Oiling finished. Ceiling on port side. Cabin sole finishing. Starting cabin ladder renovation
The weather for the last two weeks is typical Swedish autumn: rain with snow, windy and cold. Not very welcoming so my stays in the boatyard are limited to few hours on each visit.
With freezing temperatures I noticed that the wood stopped taking oil: after draining from the bilge I have all the time the same amount of oil in the canisters. Clear sign to stop the procedure.
Port side ceiling planks, oiled two weeks ago, have cured and turned silky-matt finish. Not exactly what I expected with Owatrol D1 so I will probably oil them with D2 when the weather becomes dry. Up till then I screwed them in their place with new bronze screws, utilising old screw holes in big frames. It looks neat although I’m not sure I like the gap between planks. I will check the starboard side if it also had these gaps - in case it is tight there I’ll modify ceiling on the port side.
This weekend I finished drilling and mounting all brass tubes into the cabin sole planks. Tedious job and I would not do it should I do it again. Now it’s done and looks very nice.
What is left is drilling and mounting brass rings acting as finger holes for lifting the floor. I need to experiment a bit how to handle it: these brass rings have extrusions, supposedly acting as friction mounting features but that does not work on hardwood. It’s fine on pine but it splits hard mahogany. I might chose to remove them on the lathe and glue these rings instead. Risking splitting this newly made floor is not something I want to try.
As a last thing this weekend I chose to finish cleaning old sound isolation foam on the back of cabin ladder. Sandpaper would get clogged instantly with this mixture of polyurethane and glue so I used metal brush mounted on the drill.
Half an hour and one battery charge later the job was finished, leaving clean plywood marred with steel brush. That’s not a problem really as I will put two coats of epoxy on it and then glue new sound isolation on top of that. Should work fine and make the cabin more habitable when Yanmar-san is running.