Plywood Boat Plans Australia
Like the post title says, the hull is finished painted.Whoo Hoo!!!!
My last post dealt with the port side of the boat, and this post deals with me wrapping up the starboard side of the hull and making a repair on the port side. But the jist of this post is that the paint work is completed, and I can put the paint pot back on the shelf until late August or early September.
I had to make two repairs on the port side of the hull. I prepped the two areas that needed to be re painted but I did not spray them until I sprayed the starboard side. The repairs were a result of a severe orange peel condition up by the bulwark, and a paint pot failure below the lower rub rail. The paint pot failure was some issue of the feed tube not getting primed correctly or air locking up on me which caused the paint to not flow or atomize correctly. This below the rub rail area looked pretty rough, so I sanded it back smooth.
The orange peel issue by the bulwark was a result of me not leaving well enough alone.When I was painting this area of the hull a few weeks ago, I had lost track of how many coats I had sprayed on this area. I was unsure if I had two or three coats. The area looked good, and I should have left it alone, but being the rookie I am, I sprayed what I thought was a third coat. The prior coat had already dried, so when I applied the not needed coat, it instantly turned to crap and got a severe case of the orange peel. I started to wet sand it out, but the area was too big, and it was going to be faster to take it back down with the DA sander 
and re paint. Ill have to wet sand out the parting line, but that will be an easy almost relaxing job. Both areas now look good and Im glad I made the repairs. I cant really take a picture of the starboard side as there is only four feet of room from the barn wall the the boat. But I can tell you that the starboard side now looks like the port side, which is shiny and finished. I treated the starboard side the same way which entailed sanding the hull to 320 grit, spot priming some areas, painting the rub rail, then spraying three coats of green acrylic urethane.
Ill have to do some wet sanding and polishing on a few areas, but I wont do any of that until next Spring at the launch site. Ill probably end up polishing and waxing all of the hull, but there again, none of that work will happen until next Spring or Summer just before launch.I am sort of keeping a half baked schedule roaming around in the back of my head. While Im a week or so later than I wanted to be on finishing the painting, the painting is now complete and I can focus on moving forward. The next step is going to be getting her
off of the building cradle. I found a dually truck axle for the rear of the boat and a truck steering axle for the front of the boat. No work is needed regarding the steering axle, but the dually is going to need some work before I set the boat down on it. One side of the axle is locked up and will need bearings and races, and I need to take hard look at the tires. I only have to move the hull about ten miles to the launch site, but the tires are so dry rotted, that I have my doubts about them. Once I have the bearings in them, I might bring the assembly up to the truck tire shop that sells me rubber for my trucks and see if they cant some used skins on the wheels. A halfway decent set of used rubber make me feel better about things than the dry rotted tires now on the axle. 
The other reason I need to get her off of the building cradle is that I need the metal from the cradle to build a gantry and the frame for welding together the wheel house and salon. I have over 100 of 4" I beam in the cradle and quite a bit of 1/4" plate. All that will be put to good use for a gantry and frame work for the wheel house job, and will also mean I will not have to spend any money building those two items.
I need to be assembling the wheel house and salon by early July, and needed to be finished with the welding by the middle of August. Finished with the welding means having the hand rails for the salon top welded in place, the engine room exhaust funnel welded in place, the brackets for future paravanes figured out and welded in place, the mast step figured out and welded in place, the pad eyes for the mast figured out and welded in place, lifting rings figured out and welded in place, brackets for the yet to be built dink figured out and welded in place. Im sure Im forgetting a few odds and ends, but you get my drift in that time is running out. Having all this completed by mid August gives me a few weeks to finish painting the salon and wheel house, which puts me in to September, which is about when I need to be picking a date to move her to the launch site. The boat yard Im bringer her to gets busy in late October, so I want all of my work completed before that time and the high end yachts start piling up around me which will cause me trouble with painting.
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o install the master cabin panels, and most of those will have to be plugged with bungs. Ill cut the bungs from scrap Cherry lumber, then part them on the table saw. Ill probably use a sharp chisel to pare the bung down close, then finish sand the bung with a DA sander to get it flush. Im a little worried about glue stains, but I think if I wipe each bung after tapping it home with a damp cloth, I should keep glue staining to a minimum. Im using a 1/4" x 1 1/4" batten to cover all the butt joints, so I wont have to bung those screws.
make the pathway between the bed and the sink more comfortable. Either way, Ill buy a sink this week and mock up a cabinet install to see how it fits in relation to the bed and being able to walk past the bed. Its important for me to feel comfortable as I walk around the cabin, and two or three inches in the right spot can make all the difference in how the room feels ( in my amateur opinion).
The Portuguese bridge door provides easy access to the fore deck while securing the bridge from any rough weather and helping keep our feet dry. Because this door could see some green water, I thought it important to have a jamb the door will be in full contact with once its
closed. Making the jamb out of wood seemed to be the easiest way to go for me. I wanted the door to be able to handle any 
green water it might see without getting twisted, torn off, or damaged. I tend to make things up as I go along, and with no real plan, Im happy with how the door turned out. I turned the door handle out of some 3/4" stainless round stock, and used a round over bit in the lathe to finish the ends. I also turned a stud with threads on the end to hold the handle in place, and make a pivot to engage the handle. Basically, the handle will dog down against the jamb, pulling the door tight and holding things fast. A nylock nut and washer holds the handle to the stud. To make the keeper, I mortised out the wooden door jamb, then fabricated a stainless steel keeper for the handle to dog against. I gave the keeper a slight taper to help lock the handle in place. The more you engage the handle, the tighter it dogs the door down. As things wear and tolerances get looser, I have plenty of areas to adjust ( without much difficulty) to keep the door locking tightly. When were on passage, the door will be dogged shut. When were lounging on the fore deck, or working up there, the door will be opened and resting against the Portuguese bridge. I need to find a rubber bumper to hold the door off of the PB, and also to prevent paint from chipping if the door gets slammed open.
that there are no rails or fixtures to work around will make this an easy area to maintain. Scuffing this cap with some 300 grit and apply some varnish, will be fast and easy with NO BENDING OVER on captain Conalls part. Im liking this part, and if I was on face book, Id give her a thumbs up. Because the Portuguese bridge area is going to be a pretty social spot, I wanted the wood cap to make things more comfortable, and give all a comfy place to lean on and rest a beer. The wood cap feels and looks nice, and hopefully will eliminate bangs to any revelers funny bones. 
I had to use the last of my wide boards to form the cap. I used the band saw and a belt sander to form the curves. I then used a 3/8" round over bit in my router to ease the edge of the cap. I ran out of wide boards so I ended up edge gluing some stock together to finish the job.
I used a combination of traditional scarf joints reinforced with biscuits, and floating tenons to reinforce all the joints. Just before where the wheel house meets the salon, the Portuguese bridge terminates with a sever angle down to the deck. This leaves about thirty inches between the Portuguese bridge and the wall of the salon. I treated this area of the cap by laying the cap over the top of the cap headed down to the deck. I could have used a miter joint in this area, but I was afraid the joint would open up, and I like the way the eased edge of the top cap feels and looks. This is also the area where the spring line will be secured, and also where the shore power cords will pass through. There will be a two bar stainless steel rail bolted to the down cap and welded to the salon in this area, but that cant happen until the salon is in place.
The Dutchman patch is a legitimate repair used for centurys, and give the work that "homegrown, folk art character that I like. The cap will get four coats of urethane, then I will caulk the underside joint where the wood meets the metal. Once the caulk is laid down, this job will be off of the list. 
t of drawers ( twelve drawers in total). Because our sink is in the master cabin, the walking path between the bed and sink needed to be "just so" in order for me to feel comfortable walking between the two. I moved the bed aft off the center line about 7 inches. The other design feature I wanted to build into the bed was having radius corners at the foot board to help navigate between the sink and the bed. Its amazing how more comfortable it is to walk past a radius corner vs a right angle corner. This, like other projects on the boat, is a fight for inches.
cided not to go that route. I decided to laminate multiple pieces together and bend them around a form.
re tubing witch I fabricated a base, a lid, and a nipple to accept a piece of radiator hose. The steam box was built out of duct tape and some old 2" rigid insulation I had laying around. I drilled some 1/4" holes in the side of the box to insert welding rods to make shelv
es for the lumber to sit on. My wifes meat thermometer put a high tech look to the whole contraption.
t. Im thinking I was planning on storing air in this locker, and maybe I was afraid the air thieves were going to stop by and get some of the old O2 I was keeping safely behind door number one. ??? I also had someone ask about the notch in the side of the pulpit for my air hose connection and my wash down hose connection. Heres a better picture of the notch I created in the side of the pulpit. I need to find nice looking flush, black plastic caps I can silicone in to fill all those bolt holes. The pulpit is framed out of 1 1/2" stainless pipe, and stainless plate was used for sheathing. Everything on the pulpit is stainless steel, so when I dont have to worry about rust from chipping paint while we handle the anchoring gear. I notched the bottom of the frame so I could easily hose out under the pulpit and make it easy to maintain. I had originally set this up for a chain windlass and I was afraid that water could get down into the pulpit via the chain hawser. The handle for the door is 1" stainless bar that I bent, and also doubles the step to get up on the pulpit. The door is hinged with fixed pins that I fabricated on the lathe so the door opens 180 degrees. I might need to add some gasket material to the door in case it vibrates or rattles... well see about that. I wrapped the handrail around the pulpit to help keep anyone on board when the need arises to to climb out on the pulpit and deal with something.
sion o
n the hinges to hold it open in any position one would want, its lockable, and it opens from the outside as long as it is not locked. Im glad I did not try to fabricate this hatch.
glued a piece of 
screen over the hole using some clear silicone caulk. Another reason I held the pipe proud high of the bracket, was so that I could use some hose clamps to secure more screen over the pipes to keep the bugs out of the cabin. I want to make sure that I c
an keep air flowing in and out of the boat while we are away from it while keeping it secure and weather tight. It also goes with
out saying that the more passive ventilation there is on board, will make the boat a happy place to be. When were under way, the Lewmar hatch will be closed and the Dorade vents will be supplying air to the guest cabin. Im not a 100% happy with the way I came up with ventilating the boat in this particular area, and I wish the designer would have offered a design for this. I think its good that the cowls are up high where the air can actually get to them, but Im not 100% keen on how I did it. I think in terms of being hatefull to look at , the pipes are not too hatefull, but it coul
d have been better. I was going to make the intakes integral with the Portuguese bridge, but this conflicted with the interior layout of the guest cabin. An integral intake would have also been difficult to fabricate, and would have been more difficult to paint. The Dorade boxes are held in place with four bolts, and are very easy to remove for future maintenance. The dorade boxes are also maid of stainless steel. All in all, I think the pipes work good, but Im just "OK" with how they look. One thing I can say is this design is extremely robust, and in a worse case scenario, I have another place to tie the boat off from. Im thinking after I launch, the pipes might be a good location to weld a bit too, and hang dock lines off of. I had a fan blowing on me while I was working on the installing the cowl vents. Once I was finished, I left the fan blowing, and went in to the cabin to see how much air was making it in. I was pleasantly surprised by how much flow was entering the cabin. It looks like the design will work. I think Im going to re paint the cowls, and make the inside the same green as the hull. I took a picture of the cowls looking at them from the wheel house so you could see a little more clear how I wanted them above the structures to get air flowing.
The access panel is for throttle and engine controls, hydraulic lines for the anchor winch, hydraulic lines for the steering system, and some conduit. The center beam is about 3/8" lower than the ceiling, and instead of wrapping it in bead board, I decided to wrap it in Cherry.
I needed a board over 10 long, and instead of joining two together to get the length, I found a long one on the bottom of my now air dried stack of lumber. The longest boards I have also happen to be the widest boards.
As you can see from this picture, this particular board is over 19" wide and dried pretty darn straight. After I finish milling the faux beam, Ill install it in a day or so, and the master cabin will have a finished ceiling in it.After the master cabin ceiling is finished, another day of work should have the guest cabin dressing room ceiling completed which will also mean all the ceilings below will be finished. 
I also have a lot of people who like to stop by, and any thing I can do to prevent them or me from getting hurt helps everyone in the long run. I also want to do right by the boat yard, and keep my operation in such a way as to minimize any exposure.
