Project Log: Wednesday, March 12, 2014
With at least eight coats on everything, I deemed the
varnishwork on the bulwarks and rubrail good enough for
now: enough to get through the upcoming season,
and then the boat would be back for upkeep and loose
ends anyway. I removed the masking tape.
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Continuing in the head, I created paper patterns of the
forward and after bulkheads, cutting the paper a bit shy
of the edges of the spaces and transferring the actual
shape onto the paper with a 2" offset. I'd use
these patterns to cut pieces of Formica to fit these
surfaces. |
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Starting with the aft bulkhead, I laid out the pattern
on a fresh sheet of Formica, maintaining one factory
edge to minimize cutting, which was possible since the
inboard edge of the bulkhead was a straight line.
I traced out the pattern on the new material. |
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To cut to the shape of the pattern, I clamped the sheet
as needed to a straightedge of plywood beneath, and made
the cuts with a laminate trimmer to the lines. |
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In laying out the outboard edge of the sheet, which
featured a jog around the cabin trunk and to the
outboard bulkhead in the head, I made a mistake.
To allow me to align the sheet with my straightedge, I'd
extended the upper part of the layout line to the bottom
of the sheet, intending to cut the upper part of the
jog, starting where the pencil is pointing on the piece.
I'd already cut to my lower layout line.
But a broken bearing on my laminate bit (which happened
right after completing the lower part of the cut)
distracted me for several minutes while I changed the
bit, and when I came back to make the cut, I stupidly
started at the bottom of the sheet, paring away material
that was supposed to remain. I was supposed to
start the cut up by the pencil point. |
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This was essentially an unrecoverable error from a
practical standpoint. I checked the pattern for
the forward bulkhead to see if it would fit here, but it
was too big. I only had one more sheet of Formica
on hand, and did not want to get more, and the waste
from this sheet was not large enough for a do-over.
In the end, I decided to continue the erroneous cut, the
net result of which was that the outboard side of the
panel now followed the line of the cabin trunk all the
way down, which meant that the top part of the lower
panel section was just over an inch shy of where it
should have been.
Instead of redoing the whole sheet for such an
ultimately minor error, I decided to use what I had and
install some trim to hide the problem. And so it
goes. I finished up the top cuts on the panel,
completing its patterening. |
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Keeping with my water-resistant, utilitarian theme for
the space, I found some white plastic on hand that I
thought might do the trim job nicely; if I didn't like
that, I'd use wood, but didn't really want to introduce
wood trim into the space.
I decided to leave cutting the forward section of
Formica till another day, as it was getting late and I
didn't want the frustration to affect the next piece, so
I test-fit the after piece in place and made minor
adjustments as needed, mainly rounding the two top
corners to fit a little better. I'd do the final
installation later. |
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Total Time Today: 3.5 hours
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