plywood before we did some more work proved too much. There were some panels that we thought we could fit, without causing too many problems, so we tentatively planned to go to the boat on Monday after a quick spot of Christmas shopping. The taller member of the team hates crowds and particularly crowded shops and finds the best time to do the inevitable is first thing on Monday, especially in the last few weeks before Christmas.

As should probably have been expected, the shopping took longer than planned and we also had to stop to purchase some 6mm plywood for a friend on another boat. As a result we eventually arrived at the boat just before eleven o'clock (in the morning), just in time for a tea break! However, as we arrived we had a call from the manufacturer about the window that we were still waiting for. It appears that the correct window may not have been ordered, either originally (by mistake) or subsequently, after we pointed out the error to the builder. It is also possible that the order had been placed but had got lost in the sausage machine that processes orders. We may never know.

We had literally just walked from the car to the boat - dodging the rain - and unlocked the boat when the telephone rang. The vertically challenged team member had managed to unload the car all by herself by the time the call ended. All the car driver had to do was to return to the vehicle and lock it. It wasn't planned like that, honest!

We returned to the boat to work out a plan of action after our tea break. We had an idea of what we planned to do, it was just a case of trying to make sure that we'd considered all the options. The first task was to fit the plywood to the hull side on the starboard side of the boat. This is the side with no plumbing and no gas. There are some 230 volt sockets, but no more than on the other side of the boat. We chose to note roughly where the sockets would be and run the relevant wiring and fit the sockets once we'd got the plywood for the other side of the boat. To this end, and because we still haven't fully decided how we're going to finish the fixings, we only fitted a few screws to each panel.

At the moment we're using stainless steel screws. There are a couple of reasons for this. Brass can look nicer but we've stayed clear of brass as much as we can everywhere else, so we didn't really think they fitted in. Secondly, brass screws have a nasty habit of shearing unless you pre-drill and pre-tap by running a steel screw into the hole previously. Stainless steel screws don't necessarily need to have the holes pre-drilled, but we're using a combination drill and countersink bit and then fitting the screws.

The first challenge was to decide how long the first board should be. We knew that we couldn't get a full length board between the two window centres, so there didn't seem to be any point in just fitting the first board between the front bulkhead and the centre line of the first window. The battens that had been fitted to the hull side weren't aligned with the window centre either. After much deliberation - we'd been joined by our friend Dick by this time, so he can take a third of the blame if we later find we've got it all wrong! - we opted to keep the first panel as long as we could.

We measured the height from underside of gunwale to plywood floor covering - as near to 36 inches as makes no odds if we allowed an air gap between floor and bottom edge of the panel. This gap should also limit any water damage if the floor gets wet. We'll put some hardwood trim over the gap eventually but this is liable to be less prone to water damage than the edge of the plywood.

We unearthed a 12mm sheet of plywood with slight damage to one corner and put this on our saw horses. We now had to try and draw an 8ft long straight line that marked the point where we were to cut the panel. We could have used one of the other panels but that was too easy! Instead we first started by measuring the width we wanted in several places and marking the sheet. We then tried to join these lines with the long side of a framing square. However, when we looked along the line we soon found that it wasn't straight. Then we remembered that we had a chalk line, bought specially for situations like this. So we charged it with chalk and stretched it along the board and Ping! we had a straight blue line and quite a bit of blue chalk dust on the board.

We were still intent on trying to minimise the amount of dust that we created so we picked up a hard point saw and made a small cut near the damaged area to ascertain whether the saw would tear the veneered face. It didn't. We'd already re-checked our measurement and that our saw cut would not fould the saw horses, but it was still with a slightly heavy heart that the saw was placed on the panel and cutting started. Cutting paused from time to time to clear the sawdust from the line - in truth it was to get some breath back! With the two fitter's mates supporting the cut edge as the cut proceeded, a pretty straight and clean cut was obtained and the end was soon reached.

We stowed the offcut on the floor and took the panel to the hull side to try it for fit. We're happy to report that it was a case of so far, so good. Would it stay that way?

The next task was to set the length. We established the mid point of the relevant batten and marked this at the top of the face of the panel after leaving a 12mm space between the batten on the front bulkhead and the lead edge of the panel. The gap is for the plywood that will eventually cover the front bulkhead. With a quick re-check that all was in order, we returned the panel to the saw horses and measured the amount of the panel that we intend to use and then marked that distance on the bottom edge of the panel. We again used the chalk line to mark the cutting line. A quick check that we wouldn't saw through the horses and we were away again. Even though the length to be sawn was only 3ft, we still needed to clear the sawdust from the chalk line once!

This time the saw horses were supporting the weight of the off-cut, but it still needed the fitter's mates to stop the board from moving about too much.

Cutting was soon completed and the board taken to the hull side again. We supported the bottom edge board on the long offcut we'd just produced. This gave us the air gap that we wanted. We slid the top of the panel under the gunwale and it fitted like a hand in a well sized glove. We made sure we still had the 12mm gap at the front edge as well and it was time to drill and countersink the hole for the first screw. Two further screws, along the top edge, under the gunwale, soon followed together with a single screw near to the bottom edge, fastening the panel to the batten that was nearest to the centre. It was time for a picture!

Despite rumours to the contrary, we have no intention of completely boring our readers. Consequently, we don't plan to describe the rest of this stage of the work in so much detail. Suffice to say that we were now fired with enthusiasm and a bit short of breath! Neither of the fitter's mates were keen on sawing so the head fitter decided that he'd experiment with the jigsaw. He was happily sorting out the right blade to use when the fitter's mate's mate suggested that a circular saw would probably produce a cleaner and straighter cut. Always keen to listen to suggestions - so he knows where to point the finger of blame - the fitter opted to try the circular saw this time. But first off all we wanted to check whether this would tear the veneer.

We picked up the long offcut from the first panel and, veneer side up, cut a few inches off one end. The veneer faced tore but the underside didn't. Obviously all further cuts would need to be made sunny side down. We then chose the next panel and confirmed the depth was still 3ft. There was no blue chalk this time, for we'd got the long off-cut from the first board to use as a straight edge. What we'd failed to think of though, was that we'd just cut a few inches off the length of this offcut! Fortunately, what was left was just long enough to be clamped to the new panel after we'd marked the panel for cutting. The circular saw made relatively short work of the cut and a lot of sawdust, much of which was subsequently found in overall pockets once we reached home!

Neither this panel, nor the next three needed to be trimmed to length, The vertical battens were almost in the right place. We say almost because whilst we didn't need to trim the panels to length, we did need to be careful with the fixing because the battens weren't perpendicular. Never the less, we just managed to get the screws to bite.

We stopped for lunch after the second panel was secured. Such is the mad weather we seem to be having that, in nearly mid December, we were able to sit outside and have our food. We were soon back inside and working again. The fitter doesn't let up!

Had we left the fifth panel uncut we would have had a problem because, by this time, the end of the panel was now starting to foul the counter - the area at the stern of the boat where the hull is shaped to accommodate the propeller. There weren't any vertical battens once the curve started so we decided to cut our losses and cut the last panel that we had, to fit space to the last vertical batten. One hull side was now complete as far as we could go.

We couldn't stop here. We still had twelve 9mm thick sheets of plywood and the cabin sides and roof waiting to be lined out. It was now time for some really serious thinking. We had to crack this problem of having the panel joins in sensible places. We talked over all the various options that we could think of. Eventually we decided to have joins at each vertical window edge. The joins would be covered by trim although we'd end up with a few more joins than we really wanted. In our ignorance we couldn't come up with a better solution. We'd use the off-cuts that we'd be producing to fill in the space above and below the windows.

Following a similar technique to that used on the hull sides, we measured (and re-measured) the panel sizes and used the circular saw for the cuts. We secured the panels with screws near the top edge of each panel and, again, in one or two places at the bottom of each panel. We did do one thing slightly differently. The vertical battens nearest to the windows edge are about 30mm from the window edge. As we haven't yet finalised the trim arrangement around the windows we lined up the panel edges with the edge of the windows and not with the nearby batten. This may have cost us a panel, but it is better to cut the panels too long and then trim them back, rather than to cut them too short and then have to replace them. By the end of the day we'd cut and fitted three panels.

We brushed up, put the tools away, loaded everything into the car, locked the boat and headed for home.

We were unable to go to the boat on Tuesday or Wednesday. However, we had a further telephone call just before ten on Tuesday morning to advise us that the long awaited plywood would be with the supplier on Wednesday and they could deliver it on Thursday. Our excursion into boat fitting was over for the time being. We thought that Thursday would see us transferring the plywood from the lorry into the boat and then starting the varnishing cycles again.

However, things never go the way you think they will. We'd got the bug now that we'd started fitting out and didn't want to stop. In addition, we had no idea what time the lorry would arrive so we needed to be at the boat early in case of an early delivery. At the same time we didn't want to spend time sitting around, do nothing, while we waited for the lorry. So we struck a compromise. We'd go to the boat, carry on cutting and fitting until the lorry arrived and then, once the plywood was on the boat, we'd start varnishing. Again, it didn't quiet work that way!

We found that the boat needed to be moved when we arrived. It had been put under cover in preparation for the start of the exterior painting. Painting had been delayed and now another boat needed the space, briefly. As a result, having unloaded all our tools, we spent the next hour or so moving a number of boats around. It was tea time by the time we'd finished.

Next, we needed to make some space for the delivery and to allow us some room to work. This ate up a bit of time as well, so we never really got too far with the fitting before the lorry arrived. Unloading and moving the plywood took about 30 minutes. It then seemed pointless to re-start fitting out for a short while so, as we'd reached a suitable juncture, we stopped for lunch.

With lunch over we returned to the boat. We estimated that it would take us about 2 hours to apply the first coat of varnish on the fifteen sheets that had just been delivered. As we had to be around until about 6pm, we could afford to delay the start of that task until about 4pm, so we had some time to do some more fitting out.

The first task was to take down the panels that we'd fitted already and trim them back to the battens that surrounded the window. We also had to notch the top and bottom of these panels so that the cross pieces that we'd then fit, had some exposed batten for support / fixing. We took down and trimmed the first two larger and previously fitted pieces and then re-fitted them. Next we took the offcut from the bottom of one of the the original panels - the cabin sides are just over 3ft deep so we had 1ft wide off-cuts - and used this to fill the spaces above and below the window. One off-cut was just enough to provide the plywood to complete the surround for one window.

We started off with a jigsaw and a straight edge but, no matter how hard we tried, the cut line was about as straight as the canal towpath! After cutting and fitting just one sheet we returned to the cross cut saw and made the rest of the cuts by hand. By 3.30pm we'd managed to finish two windows so we had a brew up and then started on varnishing. We got one coat of thinned varnish on one side of all fifteen sheets by just after 5.30pm. We cleaned up, locked up and went on our way.

For the second day in a row, the vertically challenged fitter's mate was unable to go to the boat on Friday. Fortunately, the assistant mate - our friend Dick - was again available. We made a slightly later start than on Thursday, but were soon working on the surround for the next window after we'd moved the recently varnished sheets out of the way for the time being.

You will have realised by now that everything we do is planned in great detail. It will then come as no surprise that we had tidily stacked the new plywood on top of the old to give us maximum space to work in until we started varnishing again, later in the day. Unfortunately, we'd failed to realise that we'd need some of the fully varnished sheets from the bottom of the pile, so we then had to move all the new plywood, extract the sheets of the original load and then re-stack the newer stock. We took the precaution of extracting three sheets, as we hoped to be able to fit at least two wall panels and, if time allowed, we'd possibly tackle a ceiling panel.

The wall panels that we'd already fitted were cut to thirty eight inches deep. This meant that they overhung the gunwales by just over an inch. With the lining comprising several pieces of plywood, and no datum line available - the position of the upper edge of the plywood was partly determined by the spray foam insulation - the bottom edge wasn't all in one nice straight line. We planned to trim the sheets once they were all up, by which time we would have something to give us straight line.

The overhang on the panels that were already in place seemed quiet excessive so we decided to cut the next panel an inch shorter. We also decided that, as all the remaining windows were less than eight feet apart, we could revert to joining panels on the centre line of the window to reduce the number of joins and the amount of trim that we'd need to fit.

It is amazing how awkward a piece of plywood, measuring a little over six feet by three feet can be when you're trying to line it up against windows at either end and keep it as high as possible on the cabin side - even if there are two of you! Nonetheless, we managed to get it into position and, after temporarily securing it with one screw, we able to drill and countersink all the remaining holes to secure the panel.

We had, by this time, also been along all the previously fitted panels, on both the cabin and hull sides and cut the holes for the switches and sockets. We fitted a draw wire to the 230 volt socket holes - where we hadn't yet got any wire to feed through the holes. We pulled the 12 volt wires through the rest. This latest panel required a hole for a light switch so we cut this before we fitted the panel in place. We were about to start cutting the filler pieces, that would go above and below the kitchen window when we realised that we'd goofed. I use the word we in the Royal sense. The fitter knows that, in this instance he has to accept full blame for the error.

As indicated above we'd decided to cut this latest panel one inch shorter than all the rest to save having to true up too many panels later on. What we'd overlooked in doing so was that the extra inch was also there to form one wall of the channel that would accommodate the wire for the 230 volt power circuit. Without the extra depth there was no way to shield the wire from view. There was nothing that we could do to overcome the problem, other than discard the panel and cut a fresh one. Fortunately, we were able to use the original panel as a template for the new one, so the replacement was soon available and fitted. Good job we didn't just extract one sheet from the pile.

By now it was almost 4pm, and we hadn't started the varnishing. We swept up, took the tools to the car and then made the inevitable cup of tea before starting on the varnishing. We were finished just before six and on the road not long after. We had achieved something, even if it was only wasting a sheet of plywood - and we haven't ordered any spares!

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