Petestack Blog

A slightly artsy title here (both punning and recalling instructions to racing crew), as well as not completely true when nothing like all the trim’s on yet, but perhaps marginally better than ‘More Tricky Stuff’, which was all I could otherwise think of…

Finishing things properly takes time! Most of what I’ve been doing here (and continue to do) requires as much thought as doing, with the consequences of mistakes potentially spoiling things rather than icing the cake. Take the tracks for the galley doors, for example; I’d glued the bottom track to line up with the shelf edge trim, then took it off and pushed it back to the fiddle before taking it off again for a complete dry fit with top/bottom tracks and plywood props in lieu of doors that finally told me where it needed to go:

So my third and final attempt to fix the bottom track set it against the fiddle at the aft (right) end but spaced to a constant distance from the shelf edge (not quite parallel with the fiddle) using a piece of 4mm ply as a kind of feeler gauge to replicate the dry fit:

And this was what I wanted despite leaving a wedge-shaped sliver of space between track and fiddle that I’d like to fill with something. But I still had to get my (now finished and varnished) shaped wood strip on right and trim the galley doors to fit, so two more fiddly and quite nerve-wracking procedures to replicate what’s easy to mock up with no screws, glue or irreversible cutting. And I’m happy with the result although still considering a couple of things (probably some quality double-sided tape to fix the top track which is currently just a snug push fit in its mounting strip, and maybe trimming the edge of the left-hand door where the main bulkhead’s not quite square, but not rushing into that when it would be so easy to spoil it and I can also think of reasons not to do it!):

I’d been planning since we lined the forecabin to trim the exposed, difficult-to-finish-neatly, bottom edges of carpet with webbing tape, but couldn’t be sure how that would go till I tried. And the answer is OK, but it takes time and eats Evo-Stik! Which isn’t that easy to spread economically on narrow porous surfaces you want to cover but not overrun (the spray glue used for most of the linings goes far further but is less practical here as well as less good for really firm edging), with my 250ml tin virtually disappearing between gluing down some obvious loose edges and fixing my tape, but I’m both relieved and pleased with a job well done and have another two 500ml tins on the way assuming that’s more than enough for everything I’ve still to do:

Might add that I’ve also been busy with other ‘little’ things you don’t see here, but have neither photos to show nor motivation to explain everything; there are other small wood parts taking shape and/or being varnished, screws on order where I don’t have quite all the ones I need to fix them all and, well, just more than enough going on to keep my head spinning and dominate my ‘free’ time! ;-)

While I’ve spent many hours (most weekday evenings and all weekend) on Fly since last weekend’s blog, more of that time’s probably been spent thinking through tricky stuff and making sure I get it right than actually doing. So no prizes for speed with what you’re about to see, but still considerable satisfaction on not only avoiding most of the potential banana skins but also making a good job of some tricky parts…

Let’s start with my new mount for Fly’s top galley door track, which brings the tracks properly parallel by allowing for deck rise and camber when the standard method of fixing doesn’t. To do this I had to establish both angles and cut some test pieces to try in place, knocking up a taper jig for the table saw along the way and working out how to cut the angles for rise (about 10mm over the galley width) and camber (6° rather than the 10° you see set up in the first two photos) in separate passes because the saw blade tilts the wrong way to do both together, but happy to say I’ve got this piece dead right:

Next (well, not actually next because I also made some other small parts you don’t see here) we come to my folding leg for the folding chart table, which looks so simple when done, but isn’t because you have to consider:

• What length should it be to keep the table true when you’re working with one corner unsupported?
• Where should it meet the bunk top fore and aft and where should it be attached to the table to keep it vertical in both planes?
• Is it going to be strong enough (fit for purpose) both in itself and how it’s attached?
• Will it fold up neatly out of the way?
• What happens if someone knocks it from an unexpected direction?
• How do you hold all of this where you want it to jig it up for drilling?
• And did you get it right?

Now, what you see here isn’t quite finished because it still needs corners rounding, varnishing, a longer bolt, penny washer between leg and table, and a locating socket bonded to the bunk top, but I think I did OK:

Two more things worth noting about the chart table before I forget are that 1. I’ve fitted my final choice of catches (toggle latches from China as the most attractive and size-appropriate option turned up by hours of Googling), and 2. I can’t remember whether we’d previously noted that the new lower nav. shelf restricts the lid opening angle to c.45°, but it doesn’t really matter because that’s probably far enough anyway and we can get quite a lot more by chamfering the bottom of its edge piece if necessary!

And so to yet more speaker enclosure tweaks. I wanted to add cosmetic trim pieces (same way I still plan to finish most visible lining edges) to the corners between coachroof sides and main bulkhead to cover the port-side wires and some over-neat starboard-side finishing, which wasn’t difficult at all:

But then had to tweak the outside bottom corners of the speaker boxes to fit the trim, which could so easily have resulted in messing them up now, but didn’t:

And that’s about it for now, except to show you bottom galley track fixing, take two, where take one had assumed I needed to fix the track as far out as possible for vertical doors to clear the top shelf at the main bulkhead end, but I’d not liked what I got so reevaluated carefully:

Quite a lot happening to Fly since my last blog, but it’s not all on camera yet so there’s some you can see and some we can just talk about…

Two weekends ago we got all but one of the new headlining panels done and most of them up, but only one covered outside before the Saturday rain drove us inside to work in more awkward conditions (NB old panel standing up and new one flat on the ground):

So the following four photos come from the Sunday (24 February), when we were able to take the glue spraying back outside (note the mix of old and new panels again):

And here are the main cabin panels in place (most of the others only went up this weekend):

Also happy to note that the new panels are much lighter than the old, with some of the saving coming from slightly thinner ply (3.5mm instead of 4mm), but the bulk of it from the new lining carpet being significantly lighter than the old ‘mousse’.

Before fitting the new panels we also reseated the six coach bolts for the pilot berth hanger eyes, replacing the suffering original plywood spacer disks with more robust plastic ones I made weeks (or maybe even months!) ago:

My made-to-measure porthole liners (from Midland Chandlers) for the companionway bulkhead have arrived and are going to look great, but still await varnishing and fitting:

Last weekend I was on my own with only one full day available, so got stuck into building the speaker enclosures I’d previously prototyped with the jig I’d built (and now fine-tuned with thicknesses of tape) after learning from that experience. Which, despite now knowing how to get things right and not mess them up, I’d guess still consisted of about 90% thinking to 10% doing as I planned my cuts from a single, small, and very finite, piece of reclaimed teak-faced ply and so on:

These then got attachment brackets (lugs?) added and their backs epoxied (for speed over varnish) before applying multiple coats of varnish to the outsides over the past few mornings and evenings:

Leaving just some clever carpet trim (seen here testing on one of the prototypes) required to ensure the best possible fit to the boat when there are various issues (e.g. my 30° front panels crossing the main bulkhead tabs at half height) conspiring against perfection even after careful adjustment from the prototypes:

But, as suggested by my blog title and opening paragraph, there’s plenty more been happening you can’t see here because I’ve not got it all photographed yet… like all the new deckhead panels (including the heads, which never had one before) and interior lights (finished today) in place. Some mild frustrations this weekend because I was necessarily limited in what I could do while Twig got wired in to testing electrics etc., but I did get the bottom track for the sliding galley doors back in, and have a lengthy list of small wood parts to make and tidying up jobs (lining trim edging etc.) to do while I’m on my own:

[Edit, 12 March 2019: took that galley track back off tonight to redo after changing my mind about its best alignment, but no problems doing so when it was stuck down with contact adhesive.]

Not much to see here, but winter Fly work continues…

A fortnight ago, worn down by weeks of long phone calls trying to resolve luckless issues with new mobile and broadband contracts, I took the whole weekend off and nothing got done. But Twig was here last Friday (delivering plywood in the snow!), Saturday and Sunday as well as Wednesday, and I’ve been working on my own this Friday, Saturday and Sunday to keep making modest progress. Twig’s got more wiring and stuff fitted as well as the heater pump and water tank vent, and we also got the fuel tank and port steering compass back in while we were both here.

So my work this weekend started on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning with a practice run at my speaker enclosures, and testing my plans with scrap ply proved a wise move when mistakes were made (don’t cut out the line for the speaker outer flange!) and lessons learned (like build a wee jig to get things clamped more accurately for the final glue-up). Need to cut the holes fractionally bigger because the speakers won’t quite sit all the way down, but think I can now make a good job of the real ones, which will also be epoxied together rather than Gorilla-Glued (done for speed here):

Other small achievements this weekend include more filling and sanding in the heads and forecabin (now ready for Treadmaster pending a little more sanding on Monday or Tuesday evening), shimming the insert on my table saw to get it just where I want it, tidying the workshop yet again, measuring/templating/drawing the shape required for a custom protective strip across the bottom of the companionway, extracting the mains cables from the starboard compass cutout and getting the compass cleaned so we can refit that one too. It doesn’t sound a lot, but even ‘little’ things take time and add up. Oh, and it seems any bright, low-angle light (February sun this side of Kinlochleven!) can get through the topsides carpet lining, so it’s not just in snow (which is now away)!

Last weekend Twig and I got some tricky Fly jobs done in lining the parts of heads, forecabin and coachroof where the liner’s stuck directly on (there are removable panels elsewhere) then refitting the companionway bulkhead facing, and were quite relieved to get through this lot with things looking good and no major mishaps. But some things turned out to be not quite so right when I returned in Tuesday’s snow to take the photos…

The heads and forecabin linings are fine when fitting and gluing the carpet to these tricky 3D shapes could so easily have gone wrong, but note that the edge above the heads door isn’t finished yet:

There was a small damp patch below the bottom right corner of the heads window (see the darker patch there?) that needs checking out because it’s a new window:

And you can see bright light off the snow getting through the topsides carpet (like the deckhead problem we resolved by painting first) to the lower left. So, while not planning to sail the boat through snow (!), I may still have to put up with some of this for summer sailing till I get the (exterior) topsides painted?

The bulkhead facing looks great in the photos but, despite two machine screws through the grab handle holes to line it up, is now firmly bonded a couple of millimetres below where it used to be. Not the end of the world, but still needing some thought in places. And, for those who’ve seen the cut on my forehead this week, the clamp to the left in the first photo is the one that attacked me when I ducked through the cockpit cover!

The most obvious problem (even if not obvious in my resized photos) is the porthole cutouts no longer being concentric, but I think that can be disguised with new liners where I’ve found a place that makes them for a reasonable price and can do iroko for a decent match to the teak. Not all of the screw holes line up and the compass cutouts are also slightly out, but will probably all be close enough, and I was already considering fitting a protective strip across the companionway bottom edge where it takes the most wear, but probably don’t have to for cosmetic reasons because the mismatch doesn’t look too bad there. Hindsight says we should have pushed the facing hard up under the hatch rails and used more screws for lining up when some of the holes through its thin plywood are slightly ovalled, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing when it’s firmly bonded with epoxy and Sikaflex and what could have been a ‘perfect’ job has turned out merely ‘OK’! :-/

While Fly work’s obviously no longer progressing at late December/early January pace now I’m back at ‘work work’ for the new school term, it’s no way grinding to a halt either with various bits and pieces on and off the boat still getting evening and weekend attention…

The battery box(es) actually went back in on 2 January, but I’ve just caught up with the photography today. It was a surprise to discover expensive, striped, cabin sole plywood when I stripped the paint from the lid back in August (?), but I’m guessing it got used as the piece needing to be cut from the original sole there anyway:

Other ongoing projects from the first week of January that you don’t see here include stripping the pilot berth structures of flaking paint (something I’m only doing outside when I’ve got both daylight and mild, dry conditions) and engine alignment (done by Twig). But I’ve got some work done on the tiller (which we’d removed to get the engine through the pushpit) this weekend, making a wee repair where the exposed end grain was suffering. Think I might finish that by epoxy-coating where I’ve chamfered the corners and a bit down the sides, but not till I’ve got some mixed up for another job:

The restored/improved chart table is all done apart from some new catches to hold it shut and a folding leg for the non-bulkhead end. While I was tempted by sprung ball catches, I’m going to fit magnetic ones because the dimensions suit better and and they’ll be much easier to fit. It used to have two horrid wee hooks on the outside, but I’m fitting catches to the inside front edge (there’s plenty of room for the charts):

Here it is in the stowed/upright position. The teak handle (which I found in a box of bits stashed in my loft) replaces an ugly alloy one. There’s also a cushion to go back where you see the slightly lighter wood and two screw holes:

And here it is as you’d use it (well, not on the floor!). The fiddles (edges) to stop things sliding off are new; it doesn’t need one to the right because there’s a bulkhead there, and the left ones have been left partial to fold up over the nav. station shelves:

Finally (for now), I’ve been fairing the surface ‘craters’ (mostly legacy of the 1999–2000 keel repair) in forecabin and heads prior to sticking down some new Treadmaster. The first pass has been sanded and I’ve done a second where necessary, but can’t sand that till Monday or Tuesday evening:

So it’s 1 January, Fly relaunching year, and the refit continues apace…

Last Thursday (27 December) we got the engine back into the boat (handy things, six-part mainsheets!), and Twig got it bolted down and connected to the new battery cables on Saturday:

The day we did the engine lift, we also managed to fit new Vetus mushroom vents to replace the tired original vent lights, where the transparent part of one was already cracked/leaking (from memory perhaps from a physical blow?) and the other surely just a matter of time:

Saturday also saw a wee hiccup to the interior lining programme when we cut a piece of carpet to line the heads deckhead and started gluing it up there, only to discover that light was shining through it in the most unpleasantly uneven mottled mix of semi-translucent GRP deck and intended carpet white-grey! So we took it straight down again to ponder a solution, which pretty well had to be blocking the light with paint. It was a surprise because we’re getting next to no light through the already-lined topsides, but the decks have different thickness and composition and it’s taken me two coats of grey primer to achieve 100% coverage, doing the second coat with no light in the boat so I could track down all the ‘leaks’, and adding about half a kilo of otherwise pointless weight in the process. The finished lining will be the lighter grey of the wasted piece visible bottom left of the first photo:

Now, you might wonder why we hadn’t noticed the problem before we got to the glue, but we were working from a paper template and knew the piece would fit, so hadn’t thought to hold it up dry. As to whether I’m really happy with ‘next to no light through the already-lined topsides’, well, yes… it is almost none and will be none when I get the (exterior) topsides painted next year or the one after, so no need for more paint in the boat there!

The new stereo is also fitted (that’s just the corner of the protective film looking a bit funny at its top right corner) and, after long deliberation about what speakers to fit where when space for them is tight, I’ve decided to build custom enclosures for 4-inch round full-range units at the top corners of the main bulkhead (where I used to have smaller, plastic car-speaker-pod-type things). What I’ve designed to fit the space (which really stops at the starboard-side grab handle) luckily comes out at near as dammit the optimum 2-litre volume for unported enclosures for the units I’ve ordered, and should be quite straightforward to build from 6mm plywood:

The battery box is ready to go back in after restoring from probably the most water-damaged visible wood we’ve kept to something semi-respectable. While some of the staining (small black marks) resisted oxalic acid and wire brushing, I’m happy enough with the result including my nice round inset piece where there used to be a misshapen ex-socket hole in its aft face:

But refitting the battery box isn’t just about the box itself when support rails for the cabin sole and exposed areas of the keel bolts and their plates needed recoating first (these metal parts also needing cleaning to recoat). So that’s got done alongside the deckhead paint job, although the keel bolt/plate job’s spread from the old year to the new after I didn’t think to thicken the resin first time and had to revisit that today:

The new diesel filler is also in, with the battery box first on the agenda for tomorrow.

Last time I blogged (a month ago), you got the No-photo report (with photos), so today I follow up with ‘Two months’ work in twenty photos’ (which may just be twenty-one!), starting with what I’d already described and partially shown there:

The overhauled seacocks are back together onboard, and new heads, water pump, water filler, galley tap, chart table support block and replacement galley shelf edges all fitted. The folding chart table (which you won’t see varnished and refitted for a while because I’m currently concentrating on immovable bits) has gained a nice teak handle I found in my loft, and I’m also replacing the ugly alloy handles on the heads door with teak rings. The nav. station bulkhead has cutouts for switch panels and stereo, and varnishing the permanently-attached interior woodwork is nearly done, with just a couple more coats to go next weekend before we can get rewiring and relining the boat.

Which, since you’ve already seen the new galley shelf edges and refitted seacocks, properly starts with the heads and, as promised, the cardboard mock Jabsco (which I made to check the standard unit would fit and we didn’t need the compact):

Next, the water pump, filler, other galley stuff and chart table support block (with thanks to Peter Watt for the iroko for the shelf edges and block as well as some other parts we’ve yet to make). Note also the new hull lining (about which more below) visible here and in the nav. station shots:

The two sections of the folding chart table are nearly finished, with five of a probable six coats of varnish to the outside surfaces done here and the sixth completed since taking the photos this afternoon (some woodwork has received up to nine or ten coats, but I’m treating six as my baseline for most things). Note the new handle on the main body and fiddles on the lid:

And here are the teak rings set into the heads door. You’d normally fit just one of these for a locker door, but I’ve used two back-to-back because both sides will show, cutting down the insert tubes to fit them to the 12mm thickness of the door. Now just waiting for some more teak filler to fill the remaining unwanted holes before varnishing:

Twig’s fitted the switch panels, run most (all?) of the necessary wiring through conduit, and made a tidy job of connecting switch panels to fuse box. The third cutout in the bulkhead is for the stereo, which we’ve got but haven’t fitted yet:

We’d decided long ago to re-line the boat with 4mm polypropylene carpet instead of something like the original ‘Mural Mousse’ (some kind of vinyl-type thing?), and went for two-tone grey, choosing the slightly darker shade (‘smoke’) for the topsides and lighter one (white-grey) for the coachroof sides and deckhead (NB Fly’s current bunk cushion covers are the same blue-grey herringbone pattern as my sofa):

And the darker grey is all done bar some finishing of edges etc., with Drew Mcfarlane-Slack coming up to get it started with Twig, then Twig continuing with some assistance from me:

The engine bay has been cleaned and awaits engine refitting:

And the new heads window is done at last, completing a clean sweep of previously leaky forehatch (2011) and main windows (2016). This was made by Twig in my workshop with my tools on Christmas Eve, which we’d chosen as cold but dry, but turned out so cold we had to put up a second ladder because the decks were untenably slippy:

So much work has been done and much continues, but we’re undoubtedly starting to see the fruits of all that endless careful preparation, which takes up so much time without things necessarily looking better. On which note, make no mistake, this is (internally at least) a total refit I’d guess to be pretty well equivalent to building the boat from the original kit. There are some things there we’ve not had to do, but other non-kit parts (i.e. original Hunter structure) we’ve had to repair or rebuild. But have to say I’m sitting here looking at the photos I took today in the boat I’ve spent so much of the past eighteen months working on and thinking just ‘wow!’ :-)

I keep hoping to get some photos to show Fly progress, but prefer the non-flash photos and don’t get much light to work with in November, especially by the time I finish work (day job) during the week or boat work at weekends. So here’s what you might get to see soon if I get the chance…

The overhauled seacocks are back together onboard, and new heads, water pump, water filler, galley tap, chart table support block and replacement galley shelf edges all fitted. The folding chart table (which you won’t see varnished and refitted for a while because I’m currently concentrating on immovable bits) has gained a nice teak handle I found in my loft, and I’m also replacing the ugly alloy handles on the heads door with teak rings. The nav. station bulkhead has cutouts for switch panels and stereo, and varnishing the permanently-attached interior woodwork is nearly done, with just a couple more coats to go next weekend before we can get rewiring and relining the boat. But she’s also starting to eat money, with loads we need to get on now ordered or getting ordered. I’m trying to avoid adding up the total project cost even though I could check my records to arrive at a pretty accurate figure, but think it could well end up more than the boat’s ‘worth’. But then she’s going to be better after all this onshore neglect followed by refit than when I bought her, and priceless to me as my much-loved boat I know well enough to trust like no other, so the key words in that last sentence are ‘well end’. Or more appositely ‘end well’! :-)

So this was supposed to be the ‘no-photo report’, and still is for November, but then I remembered I’ve got some already from late October taken just after my last blog. So here you go (but I’m keeping the one of my cardboard mock heads to show alongside the fitted genuine Jabsco!)…