All the colors are on the boat now. I think they look nice

Two more coats of red, and I can take the masking tape off and install the windows, hatches, and portholes. Just in time, too, since the tent is starting to leak. I’ll try to get by without buying another tarp for the top.

There will be small cleats between each fitting to cleat the lines to.

Sweeping the roof last weekend to get ready for the rainy season, I saw this unusual view of the boatbuilding shed. Hard to imagine a 25-foot boat in there, huh?

When this is done, I’d like to build a real shop in that spot. Concrete walls, skylights, big rollup door on the street side.  220 Volt wiring for the welder and pressurized air plumbed in. Maybe a small greenhouse on the South side for solar heating and tomatoes.  I have an urge to build some small boats next   

A lot of distractions these past few weeks have kept me from doing any big projects, so I’ve been attaching hardware and minor jobs like that.

I was concerned that a hard pull on my side cleats (like tying up with a too-short line and being hit with a large wake) might split my gunwale, so I made these bronze plates as reinforcements.  Now, any outward force on the cleat will be transferred down to the hull instead of ripping off the gunwale (I hope).   The material is 1/8 inch silicon bronze plate I bought at Alaskan Copper for this purpose.

I made a cardboard template and traced it onto the bronze plate.  I cut out the parts freehand on my metal-cutting  bandsaw, put them in my bench vise and bent the flanges over on the dotted line with a 5-pound hammer.
 

I pre-drilled the cleat holes through the gunwale, then clamped the bronze part in place and marked the big hole for the through-hull, then drilled the hole a little oversized.
 

Clamped the part in place and marked for the cleat mount holes with the drill bit I used to drill the holes in the wood. 
 

Then removed the part and drilled the holes in the bronze, starting with a 1/8 inch bit and working up the the finish size.

Checked the fit.

I ground down the corners with a 5-inch grinder and 60-grit disk, freehand.  Then sanded with the small dual-action sander, down to 220 grit.  I’m not trying for a really fine finish here – they will tarnish nice and dark soon enough.

My main concern is that I have three different metals here – zinc from the galvanized cleat, stainless bolts and nuts, and the bronze plate and through-hull.  I may look for bronze bolts to replace the stainless. At the least, I’ll put a nylon washer between the stainless nut and the bronze plate.  I need to epoxy-seal the bare wood where I drilled the holes before doing the final installation.

Added – I don’t know if this helps, but here is a rough cross-section of the area, and how I think the forces will be transferred away from ripping off that inside 1×2.

Installed the rubrails yesterday, and the through-hulls that the fenders will hang from.

Kirby Yellow Gloss paint. I’ll flatten the top coat a little.

 
Two more coats of this on the outside and two more coats on the inside, and I’ll be able to mount the windows!

Here’s my original color layout from last January. I may install the rubrail today while waiting for the paint to dry. I wish I could see the boat from this perspective, but the tent is too narrow.

Well, it took 5 coats, but I’m calling the hull paint done.  Parts of it are very shiny   Some of it doesn’t look quite as nice but I’ve decided I can live with it.

I added flattening agent to the third coat, which made the paint look very thin so I added very little thinner. The paint didn’t smooth out after tipping, leaving tiny ridges along the whole hull surface. I had to sand it down with 220 grit – 400 wouldn’t dent it. This stuff cures hard!  It took 2 more coats to make it look good again.

Sanding the 4th coat with 400 grit:

Stem:

Self-Portrait in Two-Part Polyurethane:

• The first three are 4-strokes. The Evinrude is a 2-stroke.
• All meet the California Air Resources Board air pollution standards.
• The Honda is new this year
• I’m guessing the steering angle of the non-Honda motors are 30 degrees
• The Evinrude is the only one in this list that isn’t a ‘high-thrust’-style motor. High-thrust motors are designed to power displacement boats.
• All of these models come with power tilt/trim

It’s been too rainy and humid to paint so I spent yesterday working on the dashboard design. I went ahead and bought the hydraulic steering (as opposed to mechanical) so I can add an autopilot later on if I want.    It’s a really beautiful piece of engineering. The fluid pumps are built into the steering wheel post.  Fisheries has a cutaway model – the steering mechanism has a canted plate that pushes a series of small pumps as the wheel turns. The downside is that it’s three inches deeper than I had planned for. Space between the seats and the wheel is already very tight.  It’s hard to see in the picture below, but I inset the mount 2 inches into the dash to reclaim some of the space.  This is actually my third dash mockup.  It’s hard to figure out the design until I have the actual parts that will be installed. The only things I still don’t have are the motor parts – shifter/throttle, and the engine gauges.  The navigation console will mount above the dash so I don’t need it yet.

Meryll tipped while I rolled the first coat of black paint on the topsides. The tipping left visible streaks but I’m guessing that’s normal for a first coat of black over white primer. Halfway through, the paint started getting tiny bubbles that left white spots after tipping. We tried adding some thinner but, although the paint flowed more easily, it made the bubbles worse.  It could be that it wasn’t warm enough (65F), or that the humidity was too high. I’ll wait for better conditions for the next coats.  It took about 3/4 of a quart of paint to do this coat.

Meryll wore a shower cap to keep her long hair safe. I bought her a brand-new respirator for the job.  The horizontal line of dots in the paint are screw holes for mounting the rub rail.

The rolling box she’s sitting on has been a real back saver while prepping the hull for paint. I bought nice big casters so it’s easy to move around.