On Board with Mark Corke

Wooden Boat show

I just realized today that in less than couple of months the Wooden Boat show will be here. Well not here exactly but at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.

 I shall be there, possibly with a boat but I am not sure about that yet, but it really is a fantastic couple of days if you like looking at classic and not so classic wooden boats. Having been in the past I can honestly say it is a great day out and because of where it is held there is a lot to do even for those members of the family who may not be into boats as much as you and I are.

In addition to all the boats in the Mystic seaport collection there are boats from all over thew country many bought to the show by amateur builders and exhibited in a section called 'show us yours'.

It's not till the end of June but I can almost smell the varnish.

Lumber yard skiff

This boat is basic I know but that's what I like about it. Called the lumberyard skiff the idea is that it can be built with lumber from the local lumber yard with no special materials, tools or skills. This one in the picture is at the time of writing up for sale from the guys at Old Wharf Dory co and from what I can see from the picture it looks as though it has been nicely put together with Meranti plywood. There have been a bunch of these boats at different times and I even think that the Wooden Boat school offer the boat as one of the projects that you can go and do during a week long course.  I do believe that the side decks on the one in the picture are not as originally drawn but they should add to the rigidity of the boat, keep the boat a little dryer in a chop and frankly they look good too. The reason for me bringing this boat to your attention is that I have been casting around for boat that I can build in stages on this blog. It will enable me to highlight various skills and techniques and because there are fewer parts than many boats will go together fast so I can get it onto the water later this year. There will also be sufficient information on this blog so that even if you have never built a boat before we can work togetherr so to speak if you decide to build one yourself too. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions or expand on any points.
The boat is 16 feet long and will float in less than 6 inches of water with the motor raised. Incidentally a 25 hp motor will be more than adequate and should push this baby along at a steady clip in smooth water.

i would be interested in hearing from readers of On Board if this is something that they would be interested in following on a week by week basis. If I can get enough interest from a few potential sponsors who will cover the cost of the materials then I may well raffle off the boat at the end of the project so one lucky reader gets a nice new boat.

I do quite fancy the idea of equipping it with a plywood console and installing a wheel which seems to suit it well. You can see a picture of a boat thus kitted out by clicking here.

Water system upgrade

    I've been updating the water system on 'Mallard' this winter. A part of which has been to install some updated systems and do away with the existing pressure water system. I've installed a new larger capacity water pump, some new faucets and the pressure water switch. This switch operates the pump automatically. As soon as the faucet is opened the switch senses a drop in pressure on the delivery side and automatically turns on the pump forcing water out.
Previously the system was kept up to pressure with an  accumulator tank which was under constant pressure and although this worked fine it tended to cycle on and off even when there was no water draw from the faucet. This was especially noticeable when the water tank was almost empty as the pump had to work harder to keep the pressure up and as such this would run the pump at the most inopportune times. Just as i was about to go to sleep the pump would run, which was right under my bunk and would either keep me up or wake me, neither of which were condusive to a good nights sleep. In the end i turned off the water pump breaker at night but this was something that i was apt to forget until i was awoken in the middle of the night.

Now I am hoping that the new system which has freed up considerable space in the locker will over come this malady, I shall be able to sleep soundly and the water will gush forth on demand. It all seems to work at the moment but I shall be interested to see how it works during the coming season.

Flexiteek

I've mentioned this product in the past I know but today was the first chance that I got to get my hands on a bit of Flexiteek. I had seen it at various boat shows on boats and always thought that it looked pretty good, almost indistinguishable from freshly sanded teak but I am a die hard woodworker so I had always thought that it would take a lot to get me away from the proper stuff.

The picture above shows a section of the Flexiteek laying on a panel made with the real stuff and apart from the fact that one has a white caulking and the real teak a black there is actually not much to tell the two apart, the color is very similar. Actually the texture when you rub your hand over it feels about the same too and I have to say that from 10 feet away very few people would be able to tell the difference.

Flexiteek is made from PVC, comes in a variety of widths as complete panels and is about a quarter inch thick.  Today was the first really warm day of the year here in the NE and I left the panel outside in the sun while I collected all the tools together to stick it down. With the sun warming the material it became very pliable and I could see this would be of benefit if one was fitting this in a sprung deck arrangement apparently it can also be warmed with a hair dryer or hot air gun too.  I could see that it would be easier to handle than long lengths of timber.

I glued a 18 inch square section to a scrap of 3/4 inch plywood using the adhesive supplied with the Flexiteek then to finish it off I ran a bead of the caulking around the edge just as I would do if I were fitting this stuff for real on a boat.

Then I smoothed the edge with an old chisel before peeling off the masking tape, leaving a nice neat edge.

So here is the complete panel. I am going to be conducting some trials with this panel which I am going to leave out in the weather alongside a similar panel made from real teak wood. It will be interesting to see how things develop - I'll keep you posted but as things stand right now I think that I will be looking long and hard at using Flexiteek instead of real wood in the cockpit area of my new motor boat.

Satin Finish

 I must confess that the last few times that I have painted a boat interior I have used oil based house paint and it has worked out just fine. Many of the interiors that I have done still look good after 10 years. This is due in part to the interior of the boat's cabin not being exposed to salt water and the harmful effects of the direct sun and it's damaging UV rays. I would never use house paint on the outside of the boat, for that my preferred choice is the Interlux 2 part Perfection which to my mind, perhaps because I am familiar with it one of the best finishes that it is possible to get with the roller and tip method. I've been using Interlux paints for 35 years all told and during that time I must have tried almost every product that they have made except their flattening agent, until now.

I spent some time on an old but beautiful MacKenzie recently and I much admired the interior paintwork which had a silky smooth finish which apparently was Interlux brightside single pack paint to which flattening agent had been added and wanted to get that same effect on my latest interior powerboat project. A satin finish I find is easy on the eye as it is not so glaring and especially if using white, a popular color for boat interiors that won't blind you as soon as the sun comes out.

 

Flattening agent can be mixed in different ratios with the paint depending on the level of sheen one is after, one to one gives a semi gloss, two to one an eggshell and so on down to dead flat matt finish. It works great but because there is no pigment in the flattening agent it does not cover as well as paint would on it's own. The best approach and the one as recommended by the makers is to use the paint neat for the first few coats and only add the agent for the final coat. The flattening agent readily mixes in with the paint and has a similar viscosity so application requires no special technique save for the surface preparation which you would have to do in any event.

My project is well underway and I hopefully will have some pictures to post here by the end of the week so you can see how everything worked out. Most of what I am painting are doors and other trim which I have in the workshop so I will try to get a shot of a couple of the doors, one with and one without flattening agent so you can see for yourself.

Trailer bearings

  'Mallard' stays on a purpose built trailer in the barn during the winter months while I work on her and then come the spring I tow her back to the marina for the coming summer. As trailers go it is a substantial affair and capable of many miles but even though the trailer only does a couple of hundred miles each year total I am careful to take care of it. One of the things that I am most nervous about is one of the  wheels coming off at high speed and me coming to a grinding halt, or worse. To allay those nightmares I take time each year to service the wheel bearings carefully.

It is important that the bearing and grease are in good condition especially if you regularly dunk the trailer axles into the sea. Rinsing with fresh water as soon as possible will prolong the life of the trailer and prevent it from going rusty, but back to those bearings.

Jack up the trailer and check for rumble from the bearings as you rotate the wheel with your hand. Next grab the top and bottom of the wheel and try to rock it. If you hear noises from the wheel or there is more than an 1/8 th of play then the bearing may be in need of some TLC.

The photo above shows the dust cap removed and you can clearly see the castellated nut and cotter pin that holds the hub unit and bearings onto the stub axle. If when you remove the dust cap you find water or metal filings then further investigation is necessary and you should remove the hub and service the wheel bearings (I'll show how to do that in a later posting).

While it is more than possible to over pack a bearing with grease most failure are dues to over heating often caused by the rear bearing and seal failing and all the grease running out causing over heating and failure. In extreme cases of over heating the hub can literally weld itself to the axle which in turn is then sheared off by the force of the wheel still trying to turn. I've seen a couple of these and it is not pretty.

This is a cutaway through a typical trailer hub. The outboard end is at the top which in this case is fitted with a bearing buddy which in my opinion are worth their weight in gold as it is a simple matter to pump in some extra grease from a grease gun from time to time. the pressure from the gun tends to ensure that the grease reaches the rear bearing which as I mentioned above are the ones that tend to fail.

Here is a shot of the same hub in the first photo in which the dust cap which was removed for servicing has been replaced with a bearing buddy.

If you trail your boat please check your bearings periodically.

TIP
As an added safety check I put my hand on each of the hubs any time I stop for gas. If one is noticeably hotter than the others then this is sign that something is amiss.

Interior lights

    You may be wondering what you are supposed to be looking at here but in fact the white switch in the middle of the picture is the new dimmer for the Hatteras LED lights that I have just finished installing in 'Mallards' cabin. I am very impressed with how the whole project turned out. I upgraded the existing lights some time ago by changing out the halogen bulbs for LED arrays that I made myself in an effort to reduce the amount of power consumed. They have done stirling service for the past 5 years but things have moved on greatly since those days and I wanted to upgrade the light levels somewhat and at the same time install some good looking fixtures.

    Four of the surface mount versions of the Hatteras LED lights from Imtra now provide more than enough light, in fact the photo above was taken by the light of the four fittings at full power without the aid of any supplementary flash or other fill light.

This is one of the lights and you can just see the cable exiting from the rear of the unit. In fact the cable is a four wire group which provides two for the power circuit and two for the dimmer control. The light will work perfectly well without a dimmer but I wanted to be able to drop the lights for night time sailing and other times when full power is not required. Power consumption is so small that I was able to get away with 22 awg cable which means that the cable is less obtrusive than would have been the case with conventional halogen bulb where the cable would have been 18 or even 16 gauge.

Wiring was straight forward, the lights came with a wiring diagram but I know from experience that routing the cables for a neat job is the hardest part and it is this that often takes the longest and so it was in this case.

The dimmer unit will run up to 15 lights on the same circuit so my four were well within it's capabilities. Small and light I attached it to the back of the switch panel with some double sided sticky pads after I had wired it in.

 Imtra do supply switches but I wanted mine to blend in with my existing panel so I installed an extra Carling switch which blended in with the adjacent switches, the white cover is to make it easier to spot in the dark.

So here below is the newly illuminated cabin, the lights are just out of shot mounted directly to the over head.

TCP 100 Teak Cleaner

I've had the tub of TCP 100 teak cleaner from Teak Decking Systems on the shelf in the workshop for a while now and today I finally got around to giving it a go and seeing how effective it was at actually cleaning up some dirty teak.
I used a locker lid which is about 10 years old as my sample test piece; here's the photo before I started. You don't need much in the way of equipment to clean the deck, a supply of clean water, a not too stiff scrubbing brush and the teak cleaner itself.

I do like the look of newly laid teak and I was keen to see how this cleaner performed. The photos below follow the sequence necessary to clean a badly soiled deck. If the teak is less dirty the cleaner can be diluted directly into a bucket of warm water, in which case it would simply be a question of scrubbing on the solution and then rinsing off. For regular cleaning the premix method would be the one to go for and not unimportantly use less of the cleaning agent and thus be more cost effective in the long run.

I must confess than I am a kind of do it first then read the instructions later type of guy but for the purposes of the test I followed the instructions on the tub to the letter. The first thing to do is to rinse the surface with plenty of clean fresh water. A hose would be best for large surfaces but as I was only working on a small area I used a bucket.

While the surface is still wet the cleaner is sprinkled onto the surface. It says to be liberal with it but the tub was rather full when first opened so that explains the large blob in the middle of the hatch cover!

The next step is to brush it across the grain. This is important as many a deck has been loved to death by being scrubbed with a hard brush along the grain. This has the effect of scuffing out the soft fibers in the grain which leaves a ridged deck. Although you can't see it in the photo the white powder turned swiftly grey as it lifted the dirt from the surface.
 Decks should always be scrubbed across the grain and with a brush that it not too hard.

After a couple of minutes of scrubbing the surface was immediately flushed with plenty of clean water, which rinses away the loosened dirt and debris.

The final result. It is hard to tell from the photos but the surface really was much cleaner and had more of that new freshly sanded look to it and is to my mind a success.

Vortex-Vac Flush

The first boat that I ever sailed on had no electronics and the toilet consisted of a cedar bucket which although worked well enough when I went out with the guys it was less than popular with the ladies.

Some time later we got around to installing a manual flush toilet which in those days simply flushed with sea water and as this was before holding tanks the waste simply went back into the sea.

Waste now has to go into a holding tank while boating within the 3 mile limit and electric flushing is common. This new toilet from Raritan looks interesting and offers the option of either fresh or salt water flushing with the flick of a switch which operates a solenoid thus opening and closing the relevant valve. The toilet also has something called Raritan Smart Flush Control which actually allows you to program flush options. You can can check out all the information on the Raritan website where there is even a video. I do like the idea with this type of toilet that even when you have non boating friends aboard it works just like the toilet that they are used to at home so you do not have to give them instruction or listen to those oh so embarrassing pumping sounds as they try to figure out how the head  works.
Mind you at over $1300 this is one expensive toilet, it makes the cedar bucket look very attractive.

Working with epoxy - part 2

Some time  ago I did a posting about getting to grips with epoxy so I thought it about time to move onto the next stage and actually make something with a practical purpose. If you are new to using epoxy and you read the previous post then you might be itching to make something if you have not done so already. I needed a new battery box and so this is what is featured here, but you could make a tool box or if really adventurous a water tank, just make sure that y seal and paint the inside of the tank well though. Here's how to go about making the battery box.

You won't need many tools and the strength of epoxy means that fancy joints are needed. This is beginners project and even stopping to take pictures as I went along completing the box was easily accomplished in an afternoon.

1.    After measuring the battery make a box out of plywood which will allow enough room for the battery to sit inside the box with about half and inch all around. Mix up some epoxy thickened with fillers (see the last posting by clicking here for more details on this) then brush this onto the inside of the corners and use some pins to hold the bits together while the epoxy sets. Incidentally the nails are not required for strength, the epoxy is plenty strong enough on it's own but it will allow you to continue without waiting for the epoxy to set up.

2. To make the box extra strong form epoxy fillets all around the bottom and the four corners. Make these as neat and smooth as possible because they are very hard to sand smooth once the epoxy has set. Leave the box to set overnight.

3.    We are going to be covering the outside with glass cloth which makes the box super strong and impervious to water. Sharp corners will snag the cloth and prevent it from lying smoothly on the surface so round off all the corners to a generous radius. A grinder with a sanding disc makes short work of this although it is rather dusty so you might want to do this outside.

4.     A 4 oz cloth is perfect for covering the outside of the box. Drape a piece over the box then cut darts in the corners so get rid of the extra in these areas. Although you can cut it later when it has been saturated with epoxy try to do it now, it will avoid frustration and more importantly you won't get epoxy over all of your tools.

5. Mix up a batch of epoxy and start pouring some into the center of the cloth. Spread this with a plastic squeegee saturating the cloth and smoothing out onto the plywood at the same time. Avoid using too much epoxy which will tend to make the cloth 'float' on the surface. It is better to use too little initially, if it looks too dry spread on a  little extra.

6.    It you have to do any trimming of the cloth a razor blade seems to make the best job. Cutting when the epoxy is at the 'green' stage in other words when it has just started to turn to toffee consistency is the optimum time. It is easy to cut but you won't be dragging the cloth from the surface. Leave until the epoxy is fully cured then you can sand the surface and either paint or varnish as you prefer.