In a fit of boundless enthusiasm I acquired a quite large and very old British built wood lathe. I believe it had a prior life in a high school shop and that the chap I bought it from was a retired shop teacher.

Space in my garage, which has never seen a car, is at a premium (editors note: we definitely had an unworking car in it briefly in my youth - until towed out for scap). Every square inch is fought over. My wife for her gardening stuff and myself for my fine tools.

I was eventually able to successfully lay claim to about 5 ft by 7 ft in the furthest corner. This is what I had to do to make this space ready to receive my newest toy – I mean tool! The first requirement, power, electricity, juice. Done. Then I looked at the open stud walls and the open joist ceiling (deck above) and realized that with all the sanding dust a wood lathe produces something would have to be done to close this area in. One of the cheapest products PlasticWorks.ca sells is polyethylene sheet, also called arena board. It is a near indestructible sheet that you can nail or screw through and in white which would really brighten up my corner and dust will barely even stick to it. Done.

​And while dust will not stick to the arena board it will still float in the air and coat everything in the garage. So to enclose the area around the lathe I hung from the ceiling to the floor heavy duty vinyl, also from PlasticWorks.ca. Stand for a long time on that hard concrete floor? No way! Add some rubber fatigue mats from, you guessed it, PlasticWorks.ca. Pictures follow, but this whole set up is still very much a work in progress. And I will do a separate write up on things I have made using the lathe.

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Every time I opened the paper or turned on the radio – inflation, inflation.

Every time my wife came back from the grocery store – prices up, prices up. Time to do something. So I resolved to start making our own bread (also my own wine but that is another story). I bought a bread machine.

While it will make a 2 lb. loaf I have generally been making a one pound loaf using 50-50 whole wheat and white
flour. My cost savings, get this, 48%.

You old dudes out there will remember that saying from our youth “the greatest thing since sliced bread”. Well that is the problem with baking your own bread, it is not sliced. So using some acrylic offcuts and a bit of Starboard etc. I made a bread slicing jig. It works with an electric knife that otherwise only gets used to slice the turkey at Christmas. Drop the loaf in, crank up the knife, follow the slots and voila – sliced bread. Without this slicing solution making your own bread soon becomes a PITA.
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Have problem? Think plastic. You may find a solution there.

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated, but…… I know it has been a long time since I wrote anything.
No more writings about boats. No more boat. I sold my boat. Here is why:

​My last boat was a Tolly 24, a big step down but I could handle it myself and did not need the assistance of my reluctant wife. I was anchored in Nanaimo harbour, with probably 20 other boats within shouting distance. Off I go in the dingy to get provisions. On my return I did that age old blunder, one foot on the swim grid and one foot on the dingy, and the distance is getting bigger until – plunk, I am in the water. Even at my advanced age I was able to scramble out, and there was really no danger with all the other boats at anchor nearby. But boating alone I was frequently at anchor in some bay where I am the only boat. What if this mishap occurred there? What if I could not get out of the water? Time to sell the boat. Time to move on.
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What should I do now? With time on my hands and dollars in my pocket I thought back (many many years) to my high school days in Saskatchewan where I had had worked on a metal lathe.

So I acquired a metal lathe, followed by a big geared drill press, a power hack saw, and a band saw. Heck, why stop there, so followed a mill and a wood lathe. Most of these were used items. Now what to do? After the familiarization time had passed I decided to CNC the metal lathe, a BIG project. Lots and lots of research, lots and lots of time sourcing items and then the installation which took the least time of all. And how did it turn out? The installation went fine and the machine worked fine. But programming the machine was a nightmare. I could spend a week writing and debugging a program and then 30 minutes to produce my one off part. It drove me crazy. What to do? 

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Eliminating Stress and Covering Up

Coming off my swim grid at the stern is a ladder which gives access to the swim grid and back onto the rear deck. Right beside this ladder is my stern light post, attached to rear of the boat and reaching up into the air. The stern light post is just too easy to grab when you are using the ladder. This has led to stress cracks at the base of the light post, and as well the cracks have allowed rust from the set screws to follow the cracks down and spread out. So we have both a strength and an appearance problem.

To cover up the worst of the cracks and rust stains, and to strengthen the whole area, I thought I would put a fiberglass plate on the outside and under the base of the stern light, and also put a plastic backing plate on the inside where the bolts went through.

I had previously made some flat fiberglass panels which I knew would come in handy for various projects. The panels were made using a sheet of melamine fiberboard as a layup table. Fiberglass resin will not stick to the melamine so no waxing or prep is needed. These panels were made by painting on a layer of white unwaxed gel coat, letting that set up, and then overlaying this with 2 layers of 1.5 oz fiberglass mat. However these stock panels were quite flexible, thus I added a layer of combo mat to stiffen up the fiberglass for this project.

I had made a paper template of the shape I wanted, which was then transferred to the fiberglass panel and cut out using a jig saw. The edges of the oval shaped cutout were then filed and sanded to make them smooth and to give a small radius on the top edge. (This is where I say –I wish I had taken more pictures.) Next the fiberglass shape was painted, using Endura, a high end two part paint. The colour is Oyster White, which is a close match to the Tolly off-white gel coat. The paint was left over from my cabin door project, described earlier, although for the door project I had a body shop apply the paint. Here I just brushed on a heavy coat and let it self-level.

The base of the light post was then used as a template to match drill holes in the fiberglass panel. A hole was also drilled for the wires to come through. For the inside backing plate I used a piece of 1/4” ABS, a circle 1” in diameter bigger than the base of the light post. In the ABS I then drilled a hole for the wire and one bolt hole. To the back of the fiberglass plate I applied some caulking around all the holes, which along with some masking tape held the plate to the stern of the boat. I then inserted one bolt through the metal base, through the fiberglass plate, through the wall of the boat, and eventually through the ABS backing plate on the inside of the boat, and put on a nut and washer. With everything now all lined up I could drill through the existing holes from the outside to make the final 2 holes in the ABS inside backing plate. Now everything could be tightened up, wiring completed, and the light post reattached to the base.

By the way, this project was only possible because of the air vent on the rear side of the boat. I was able to remove the vent and the hole was just large enough and close enough for my arm to reach the bolts from the inside, but it was a stretch. And I will avoid going into detail about assembling it without the wires going through and other similar distractions, such as my glasses falling overboard, and …………

This is another posting with nothing to do with plastic or fiberglass but I hope you find it interesting.

Just before I put my previous boat up for sale, a twin engine diesel of 36 feet, I blew an engine. I had previously installed engine overheating alarms, but had not yet extended them to the upper steering station. Many many boat dollars later I had the same boat as before I put out all that money. Thus when the alarm went off in my new boat I immediately shut the engine down. After a period of time I started it up again, only to have the alarm come on after a few minuites. So I shut things down again and put in a call to C-Tow. I was close to Collingwood Channel, between Bowen Island and the Paisley Islands and the water was fairly rough, luckily I was travelling alone.

C-Tow arrived and we hooked up a rope bridle through the fairleads on either side of the bow. Soon, due to the rough water, the cutting action of the fairleads, and the less than high quality rope, the rope parted. It broke a few more times before we reached safe harbor at Gibsons.

Later I examined the fairleads more closely. They were designed for the ropes being led through them to go aft only. When you lead the rope forward as we had to do for the tow, the edge, which did not look all that sharp was still sharp enough to wear a rope quite quickly. There must be a better way. So I began a search for a better design. All fairleads I looked at seemed to have the same problem. You could install them as aft facing or forward facing but I could not find ones that would work both ways. So I designed my own.

The design was sketched out and sized so it could handle up to 1” diameter rope. The drawings were then taken to Pro-Tech over at Lynwood Marina in North Van. They did a great job of producing the items as I had drawn them out .

This is the new very skookum fairlead. The original one in the picture is great for tying up at the dock but not for towing, and is designed for the rope to led aft only. 

Oh yes, and that alarm which led to the tow and all this fairlead business – it was my newly installed depth sounder that had not been programmed properly.

Ponding Water on Cover

Here on the wet coast, even in summer, it rains regularly.  A previous blog showed how I dealt with ponding water on my winter cover using posts and plastic plates.  This is the same approach applied to the summer cover, however here rather than plastic plates I used fiberglass.  A panel of fiberglass was fabricated by doing a layup on melamine and then using a jig saw to cut it to shape.  The actual piece of fiberglass I used was left over from a previous job, but you can see pictures of the technique used in my blog write up on making a new entry door.

On one side of the fiberglass plate I glued a square of carpet, somewhat larger than the fiberglass.  This would prevent the hard edges of the fiberglass from chewing through the canvas cover.  On the other side of the fiberglass I glued a block of wood with a hole in it using epoxy.  The wooden hold up rod would go into the hole in the wooden block.

The steering seat on the upper deck lifts off quite easily, and the pedestal it sits on is a hollow tube.  Thus I can just remove the seat and store it on the deck, drop a wooden rod into the seat holder, put the fiberglass plate on top of the wooden rod and zip up the cover.  The cover now has slope to shed the rain and prevent it from ponding.

Bird Wars, Continued

A previous blog entry detailed my attempts at keeping the birds off my upper cover.  My K.I.S.S. solution detailed in that write up worked, but I was never totally satisfied with it as storing the long rods with the plastic blocks was not easy, they had to go inside the cabin at the edge of the forward berth.  So this is the latest version of what I now call my “Bird Away” system.

I began with a small piece of 1/4” white ABS plastic, which I bent at an angle, at home, using a heat gun.  The ABS just slips into the unused bimini cover holders, drill a hole, put in a bolt and the ABS is locked in place.

Next I purchased a short section of 1/4” ID stainless tubing.  I cut the tubing into sections about 2.5” long, drilled a hole in the end, and using small bolts attached the tubing to the bent ABS.  The idea was to position the tubes at a fore and aft and upward angle, so that when a fiberglass rod was inserted in each rod it would sit above the cover and keep the dirty birds from landing on the cover.

Long narrow strips of 1/8 and 1/16 thick ABS were cut from scraps.  These were then cut into short pieces and used as shims to position the metal tubes at appropriate angles.  The shims were glued to the ABS base, and to each other using methylene chloride, but ABS plumbing cement would also work.

The fiberglass rods were then inserted into the tubing and cut to length to give a fan effect providing a sort of canopy over the cover.  This has proved very effective in keeping the birds off.  It has not been necessary to fasten the fiberglass rods to the metal tubes, they just slip in and none has ever worked its way out.  This makes removal easy.  I just pull the rods out and store them on the upper deck between the seats and the outside edge.  The rod holder remains bolted to the upper rail and only needs to be removed when the winter cover goes on.

This is part of the console of the upper helm station of Morning Star, my 26’ Tollycraft. Shown here is the depth gauge which I installed some time ago and holes from installs done by previous owners. I assumed the depth gauge was water tight, it is not. Returning recently in the rain the gauge began to malfunction, but luckily returned to normal when it dried out. Time for a cover up, and while I am at it why not cover up the ugly holes in the vicinity.

What I came up with was a plate which would go under the depth sounder and cover up the screw holes. A water proof cover would then go over the sounder and be glued to the plate. To cover the hole in the vertical step in the dash I would mount a box on the stepped up part of the dash, and the front of the box would come down below the bottom of the box to cover up the hole in the vertical step. The front of the box would come down to, but not be joined to, the plate under the sounder.

Cover Up

For a long time I have had a hole in the port side of my aft deck. The previous owner had installed a steering wheel and related hardware in this area – he must have been a very avid fisherman who wanted to steer the boat without leaving the aft deck. I had earlier installed a circular access plate where the steering wheel was, but I was waiting for inspiration on what I could do with the nearby square hole.

While it seems like the plexi stands out I can guarantee you that no one except an experienced boater will notice it. No one has yet commented on the hole that was there.

Getting Organized
 
Under the forward seat of the dining area on my boat is a locker, a cupboard.  It is a good size, but it is difficult to access anything in the back.  Thus one of the first things I did was to install a drawer in the lower half of this locker, the upper half being accessible by lifting the seat.  Now I could pull out the drawer and have access to the far reaches of the locker.  This became the designated area for storing navigation charts, oversize cruising books (that would not fit on my bookshelf – see previous blog entry) and manuals.  It became annoying to have to remove the cruising books to get at the charts, pull out the chart I needed and then replace the books.  (Even with GPS I always keep the relevant chart handy.)
 
So while sitting at anchor in Garden Bay at Pender Harbor I went looking for the chart for Smuggler’s Cove and thought – I can improve this system.

The way it was, books on top, charts buried below.  The little lip on the inside of the drawer is to strengthen the sides of the drawer where the drawer sliders are attached.  I can make use of that!
 
My idea was to make a tray that would sit on the lip at the sides of the drawer.  I would give the tray hand holds to make it easy to lift the tray out.  To contain the books that would sit on the bottom of the drawer I would make another tray.  Heck, let’s make two trays.

Now days I just give a drawing to Alex, our CNC man, and he programs and computer cuts the pieces.  The pieces will be cut from 1/4” clear acrylic (plexiglass).  I know I said I make the trays, but really I give the pieces to Jay, our Sri Lankan, Canadian lead fabricator, and Jay does the assembly.  By the way Jay is a true sailor, having worked for many years on ocean going freighters, and literally having sailed the seven seas.
 
The computer cut pieces are bent, the sides are solvent welded on, the units are dressed up by flame polishing with a hydrogen/oxygen torch and voila!

And how did it all work out – great!  One of the bottom trays holds all the books, leaving the other tray soon to be filled, which will not be a problem.  The top tray lifts out easily, holds all the charts with room for a few more, is a big organizational improvement, and looks good to boot.  A thing of beauty and a joy forever!  Hey it’s my blog and I can wax poetic if I want.