Nothing going on this week...

 

Change of location

Instead of one group working on Saga in one shed and another group working in another shed we all got together to work in one place for a change. This allowed us to make some progress with fitting of a new thaft to Linda and some sucking of teeth about the fitting of a new thaft to Waterlily.

Fitting a new thaft to Linda

A partly fitted new thaft on Linda

It's the Sailing Season...

With the arrival of the sailing season several OHBS volunteers have been occupied getting their boats ready for the season which has meant an interruption to restoration activities. However, we managed to restart work today both on Saga and cleaning & painting work at the Ness site.

Removing broken screws on Saga

 

After cutting out a number of broken screws from the deck framing and plugging the holes we test fitted the original coaming to see how things were shaping up. Not too good. Something has changed shape (not unusual) and the original coaming boards no longer fitted snugly, we had 10mm gaps in a couple of places so onto plan B = fit new coaming boards.

Test fitting the original coaming boards

Working on Nellie

Work is continuing on the ex-steam launch Nellie. A lot of time has been spent cleaning out the interior of Nellie which had suffered from years of coal dust, oil and salt water being ground into the bilge area. With the cleaning phase over, focus has shifted to painting. Much of the interior has now been painted and some of the deck level wood work has been stripped and re-varnished.

Nellie interior

Nellie interior

Nellie spent much of her time while on the water moored to a buoy. This meant that she rocked or rolled in any waves that hit her from the side. A previous owner fitted a wheel on an axle to a bilge pump which meant that the rolling motion had the benefit of pumping the bilge out.

Nellie bilge pump wheel

Fettling the trim

Working on Saga. The new rubbing or side strakes arrrived today. These will eventually be fitted to the outside of the hull so that they are flush with the new deck. Before we get to the fitting we need to finish planing back the outside edge of the new deck and drill the strakes ready for screwing to the hull. The screw holes will then be plugged to hide the screws. In the meantime we have been working on the foredeck trim piece, this is a piece of sapele that covers the joint between the two sides of foredeck.

The new side strakes

Marking out the foredeck trim piece

Cutting out on the foredeck trim piece

4/4 new panels set down

With all four new deck panels now glued down the next task was to trim off the excess overhanging around the edges. The new deck panels were rough cut to shape - we had deliberately oversized the panels by a couple of centimeters. With the panels all glued in their final position we could now trim the edges back to within one millimeter of their final size. We trimmed the deck edges using a small router with a flush trim bit and a piece of sheet steel to act as a stand-off guard against the hull. The edges will be further finished by hand planing.

Test fitting a trim piece

Testing fitting the old coaming

Three down and one to go

The fourth and final section of new decking was glued down today. Although we use a lot of clamps and weights, the clamps and weights are used carefully so that we down get depressions in the flexible decking sheet. With all the new sections of deck now fixed down the next job will be to trim off excess around the edges and then to plane the edges to make them flush with the underside.

Saga - last section of new decking being glued down

Lots of clamps - but only lightly clamped